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The leap from friends to lovers means they have everything to gain...
or everything to lose...
Colleagues, confidants and best friends for years, Flynn and Sabrina have never crossed that line. Until one searing Valentine’s Day kiss. And when circumstances force Sabrina to move in with Flynn...that line disappears. But becoming friends with benefits must stay a secret. Because if word gets out, they’ll be risking their professional reputations and their relationship...
A former job-hopper, JESSICA LEMMON resides in Ohio with her husband and rescue dog. She holds a degree in graphic design currently gathering dust in an impressive frame. When she’s not writing supersexy heroes, she can be found cooking, drawing, drinking coffee (okay, wine) and eating potato chips. She firmly believes God gifts us with talents for a purpose, and with His help, you can create the life you want.
Jessica is a social media junkie who loves to hear from readers. You can learn more at jessicalemmon.com.
Also by Jessica Lemmon
Lone Star Lovers
A Snowbound Scandal
A Christmas Proposition
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk
Best Friends, Secret Lovers
Jessica Lemmon
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-09207-4
BEST FRIENDS, SECRET LOVERS
© 2019 Jessica Lemmon
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Version: 2020-03-02
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For Jules. I’m so blessed to call you a friend.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
About the Publisher
Prologue
“Twenty minutes minimum, or else she’ll tell everyone you’re horrendous in bed.”
“If you’re down there for longer than seven minutes, you dumb Brit, you have no idea what you’re doing.”
“Spoken like a guy who has no idea what he’s doing.”
Flynn Parker leaned back in his chair, his broken leg propped on the ottoman, and listened to his two friends argue about sex. Pleasing women in particular.
“If either of you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be single,” he informed his buddies.
Gage Fleming and Reid Singleton blinked over at Flynn as if they’d forgotten he was sitting there. Drunk as they were, they might have. Gage grabbed the nearly empty whiskey bottle resting on Flynn’s footstool and splashed another inch into Reid’s glass and his own.
But not Flynn’s. Thanks to the pain medication he was on, the only buzz he would be enjoying was courtesy of Percocet.
“You’re one to talk,” Reid said, his British accent slurred from the drink. “Your ring finger is currently uninhabited.”
“The reason for this trip.” Gage clanked his glass with Reid’s, then with Flynn’s water bottle.
Flynn would drink to that. His recent split from Veronica was what drove them all up here, to the mountains in Colorado to go skiing. The last time they were in Flynn’s father’s cabin had been their sophomore year in college. The damn place must be a time machine because they’d devolved into kids just by being here.
Gage and Reid had been nonstop swapping stories, bragging about their alleged prowess, and Flynn had been foolish enough to try the challenging slope...again. His lack of practice led to his taking a snowy tumble down the hill. Just like the last time, he’d ended up in the hospital. Unlike the last time, he’d broken a bone.
Skiing wasn’t his forte.
So. Veronica.
The ex-wife who had recently ruined his life and his outlook. His buddies had come here under the guise of pulling him out of his funk, but he knew they were mostly here because they hadn’t left each other’s sides since they were in college. Sure, Reid had fled back home to London for a short time, but he’d come back. They’d all known he would.
Before he boarded the plane for this vacation, Flynn had learned two things: One, that his father’s diagnosis of “pneumonia” was terminal cancer and Emmons Parker would likely die soon, making fifty-three the age to beat for Flynn; and two, that when he returned home he’d be sitting in his father’s office with the title of president behind his name.
Running Monarch was all Flynn had ever wanted.
Was.
Despite years of showing an interest and trying to please his father, Emmons Parker had shooed Flynn away rather than pulled him in. Now the empire was on Flynn’s shoulders, and his alone.
Reid howled with laughter at something Gage said and Flynn blinked his friends into focus. No, he wasn’t alone. He had Reid, and Gage, and the best friend who’d been a part of his life longer than those two, Sabrina Douglas. His best friends worked at Monarch with him, and with them in his corner, Flynn knew he could get through this.
The senior employees were going to freak out when they found out Flynn was going to be president. He’d been accused of “coasting” before and would be in charge of all of their well-beings, which Flynn took as seriously as his next line of thought—the pact he’d been ruminating about since before his leg snapped in two on that slope.
“Remember that pact we made in college? The one where we swore never to get married.”
Reid let out a hearty “Ha!” UK-born Reid Singleton was planning on staying as unattached as his last name implied. “Right here in this room, I believe.”
