Friendship on Fire

by Joss Wood

  “Just the past smacking me in the face.” Noah lifted his beer bottle to his lips. “This life is very different from the one I’ve been leading.”

  “High-end clients and cocktails,” Levi said after taking his shot, the five ball rolling into the far right pocket. Damn.

  “Pretty much,” Noah agreed. “This, a simple evening playing pool with my mates, is something I haven’t done in years.”

  “Your fault, not ours,” Levi said with his characteristic bluntness. “We were here.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Noah put his beer bottle onto the high table and rested his hands on the top of the cue. He needed to say this, had to get it out. “Lee, Jules and I—”

  Levi held up a hand and his face turned dark. “Oh, hell, no! I don’t want to know.”

  And he didn’t want to spit the words out but he had to give Levi a heads-up, he owed him that much. But how to gently tell him that he wanted his sister with a ferocity that terrified him was turning out to be harder than he thought. He mentally tested a few phrases but none of them sounded right and all of them would end up with him sporting a broken nose. So he settled for simple. “Paris Barrow thinks we are dating—long story—but I should tell you that something is cooking between us.”

  Levi rolled his eyes. “That’s the best you can do?”

  “I’m trying to avoid a trip to the emergency room,” Noah admitted. “So, yeah, that’s all I can say.”

  Levi stared at him while he made sense of that statement. When he did, his expression darkened. “I need brain bleach.” Levi bent over his cue again, stood up to speak and bent down again, frustration radiating off him in waves.

  He stood up, tossed the cue on the table, dislodging the few remaining balls. “Crap, Noah! She’s my sister and you are my oldest friend. I should punch you just for looking at her, but then you might piss off again and we might not see you for another decade!”

  Underneath the frustration he heard anger and, worse, hurt. His absence hadn’t only affected Jules, it had touched Levi, as well. And, he surmised, Eli and Ben and, to a lesser extent, DJ and Darby.

  He didn’t even want to know what Callie thought about his time away...

  Levi’s punch to his shoulder packed restrained power and rocked Noah back onto his heels. “Don’t mess this up, Noah. You hurt her and we’ll have words. We’re partners and that will make for a tough atmosphere. Be very, very careful, because one wrong move will have consequences.”

  He knew that. God, he wasn’t an idiot.

  “Thanks for spoiling the game and my mood, dude,” Levi said and stomped off toward the bar.

  Crap. Good job, Lockwood. His phone vibrated and when he pulled it out of his pocket, he read the name on his screen. Morgan. Dammit.

  Hi. Where are you? Would you like to get together for a drink for old times’ sake?

  It took Noah two seconds to type out a solid, in caps NO. After pressing Send, he shut his phone down and slipped it back into the pocket of his jeans. Not now. Not ever.

  He’d rather chew his wrists off than allow her back into his life. The fact that she was spectacularly beautiful and amazingly good at sex had confused his twenty-three-year-old brain and he’d stayed with her far longer than he should have. Jules had detested her from the moment they met and the feeling had been mutual. Trying to juggle his best friend and girlfriend had been a pain in his ass. But as time went on, the sex became wilder and Morgan became clingier, and Jules more disparaging about their relationship.

  Fresh air wafted toward him and Noah turned to look at the open door. All rational thought evaporated as he took in Jules’s teeny-tiny dress and ice-pick heels that made her legs look longer than should be legal. Black material skimmed her curves and fell from a round neck over perfect breasts, leaving those creamy shoulders and toned arms bare.

  Not knowing whether he could take much more, Noah lifted his eyes to her perfectly made-up face, her extraordinary eyes dominating the rest of her features. Her mouth, frequently ignored because her eyes were so startling, was covered in a light gloss and he wanted to pull that plump bottom lip between his teeth. She’d subdued her hair into some wispy, complicated roll, and diamond studs glinted in her earlobes.

  Mine, his body shouted. Mine! Mine! Mine!

  Calm the hell down, caveman, his brain replied. You don’t believe in love, or commitment. And, as he’d learned from his mom and Ethan, love made people act foolishly and lose control. He had no intention of following in their footsteps. He was more than happy to learn from the mistakes of others.

  So, instead of walking over to her, throwing her over his shoulder and kissing her until she screamed with pleasure, he turned at the sound of amused female laughter and looked into DJ’s lovely face.

  DJ grinned. “Watching you two has always been one of my favorite forms of entertainment.”

  Jules...

  Jules stepped into the always busy bar and instinctively made her way to the back right-hand corner, where the gang always made themselves at home. Yep, they were all there. Darby was leaning across a pool table, about to make an impossible shot, Eli was looking resigned at losing some more money to her, and Levi and DJ had their backs to the wall, beer in their hands. Ben was wedged between two blondes at the bar and he didn’t look like he wanted, or needed, rescuing.

  Same old, same old...

  Jules wove her way between the tables, greeted a few regulars and smiled at Dom behind the bar. Then she looked back to the billiards area and her heart belly flopped when she noticed Noah standing in the shadows, looking hot. He was the reason she’d rushed through her dinner with the still-pleasant Rob, the reason she’d kept checking her watch. Noah was the reason she steered her car here instead of heading home. She was a pigeon and he was her homing device.

