Nick chuckled. “A bit dramatic, maybe. But I’ll happily be your obstacle, especially if it means I get to enjoy watching you try to crawl over me.”
I thought about objecting but realized I’d only make it worse if I acknowledged his implication. “Thank you,” I said curtly.
“Well. Congratulations,” he said. “The job is yours, if you want it.”
I shook Nick’s hand and left the room. As much as I wanted to portray calm, I couldn’t help fast-walking my way toward the exit. I just needed space. Air.
I stared straight ahead. Confidence, confidence, confidence. It wasn’t fair, but the business world expected an entirely different level of professionalism from women. Men could loosen their ties and joke around without losing the respect of their employees. Women didn’t always have that luxury, so I knew I needed to keep my walls up. Always. The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth. Those same walls were part of the reason my “perfect” boyfriend was no longer in the picture. I’d made my choice, though. I’d been chasing my goals for too long to let anything get in the way. Even Robbie. And now I had a bad feeling if I didn’t plow my way through Nick, he’d be the one doing the plowing.
I cringed. Why couldn’t I stop accidentally turning my thoughts sexual when it came to him? I was supposed to want to punch him in the mouth, not kiss it. A few minutes alone with him was poisoning seven years of painstakingly maintained anger, and I needed to put an end to that before it got any worse. Somehow.
“Hey,” Nick called from behind me. “Wait a sec.”
I turned around and couldn’t help drinking him in all over again. He was like a sweet wine with a bitter aftertaste. The first glimpse made jolts of excitement run through me, but then the past would bubble up and make my stomach turn.
Dark hair, dark-green eyes, glasses, and a heavy dose of brooding. His brothers could’ve been cast as the superheroes in any blockbuster movie, but Nick had a touch of the traits that would’ve made for the perfect sympathetic villain. He would’ve been the kind of villain audiences swooned over and rooted for, even as he was crushing the world under his boots.
Nick had always stood apart from his brothers in more ways than one. It had been what made me develop a hopeless crush on him back in high school. He usually wore an expression like he was trying to think through some impossible problem. The Nick I knew was always struggling to find something worthwhile for that bright mind of his, and whether anyone else wanted to admit it or not, I knew he was the backbone of Sion’s multibillion-dollar success. Nick was the smartest man I’d ever met, and that was part of the reason I’d never forgiven him for dating Kira all those years ago. He was too smart to claim he didn’t know how I’d felt about him back then. He’d also been too kind to let me write a poem like that for him and then pretend it had never happened.
But he’d changed, even in the last few months. It seemed like he was trying to date his way through every woman in West Valley before the end of the year. Except me, of course. Maybe watching his brothers pair off into relationships had him putting some kind of pressure on himself to compete.
He was standing now with that scrutinizing look. He wasn’t the boy from high school anymore with the broad shoulders and the thin frame. He’d thickened up with a touch of muscle in the right places, and his face had matured in ways that made it hard not to gawk. Regardless, I would’ve had to dig very deep to find any warmth for him in my heart. I felt it in my skin and my stomach, but not where it counted. Seven years of holding a grudge did wonders for quenching flames, after all.
“Yes?” I asked. I made a monumental effort to be professional. I’d decided that was the final stage of this whirlwind. No matter how I might feel about this, all I had to do was do my job and do it well. My feelings for Nick—or lack thereof—could sit in the back seat and get into as much trouble as they wanted so long as the car got where it needed to go.
“You dropped this.” Nick held out a candy wrapper for me. The irritating twinkle in his eye made a wave of jittery panic run through me.
Calm, I reminded myself. Be calm. I reached out a steady hand and took it from him. “It must’ve fallen out of my purse.”
“Since when do you eat candy?” Cade asked. He was still sitting in the lobby with his eyes glued to his phone. “I thought you were a green-smoothie-and-detox kind of person. You know, they make detoxing sound so clean and fancy. Nobody tells you it’s just the process of blasting the contents of your stomach out in the form of liquid—”
“Cade,” I said quickly. “If you would stay out of this, it’d be great.”
“Stay out of this?” he asked. “Oh my. I hadn’t realized you and Nick already graduated to this status. Well done, Nick. You’ve started to warm the heart of the ice queen, after all. Next, you’ll just need to work that warmth down, and down, and—”
“It’s just a”—I took a shaky breath, then regained my composure, which wasn’t easy with two King brothers watching me and Cade spouting nonsense—“figure of speech. And unless I dropped some more trash, I should be going.”
Nick licked his lips. “Actually, I was thinking we could grab something to eat. Break the ice and smooth over old wounds before your first day.”
Cade looked up from his phone. “Are you barking mad? She swore an oath that she’d never date you. An oath.”
Nick and I both glared at him.
Cade looked between us, then sighed. “It was a pun. Bark Bites. Barking mad? Never mind. I don’t need you to laugh to know I’m funny.”
“Puns are only funny when they fit the context of a conversation,” Nick said. “That’s half of the art of a good pun.”
Cade held up a finger to silence his brother while he tapped something into his phone and squinted at the screen. “Look,” he said, still reading off his phone. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Today has been ruff, and . . .” Cade suddenly laughed. “Oh, wait, did I ever tell you about the time I went to the zoo and they only had one small dog? It was a shih tzu.” He laughed again. “Shit zoo—you get it, right? Like the zoo was shit, but the dog was—”
“Are you just reading puns off a list online?” Nick asked.
Cade set his phone in his lap. “Uh, no? I was multitasking. Work emails, I shih tzu not.”
“As much fun as it is to listen to my brain cells committing suicide one by one, I should really go,” I said.
“Wait,” Nick said. “You never gave me an answer.”
“About lunch? I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”
Cade nodded. “She’s right. You put that much chemistry in a small restaurant booth? Boom. Might as well jump into a swimming pool filled with soda while wearing a full bodysuit covered in Mentos. Bad idea. Trust me.” He made an explosion noise and spread his fingers out. “Clothes everywhere. Just naked bodies. Sweat. Passion. Maybe a grilled cheese stuck on Nick’s butt cheek.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth and whisper-yelled the rest. “He’s really into the whole food-mixed-with-sex thing. Also something about pegging? Pirate legs? I forgot the details, but really just anything pirate related would—”