Flirting with the Frenemy

by Grant, Pippa

  “Nope. I’m pretty sure you hate them and you’re just humoring us.”

  She laughs. “You’re absolutely correct. But since they come with Tucker, I guess I’ll keep them.” Her hair tickles my cheeks as she bends to kiss me, and I thread my fingers through the soft, curly locks while I tease her tongue with mine.

  Her phone buzzes on the floor next to us, but we both ignore it. Her fingers are trailing over the vacation stubble on my jaw, and there’s nothing I love more than her touch on my face.

  Except maybe the way she’s rocking her pussy over my rapidly hardening cock.

  That’s pretty fucking amazing too.

  Especially knowing how hard she’s worked to get so much strength and range of motion back in her leg.

  Anytime Beck gives me shit for sleeping with his sister, I point out how much I’ve improved her flexibility.

  Her phone buzzes again. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “Couldn’t help myself. I posted a picture of my rings on Twitter.”

  “So you do like them.”

  “Maybe a little.” Her eyes sparkle while she dips her head to press a kiss to my neck. I slide my hands under her shirt, and—“Dammit, Ellie, I fucking hate your sports bras.”

  She laughs while she straightens and pulls off both her shirt and the stupidly tight rubber band with straps that require flexibility and acrobatics to pull off.

  I don’t mind the show, but it looks like wearing it would hurt.

  Though I do like the way her breasts just somehow fall right into my waiting palms while she’s still wrangling the thing over her head.

  So soft. And those gorgeous pink tips that harden immediately under my thumbs are making my cock ache. I lean up to take one in my mouth, and she gasps and grips my shoulders. “Wyatt.”

  “Mmm,” I hum against her nipple, and her breath catches again while she arches into me.

  Her phone erupts in a series of buzzes, and she laughs breathlessly. “I should shut that off.”

  “Ignore it,” I reply, shifting my focus to her other breast while I roll her wet nipple between my thumb and finger.

  “Oh, god, Wyatt, what if Tucker gets up again?” she whispers.

  “I’ll hear him.”

  “Like last time?”

  “Ellie. He’s passed out cold.” I blow on her nipple, and it works.

  She moans and grabs my face and kisses me hard, then orders me to lose my shirt too.

  I’m happily obliging when her phone blows up.

  Not like kitchen-fire-level blowing up, but a steady stream of buzzes that just don’t stop.

  At all.

  She huffs and leans over to grab it. “Stupid pho—oh.”

  Her eyes go wide.

  Then wider.

  Her mouth follows suit.

  “Wyatt,” she whispers.

  That raging hard ache in my cock disappears, because something’s wrong.

  Something’s seriously fucking wrong.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Beck—” she starts.

  My veins freeze over. For all the shit I’ve given him, if something happened to Beck—

  “No, no,” she says quickly. “He’s okay. He’s okay. But—the jokes. The pranks. His mouth. He—”

  She cuts herself off and holds her phone in front of my face.

  I read the first text from Monica.

  Another from her mom.

  One’s come in from Levi, and I realize if I had my phone on me, it would probably be blowing up too, but my phone’s upstairs.

  And then there’s the picture.

  The picture of a tweet.

  Sent by Beck.

  Looks like something he’d say to Ellie, but he most definitely did not send that Tweet to his sister.

  “He’s fucking dead,” I say, my own eyeballs like saucers.

  “His career is,” she whispers back.

  We make eye contact.

  “Surprise engagement party tomorrow night at home,” I croak out. “He’s coming.”

  She’s off me in a heartbeat, putting her phone to her ear, undoubtedly calling the dumbass. “He’s home?” she asks me while I hear his voicemail pick up.

  “Flying in overnight.”

  I’m on my feet now too.

  I don’t care how much shit he gives me for dating his sister—or how many other pranks he’s pulled on me this past year alone—he’s my brother.

  And he just made the mistake of his life.