Gage pursed his lips, his brows closing in the slightest bit over his nose. “We were hammered on Jägerbombs that night. God knows what else we said.”
“I didn’t adhere to it. I should have.” Flynn had been swept up by love and life. He hadn’t taken that pact seriously. A mistake.
Gage frowned. “It’s understandable why you’d say that now. You’ve been through the wringer. Back then no one expected to find permanence.”
“None of us wanted to,” Reid corrected.
Flynn pointed at Gage with his water bottle. “You and this new girl have been dating, what, a month?”
“Something like that.”
“Get out now.” Reid offered a hearty belch. He lifted his eyebrows and downed his portion of whiskey, cheeks filling before he swallowed it down. “You and I, Gage, we stuck to the pact.” He smiled, then added, “If you were Flynn, you’d have married her by now.”
Reid wasn’t exaggerating. Flynn and Veronica had been married on their thirty-day dating anniversary. Insanity. That they’d lasted three years was more a testament to Flynn’s stubbornness than their meant-to-be-ness.
The final straw had been Veronica screwing his brother.
Whatever, he thought, as the sting of betrayal shocked his system afresh. He’d never liked Julian much anyway.
“He’s doing the thing,” Reid muttered not quietly, given his state of inebriation. His gaze met Flynn’s, but he spoke to Gage. “Where he’s thinking of her.”
“I can hear you, wanker.” Flynn lost his marriage, not his hearing. Though “lost” would imply he’d misplaced it. It hadn’t been misplaced, it’d been disassembled. Piece by piece until the felling blow was Veronica’s head turning for none other than his older, more artsy brother. She was the free spirit, and Flynn was the numbers guy. The boring guy. The emotionally constipated guy.
Her words.
“Hey.” Gage snapped his fingers. “Knock it off, Flynn. We’re here to celebrate your divorce, not have you traipse down depression trail.”
But Flynn wasn’t budging on this. He’d given it a lot of thought since he’d tumbled down that hill. It was like life had to literally knock him on his ass to get him to wake up.
“I’m reinstating the pact,” Flynn said, his tone grave. Even Reid stopped smiling. “No marriage. Not ever. It’s not worth the heartache, or the broken leg, or hanging out with the two worst comrades in this solar system.”
At that Reid looked wounded, Gage affronted.
“Piss off, Parker.”
“Yeah,” Gage agreed. “What Reid said.”
With effort, Flynn sat up, carefully moving every other limb save his broken leg so he could lean forward. “I don’t want either of you to go through this. Not ever.”
“You’re serious,” Gage said after a prolonged silence.
Flynn remained silent.
Gage watched him a moment, a flash of sobriety in the depths of his brown eyes. “Okay. What’d we say?”
“We promised never to get married,” Reid said. “And then we swore on our tallywackers.”
Gage chuckled at Reid’s choice of phrasing.
“Which means yours should have fallen off by now.” Reid’s face contorted as he studied Flynn. “It didn’t, did it?”
“No.” Flynn gave him an impatient look. “It didn’t.”
Reid swiped his hand over his brow in mock relief.
“Come on, Parker, you’re high on drugs,” Gage said with a head shake. “We made that pact because your mom was sick and your dad was miserable, and because Natalie had just dumped me. We were all heartbroken then.” He considered Reid. “Except for Reid. I’m not sure why he did it.”
“Never getting married anyway.” Reid shrugged. “All for one.”
“So? Swear again,” Flynn repeated. “On your tallywackers.” That earned a smile from Reid. “Big or small, they count.”
The first time they’d made the pact none of them truly knew heartache. Breakups were hard, but the decimation of a marriage following the ultimate betrayal? Much worse. Reid and Gage didn’t know how bad things could get and Flynn would like to keep it that way. He didn’t want either of them to feel as eviscerated as he did right now—as he had for the last three months. All pain he could have avoided if he’d taken that pact seriously.
His buddies might never find themselves dating women who slept with their family members, but it wouldn’t matter how the divorce happened, only that it did. He’d heard the statistics. That 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce was up to around 75 nowadays.
He’d heard some people say they didn’t harbor regret because if they’d never married, and divorced, they wouldn’t have learned life’s lessons. Blah, blah, blah.
Bullshit.
