Anyone but rich, p.1
Anyone But Rich, page 1
OTHER TITLES BY PENELOPE BLOOM
The Objects of Attraction Series
His Banana
Her Cherry
His Treat
His Package
Her Secret
Stand-Alones
Savage
The Bodyguard
Miss Matchmaker
Single Dad Next Door
Single Dad’s Virgin
Single Dad’s Hostage
BDSM Themed
Three-Book Stand-Alone Series
Knocked Up by the Dom
Knocked Up by the Master
Knocked Up and Punished
The Dom’s Virgin
Punished
Punished by the Prince
Mafia
Two-Book Stand-Alone Series
Baby for the Beast
Baby for the Brute
Three-Book Stand-Alone Series
His
Mine
Dark
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2019 by Publishing Bloom LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542014151
ISBN-10: 1542014158
Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson
CONTENTS
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SEVEN YEARS AGO
We parked our cars at Overlook Point. The hills surrounding our little town were so small that it would’ve been more accurate to call it Mosquito Bite Point, where the hill was barely big enough to see over my uncle’s bald spot, let alone the school that blocked most of the view. If you leaned just right, you could sort of see the chapel and the river near the center of town, but my friends and I never came here for the view.
For as long as I could remember, this was where we came to talk when something had gone seriously wrong. And not I tried to hover pee and accidentally blasted the entire toilet wrong. Not even the I mistook my mom’s hair removal cream for conditioner event of two years ago. No, Overlook Point was for the big-drama moments. It was for life-and-death situations, and if the King brothers weren’t a life-and-death situation, I didn’t know what was.
Iris would have normally been wearing her soccer uniform. She’d have her hair pulled up in a sporty little ponytail, and she’d be in a hurry to get back to school in time for practice. Miranda would have a stack of textbooks open on her passenger seat, because she was so nerdy that her idea of texting and driving involved chemistry books instead of a cell phone. She’d be chewing on the nearest object, because some life-altering exam was looming. My own car would have usually been burdened with folders full of the work I’d been doing on my latest story for the school newspaper and scripts full of highlighted lines to study for the next school play.
We all had our things. Iris was going to head butt her way into a college scholarship. Miranda was going to outbrain everyone in the state and get a free ride to any college she wanted. And me? Thanks to Rich King, I was probably going to be picking gum off the bottoms of tables while customers tried to pinch my ass.
My friends and I had been happily making our way through life when the King brothers—with their chiseled jawlines, six-pack abs, and obnoxiously gorgeous smiles—collided with us like freight trains.
One by one, the Kings had managed to smooth talk their way into our lives and throw a wrench into the perfectly oiled machine that was my friendship with Iris and Miranda. Since kindergarten, the three of us had survived disputes over who was going to hold Brady Hall’s hand during skate night and arguments over who got to wear that black-and-white dress to the formal, and we’d even managed to stage the school’s greatest cover-up when my first period came in seventh grade while I was wearing white jeans. It never mattered how big the obstacle was. The three of us were unbreakable, and we’d find a way to overcome it. Only this time, I thought maybe the rift between us would be too serious to fix.
For as long as I could remember, the King brothers had been the royalty of West Valley. The oldest two were twins, and the younger was only a year their junior. They could’ve had any girl in town. Everybody knew they’d go on to bigger and better things after all this. Movies, professional sports, megabusinesses—whatever they wanted. There was just an aura about the three of them. They seemed invincible, like some greater power had accidentally dropped them into a frothing pot of good luck and stellar genetics before they left the assembly line. Landing a date with one of the Kings was like stealing a slice of something larger than life. For those few hours—days, if you were lucky—you were carving out your moment in the life of someone who was almost certainly going to be special. It was a moment in the spotlight, and I didn’t know any girl who didn’t want it.
We hadn’t been any different. The Kings were distant and unattainable—even Nick, the youngest, seemed out of reach. He’d been friends with Miranda ever since middle school, but he was always dating someone else. Three weeks ago, that someone else was me, and that was how I stupidly set off the chain reaction that brought us to the hilltop and nearly to the breaking point in our friendship.
We all sat on the hoods of our cars, and no one seemed to want to be the first to talk.
“I really am sorry,” I said to Miranda.
She was looking down at the school and the little piece of West Valley she could see below.
“You seriously didn’t know I liked him all this time?” she asked.
Iris chimed in. “You did say, ‘Ew, Nick is like a brother to me,’ pretty much every time we teased you about liking him. So you can’t really blame Kira for not realizing you wanted to fuck your brother. Brotherfucker,” she added. “Besides, if you wanted to get Kira back for dating Nick, I think Rich kind of beat you to the punch.”
