Friendship on Fire

by Joss Wood

  “Playing ‘Angry Birds’?” Jules asked, tossing his sandwich into his lap.

  “You know me too well.” Levi placed his tablet on his messy desk and lifted the packet to his nose. He narrowed his eyes at Jules. “Ham and egg... What do you want?”

  “A frame to be welded.”

  Levi unwrapped his sandwich, and after taking a bite, chewing and swallowing, he shook his head. “Eli is better at welding than me. Or, better yet, he can send one of his welders from the shipyard to do it.”

  “But that will take forever.”

  Jules perched on the edge of his desk, leaving her sandwich in front of him. If necessary, she’d bribe him with the second sandwich to get her frame welded today. She batted her eyelashes at him, knowing that he loved to be adored. “Please, Lee? You have a welding machine and you’re—” she gestured to his tablet “—obviously not busy. The steel bars are already in your workshop at home.”

  Levi glared at her. “For your information, I was going over our financials.”

  The note of worry in his voice caught Jules’s attention. “Everything okay?”

  Levi was slow to respond, but when he did, his face carried no hint of his normal good humor. “Noah and I recently bought a majority share of the marina on the waterfront and are in the process of updating the facilities. We’re asset rich and cash flow tight at the moment.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  Levi nodded. “I am. The businesses are. I’m not so sure about Noah. He’s seriously stressed and I know it’s money related. Did you know that he wants to buy the Lockwood Country Club Estate off Ethan?”

  Jules frowned, confused. “Buy it? Why would he buy it since the Lockwood Trust owns it?”

  “But Ethan owns the Lockwood Trust, not Noah and the guys. Ethan was awarded the estate when the boys took Ethan to court. How do you not know this?”

  Because she never talked to or about Noah?

  “Did you not wonder why Noah was staying with us, why he’s sleeping on the Resilience and not at Lockwood House?”

  “Well, I did, but—” Jules ended her sentence with a shrug. “I knew Ethan and Noah had a falling-out but not much more than that. So, what happened?”

  Levi held up a hand. “Ask Noah. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

  Jules’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t know either!”

  Levi shrugged. “Noah doesn’t talk much. You know that.”

  She really did. “So, what do you know?” Okay, she was curious, she’d cop to that.

  Levi pushed a hand through his dark hair. “The guys need to raise a cracking amount of cash in order to get a mortgage to buy the estate off Ethan. In order to do that Noah needs to finish the design on the yacht he’s working on but his client is being difficult.”

  “Noah always delivers. That’s what he’s known for, what he does.” Noah was exceptionally good at what he did and was reputed to be one of the best racing yacht designers in the world.

  “Well, this client wants something that Noah can’t deliver and if he doesn’t deliver, he won’t get paid. If he doesn’t get paid, he can’t buy Lockwood House and the estate.”

  My client is pretty adamant that she wants you to design the interiors. Her heart and stomach dropped to the floor as Jules remembered Noah’s words in her office. Her firm “no” had put his project, buying his family house and land, in jeopardy. God, Noah.

  Levi continued to speak. “The client isn’t listening and Noah’s project is up the creek. Without her cash, he can’t buy the estate. Without the estate, he doesn’t get Lockwood House. And you know how much the house means to him.”

  Yeah, she did. All his memories of his mom were tied up in that house, in the country club she managed and the land she loved.

  Levi balled his wax paper and threw it into the wastepaper bin across the room. He eyed the second sandwich. “I’ll do your welding this afternoon if you hand over that sandwich.”

  Instead of tossing him the second sandwich, she scooped it up and headed for the door. “Hey! Where are you going with that sandwich?”

  At the door, Jules turned. “Is Noah using Grandpa Lockwood’s old office and is he there?”

  Levi nodded. “Should be. He works longer hours than I do.” He sent her his patented I’m-hungry-feed-me look that was difficult to resist. But Jules had other plans for her sandwich, so she left his office and headed for the spiral staircase at the end of the hall, the one that would take her to the conference room and Noah’s office.

  “I’m not welding your frame without the sandwich!” Levi’s words trailed after her.

  She didn’t care. She had a bigger problem to fix.

  Four

  Noah...

  Noah, dressed in navy cargo shorts and a gray T-shirt under an open denim shirt, turned away from his architect’s desk as she walked into his office without knocking. Standing in the doorway, she noticed his look of complete surprise before his face settled back into its inscrutable can’t-faze-me expression.

  “Jules. Good morning.”

  To hell with being polite, they were so far past that. “Why didn’t you tell me that your project was in jeopardy?”

  Noah lifted his broad shoulders in a weary shrug. “You’re busy. I can’t expect you to drop your other projects just because I asked. I thought my client was being unreasonable and that I could persuade her to consider other designers.”

  “Did you manage to do that?”

  Noah tossed his pencil onto the desk and rubbed his fingers into his eye sockets. “Nope.”

  “So I’m it or you lose the project?”

  Noah twisted his lips and finally nodded. “Basically.” He lifted a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Jules. I have other clients who have been begging me to design racing yachts. It’s not a big deal.”

