Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,43

an assortment of condiments and small drinks. “Breakfast?” he asked.

“Uh, sure,” I said.

He wheeled his cart into the room and started opening everything up. What I’d assumed was an array of choices for other guests to choose from turned out to be all for me. He set up everything on the table in my cabin on a combination of heated plates for the warm food and chilled plates for the fruits and sweets. When he was done, it looked like a meal big enough to feed four people, complete with eggs, hash browns, bacon, pancakes, fruit with some kind of syrupy drizzle, and endless packets of fancy-looking butter and little glass bottles of condiments.

I raised my eyebrows at the haul once he’d left. “Well then,” I said to myself. I held up the tiniest ketchup bottle I’d ever seen and marveled at how adorable it was. “I’m totally keeping you,” I whispered.

Thug was sitting close to the table, licking his lips.

“Calm down,” I said. “I’ll look up what stuff on here is safe for you to eat and share. But I get to eat first.”

As if he understood me, Thug let out a pitiful little groan. I sighed and tossed him a pancake, which he caught and smacked down without chewing.

I looked toward Max’s door and wondered if they had brought him breakfast as well, or if they were assuming I was the only one in the cabin. I raised my hand to knock on the door separating my partition of the cabin from his and paused.

Max seemed like a nice-enough guy, and I didn’t want him to go hungry. I could invite him over to share some food without it having to have any kind of romantic implications, couldn’t I?

I knocked on his door twice and waited.

I heard him unlocking it, then the door swung open. He was thankfully fully clothed this time and apparently already set to start his day. He looked freshly showered, and he was wearing a navy-blue polo. “Morning,” he said.

“Hey, they brought me enough food to feed a small army. I was making sure they brought you some too.”

“No such luck,” he said, gesturing to the empty table in his room.

“Well, come grab yourself whatever you like. I’m not a huge breakfast person, so you can take your pick.”

Ten minutes later, I was sitting across from Max, who had misunderstood my offer and seated himself at the table in my room to eat. Even though our conversation was completely innocent, I kept feeling a pulsing wrongness about the whole thing. Nick was right next door, and I’d stubbornly insisted on bringing Max here. I just had to keep telling myself how clear Nick seemed to make our situation. He was my boss, and I was his employee. Whether he felt something for me or not, he seemed to have decided not to act on it. So if I was going to be worried about having a man in my room, it should have been only the natural worry of my boss thinking I was behaving inappropriately on a company-sponsored trip.

“How long have you known him?” Max asked. He ate a forkful of eggs before looking up and waiting for my answer.

“Who, Nick?” I asked. His question had come out of the blue. A second ago, he had been talking about why he liked golf so much.

Max nodded.

“A pretty long time, actually. We met back in high school and were really good friends for a while. Rich and Cade were always kind of the untouchable jock overlord types, but Nick was more approachable back then. I don’t think he knew how cute he was.” I awkwardly swallowed, realizing how weird this was to talk about with Max. As far as I could tell, Max seemed to believe he was charming his way into my life, and he probably wasn’t interested in hearing how cute I thought my boss used to be. “I just mean a lot of girls liked him, and I don’t think he realized he was friend-zoning everybody. He was more innocent back then, I guess. It seems like he has figured out what he has going on lately, though.” The thought was more than a little bitter. I didn’t like knowing that Nick had become so fast and loose with relationships recently, even if I did at least know it was mostly just to keep his parents off his back.

“Wait,” Max said. He set his fork down for the first time since