I covered my mouth so Miranda wouldn’t see me grinning, but thankfully, Miranda was smiling too. We could always count on Iris to say something dumb at the right time. I didn’t think Iris could even help it if she’d wanted to. That was just how she was. And saying Rich had beaten her to the punch was the understatement of the century. I didn’t need to dig deep to know why I’d dated Nick. The King brother I’d always dreamed of had been Rich, but he was untouchable. Nick was my pathetic attempt to get his attention. If only I’d realized a single day of Rich’s attention would be enough to turn my world upside down.
“Just because you’re right, it doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole,” Miranda said.
“I’m the nicest asshole you’ve ever seen,” Iris said. “Admit it.”
The stony look on Miranda’s face finally softened. “I’m proud to say I have only seen one asshole. And I think you’d have to be a little demented to call it ‘nice.’”
“You get that, Kira?” asked Iris. “That can be your front-page story for the next school paper. Miranda Collins has a disfigured, terrifying asshole.”
Miranda rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. “Just make sure you put an asterisk after that sentence. And her name is Iris.”
“You named your asshole after Iris?” I asked.
Miranda threw up her hands and shook her head. “I thought this was supposed to be some kind of cease-fire meeting. You two are just teaming up on me and my poor asshole.”
Her words reminded us all why we’d come to Overlook Point and of everything that had happened. Nobody was smiling anymore.
“I had an idea,” I said. “It won’t fix what happened, but I think it’s the best way to move forward.”
Iris nodded. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re right. We leave the gas on in their house and then lob cherry bombs in the window. If science doesn’t let us down, only their teeth will survive the explosion.”
I stared at her. “Surprisingly, that wasn’t what I was about to say.”
Iris shrugged. “If your idea isn’t good, we’re going with mine.”
“I hope your idea is good,” Miranda said, “because I’m scared by how much I like this cherry bomb plan.”
“I say we make a pact. We all swear that no matter what, even if the King brothers come begging us for forgiveness on their knees, even if they end up becoming megafamous billionai
“That’s it?” Iris asked. “Can we at least slash their tires? Maybe shove a potato in their exhaust pipes?”
“What the hell?” I laughed. “I don’t see how any of that would help.”
“It would help,” Iris said quietly.
“You can vandalize whatever you want, but I think we all need to swear it,” I said.
Miranda nodded. “I swear.”
“Fine. Me too,” Iris said.
“And me,” I said.
Chapter 1
KIRA
Seven Years Later
“Friendships are a lot like kindergarten art projects: without glue, they all fall apart.” Surprisingly, my father had said that. Granted, he’d also gone on to rant about how he never understood the stigma of eating glue and how scented glue sticks could have been like candy if people only tried them. It was always a little bit shocking that the man had ended up becoming a mayor, even if it was of a small town in rural North Carolina.
What he said had stuck with me. The first part, at least.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t help feeling like my friends and I were growing apart. Our promise to stay away from the Kings had brought us back together all those years ago, and it had held us together since. The Kings had left right after high school to launch some tech company out in California. Unfortunately for us, they’d found enough success and money that they had become billionaires and they had become national celebrities. Their shocking good looks, antics, success, and money made them household names. Go figure. When you made a solemn vow and filled it with a bunch of “even if” clauses, you didn’t really expect every last one of them to come true.
The way things had turned out also made our promise seem silly. It wasn’t like back then, when we had to hold each other accountable. The Kings weren’t walking the halls of our school and parading right in front of our faces day after day. Now they were just gorgeous faces on tabloid magazine racks in the grocery store checkout. They were occasionally spotlighted on TV, but they were as distant and untouchable as Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds. Pretending we had to even think about trying not to date them was beyond silly.
To make matters worse, we’d all been struck by adulthood. That inexorable internal shift when people started judging the success of a day by how productive they were instead of how much fun they had. Fun was the enemy, and it was only allowed if the production quota was met. Our common interests were dying a slow death, and it was becoming more and more clear that we were clinging to the last, decaying wisps of the promise.
I let out a long sigh through my nose, because that wasn’t as dramatic as a mouth sigh. I was sitting at our usual table by the windows in Bradley’s, a local-bakery-slash-coffee-shop-slash-comedy-improv-venue-slash-gossip-nexus for the entire town. A dose of routine felt good when everything else was changing, and Bradley’s for coffee before work was our routine.