  Because that thought annoyed and irritated her, Jules indulged her inner toddler and ignored Noah, pretending not to notice the way his broad shoulders filled out that designer T-shirt, the way his jeans clung to his muscular thighs and outlined his impressive package perfectly. Before Noah, her eyes had never dropped below a guy’s belt. Jules’s cheeks heated and she closed her eyes, mortified.

  Only Noah could make her feel so out-of-control crazy.

  As if he could feel her eyes on him, Noah swiveled his head and their gazes collided, a million unspoken thoughts arcing between them. Jules, because she could read him so well, managed to decipher a few heading her way. I want you. I missed you. God, you’re hot. This is complicated.

  Did he still have the ability to read her eyes? Would he be able to discern that she was terrified of what him returning to Boston meant, scared that he would hurt her again? Would he see her wishes that they could go back, that he would kiss her again, that he would show her how spectacular sex could be?

  The flash of awareness in Noah’s eyes told her that he received her this-is-crazy-and-we-should-stop messages.

  They really should. Jules watched Noah approach her and desperately wanted to thread her fingers into that thick hair, feel that blond stubble against her lips, feel him rock himself against her core.

  What they should do and what they were going to do were two vastly different things.

  Noah...

  Noah handed Jules a G&T, heard her quiet thank-you and leaned his shoulder into the same wall Jules had her back against. She smelled fantastic, but beneath her smoky eyes and expertly applied makeup, she looked frazzled. And exhausted.

  Like him, she was working long hours and if she was going home to lie awake fantasizing about how they would burn up the sheets, he could sympathize. When he finally fell asleep on those long nights, he often woke up with a hard-on from hell, his mind full of her, throbbing with need.

  God, he was so tired of solo sex.

  “Darby looks like she’s cleaning up,” Noah said, trying to distract himself from images of Jules naked,
under and on top of him. “When did she get so good at pool?”

  Jules smiled and he saw the kid she used to be, fun loving and so damn naughty. “Darby dated a pool player in college and she spent hours being coached by him. She said it was the only way she could get any of his attention. As a result, she got really good at it. And Deej and I are really grateful for her skill.”

  There was more to this story. “Okay. Why?”

  “Throughout college Darby hustled guys who assumed she was just a pretty face and her winnings always funded our bar bill. Some of her bigger bets also paid for a few beach and skiing weekends away.” Jules took a sip of her drink and smiled. “As you know, Mom and Dad put us on a budget. If we wanted money to party and play, we had to work for it.”

  For all their worth, and it had been considerable, Ray and Callie believed in making their kids work for their money. His mom learned that from them, too; he and his brothers were expected to work at the club as golf caddies or, while he was alive, for Grandpa Lockwood at the marina. At the time he’d resented putting in the effort, but those long summers spent busting his butt taught him the value of hard work. He couldn’t have achieved his sailing and financial success without knowing how to put his head down and graft. Jules wouldn’t have built a business without it either.

  If he ever had kids, it would be a lesson he’d pass on.

  Except having kids, getting married—or getting married and having kids—wasn’t part of his plan. Designing Paris’s yacht, buying back this estate and leaving Boston was. Jules wasn’t part of the plan either. Noah looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. He hadn’t planned on staying this late and had work he wanted to complete tonight, but when Jules arrived, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Standing next to her, breathing in her scent, was where he most wanted to be.

  And staying later meant more drinks and he was pretty sure that he was close to the limit. Damn, he wouldn’t be driving himself home tonight and that meant either asking one of his brothers for a lift. Except that Eli had left Darby to talk to a redhead in the corner and Ben was... Well, Ben was gone—so that meant he would be catching a cab.

  Noah pulled his phone out of his back pocket and powered it up. After he plugged in his code, his phone lit up like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July.

  “You’re a popular guy,” Jules said, and he heard the snark in her voice. The possibility of her being jealous gave him an unexpected thrill.

  Noah stifled a smile and scrolled through his messages. One from Paris, a few from his team back in London and four, five, seven from Morgan. “Crap on a cracker,” Noah muttered, scowling.

  “Problem?” Jules asked, lifting her finely arched eyebrow.

  Having nothing to hide, he held up his phone so that she could see his screen and the various missed calls and notifications from his ex.

  “Wow,” Jules said, eyes widening.

  “Yeah, did I tell you that the reason I named you as my girlfriend was because Morgan has put it out there that she wants us to get back together?”

  Jules dropped her head and ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “Is that a possibility?” she asked quietly.

  “I’d rather get smacked repeatedly in the teeth by a flying boom,” Noah stated flatly.

  There was that small smile, the one he’d been looking for. Jules lifted her head and he saw the relief in her eyes, and a hint of humor at his quick response. “So why does she think that’s a possibility?”

  “Because she’s deluded?”

  Jules smacked him on the arm. She thought he was being sarcastic or, worse, rude about Morgan’s issues. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t joking. She actually is bipolar and she also has some other mental health problems. Her dad described her to me as being ‘emotionally fragile.’”

