by Jolie Day
Crushing on my Billionaire Best Friend
A Hot Romantic Comedy
Jolie Day
Contents
1. Laney
2. Oliver
3. Oliver
4. Laney
5. Laney
6. Oliver
7. Laney
8. Laney
9. Oliver: 12 years earlier
10. Laney: 12 years earlier
11. Laney
12. Oliver
13. Laney
14. Oliver
15. Oliver
16. Laney
17. Oliver
18. Laney
19. Oliver
20. Oliver
21. Laney
22. Oliver
23. Laney
24. Laney
25. Laney
26. Oliver
27. Laney
28. Oliver
29. Laney
30. Oliver
Epilogue: Oliver
Billionaire Baby DADDY Sneak Peak
Also by Jolie Day
Connect with Jolie Day
Crushing on my Billionaire Best Friend © Copyright 2021 Jolie Day
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Warning: This story contains mature themes and language.
Crushing on my Billionaire Best Friend; Kiss a Billionaire Series; Jolie Day
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Cover Design: ARP Book Covers
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About this Novel
I just moved in with my billionaire best friend (and secret crush),
Oliver Humphries.
He’s the all-star. The jock. The golden boy—
and I’m no match.
I’m the nerdy, frizzy-haired, not-so-skinny friend.
The moment I met him at fourteen, I was in L-O-V-E.
I’m under no illusion I stand a chance.
Living with him?
Not a problem.
In fact, it’s a brilliant idea. I’m good at hiding my feelings.
Until I play “Truth or Dare” with him.
Oh, good grief!
Did I just tell him I want him to be my first?
1
Laney
“Are you serious? No way.” I practically shouted at Lisa, my bestie, on FaceTime.
“Yes, way!” She beamed, bringing her face close to the screen.
“When?” I couldn’t believe she was taking a vacation. If anybody deserved the time off, Lisa did. She worked her ass to the bone.
“Leaving in half an hour, girl.” She rolled her eyes, waving her hand dramatically. “I still need to pack.”
“How long will you be gone?”
Lisa grinned with a dreamy expression. “A few weeks.”
“That’ll be so much fun.”
“Yep, especially in the bedroom,” she said with a wink. “I can’t wait to get me some down-and-dirty action!”
“Maybe he’s going to propose.” A dream vacation where the man you loved proposed? Yes, please.
“He better!” Lisa hooted. “I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. Oh, speak of the devil, he’s here. Sug, I gotta run. Text you later.”
“Love you.” I touched my fingers to my lips and blew her a kiss. “Have fun. You better send me a pic first thing!”
“Of his popsicle?” she asked, lifting an amused brow.
“Of the ring! Lisa.” We burst out laughing, and she fell out of view for a moment. I think maybe she rolled off the bed? That girl was crazy (I loved it). The pic—it was an inside joke between Lisa and me. My last Tinder date had sent me a dick pic. Yeah, I know. Sending dick pics—that was creepy as fuck. No man should ever do that. I mean, hello? Lisa had thought it was hilarious, and she’d asked me if his face was in the pic. It wasn’t. That had been another red flag. It’d probably been another guy’s popsicle—that’s what Lisa had thought, anyway. Was that a thing? Did men do that? I was so clueless.
“Will do. I’ll miss you. Love you, Laney! Don’t work too long, get laid.” And she hung up on me.
Yeah, right. Get laid? I wish!
I glanced up at the clock. It was late. And I was still at work. The lab had gone dark hours ago, and yet again, I’d forgotten to flip on the lights. The sting of the bright computer monitor had started to scorch my eyeballs (I really needed a blue-screen filter), but I sat, and I worked. Like I did most nights.
Linzar Inc. was a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, and one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies—also known as my second home. Or really, it could be considered my first home since it was actually the place where I spent most of my time.
I was trying to push through the familiar late-night exhaustion and focus, but a notification on my phone yanked me away. I glanced at it for a moment—just long enough to see Oliver had posted yet another picture on Instagram. Seeing it was a sensation I was all too familiar with. A perfect photo of him standing at a glamorous party or nightclub with a stick-thin, supermodel-looking girl on his arm.
Absolutely nothing had changed since high school.
Seconds after his flawless photo hit the gram, another text popped up on my phone. It was the second one from him in the past several hours.
Oliver: You should have come out tonight, Laney.
Oliver: Lots of rich, single guys here.
Good grief. I groaned and rolled my eyes. How can men be so blind!
Oliver: And a shit-ton of drinks and fun.
I’d intentionally ignored his first text inviting me out, but of course, he couldn’t take the damn hint. He never did. Not when it came to trying to lure me out into his ridiculously glammy night life of socializing and drinking.