As a longtime eavesdropper, I saw all the signs that some particularly juicy bit of news was circulating throughout the store. I knew it had to be something good, because Landry Miller had actually set down his newspaper and hobbled all the way across the restaurant to lean into the conversation. There would’ve been no shame in getting up to listen in, but I wasn’t in the mood today, no matter how interesting the news was.
Tomorrow, I had to find a way to stand in front of classrooms full of high school seniors and try not to make a fool of myself. Seven times in a row. Yay for the seven-period school day.
I was almost driven out of my disinterest when I heard a collective gasp from the gossipers and saw a few wide eyes. What the hell are they talking about? I was usually disappointed by what passed for juicy gossip in West Valley. I’d seen the same group of people practically frothing at the mouth when somebody caught Franklin Moore with one of his sheep. It didn’t help that Franklin had tried to defend himself by saying it was actually a goat. As it turned out, his wife didn’t care much which it was, and she promptly left him. The real kicker was when her divorce lawyer managed to get her custody of the goat, and it had been revealed that the goat was a male.
Thinking back, I realized that had actually been a pretty juicy story. It made me want to get up and dive into the gossip circle even more, but then I saw Iris come in through the front door. Rumors could wait a little while longer.
The bell above the entrance gave a half-hearted jingle to announce her presence, but nobody so much as turned to look at who had come in. I distantly wondered if it was the Frank-and-farm-animal-romance saga part two that had everyone so transfixed. Maybe he’d moved on to bigger game—cows and horses, beware.
Iris was clad in her police uniform. She had graduated from the academy four months ago, and now she even got to carry around a gun. I still wasn’t quite used to the girl I grew up with packing heat instead of soccer cleats, but we’d all changed, and I had a feeling the differences were only going to continue to grow.
Iris sat down before getting herself a coffee. She flashed me a quick, friendly smile. She had her black hair trimmed short in a pixie cut, and her cute pointed chin made it somehow both adorable and sexy. I knew she was always trying to look more tough to fit in with the guys at the station, but unfortunately, she was blessed and cursed with highly feminine features.
“Something big going on today?” she asked with a nod toward the crowd of people at the other end of the store.
“Something,” I said.
She turned her eyes on me, expression growing serious. Iris always saw straight through me, and she clearly could read my stress. “You’re going to be fine, Kira. Those kids are going to love you. You’re impossible to hate. You’ve got that innocent little small-town librarian thing going on.”
“What the hell?” I asked, half-mad and half-amused. “It’s only seven in the morning, and you already get the award for the most backhanded compliment of the day.”
“You can be butt hurt all you want. Librarians are hot. Especially when they have sweater puppies.” She yanked her nightstick from her belt and jabbed at my boobs with it.
I laughed, dodging and swatting it away. “I’m going to call your boss and get that thing taken away from you.”
She did a stylish twirl of the stick and slid it back into her belt without looking. “Call my boss? I am the law, bitch. So leave a message.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s impressive. The part where you can say that with a straight face.”
She cracked a smile and shrugged. “I’ve been practicing. The guys at the station aren’t really taking me seriously, so I’ve been practicing my tough faces in the mirror.”
Iris’s voice was light, but I thought I sensed a touch of real sadness there. The bell above the door jingled again. Iris and I were the only ones who turned to see Miranda walking in. She had always been a good dresser, even back in our school days. She had a way of finding creative ways to put together ordinary clothes. Thanks to her new job, she also had the money to straight-up buy fancy clothes. Of course, she managed to wear them well, too, which normally drew all sorts of eyes everywhere she went.
I was surprised when nobody in the gossiping crowd at the other end of the store seemed interested.
Miranda skipped ordering a coffee and joined us at the table. Her blonde hair was in perfect order, as usual, and tied into a braid she wore to one side. It had the enviable effect of making her look like some sort of Amazon warrior. She glanced between the two of us like she was waiting for us to say something.
“What?” I asked.
“You guys have heard, right?” Miranda asked.
My eyes went to the gossiping crowd for the hundredth time. “I literally walked straight from my house and plopped down at this table. No pit stops and no phone. So no, I haven’t heard anything except my stomach grumbling, because you assholes think thirty minutes is fashionably late.”
“They’re coming,” Miranda said.
I didn’t even know who she was talking about, but the tone of her voice and the look on her face made my stomach clench. “Who is coming?” I asked, a little annoyed by the theatrics of saying something like that and waiting for the obvious question.
“Hemorrhoids?” guessed Iris. “We’re getting closer to thirty. They say that’s when you really have to be careful. No more than five minutes on the toilet and definitely no straining.”
I gave her a disgusted look.
