I stared at him in disbelief. My heart was pounding, and my blood felt cold.
Shit.
I rapidly played through what he’d just said again and again, searching it for any holes. There didn’t seem to be any. He could very easily spin what had happened that way, and it would look horrible not just for me, but for Sion. Considering we were a company that 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 to see what happened? Did I pounce on them while they were still so strong? Or did I shelve them entirely and focus on my career? Now that my options felt like they’d been stripped from me, the answer seemed so obvious it hurt.
I cared about Nick. I always had. Even when I’d been telling myself I hated him and was happy I’d sworn the oath to stay away from him, I’d still wanted him. The oath was just a defense mechanism. It had let me think the reason we weren’t together was because I’d decided we wouldn’t be. I hadn’t had to face the fact that I was too scared to put my feelings out there for him and the idea that he might not feel the same way about me.
But now I knew he did. It was all right in front of me, and the only thing that had been left to do was reach out and take it. Except I’d waited too long. Again.
There was one option in the entire mess that might work for both of us, though. It was far from ideal, and I knew Nick wouldn’t approve. I had a feeling he was going to tell me to let Max run the story and promise he’d take care of the damage.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I could fix this. I just needed a little time.
Chapter 20
NICK
I got tired of waiting for Miranda to stop pretending she wasn’t feeling well around dinnertime. I reasoned that five hours was plenty of time for her to decompress. If she really wasn’t feeling well, she would need to be checked on, anyway.
I knocked on her door and waited. And waited.
It took me five minutes before I peeked through the windows. I felt my stomach drop when I saw the room had been cleaned out. All her stuff was gone. I staggered backward and slumped down, racking my brain for an idea.
She was almost certainly trying to go to LA. The part I didn’t know was why. I fired off a text asking what was going on, even though I suspected she was planning on doing something she knew I wouldn’t like, or else she wouldn’t have sneaked off like this.
I looked up Robbie’s business and found the address. She’d probably be headed there. All I needed was to somehow intercept her before she got there and did anything stupid. I couldn’t imagine she’d offer to get back together with him, even to stop Max from running his story. But I was worried he’d try something. God, I was worried.
I called Cade.
“I’m naked, unless nipple clamps count as clothing. Wait, didn’t we have a debate on this once? I can’t remember what we decided on.”
“We decided you didn’t need to brief me on the amount of clothes you were wearing every time you picked up the phone.”
There was a short pause. “Oh. Right. Well, what did you need?”
“Can I use your helicopter?”
“I was planning on getting burritos when Iris and I finished up here. How am I supposed to get burritos without a helicopter?”