Best Friends, Secret Lovers (The Bachelor Pact Book 1)

by Jessica Lemmon

  Flynn was...not like a brother.

  But there was a deeper camaraderie between them that was worth resurrecting. And it’d be fun to go out on Valentine’s Day with him. They could make new memories since neither of them had ever been single at the same time as the other.

  She blinked as that thought took hold.

  Until now.

  * * *

  “So now you’re dating Flynn and we’re still not calling it dating?”

  Her brother, Luke, delivered doughnuts to her place on Saturday morning. One of which was a cruller that she tore in half and dunked into her coffee.

  Mmm. Coffee and crullers.

  “Hello?” Luke snapped his fingers in her face. “You and that doughnut are having a moment that’s making me uncomfortable.”

  “You’ll live.” She tore off another bite and stuffed it into her mouth.

  Her apartment was in the city not far from Flynn’s, but the two residences were worlds apart. His, a penthouse and shrine to all things soulless, and hers an artsy loft filled with cozy accents. A red faux leather sofa sat on a patterned gold-and-red rug, a plaid blanket tossed over one arm. Framed art hung on the wall, one of them Sabrina’s own: a whimsical painting of an owl sitting on a cat’s head that always made her smile. Butter-yellow ’50s-style chairs she’d reupholstered after salvaging them from a trash heap circled a scarred round kitchen table that she and Luke sat at now.

  “Flynn lives in a barren wasteland of a penthouse, but the view is a million times better,” she said, scowling out at the view of a nearby brick wall.

  When she’d first rented her place, she’d fallen in love with the C-shape of the building and the ivy climbing the rust-red-and-brown bricked facade. Now, though, she’d like a view of the sunset. Or a sunrise. As it was, very little vitamin D streamed through her kitchen windows, and only for a few choice hours a day.

  “That’s most rich guys, isn’t it?” Luke smirked.

  “Oh, like you don’t have aspirations to make millions.”

  “I do. Off my Instagram account. Eventually.” He religiously posted at-the-gym selfies. Luke had rippling abs and a great smile and if she were to ask any female her opinion of him, she could guess the answer. Her girlfriends in college had labeled him “hot” even when he was younger, and his loyal league of followers contended that he was gorgeous.

  “And when you make your millions, will you live on a top floor and invite me over for doughnuts?”

  “No. I’ll live on a few hundred acres and buy a llama.”

  “A llama.” She hoisted one eyebrow.

  He grinned. She shook her head. He was still just Luke to her, no matter what thousands of random women thought of him.

  “Tell me about your Valentine’s Day date with Flynn.” He chose an éclair from the white cardboard box. She wiggled her fingers over a bear claw and then a powdered jelly before grabbing another cruller. She was a purist. Sue her.

  “It’s not a date. I mean, it is but it’d be the same as if I went out on V-day date with a girlfriend. Like Cammie.”

  “Mmm, Cammie.” A quick lift of Luke’s eyebrows paired with a devilish smile.

  “No. We’ve been through this. You’re not allowed to date my friends because it’d be weird and awkward and...no.” Plus, Cammie moved to Chicago last year. Sabrina missed having a girlfriend close by.

  “Flynn is dating you and he’s my friend.”

  “We’re not dating,” she reiterated. “And he’s not your friend. You know him. There’s a difference.”

  Affronted, Luke pouted before taking a giant bite of the éclair.

  “And we’re not going to a cliché superfancy, elegant dinner. We’re going to Pike Place Market and having breakfast, then hearing a cheesemonger speak about artisan cheeses, and then—”

  “Did you just use the word cheesemonger?”

  “—and then we’re going to finish up with a trapeze show.” The part she was most excited about.

  Luke made a face.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “It sounds lame.”

  She punched him in the arm but he was asking for it, delivered doughnuts or no.

  “I thought you were supposed to be reliving your college years. The Market was built, what, a few years ago?”

  “We’re reliving the spirit of our college years.”

  “I’ll give you this, Sabs.” He stood to grab the coffeepot and refilled both their mugs. “Your date sounds positively unromantic. Fifty points to you. I guess Flynn is only a friend.”

  That rankled her, especially after she and Flynn had been exchanging some eye-locks and subtle touches that had felt, while not romantic, at least sensual. Rather than clue her brother in, or entertain the words sensual and Flynn in the same thought, she mumbled, “Right.”

  Seven

  The rain fell on a cool fifty-degree day that the weatherman said felt more like thirty-seven degrees. No matter. Sabrina had convinced Flynn to start his hiatus Monday—today—and she was determined to both pry her best friend out of his shell and enjoy herself.

  They started with breakfast, tucking into a small table for two near the window where they could watch the foot traffic pass by. She ordered a cappuccino and orange juice and a glass of water.

  “Like you, I usually drink my breakfast,” Flynn said after ordering coffee for himself. He could give her all the hell she wanted so long as he was here with her.

  When their drinks arrived, she resumed her sermon from the ride over about how he needed time off. “It’ll take you a while to get used to relaxing.”

  “I’m relaxed.” His mouth pulled to the side in frustration and he lifted his steaming coffee mug to his lips.

