I was too scared to look up and see if Nick had noticed the cup was empty, so I kept glaring at my screen. I finally looked back up at him and did my best to appear impatient. “Is there something else? Or were you going to just watch me work all day?”
“I was just curious how long you’d be able to keep it up.”
“Keep what up?” I asked. If my cheeks had been red and hot before, they were molten now.
“Oh,” Nick said. “Before I forget . . .” He fished out a note card from his pocket and set it on my desk. “That’s your log-in info and password. And did you want me to fill this up so you don’t have to stop whatever you’re in the middle of?” He put his fingertips on the handle of my empty mug.
“I’m good,” I said through a tight throat. “Thank you.”
Nick took two steps backward while still wearing that obnoxiously cute smirk. All the indifference I’d seen in his office was apparently forgotten, at least momentarily. It was like I could see straight back to seven years ago when we’d flirted almost every day in AP Chemistry class. Back then, he’d been the only guy who ever seemed interested in me for my intelligence and not because of how I looked. But the smirk on his face suddenly melted away. He looked startled, even. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said quickly, then shut the door behind him.
I glared at Thug, if for no other reason than because the real person I felt like glaring at had just left. All I’d done so far was show him that I was a bumbling idiot. He’d walked in on me stress-bingeing twice and had just watched me make a fool of myself pretending to work and drinking from an empty coffee mug.
All I needed to do was remember that this was good. Even if it was painful to make a fool out of myself again and again in front of him, at least it was helping to simplify the situation. After all, I wouldn’t need to worry about developing feelings for him if he didn’t want anything to do with me in the first place.
Except there had been something in his eyes that didn’t quite add up. In his office, it had seemed like he was actively trying to put distance between us. Then, just minutes later, I’d sensed something else.
Thug came up to me and headbutted my thigh until I relented and scratched his ears. He sat down contentedly, apparently assuming the scratches would continue.
“You’re a manipulator,” I said to him. “Aren’t you? Can’t get by on your good looks, so you have to resort to psychological warfare. Well, don’t get used to it. I’m going to find somebody to take you off my hands as soon as I can.”
Unsurprisingly, Thug was not impressed by my tough-guy act.
When my thoughts went back to Nick—which seemed an inevitability lately—I wanted to groan with frustration. Why couldn’t he just make it simple? Either he was interested, or he wasn’t. Either I’d landed this job because he thought I was qualified, or it was because he was trying to get into my pants.
Nick was painfully attractive, but the idea of him giving me a job just to try to sleep with me made my stomach turn over. For more reasons than one, I desperately hoped that wasn’t the case. Then again, with the way he’d shut me down in his office, it felt more like he was trying very hard to keep out of my pants.
“Why are men so complicated?” I asked Bone Thug.
He tilted his goofy protruding teeth up at me and then sloppily licked his lips.
Nick was hosting the party at his house, but calling the place a house felt as inadequate as calling a gunshot wound a “boo-boo.”
It was a mansion in every sense of the word. The driveway sloped and curved down toward what appeared to be a massive garage below. Huge, perfectly squared-off hedges stretched out from either side but didn’t completely conceal the watery glow of a pool in the back. And the building itself was a glass-and-steel masterpiece with so many architectural flourishes that I probably could’ve spent hours just admiring the outside. It all looked sparkling and new, because it was. Houses like this hadn’t existed in West Valley before the King brothers brought Sion here. He must’ve paid a fortune to have the construction fast-tracked, because I would’ve thought something this massive would take years to complete.
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, seeing Nick’s house in person made him feel even more like some larger-than-life figure. On one hand, I couldn’t help realizing he was exactly what most guys would be if they had a magic genie lamp and unlimited wishes. He was shockingly handsome, rich, and intelligent. I played pretend at being perfect, but Nick was nearly the real thing. So why should I have been so surprised that he passed on me all those years ago?
I’d still spent seven years brooding over the way it had all happened. Seven years of unintentionally elevating him to supervillain status. A few months of being ignored by him while watching him gallivant around town with his brothers had only helped push him even farther up the evil totem pole. And now he was adding emotional whiplash to his bad track record with me to round it all out.
The only problem was that obsessively thinking about Nick for seven years had apparently had some unintended side effects on my brain. Instead of doing what normal people did and moving on long enough for the flame to grow cold, I found it still raged inside me. I liked to think it was an angry kind of raging, but I was starting to see the danger of feeling any emotion so powerfully for so long.
It felt like all that energy could just as easily get redirected if I wasn’t careful. One wrong look, one flirtatious comment, or one innocent touch could be enough to set me down a dangerous path with him. I was already feeling it in how much unwarranted focus I was putting on a few interactions with him, how I was endlessly turning the conversations over in my head and trying to read his intentions.
I took a steadying breath and tried to focus my thoughts elsewhere. I was here for business. Maybe that was all I needed to do. Focusing on my career had always been enough for me before. I just needed to get my head back to that place and stop seeing the other side of Nick. For now, he was my boss. He wasn’t the boy I used to daydream about, and if his recent behavior was any indication, he wasn’t interested in me as anything but an employee, anyway.
Inside his house, I found a relatively tame party. I was halfway prepared for some playboy billionaire–style engagement. I’d thought I might find scantily clad women dancing in giant glass tubes filled with smoke and aggressive techno music.
Instead, the party had the vibe of a business Christmas party before anybody had gotten drunk enough to risk looking bad in front of their bosses. People chatted in small groups with drinks and appetizer plates in their hands, tastefully professional music slid from unseen speakers throughout the house, and waitstaff circulated throughout. It was all very prim and proper.
Since I hadn’t seen Nick after my initial sweep of the main area of the party, I decided to do a little exploring before I introduced myself to anyone. I found a hallway lined with windows and art displays that seemed to take me away from the hub of activity and music. It led to a sort of theater room, where Cade King was reclining on a daybed with a metal plate of grapes beside him.
He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even look up as I approached.
“Cade?” I asked slowly. “Is everything okay?”
“Hmm?” he said. He seemed to notice me for the first time, then smiled. “Oh, hey, Miranda. I was just trying to sort through some issues.”