  “I’ll start packing,” I say while I throw on my shirt.

  She leaves her sports bra on the ground and struggles into her tank top. “I’m calling Mom and Dad.”

  “Tucker can sleep in the car.”

  She winces. “But the festival—”

  “Ellie.”

  She studies me a minute, then nods.

  Would I rather spend the night making her moan my name?

  Fuck, yes.

  But family comes first. And if the way Ellie’s phone is blowing up all over again is any indication, family needs her right now.

  And me.

  And every last one of the guys from the neighborhood.

  For what Beck just did, he’s going to need all the support he can get.

  “Ellie?” I say softly while I trail her up the stairs.

  “What?”

  “You know this isn’t because we got engaged, right? We don’t actually cause disasters.”

  She pauses to look at me, and then we both laugh. Except neither one of us actually thinks it’s funny.

  We’re loading up the car before she says any more about it. Tucker’s objecting to being strapped into his booster seat in the middle of the night, and Ellie’s about to climb in to sit next to him and snuggle him as best she can in the car when she turns to look at me.

  “We really are cursed,” she says slowly, but then a smile pops out. “But there’s no one in the world I’d rather be cursed with.”

  * * *

  Thanks for reading! Want some bonus epilogues, including the proposal, some epic revenge from Beck, and the answer to the question of how long Ellie and Wyatt actually made it? Click here to register for the Pipster Report, and I’ll send you three! If you’re already a subscriber, check your last issue - the link is always at the bottom of every email from me!

  If you’re the awesome type of person who likes to leave reviews, here are quick linkies for you to Amazon and Goodreads. And keep reading for a sneak peek at America’s Geekheart, Beck’s story. Hugs and cookie kisses!!

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  More Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  Royally Pucked (Manning and Gracie)

  Beauty and the Beefcake (Ares and Felicity)

  Rockaway Bride (Willow and Dax)

  Hot Heir (Viktor and Peach)

  The Hero and the Hacktivist (Rhett and Eloise)

  Charming as Puck (Nick and Kami)

  Flirting with the Frenemy (Wyatt and Ellie)

  America’s Geekheart (Beck and Sarah)

  Hosed (Ryan and Cassie)

  Hammered (Jace and Olivia) (Coming Spring 2019)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  And more…

  Sneak Peek at AMERICA’S GEEKHEART

  If you love hot, sexy Hollywood men, Tweets gone terribly wrong, and charmingly adorable heroines looking for where they fit in the world, read on for an uncorrected early excerpt of Beck Ryder’s story, America’s Geekheart!

  Beckett Ryder, aka a man completely oblivious th
at he’s just mistweeted his way to being public enemy number one

  Life is pretty fucking perfect.

  Weather’s a glorious seventy-five degrees and sunny on this brilliant June morning. My new jogging shoes fit like I’m running on a cloud. The green leafy canopy over Reynolds Park is hitting that perfect level of shade, and I’ve got my tunes dialed up and nowhere to be until my sister’s engagement party tonight.

  Ten solid hours of doing whatever the hell I want.

  I’m grinning to myself as I run the familiar pathway through the city park, so fucking glad to be back in Copper Valley. Love my job, but there is no place in the world like home.

  I nod to a woman pushing a jogging stroller going the other way, and she scowls and flips me off.

  Odd.

  Crazies are normal when I’m in LA, or sometimes in Europe, but here?

  My hometown loves me.

  I dial down the volume on my tunes and double-check my shirt.

  Nope, nothing offensive about a Fireballs T-shirt. They might be the biggest losers in baseball, but they’re lovable losers.

  I glance lower, and—yep, remembered to put pants on today. Shorts, really. My brand, naturally, but not because they’re my brand. More because I picked them to be in my line because they’re really fucking comfortable.

  I might’ve been singing along to Levi’s latest hit, but I’m not that bad. Sure, I was the eye candy in the boy band Bro Code back in the day, but I can still carry a tune.

