Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,68

relied heavily on public trust of our good intentions to do the right thing with the businesses we took over, the results of a story like that could be catastrophic.

Miranda looked at me with a questioning expression. I thought she was trying to silently figure out if what Max was saying counted as a valid threat. I gave her a small, grave nod.

“When are you going to run the story?” I asked.

“Never, as long as Miranda does what my friend wants.”

I resisted the urge to grip his collar and squeeze until his face went red. Anger wasn’t going to help anything here. “Does your ‘friend’ know you were trying to drunkenly sleep with his ex-girlfriend?”

Max looked a little startled at that. “According to you,” he said.

I decided not to press the issue anymore. I at least knew Robbie hadn’t sent Max to sleep with Miranda, which meant it might be an angle I could use later. There was no use in making that any more clear to Max at the moment. “And what does your friend want?” I asked.

“Robbie has a new company and a perfect position available for her in LA. All she needs to do is accept his job offer. That’s it. No strings, no expectation of her taking him back. He just wants her for the job.”

“Like hell he does,” I said tightly. “She breaks up with him, and now he’s, what, paying you to blackmail us to get his ex-girlfriend to move across the country and work for him? And you expect us to believe he doesn’t have any plans beyond that?”

“Frankly, it doesn’t really matter what you believe. The deal is on the table.” He rapped his knuckles on the wood cheerily and then stood. “Your move.”

Chapter 19

MIRANDA

Nick wanted to go back to his place and talk about what Max had said, but I told him I wasn’t feeling well and needed a little time in my room.

I lay in bed for hours while I ran through the possibilities. My favorite was hopping on a plane, finding Robbie, and strangling the life out of him with some of the dental floss he never left the house without. As amusing as that idea was, I unfortunately didn’t have the same murderous instinct that Iris did. I also couldn’t floss my teeth without breaking a string, so I doubted I could choke a grown man to death with it, but a girl could dream.

Admittedly, the job offer was tempting. For starters, there would be nothing except a few hundred miles stopping me from dating Nick freely. I’d also be back at the kind of job everyone expected me to take. As much as I’d wanted the Bark Bites job to feel like I was actually contributing somewhere, part of me hated the thought that everyone would see me as a joke for working at a company based around making a dog-friendly restaurant.

Taking Robbie’s job would also mean leaving behind everything I’d already started to build here. Bone Thug was contractually bound to the company as its mascot, as ridiculous as that sounded, so I couldn’t take him with me. I’d also be leaving behind my plans for the future of Bark Bites Resort.

There was no easy answer. Staying would be selfish on so many levels, but leaving would feel like I was stepping back into being that person I was before everything with Nick happened. I’d be letting my obsession with my image take back over, and now that I’d had a taste of shedding that part of myself, I hated the thought of going back to it.

The question that kept tormenting me was whether I could really do it. Could I really keep going after what I wanted when I knew how much damage it could do to Nick’s company? It wasn’t even just Nick that would suffer from a story like that. Rich, Kira, Cade, and Iris were all tied to Sion now. With one selfish move, I’d be potentially harming everybody I cared about.

Potentially.

It was the little word that kept bringing me back full circle. Could a single news story really do any noticeable damage to a billion-dollar-business empire? Even if it did, would the King brothers miss a few million dollars or even a few billion?

I turned over and groaned into my pillow. There wasn’t an easy answer. A few hours ago, I’d been on the fence about what to do with my feelings for Nick. Did I sit on them and wait