  He’d been thinking about calling it off when Morgan had had her first proper meltdown, staying in bed for two weeks, not eating or drinking or, God, bathing. She’d bounced back from that episode and he’d decided to give her some time to recover before he broke up with her.

  But every time he distanced himself, she went into a decline and he genuinely worried for her. When she was healthy, she was a fun partner and, well, yeah, the sex. Her skill between the sheets was partly to blame—along with too much whiskey—for him agreeing to even entertain the idea of commitment.

  Her father had worked fast, offering him exactly what he needed when he most needed it. Two years passed and when he was released from his sponsorship deal with Wind and Solar, the first thing he did was visit Morgan and formally end their engagement. Why he bothered, he didn’t know since they were both leading very separate lives. But he did the deed and a week later Ivan sent him a brief text message stating that Morgan was in the hospital and that they both blamed him for her nervous breakdown.

  He’d tried to let her down gently. He’d seen Morgan a handful of times over those two years they were supposed to be engaged and, within a month of him leaving Boston, their twice-a-week phone calls fizzled to once a month and then to one every couple of months.

  He sent her the same emails he sent everyone else and Ivan paid for her to visit him in various ports as he raced, but those visits became, thank God, rarer and rarer. The cash kept coming in from Wind and Solar and he kept the few liaisons he had time for very low-key and trouble-free.

  Amazing that, ten years later, when he was supposed to be so much wiser and mature, he was in another fake relationship, but this time with Jules. Maybe life was finally realizing a fake relationship was all he was capable of.

  Jules, as he expected her to, looked shocked. “Wow. That’s... Wow.” It took a moment but then her natural curiosity and frankness reasserted itself. “I still don’t understand why you became engaged to her. I know you didn’t love her—” Jules’s eyes dropped from his and he saw her swallow “—like that.”

  He’d never loved a woman, not like that. And he never wanted to. What could be worse than thinking someone loved you, lived and would die for you, only to find out that you’d been played for a fool and what you thought was love was something else? The concept of love was too nebulous, too open to interpretation.

  Jules looked like she was waiting for an answer and Noah wasn’t sure how to respond. Reticence was a habit he couldn’t break, not even with Jules. Besides, his fake engagement to Morgan wasn’t exactly something he was proud of but it had been the best choice at the time. “There were reasons, Jules. Can we leave it at that?”

  Jules’s chest rose and fell, and when she finally lifted her face to look at him, he saw profound sadness in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak but then shook her head and remained silent. He shouldn’t ask but the words left his mouth despite his best intentions. “What were you about to say, Ju?”

  Jules scraped the last of the gloss off her bottom lip with her teeth. Then she bobbed one shoulder. “I was just thinking that we used to tell each other everything but then I realized that wasn’t true. I used to tell you everything but you didn’t reciprocate. You were very selective with what you wanted me to know and, as an adult, I can recognize that now. But it still makes me sad.”

  God, didn’t she realize that he told her more than most, that she, at one time, knew him better than anyone else? “I did talk to you, Jules. As much as I could,” he quickly added as a qualifier. “Besides, talking about boyfriends and how mean or unreasonable our parents were wasn’t exactly life-and-death stuff.”

  “It was more than that and you know it,” Jules protested.

  Yeah, it had been but he couldn’t think about that now. Because remembering made him want to go back to when his life was uncomplicated, to that time when his mom was alive, his father loved him and life was golden. His biggest worries were what amateur race to enter next, getting his assignments in on time, dating that cute blonde in his marine systems class.

  “Whate
ver it was, we can’t go back, Jules. We have to deal with the here and now,” Noah said. God, he was tired and, yeah, sad. This was the downside to being back in Boston, hanging out with his family and people who knew him well. He couldn’t insulate himself from emotion, distance himself when conversation turned personal.

  It wasn’t easy to do when he was talking to someone who’d lived across the road for most of his life. He’d desired other women, of course he had—he was in his thirties and had always enjoyed a healthy sex life—but there had never been anyone whom he thought about constantly, whom he, let’s call it what it was, obsessed over. Even in his teens he’d never spent this amount of emotional energy thinking about a girl.

  He was so completely and utterly screwed. And because he was on the point of saying to hell with it and throwing caution to the wind—and his obsession at her feet—he thought that it might be a good idea if he took his ass back to his boat.

  Yep, Eli was on his way out with that redhead, so his only options were a taxi or to sleep on the couch at Jules’s house. Not that he would sleep knowing that Jules was upstairs, in that comfortable bed...

  An expensive cab ride it was, then.

  Super.

  Six

  Jules...

  Jules sat in Noah’s visitor’s chair and propped her bare feet up on his cluttered desk. Leaving her sketch pad on her knees, she dropped her thick pencil on top of the pristine paper and lifted her arms to gather her hair and twist it into a knot. She picked up a lime-green pencil from the small table next to her elbow and jammed it into her hair, working the pencil in to keep it all up.

  She darted a look at Noah sitting at his high desk, black-framed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. His brow furrowed in concentration as his hand flew between his notepad and a desktop calculator. Every now and again, he scribbled something on the plans spread out in front of him.