  Jules leaned her shoulder into the door frame. “But if you lose this project, you lose all your work and also the ability to buy back Lockwood House and everything else.”

  “Levi and his big mouth. I’ll make a plan. If I don’t buy it this time around, I’ll wait until it comes back on the market and buy it then. For the first time since 1870 it’ll leave Lockwood hands, but I’ll get it back.”

  Jules saw the determination in his eyes. He would eventually take back his family’s legacy but at what price? God, he’d already lost his mom and his home, was it fair that he lose this opportunity, too? Who knew when he’d get the chance to purchase Lockwood Estate again, if ever?

  A management company ran the country club and estate but Jules couldn’t bear the thought of another family owning and living in Beth’s beloved and historic house; they might add on, rip it down, change it. No, a Lockwood deserved to live there or at the very least, the house should remain empty until one of the brothers decided he was going to move back in.

  She hadn’t recognized the consequences of her decision, because Noah hadn’t told her, and she could kick him for that. If she’d known, she wouldn’t have hesitated. This affected not only Noah but Eli and Ben, and her refusal to help felt like she was letting Bethann and her sons down. Yes, she was busy, but she could delegate work to her assistants and carve out some time for the project.

  Jules walked into his office, dumped her bag onto his chair and placed the sandwich on his mostly empty desk. She couldn’t eat; this was too important. But he might be hungry.

  “Eat up, and when you’re done, we’ll go over the design brief.”

  Noah sent her a hard stare. “You’re going to take the job?”

  Jules rolled her eyes so hard that she was sure she could see her butt. “Of course I am.”

  “Why?” Noah demanded, his eyes wary.

  “Because, as annoying as you are, you and that house are a part of my family, and family steps up when there’s a problem. You need this job to be able to b
uy that house, and to raise the money to do that, you need me. There’s no way that I am going to be responsible for the estate passing out of Lockwood hands. Bethann might start haunting me.”

  “It’s a strong possibility and something I’m also worried about.”

  Noah looked down and, judging by the way his shoulders dropped, Jules knew he was trying to hide his relief. He hated anyone to see that he was worried, to think that he was weak. He liked the world to think that he was a tough-guy sailor, one who took enormous risks with aplomb, conquered high waves with a whoop and a yell, and he liked them to think that he did it with ease. Jules was the only person, apart from maybe her parents, who’d glimpsed the turmoil roiling inside of him.

  But Jules, as always, saw more than she should and, standing in his office, in front of this delicious-looking man, she sensed the tension seeping from him, could taste his relief. And suddenly, weirdly, she wanted to put her arms around his waist, lay her head on his chest and tell him that it would be all right. That they would be all right. But, as much as she wanted to do that, she couldn’t.

  She’d trusted Noah once, trusted him with her deepest fears and feelings, her innermost thoughts. But he’d dismissed her, abandoned their friendship and ignored her.

  No, she couldn’t allow herself to be seduced by memories, to fall back into that space where the world was a brighter, better place with Noah in it. He was her client, sort of, and she had a job to do. This would be business and only business. She could never regain what was lost.

  She’d work with Noah, give him her best effort but she’d never ever trust him again.

  “Thanks, Jules. But before you accept, there’s something else you should know.”

  That didn’t sound good... Noah pulled in a deep breath before dropping his conversational grenade. “My client thinks that we’re dating.”

  “Sorry?”

  “She thinks you are my girlfriend, lover... Call it what you will.”

  Jules stared at him, her insides feeling like they were on a roller-coaster ride. His girlfriend? Why would his client think that? And why did the idea of being with Noah, tall, built and ripped, send shivers of...well, lust, up and back down her spine? What was wrong with her?

  And, oh, Lord, being alone with him was an exercise in restraint. Yeah, she was still angry that he’d walked out on her, that he ignored her for years—no, she wasn’t angry, she was hurt—but, worse than that, she was on fire, inside and out. Jules licked her lips and then swallowed, trying to get some moisture back into her mouth. Between her legs, an ancient drumbeat thrummed and her nipples pushed against the fabric of her pretty lace bra.

  Just because Noah mentioned that someone thought that they were lovers. Ridiculous to the nth degree.

  Jules dropped her eyes from his chest, allowed them to bounce off his muscled thighs before staring at the black and brown slate tiles that covered his office floor. She shouldn’t be thinking about how attractive she found him. She had bigger problems than that to deal with. Like the fact that his client thought they were dating.

  Uh...why would their client think they were dating?

  Jules’s eyes darted up to meet his, her eyebrows rising. “Want to explain how I went from being your designer to your girlfriend?”

  Noah looked equally frustrated. “She was trying to set me up with...someone, so I said that I have a girlfriend. She asked who she was, your name was the first name that popped into my head.”

  Really? Surely he had a dozen names he could’ve thrown at his client. Noah was a good-looking, sexy, moderately famous and very successful guy. He had to have an encyclopedia-size black book of eligible candidates suitable to be his arm candy, so why did her name leave his lips?

  “Because this is Boston, which is in some ways a ludicrously small town, she recognized your name and got all excited, insisting that she knew you and your work and that she wanted no one else to design her interiors.”