  She must’ve mistaken me for someone else. Or her fingers are stuck that way. Resting bitch face knows no boundaries and can happen to even the most innocent victims. Probably not her fault.

  I keep on truckin’, and an elderly woman on a bench shakes her cane at me and says something I don’t catch while her dog yaps along. I pop out one earbud.

  “You’re a disgrace to good men everywhere,” she crows.

  I slow and face her, jogging in place. “Ma’am?”

  “Your poor momma must be ashamed.”

  Ah. The underwear police. Not so unusual. While Levi went on to be a pop sensation when we called it quits as Bro Code, Cash took off for Hollywood, Tripp hung up his fame and settled down, and Davis went into hiding, I took my own route.

  My post-boy-band career choices have been known to raise a few eyebrows.

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s horrified. Y’all have a nice day now.” I salute her and head back down the path toward the fountain at the center of the park.

  In the years since I modeled my first pair of briefs for Giovanni & Valentino, before I branched out into creating a fashion empire of my own, I’ve had my share of haters. Goes with the business.

  But my momma isn’t ashamed of me.

  No more than she was during my boy band days.

  If anything, she’s amused. Resigned sometimes, but amused.

  Ellie—my sister—gives me trouble. So do all the guys we grew up with.

  That’s why I love them.

  They keep me grounded.

  Hell, half of them needed the grounding themselves.

  The path curves, and there she is.

  My fountain.

  Okay, fine, she’s not mine. But she’s on the city’s crest, and she just says home to me.

  I fucking love home, but running the Beck Ryder fashion empire—yeah, go ahead and snort, it’s funny—keeps me away a lot.

  I burst out into the sunshine and make the loop around the curved sidewalk, feet pounding the concrete, mist brushing my face, the five stone dolphins around the fountain joyfully spitting water into the stone mermaids’ buckets on the second tier while a circle of seahorses blows water horns.

  The early summer breeze rustles the birch and sugar maple leaves shimmering in the sunlight. The air’s clear. The sky’s my favorite blue. Flowers explode in reds and yellows and purples in the carefully cultivated landscaping that masks the downtown skyscrapers and mutes the noise of the city.

  It’s my own private welcome home party from nature.

  Can’t wait to be here more often.

  Soon. So soon.

  I circle the fountain and head back toward the path that leads to the Shuler building and my penthouse at the edge of the park. Tomorrow, I have to get back to work on the final details on selling off the RYDE line of my empire—yeah, my signature line—but today, my staff has the day off, my phone’s still on airplane mode, and the whole Copper Valley metro area is my oyster.

  No phone, no work, no responsibilities.

  Maybe I’ll leave the city behind and head up into the Blue Ridge mountains for a hike. Nap up there in the fresh air. Eat. Eat some more. Get back in time for Ellie and Wyatt’s surprise engagement party.

  Rumor has it they’re serving barbecue.

  I haven’t had good barbecue in months.

  I’m so busy drooling over the thought of real Southern pulled pork that I almost miss the yoga class.

  By itself, a yoga class on the lawn by the fountain isn’t unusual. But this yoga class seems less into the Namaste and more into hurtling their yoga bricks.

  Specifically, at me.

  They charge me as a group, a yoga-pants-clad mob racing over the hilly green grass, shouting obscenities and shaking fists. One lady has her mat rolled into a cylinder and is leading the pack Braveheart style.

  “Creep!”

  “Jerk!”

  “You go home and get your own damn apron!”

  My pulse amps into sprint territory.

  “Hey, hey.” I hold my hands up in surrender while I jog backwards, because seriously, what the fuck? “Y’all know I love you. What’s—”

  A shoe hurtles at my face. Another yoga brick clips my shoulder.

  “Get him, ladies,” the Braveheart lady yelled.

  Oh, shit.

  They want blood.

  I don’t have a fucking clue what I did, but these ladies want blood. My blood.