“Sure, Oliver,” I mumbled to myself in the dark lab. “I should just drop everything and be your third wheel around town. It’s not like I’m doing anything important…like, you know, developing cancer treatments. Oh. Wait! Yes, I am.” I knew I shouldn’t be such a bitch about it, and I knew he meant well, but come on. No one wanted to hang around their best friend while he tried to get laid.
Nobody, and I mean, nobody wanted to be the third wheel. Ever. Especially where Oliver was concerned. I’d be invisible, and I didn’t need that tonight.
I had work to do. If it were just the two of us, that would be a different story.
Me: Sorry, still at work.
Always at work, I thought to myself, but I didn’t type that.
If I seemed a teensy bit bitter and resentful, it was because I was. Or maybe just overworked. Or both. I wasn’t resentful in the sense that I disliked him.
Quite the opposite, actually.
Oliver was my best friend.
I’d pined over him for y
ears, but none of that mattered. Sure, I was a little bitter at times, and I was hard on myself. I couldn’t be Miss Mary Sunshine all the time. I mean, seriously. Could any woman? Really? Since I was fourteen years old, I had watched everything fall into Oliver’s lap. The lucky bastard. An endless string of beautiful women (that was hard to watch), his lucrative career with his family’s company (that wasn’t hard to watch), and fun! Always nonstop fun. Or so it seemed. What I wouldn’t give to have his easy-going, “I don’t give a fuck” attitude and not worry about anything anymore. Trust me, I’d tried. It wasn’t easy to “not” give a fuck. I’d faced the truth a long time ago: I just wasn’t an easy-going person. Sigh. Especially when it came to him.
Well, anyway, while I attended our expensive New York prep school on scholarship, fighting to keep my GPA up, it’d been the Humphries family that funded the place. Which basically meant Oliver was a straight-A student whether he earned it or not. And while I was studying my ass off in undergrad, Oliver was partying his way around campus. He was bestowed the title of Chief Financial Officer of his family’s real estate company after graduating college (See? Told you he was a lucky bastard), and I continued working my ass off to earn my master’s.
And the rough road was far from over for me.
My next stop?
NYU’s prestigious PhD program.
Oliver’s next stop?
A trendy new club opening in Midtown Manhattan, apparently. With one of Cosmopolitan’s recent top-featured mannequins.
Like I said, absolutely nothing had changed since high school.
I blew out a long, steady breath, knowing I didn’t have time to get wrapped up in any of my “wannabe” deep-seated feelings of resentment toward Oliver. I failed miserably when trying to actually resent him. I mean, I loved the guy—actually loved him, and a lot. And honestly, it wasn’t about money and lifestyle differences. Truthfully, my main reason for secretly holding onto those off-the-wall feelings toward my best friend was that in all these years, he’d never once considered my potential to be anything more.
The only reason I could see that I’d been so quickly written off his list of prospective girlfriends was either the fact my ass wasn’t rail-thin skinny (which let’s face it—who gives a rat’s ass? Well, honestly, me—but only on bad days like today), or I’d been shoved directly into the friend zone—forever. Both sucked ass. Speaking of sucking ass: I never should have confessed my love for him. I did. Sigh. In a letter. That was more than ten years ago. Talk about the most embarrassing moment of my life. Let’s just say, I wished I’d never written it. Thankfully, we remained friends.
I’d come a long way since my frizzy-haired, baggy-clothed, four-eyed high school days. I’d also learned how to master the art of makeup and waxing my eyebrows. Yes, ladies, those brows—if they were anything like mine, they needed to be waxed in a bad way. Nobody liked caterpillar brows—it just took me longer than most to get my fashion sense in order. Not that it made any difference to Oliver.
Truth be told, sometimes I still wore glasses. Sometimes contacts irritated my eyes (Go me!) And baggy shirts (I loved my comfy, oversized, funny T-shirt “Okayest Girlfriend Ever” gift from Lisa. She loved funny gifts, and nobody could top her gags). And frizzy hair (unless I dumped all the anti-frizz I could get into it). I mean, who cared? I was at home, and I had nobody to impress. I was comfortable in my own skin, and I didn’t give a shit what other people thought. Okay, except Oliver, and he’d seen me at my absolute worst. But, I didn’t allow anybody’s opinion of me to define my self-worth. I’d learned that the hard way when I was a kid, struggling with my weight and self-image. Then I decided, “screw it!” I refused to live my life by other people’s standards or what a scale said. Scales were the devil, anyway.
I felt myself slipping back into the land of medicinal science, where nothing else existed except me and the tedious collection of things in front of me—be it algorithms, bacterial slides, or clinical trial results. Who needed nightclubs, cocktails, and entertainment when you had all of that in your life? All day, every day, often for twelve to sixteen hours a day. For that matter, who needed a sex life? Especially one with Oliver Humphries in it. Not me. Okay, that’s a lie. I would very much like a sex life. Preferably with him in it. But that’s a whole other story… My fantasies, though? Yeah, they totally starred him—center stage. I’d named my trusty vibrator Oliver. I was bad, and I knew it. Sue me.
