“It’s Nick,” I said.
Pause.
“Oh, wow. Hey,” she said.
“Who is that?” a man’s voice asked from the background.
My throat tightened, and I felt my fingers clench around the phone. “Was that the driver?” I asked. Remind me to fire the nosy bastard.
“Uh, no,” she said. “Just—hey, would it be okay if I catch up with you when I get there?”
What the hell? I took a deep, calming breath. I needed to remember what I’d said. If I wanted to believe I cared about Miranda and not just about sleeping with her, then I needed to also remember to keep out of her personal life. Getting romantically involved with her, or even implying I wanted to, would tarnish everything she’d worked for and everything she cared about. She’d think she got the job only because I liked her, and what kind of asshole would I be to put my dick before her dream? “Sure,” I said. “Later is fine.”
“Thanks. Bye,” she said, then disconnected.
I hung my head and blew out a shuddering sigh. Damn it. This was going to be harder than I thought, and I already expected it to be hard. I guessed I just needed to think of this as the new challenge. I’d thought winning Miranda over was the Mount Everest for so long, but the real Everest was setting aside my feelings for her best interests.
I decided to head to the outdoor pool in hopes of relaxing some of my stress away. The view really was beautiful. A hill behind the pool sloped away to give breathtaking views of mountains that went so far back I couldn’t tell where the clouds started and the mountains ended. I ordered a plate of french fries from the little restaurant attached to the pool and kicked off my shoes to lounge and admire the view.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a familiar voice asked.
Cade sat down in the chair beside me and grabbed a fry, popping it into his mouth. “Did you know there are two helipads here? Pretty badass. Although I wouldn’t have had to crash your party via helicopter if you’d booked me a room like a normal, loving brother might have.”
I groaned. “Please tell me you’re just visiting.”
“What? This is a company retreat, right? I’m part of the company.”
“It’s a Bark Bites retreat.”
“And you invited people from the corporate office as well as the chain locations. I’m a corporate employee. Deal with it, bitch.”
I chuckled. “Will you at least try to avoid sowing mayhem and carnage while you’re here?”
“I will do what I always do. I’ll be myself as aggressively as possible.”
I couldn’t stop from grinning a little. To be honest, I would’ve been worried if he’d said anything else. “Then maybe just aggressively be yourself out of my way, whenever possible. And if you see Miranda around, just—” I shook my head. “No. Forget I said that.”
“Oh my.” Cade sat up straighter. Somehow, he’d taken his shirt off without me noticing. He also produced a bottle of sunscreen and was liberally applying it to his chest and abs. He winked at me as he ran a finger down his stomach and made a sizzling noise.
“You’re such an idiot,” I said.
“And even an idiot can see through your little game, Nicholas.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Saint Nick, it’s clear as day. You want to play hide the hot dog with Miranda. If you bottle something like that up, it’s going to explode on you. It’s like blue balls for your brain. Like . . .” He paused, obviously thinking very deeply. “It’s like balls brain.”
“Balls brain . . . wouldn’t blue brain make more sense?”
“See?” He punched my shoulder. “That’s why you’re the smart one. So, anyway. You’re going to give yourself brain balls if you keep holding this back. It’s going to build up and build up, and before you know it, you’ll be a hopeless mess around her. All you’ll be able to think about is how badly you want to do the deed with her.”
“Your problem is you can’t understand that not everybody operates with the same mental deficiencies you do. Even if you were right about how I feel—which you’re not—I could control my emotions. I can be an adult and put the business first.”
“Right. Because being an adult is so great. Except, wait a second! I almost forgot that having billions of dollars practically exempts us from needing to be adults. You know what an adult is? It’s a slave to the system. It’s those poor people who have to spend more time working than they do sleeping, eating, fucking, and enjoying life. And you know why they do that? Because they have to. Because adults have responsibilities, but responsibilities are just code for bills.”
“You don’t think your child counts as a responsibility?”
“Bear is a privilege. And he’s a well-trained privilege. You train them right, and they practically operate themselves. He can wipe his own ass now,” Cade added, as if that was a completely reasonable and interesting bit of knowledge I’d need.
“Okay, but you do realize I enjoy the work. Right? We obviously don’t need the money anymore, but I still work because it’s important to me.”
Cade blew a raspberry and flopped back into his chair. “To be young again,” he said wistfully. “So young and so innocent to the world. It’s cute, really. But you know, when you grow older and wiser, you’ll realize that people don’t exist to work. We exist to make a minimum of one baby. But really two is ideal. And if you have genetics as good as mine—and yours, to a lesser extent—you’re honestly obligated to make as many babies as you can. That is your divine purpose. Not feeding dogs under the table.”
I shook my head as I stared off toward the mountains. “You do know the world is heading toward overpopulation, right? If everybody keeps making babies like there’s no tomorrow, we’re all going to starve in a century.”
“I plan to be happily dead in a century, thank you very much. And I didn’t say everybody should make babies. I said people like me who won the genetic lottery are obligated to.”
“Sometimes, I can’t tell if you’re actually being serious or if you’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”
“Why can’t it be both?” Cade asked.
Once I realized relaxation was not going to happen with my brother within fifty yards, I headed back to my cabin. It was situated on top of one of the many rolling, grassy hills in the resort and part of a line of maybe twenty other nearly identical cabins in a row. I stopped at the foot of the hill when I saw who was getting out of a car beside the row of cabins up above. Miranda carried a small handbag down the path to her cabin. An athletic-looking guy, maybe in his thirties, followed behind her. He was pulling a big cream-and-gold suitcase I had to imagine wasn’t his own.
I clenched my fists. I thought back to the voice I’d heard in the background when I called her and how short she’d been with me. I didn’t get it, though. Miranda had hardly left the office since I’d hired her a few days ago. I couldn’t figure out how she would’ve had time to meet somebody. I also couldn’t figure out how she’d managed to get him in, considering I’d paid a great deal of money to keep the resort exclusive to only Bark Bites employees.