Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,41
the truth I had decided on—the one I was going to operate based on moving forward. That truth was going to have to be good enough, because I did believe it, even if my feelings for her might have influenced my decision too. “I believe in what you can do,” I said.
“Then let me be helpful. Max is going to give us publicity. He brought a drone and a camera crew. This whole thing is going to be a great look for Bark Bites, okay? All you have to do is stop looking at him like you want to kill him. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I can’t promise I’ll stop thinking about killing him.”
Miranda looked incredulous. “What is your problem, anyway?”
“My problem is that I went out of my way to make this an employee-only event, and you brought some reporter. I also don’t trust the way he went about this. What did he do, flag you down on your way out of the airport?”
“Sometimes you have to make the best of unexpected circumstances.”
“Did you read that on a fortune cookie?”
“No. I learned it firsthand. So, do you want to trust me on this or not?”
I sighed. “Fine. But if he does anything creepy, you—”
“I am a big girl, Nick. And I certainly don’t need my boss trying to police my personal life.”
“Wait. Personal life? When did Max Frost and his stupid-ass name stop being a business opportunity and start being part of your personal life?”
Miranda took a step back and raised her voice again so Max could hear. “You said my cabin actually had two bedrooms, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Completely out of the question. As an employee, you—”
“You can crash in the other bedroom.” She was ignoring me now and talking to Max like I’d spontaneously puffed out of existence. “I think it’s the kind that is separated by doors with locks, so we can each have our own space.”
I was going to kill him, especially when I saw the brief, smug glance he threw my way. He thought he was winning. I wondered how smug he’d look if I accidentally knocked him down the hill.
Calm. Down.
I was losing my goddamn mind over this. Max Frost was a distraction—a stupid one with an appropriately stupid name. He’d caught me off guard, but I still knew my plan, and he wasn’t going to change it. That was all I needed to focus on.
“You’re both adults,” I said, inserting calm into my words that I didn’t feel. “If you don’t mind cutting the size of your cabin in half, then go for it.”
Miranda shot me a look I couldn’t quite decipher before heading into her cabin with Max right behind her. A few moments later, the driver I’d assigned her was doing his best to keep hold of the leash as Bone Thug half dragged him down the path toward Miranda’s cabin.
“Did anything happen in the car between the two of them?” I asked the driver.
“Sorry, sir. I was just looking at the road.”
I sighed.
This was fine. No, it was good. It was all completely great, as long as I looked at it from the right perspective. Max Frost might have been a joke of a news anchor who had to change his last name—I assumed—to make himself sound like a video game character, but he was also going to make it easier for me to do what I’d set out to do. Forget about my feelings for Miranda. Let her live her life. Get the hell out of her way, and above all stop acting like a jealous child.
It was the out I’d been looking for. I may not have felt like I was able to date anyone without being an asshole, but this was the solution. All I’d needed was to wait for Miranda to get in a relationship of her own. It was the perfect solution I’d always been looking for. The catch was this one tasted entirely bitter and not the least bit sweet.
Chapter 11
MIRANDA
To his credit, Max was a gentleman about our living arrangement. I’d been bracing myself for the potential of a few awkward minutes of boundary definition, but he’d just smiled and taken his things through the partition separating our halves of the cabin, leaving the door open a hair. It probably helped that we’d both just finished a long day of traveling and wanted nothing more than a shower and a night’s rest.