  My run morphs into a sprint, but for once, my brain’s spinning faster than my legs.

  The mother and her stroller and her middle finger. The grandmother and her cane. And now a yoga class.

  I’m outnumbered.

  Probably outsmarted and outmaneuvered too.

  Another yoga brick.

  And I’m still a mile from safety.

  “Shut up and let your underwear do the talking!” A clump of—oh, man, that’s disgusting. Flying horse poop. Awesome.

  I pump my legs harder. Knees higher. Like I’m gonna beat Usain Bolt. Running. Sprinting. Away from a mob of angry women.

  This is new.

  As is having a mob of angry women gaining on me.

  The ladies usually love me. Or if not, at least they tolerate me with patient smiles.

  Maybe a run wasn’t the best cure for jetlag.

  But how was I supposed to know today’s International Beck Ryder Is The Enemy Day?

  “I’ll show you where you belong,” one of the women screeches.

  I don’t have a clue where she thinks I belong, or why she thinks I belong there, but I know one thing.

  I am totally fucked.

  Click HERE to get AMERICA’S GEEKHEART!

  Sneak Peek at MISTER McHOTTIE

  If you love hot billionaire bosses, jilted heroines out for revenge, brothers’ best friend romances, and horrifically mortifying situations, read on for an excerpt of Mister McHottie…

  Ambrosia May Berger (Bro for short, but only to her enemies)

  Know who just bought the company I work for?

  Chase Jett.

  Number One Dick on my Dick List. He’s the reason I tell people I’m from Pittsburgh. I hope when they put him up at Madame Tussaud’s, they use ear wax. I hope when he goes on Naked and Afraid, they release him in the wilds of Minnesota and someone replaces his insect repellent with pig’s blood. Have you seen Minnesota mosquitoes? They’re horses with wings. It’s like being bitten by a hornless unicorn.

  My boss is introducing him, and I don’t have to look to know that he�
�s preening for his adoring fans. I can smell the estrogen his presence has prompted. Half of my coworkers just spontaneously ovulated.

  So the guy could buy a small country. Who cares? He’s also been known to pee in cornflakes.

  Literally.

  I didn’t witness it, but my brothers told me later they didn’t think I’d really eat the cereal.

  Now the Dick is talking. I’d turn my headphones up, but Parker spilled her avocado mango acai berry chia energy smoothie on them last week and shorted something in the cord, which means One Direction sounds like they’re being filtered through mashed bananas.

  “Morning, ladies and gentlemen.” The Dick’s voice is hot chocolate with a triple shot of espresso, and I hate myself for noticing. Why couldn’t the smoothie filter that out? “Just wanted to stop in and say hi. Love what you’ve done here, and I’m excited to be a part of the Crunchy family.”

  I snort.

  Family.

  My brothers thought Chase was family once.

  A chill washes over me, making my nipples tighten against my damp bra. Stupid boob sweat. Stupid racing heart. Stupid backstabbing billionaire.

  Why did he get to be the one who grew up to become a billionaire?

  “O.M.G. He’s watching you.” The message from Goth Parker adds a sour taste in my mouth to my already overactive physical impairments. My boob sweat is starting to stink.

  When I don’t reply, another message pops up. “You don’t look good. Do you need an energy bar? Tell me you didn’t go bar-hopping and have a one-night stand with Hottie McBillions last night. Oh, wait. Tell me you did. Then tell me everything else.”

  “Ah, Sia, always working hard.” Rod raises his voice. “Sia? Sia! Tell Mr. Jett about the Choy Joy campaign.”

  Mr. Jett. Rod has twenty years on Chase, but since Chase has the fat bank account, it’s Mr. Jett.

  What would they call him if they knew what he did at the lake with my floaty toy that one summer? Hmm?

  I pull off my headphones and mentally prepare myself for a public execution. I lever myself out of the beanbag chair—without stumbling, take that, Mr. Arms—and I turn, making myself stare straight into the pits of hell.