  Well, she’d made an impression on someone. A rich someone who had the money to buy a phenomenally expensive yacht. “As long as your client isn’t Paris Barrow. I’m prepared to work with anyone but her.”

  Noah closed his eyes and Jules groaned her dismay. No! Why was the universe torturing her? She not only had to work with her oldest friend who now made all her hormones jump, but she also had to work with the client from hell? Paris wasn’t mean but she found it hard to make a decision and stick to it. One day it was pastels, the next earth tones, a week later it was the colors of the Mediterranean. Wood, then steel, then ceramic, then a combination of all three.

  Paris lived in her own world, surrounded by people whose mission in life was to make her happy. What Paris wanted, Paris got. Even if that meant changing her mind a hundred times.

  She was a deliciously sweet, generous nightmare of epic proportions.

  And, worse than that, she was incredibly nosy and horribly romantic. Married multiple times, widowed once, each and every one of her husbands was the love of her life. She was, so Jules heard, on the lookout for husband number six. Paris wouldn’t be content with the idea of her and Noah just dating. Before she could blink twice, Paris would have them engaged and booking a church.

  Jules tossed up her hands. “Uh-uh, no way. Not Paris Barrow, you’re on your own.”

  Noah smiled, flashing white teeth. “Chicken,” he murmured.

  Jules hopped off her stool and slapped her hands on her hips. “She’s like a walking, talking dating show! Everyone around her drops like flies when she comes into their lives.”

  Noah lifted an eyebrow. “Dead?”

  Jules waved her hands to dismiss his words. “No! They fall in love, get married, get engaged. She’s, again, a walking, talking bottle of fairy dust! And you told her that we’re dating?”

  “No, I told her that you were my girlfriend. One step up,” Noah replied, very unhelpfully.

  “Oh, God. She’s going to harass us about the fact that we’re not engaged, not married. Paris is a staunch proponent of buying the cow before you drink the milk.”

  Noah’s low laugh danced over her skin. “I think you’re making too big a deal about this, Ju. We pretend to be lovers, she harasses us a little, we resist. It’s all good.”

  Jules sent him a dark look. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  Noah folded his arms and his biceps pulled the fabric of his shirt tighter. Jules sighed, he had the sexiest arms she’d ever seen. Bar none. Noah’s brown eyes turned serious. “Is our dating going to be a problem for you?”

  For some reason Jules wanted to reassure him that there wasn’t anybody in her life who caught her interest. Except him. Since he’d walked back into her office, into her life, she couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering how he tasted, whether his strength would be a counter to her softness, whether they’d be the perfect fit she imagined.

  More than the physical attraction, there was a part of her that wished she could go back, to reexplore their closeness, to plumb his mind. She’d enjoyed the way he thought, his analytical brain, the tenderness beneath the suit of armor he wore. The combination of attraction and friendship was lethal. It could lead to more than she was ready for, for much more than she could deal with. No, she could not go back to what they had; it was dead. She couldn’t risk having Noah in her life again and losing him.

  It had nearly broken her once. There was no way she’d give him the power to do that again.

  As for her attraction to him? She was a normal woman in her late twenties with needs, sexual needs, that had been long neglected. Noah was a gorgeous specimen and very capable of assuaging those needs. Her attraction to him was a simple combination of horniness and nostalgia and curiosity. It didn’t mean anything; it couldn’t mean anything.

  He was a family friend, no more, no less.

  A family friend with sexy arms, muscled shoulders and strong, s
trong legs. And a face that he could’ve inherited from a fallen angel.

  Crap.

  “Jules? Is your dating going to pose a problem to us working together? To acting like my other half around Paris?”

  Jules blinked and shook her head, pulling her attention back to his question. “No, not at all. I’m not in a relationship with anyone.”

  “Okay, good. To keep things simple, I suggest that we never meet with Paris together, that one or the other deals with her, you on the interiors, me on the design.”

  Jules thought that he was onto something. There was no point in giving Paris any ammunition. And this way, Paris couldn’t comment on their relationship. Or nonrelationship. Or, to put it another way, lie.

  “That sounds like a plan,” Jules agreed. “When does she want to meet with me?”

  “As soon as possible, this week if we can arrange a time. Paris has a habit of forgetting meetings and darting off to Madrid or Mexico.”

  Yeah, she was familiar with the socialite’s modus operandi. When Jules had designed her house, she’d have workmen waiting to start, waiting for Paris’s final approval only to find that the blasted woman was at a spa in Monte Carlo.

  One step at a time, Jules thought. “Let’s start with what you imagine the interior of the yacht to look like.”

  “You don’t want to get a brief from the client?” Noah asked, surprised.

  “Normally I would, but Paris changes her mind on a minute-by-minute basis. Trust me, she’s easier to handle if you don’t give her the whole box of crayons to play with.”

  Jules walked over to her tote bag and bent over the side of the chair to pull a sketchbook from its depths and thought she heard a low groan from behind her. When she whipped her head around, she saw Noah staring at the floor, his clenched fist resting on his thigh. “You okay?” she asked, heading back toward his desk.