Flynn regretted saying “I do” to Veronica all the way down to his churning stomach. The heartbreak over her choosing his brother would have been more bearable if she’d told him up front rather than three years into an insufferable marriage.
“I swear,” Reid said, almost too serious as he crashed his glass into Flynn’s water bottle, then looked at Gage expectantly.
“Fine. This is stupid, but fine.” Gage lifted his glass.
“Say it,” Flynn said, not cracking the slightest smile. “Or it doesn’t count.”
“I promise,” Gage said. “I won’t get married.”
“Say never, and we all drink,” Flynn said.
“Wait.” Reid held up a finger. “What if one of us caves again? Like hearts-and-flowers Gage over here.”
“Shut up, Reid.”
“One of your monthlong girlfriends could turn into the real thing if you’re not careful.”
“I’m careful,” Gage growled.
“You’d better be.” Flynn stared down his friends. The enormity of the situation settled around them, the only sound in the room the fire crackling in the background. “The lie of forever isn’t worth it in the end.”
Reid eyed Flynn’s broken leg, a reminder of what Flynn’s stupidity had cost him, and then exchanged glances with Gage. These men were more like Flynn’s brothers than his own flesh and blood. They’d do anything for him—including vowing to remain single forever.
“Never,” Gage agreed, holding up his own glass.
Reid and Flynn nodded in unison, and then they drank on it.
One
Flynn Parker, his stomach in a double knot, attempted to do the same to his tie. His hands were shaking from too much coffee and not enough sleep. It wasn’t helping that the tiny room in the back of the funeral home was nearing eighty degrees.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and slicked his palms. He closed his eyes, shutting out his haggard reflection, and blew out a long, slow breath.
The service for his father was over, and when Flynn had left the sweltering room, the first thing he’d done was yank at his tie. Bad move. He’d never return it to its previous state.
God help him, he didn’t know if he could watch his father being lowered into the dirt. They’d had their differences—about a million of them at last count. Death was final, but burial even more so.
“There you are.” Sabrina Douglas, his best friend since college, stepped into view in the tall mirror at the back of the funeral home. “Need help?”
“Why is it so hot in here?” he barked rather than answer her.
She clucked her tongue at his overreaction. Much like this moment, she’d come in and out of focus over the years, but she’d always been a constant in his life. She’d been at his side at work, diligently ushering in the new age as he acclimated as president of the management consulting firm he now owned. She’d been with him for every personal moment from his and Veronica’s wedding to his thirtieth birthday—their thirtieth birthday, he mentally corrected. Sabrina was born four minutes ahead of him on the same damn day. She’d jokingly called them “twins” when they first met in psych class at the University of Washington, but that nickname quickly fizzled when they realized they were nothing alike.
Nothing alike, but unable to shake each other.
Her brow crinkled over a black-framed pair of glasses as she reached for the length of silk around his neck and attempted to retie it.
“I do it every morning,” he muttered, Sabrina’s sweet floral perfume tickling his nose. She always smelled good, but he hadn’t noticed in a while.
A long while.
His frown deepened. They hadn’t been as close in the years he was married to Veronica. His hanging out with Reid and Gage hadn’t changed, but it was as if Veronica and Sabrina had an unspoken agreement that Sabrina wasn’t welcome into the inner circle. As a result, Flynn mostly saw her at work rather than outside it. The thought bothered him.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He was speaking of his own reverie as much as his lack of ability to tie his necktie.
“Flynn...”
He put his hands on hers to stop whatever apology-slash-life-lesson he suspected was percolating. As gently as he could muster, he said, “Don’t.”
Sabrina leveled him with a wide-eyed hazel stare. Her eyes were beautiful. Piercing green-gold, and behind her glasses they appeared twice as large. She’d been with him through the divorce from Veronica, through his father’s illness and subsequent death. The last couple of months for Flynn had started to resemble the life of Job from the Bible. He hadn’t contracted a case of boils as the Monarch offices collapsed in on themselves, yet. He wasn’t going to tempt fate by stating he was out of the woods.
Emmons Parker knew what his sons had been through, so when he’d had his lawyer schedule the meetings to read the will, he’d made sure they happened on separate days.
Flynn on a Sunday. Julian on a Monday.
Unfortunately, Flynn knew Veronica had gone to the reading with Julian, even though he’d rather not know a thing about either of them. Goddamn Facebook.