I’d just finished my turkey on rye with pickles and chips. I was stuffed. And, I was finally back in the flow of things when my phone rang. I threw my head back in a long, dramatic groan.
“Oliver! I’m working. Stop—”
“Ms. Carter?” An older man’s thickly accented voice cut me off.
Oops. “Oh. Uh, sorry. Yes?”
“This is Mr. Cruz. The supervisor at your apartment building.”
“Mr. Cruz! Of course.” I knew the voice seemed familiar, but something was off. His Spanish accent was thicker than usual, and he sounded alarmed and frantic. “What’s going on?”
The moment I asked the question, I picked up on the noises ringing out from the background. There was a lot of commotion, shouting, and sirens. My heart started to pound in my chest.
“I…I don’t know how to tell you this, Ms. Carter. But I didn’t want you to come home and find out by surprise. The building…there was a fire…and I’m sorry to say that…well, your belongings were destroyed.”
“What? Fire? Oh, my God!” I blinked, processing one word at a time. “Which belongings?”
“I’m sorry?”
I didn’t repeat what I’d said. It was clear enough the first time, wasn’t it? Or maybe I was just in shock.
“All of them,” he said after a long, awkward pause. “Most of the units inside the building have been destroyed—they just poofed up in flames. I’m afraid your unit was one of them that didn’t make it. You should turn on the local news and see for yourself. It’s bad. I am so sorry.”
I immediately opened my browser and searched for the local news report. Sure enough, there it was, and my mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Plumes of smoke were billowing from my building, and suddenly the weirdest sensation washed over me. Like I was standing on a floor, but suddenly realized the floor was gone. Only I was still floating there in space, trying to figure out where it had gone.
“Didn’t make it?” I murmured, the only three words out of all that I could think of right now.
Mr. Cruz kept talking, explaining everything in more detail, but his words were no longer registering in my brain. He said something about the Pomeranian that belonged to an older woman who lived a few doors down from me. A candle knocked over. Flammable curtains. The only thing that seemed to really sink in enough to make sense was when he said that none of my neighbors had been hurt and everybody got out safely. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ms. Carter? Are you still there?”
“No.” I blinked. “I mean, yes. Yes, I’m still here. I’ll…I’ll be right there.”
“I wouldn’t come tonight. It’s dark, and the air is filled with smoke and mist from the firefighters’ hoses. There are parts of the fire they’re still trying to extinguish. They’re trying to clear everyone that they can out of the area for now.” His voice grew louder, but then it was gone, like he was talking to somebody else. A few seconds later he returned to the phone. “Sorry about that. Where was I?”
“Smoke and mist. Me coming there…”
“Ah, yes. You can come tomorrow and see for yourself. The insurance people will want to interview everyone.” When I didn’t respond, because my brain was working overtime just to keep up with everything in its state of shock, he added, “I hope you have somewhere to stay.”
A hard lump rolled down my throat. “Uh-huh. Well…thanks for calling to let me know.”
Shit. I hung up the phone and stared at the screen for a long time without moving. Like most nights, my plan was to work for another hour and then go h
ome to cuddle up with a Sylvia Day hardcover and crash, only to get up early tomorrow morning and do it all over again. It had all been ripped out from under me. None of the work in front of me made sense anymore, and whatever came after that was completely unknown.
A memory from that morning flashed through my brain. I’d run to catch the closing elevator doors and found Mrs. Mosely waiting inside with her dog, Princess Bubbles, perched next to her on a leash with that giant pink bow flopping around on the side of her head, piercing the small space with her little yapping—she was so cute. I’d always loved that dog, and now everything I owned was gone because of a cute little puppy? I didn’t understand. I mean, yeah, accidents happened, I knew, but Princess Bubbles had always been so well-behaved. I just couldn’t imagine her setting the entire building on fire (okay, the inside, but still). Mrs. Mosely would even allow me to watch her from time to time when she needed to do grocery shopping. I’d never once seen Princess do anything but lay at my feet or on my lap and beg for belly rubs. But now, I was homeless. What was I going to do?
My chest rose and fell as I clung to that breathing technique I thought I needed moments before, but apparently, it only worked for melodramatic crises and not real ones. Because it was quickly spiraling away from me, leaving me feeling like I was hyperventilating right there in my rolling lab chair. All of my stuff was gone. My clothes. My memories. My letters. My books. My kitchen stuff. My favorite “I love me” coffee mug! My favorite sweatshirt! It was a school-logo hoodie that just so happened to match the one Oliver always wore. Oh, and poor little Oliver. He’d surely be a bubbling goop of pink in what was left of my nightstand. Thank God firefighters would never find my little secret toy of joy. This was a nightmare. All of my favorite things I thought had been so safe tucked away in the security of my apartment were now destroyed.