  “Yes. With your shoulders clinging to your earlobes and that Grouchy Smurf expression on your face, you’re very convincing.”

  He forcefully dropped his shoulders and eased his eyebrows from their home at the center of his forehead.

  “It’s okay to admit you have emotions to deal with. It’s okay to talk about your father. Or Veronica and Julian—or either of them apart from the other.”

  “How can I talk about them apart from the other if they’re never apart?”

  Sabrina stirred her cappuccino before taking a warm, frothy sip. As carefully as if she were disarming a bomb, she asked a question that pained her to the core.

  “Do you miss her?”

  He took a breath and leaned on the table, his arms folded. Huddled close over the small table for two, he pegged her with honest blue eyes. “No. I don’t.”

  That pause had made her nervous for a second. Her chest expanded as she took a deep breath of her own. Then she pulled her own shoulders out from under her ears. Sabrina was there for Flynn’s engagement and the wedding and the aftermath. She knew what Flynn was like dating Veronica, being betrothed to Veronica and then married to her. Sabrina had watched the evolution—the devolution—of him throughout the process. It broke her heart to watch him be used up and discarded.

  “I don’t miss her either.”

  He returned her smirk with a soft smile of his own.

  “She never liked me.”

  “She did so.” His low baritone skittered along her nerve endings, that inconvenient awareness kicking up like dust in a windstorm.

  “You don’t have to lie to me now. It’s not like she’s sitting here. She tolerated me because you and I were friends and we share a birthday and because I’m too loyal to leave you.”

  “I wouldn’t sweat it. She’s clearly not stable since she’s with Julian.” He let out a small breath of a laugh and she clung to it. She’d love to hear Flynn laugh like he used to, big and bold. Watch how it crinkled his eyes. She loved so many aspects about him, but his laugh was at the top of her list.

  “It’s fitting to be out with you on Valentine’s Da
y,” she told him. “You might be the only guy in my life aside from Luke who I’ve cared about consistently.”

  “Never ruin a friendship with dating, right?”

  “Right.” She smiled but then it faded. “We were never tempted to date, were we?”

  Mug lifted, he sent her a Reid-worthy wink. “Not until today.”

  “It recently occurred to me that we were always dating someone other than each other. Do you think that was why we never dated, or were we just too smart to get involved?”

  “We weren’t always dating other people. I had long stints of being single.”

  “Yes, but they never coincided with my stints of being single.” She was right about this. She knew it. “Go through your list.”

  “My list?”

  “The list of girls you dated from your college freshman year through now.”

  “How am I supposed to remember that?” He swiped his jaw, and his stubble made a scratchy sound on his palm, reminding her of when she touched his face last week. She shifted in her seat and shut out the strange observation.

  “I need corroborated evidence.”

  “Who the hell’s going to corroborate?”

  “Me. I remember who we dated in college.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone.”

  “That is a useless amount of information to store in your noggin, Sab.”

  “Nevertheless it’s there. Go. You can start with Anna Kelly.”

  “Anna Kelly does not count.”

  “You and I had first met. You were dating her and I was seeing Louis Watson.”

  “Good ole Louie.”

  “We went on that—”

  “Disastrous double date,” he filled in for her. “Louis didn’t know better than to talk politics.”

  “She baited him! Anyway, so there was that. Then I broke up with Louis and started seeing Phillip.”

  “Cock.”

  “Cox.”

  “He was an idiot. Okay, let’s see...that was when I was with Martha Bryant. For a few weeks and then another M. Melissa...something?”

  “Murphy. Don’t act like you don’t remember her just because she was crazy.”

  “God, she so was.”

  “And you stayed with her for like, ever.”

  “Only for a few months. I had a weakness for crazy back then. And then I dated Janet Martinez.”

  Her name rolled off his tongue in a way that made Sabrina seasick. “She was gorgeous. What happened to her? Did she ever become a swimsuit model?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lie!”

  “Truth. She didn’t land Sports Illustrated, but she was on the covers of a few health mags. She lives in Los Angeles. Or did the last time I saw her.”

  “When did you see her? You didn’t tell me that.” A misplaced pang of jealousy shot through her.

  “She was in town randomly a few years ago and was considering hiring Monarch.”

  “For what?”

  “She owns a company that makes surfboards.”

  “Wow. I didn’t date anyone that interesting ever. Unless... Ray Bell.”

  “Puke. He was not interesting.”

  “He was!”

  “You were too good for him.”

  “As were you for Janet,” she shot back.

  “Which was why I started dating Teresa.”

  “And after Ray dumped me, I dated Mark Walker for a long while.”

  “I thought he was the one.”

  “I thought Teresa was the one for you. She was smart, funny.”

  “And only dating me to get close to Reid.”

  “To his credit, he didn’t take her up on it,” Sabrina pointed out. “That’s what friends should do. Reid’s a good friend.”

  “He is.” Flynn examined his coffee. “Wish I’d have seen Veronica coming. She blindsided me.”