Julian inherited their father’s beloved antique car collection and the regal Colonial with the cherry tree in the front yard where they’d grown up. Flynn inherited the cabin in Colorado as well as the business and his father’s penthouse apartment downtown. Julian was “starting a family,” or so the lawyer had read from the will, so that was why Emmons had bequeathed their mother’s beloved home with the evenly spaced shutters to his oldest, and least trustworthy, son.
The son who was starting a family with Flynn’s former wife.
Today Flynn had accepted hugs and handshakes from family and friends but had successfully avoided Julian and Veronica. His ex-wife kept a close eye on Flynn, but he refused to approach her. Her guilt was too little and way too late.
“I don’t know what to do.” Sabrina spoke around what sounded like a lump clogging her throat. She was hurting for him. The way she’d hurt for him when Veronica left him. Her pink lips pressed together and her chin shook. “Sorry.”
Abandoning the tie, she swiped the hollows of her eyes under her glasses, careful of the eye makeup that had been applied boldly yet carefully as per her style.
He didn’t hesitate to pull her close, shushing her as she sniffed. The warmth of that embrace—of holding on to someone who cared for him so deeply and knew him so well—was enough to make a lump form in his own throat. She held on to him like she might shatter, and so he concentrated on rubbing her back and telling her the truth. “You’re doing exactly what you need to do, Sabrina. Just your being here is enough.”
She let go of him and snagged a tissue from a nearby box. She lifted her glasses and dabbed her eyes, leaning in and checking her reflection. “I’m not helping.”
“You’re helping.” She was gloriously sensitive. Attuned. Empathetic. Some days he hated that for her—it made her more at risk of being hurt. He watched her reflection, wondering if she saw herself as he did. A tall, strong, beautiful woman, her sleek brown hair framing smooth skin and glasses that made her appear approachable and smart at the same time. She wore a black dress and stockings, her heeled shoes tall enough that when she’d held him a moment ago she didn’t have to stretch onto her toes to wrap her arms around his neck.
“Okay. I’m okay. I’m sorry.” She nodded, the tissue wadded in one hand. Evidently this okay/sorry combo marked the end of her cry and the beginning of her being his support system. “If there’s anything you need—”
“Let’s skip it,” he blurted. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was the right thing to do.
“Skip...the rest of the funeral?” Her face pinched with indecision.
“Why not?” He’d seen everyone. He’d listened as the priest spoke of Emmons as if he was a saint. Frankly, Flynn had heard enough false praise for his old man to last a lifetime.
Her mouth opened, probably to argue, but he didn’t let her continue.
“I can do it. I just don’t want to.” He shook his head as he tried to think of another cohesive sentence to add to the protest, but none came. So he added, “At all,” and hoped that it punctuated his point.
She jerked her head into a nod. “Okay. Let’s skip it.”
Relief was like a third person in the room.
“Chaz’s?” she offered. “I’m dying for fish and chips.” Her eyes rounded as her hand covered her mouth. “Oh. That was...really inappropriate phrasing for a funeral.”
He had to smile. Recently he’d noticed how absent from his life she’d been. It’d be good to go out with her to somewhere that wasn’t work. “Let’s get outta here.”
“Are you kidding me?” His brother, Julian, appeared in the doorway, his lip curled in disgust. “You’re walking out on our father’s funeral?”
Like he had any room to call Flynn’s ethics into question.
Veronica’s blonde head peeked around Julian’s shoulder. Her gaze flitted to Flynn and then Sabrina, and Flynn’s limbs went corpse-cold.
“Honey,” she whispered to Julian. “Let’s not do this here.”
Honey. God, what a mess.
Sabrina took a step closer to Flynn in support. His best friend at his side. He didn’t need her to defend him, but he appreciated the gesture more than she knew.
Julian shrugged off Veronica’s hand from his suit jacket and glared at his brother. It was one of Dad’s suits—too wide in the shoulders. A little short in the torso.
Julian didn’t own a suit. He painted for a living and his creativity was why Veronica said he’d won her heart. Evidently, she found Flynn incapable of being “spontaneous,” or “thoughtful,” or “monogamous.”
No, wait. That last one was her.
“You’re not going to stand over your own father’s grave?” Julian spat. Veronica murmured another “honey,” but he ignored it.
“You’ve made it clear that it’s none of my business what you do or don’t do.” Flynn tore his gaze from Julian to spear Veronica with a glare. “Both of you. Same goes for me.”