  “True story.” Sabrina had witnessed it firsthand. Flynn was fresh off a breakup with Teresa and smarting over it. Gage’s engagement had ended so he was as sad a sack as Flynn. Reid was in charge of keeping them from moping and so he dragged them to a party one random Friday night and that’s where Flynn met Veronica. She’d swept in and convinced him—and the rest of his friends—that she was the woman Flynn needed.

  “I guess Julian didn’t abide by the friend code.”

  “I guess not,” she concurred sadly. Because it was sad. Devastatingly upsetting, actually. How could Veronica leave Flynn when her job was to love him more than she loved herself?

  “I really hate her sometimes.” Sabrina pressed her lips together, wanting to swallow the words she shouldn’t have said.

  They were true, though. She didn’t hate Veronica only because of the cheating and leaving. Sabrina had felt that surge of bitterness toward the woman throughout Flynn’s marriage for one simple reason: Veronica was selfish. As had now been proved.

  “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “Don’t be,” Flynn said.

  They were interrupted by the delivery of waffles and a refill of coffee for Flynn. A plate of bacon appeared, smoky and inviting, and he moved it to the center of the table like he always had. Sabrina never ordered bacon because it was unhealthy and, frankly, she felt sort of bad for the pigs. He suffered no such guilt and knew she would cave and have a bite or two. He always shared.

  “Hate whomever you want.” He pointed at her with a strip of bacon before taking a bite and blessedly changed the subject. “After all, I hated Craig.”

  “Craig Ross.”

  A minor blip to get her over Ray. It worked on the short term and then she realized he was a complete narcissist. She dumped him shortly after they started seeing each other.

  “And there you have it,” she stated. “I’ve been single most of the time you and Veronica were married. But this is the first time you have been single at the same time as me.”

  “But you’ve dated.”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “Meaning?” He paused, fork holding a bite of waffle midair, syrup drizzling onto the plate.

  “Meaning...nothing serious.”

  “No permanent plans, you mean.”

  “No...other things, too.” She dived into her own waffle.

  “No sex?”

  Okay, that was a little loud.

  “Shh!” She and Flynn had talked about sex and dating plenty but now that his physical presence was more present than ever, she felt strangely shy about the topic.

  He chuckled and ate his waffle, shaking his head as he cut another piece precisely along the squares.

  “It’s not funny. It was a choice.”

  “Aren’t you going mad?”

  “Are you?”

  His pleasant smile faded and there was a brief, poignant moment where their eyes met and the rest of the dining room faded into the background. She counted her heartbeats—one, two, three—and then Flynn blinked and the moment was over.

  “I’m failing at cheering you up,” she said.

  “No. I started it. I have no right to judge you for your choices, Douglas.”

  “Well. Thanks. I just...didn’t want to be attached to the wrong guy again. Sex makes everything blurry.”

  “God. Dating.” He made a face. “I’m not in the market—”

  “Actually, you are at the Market.”

  His smile was a victory in itself.

  “I’m not in the market,” he repeated, “for a relationship or a date. Gage and Reid think sex is going to magically fix everything. But you’re right. It won’t.”

  That was a relief. She didn’t want him to go find someone else either. It was too soon.

  “Sex has a way of uncovering feelings you’ve been ignoring.”

  His blue eyes grew dark as he studied her.

 
; “What do you mean?” he asked after a pregnant pause.

  “In the same way alcohol acts as truth serum, sex makes you face facts. Like if the attraction wasn’t actually there, and when you have sex it’s dull. Or, on the flip side of that same coin, if there is a spark, sex heightens every sensation and it’s incredible.”

  Flynn’s cheeks went a ruddy, pinkish color. “Incredible?”

  “Sometimes.” She swallowed thickly. “Unless it’s just me.”

  “It might be you,” he muttered cryptically before grabbing another slice of bacon. “Help me eat this.”

  * * *

  Sabrina’s statement at breakfast followed Flynn around like a bad omen.

  “Sex has a way of uncovering feelings you’ve been ignoring.”

  He’d like to believe that wasn’t true, but it felt true. Right about now, watching her with an itchy, foreign sort of need, it felt really, really true.

  “Stop grimacing,” she whispered as the cheese tour continued.

  Their group of eight dairy-delighted couples were eating their way through various artisanal cheeses and the tour wasn’t half over yet. Their guide, head cheesemonger Cathy Bates—yes, that was her real name—had just served samples of blueberry-covered goat cheese. Sabrina must’ve assumed that was what turned his mood.

  “Who can eat this much cheese? No one,” he growled under his breath.

  Sabrina shot him a feisty smile that was like a kick in the teeth. It rattled his brains around in his skull and his entire being gravitated closer to her. Until this morning, he’d never laid out their timelines and dating habits side by side. They’d never talked about how they were always overlapping each other with other people.

  It was an odd thing to notice.

  Why had Sabrina noticed?

  He watched her as cheese samples were passed around but he couldn’t detect by looking if she’d had the same sort of semierotic dream about him as he’d had about her, or if she was thinking of him in any way other than as her pal Flynn.

  He’d never looked at her any differently until that dream. Sabrina Douglas was his best girl friend. Girl space friend. Not a woman he’d pursue sexually.