The Supermodel's Best Friend

by Gretchen Galway

  Table of Contents

  From the Back Cover

  Copyright page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author Note

  Also by Gretchen Galway

  Preview of DIVING IN

  About the Author

  The Supermodel’s Best Friend

  by Gretchen Galway

  Lucy Hathcoat’s best friend the supermodel is getting married to a billionaire—what better place than their week-long wedding in a luxury eco-resort to find a new man? Lucy isn’t picky; she just wants a decent guy who’s eager to start a family. Someone as logical, responsible, and practical as she is.

  Definitely not the six-foot-five, fun-loving Miles Girard. Being totally hot and charming is not important. She doesn’t need a guy who makes her laugh. A college dropout who makes her jump in his lap and kiss him. A man who is pathologically wary of marriage and thinks she needs him more than she needs a husband.

  Then again, Lucy’s starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, she can’t live without him…

  THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND

  ©2011 Gretchen Galway

  www.gretchengalway.com

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover by Yocla Designs

  Chapter 1

  THIS WAS NOT IN THE plan, Lucy thought, staring at the handsome face on her phone. Her fiancé was supposed to be standing by her side, pen in hand, not using video smartphone technology to dump her from another state. I don’t love you enough to let you ruin the plan.

  “You must’ve known I had some doubts,” Dan said, his voice as small as he was.

  Lucy looked around the empty living room of the spacious three-bedroom California bungalow with original plank hardwoods and walnut built-ins. “You said you’d kill to have this house,” she said, wondering if the real estate agent, laying out the pages for their revised offer on the granite breakfast counter in the kitchen, could hear them.

  “It’s a great house,” he said, sighing. “A perfect house. But now I see that it would just tie us down, drag out the inevitable.”

  She blinked, not sure what she was hearing. “We’ve been planning this for almost five years.”

  He hesitated. “I met someone.”

  “When? This morning?”

  Licking his lips, he said, “Why don’t we talk later, after you’ve had a chance to calm down.”

  She frowned. “I’m hardly hysterical, Dan.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “You’d like me to be hysterical?”

  “Forget it. Of course not. It makes everything easier.”

  She nodded, belatedly piecing together some clues he’d dropped over the past few months. “Your six-month assignment in Seattle wasn’t the opportunity of a lifetime, then.”

  “Well…”

  “Ah. A personal opportunity, you meant.”

  “I wanted to be sure. For both—for all of us.”

  “Very considerate of you,” she said.

  “Damn it, you don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “You’re hardly in a position to tell me what to do. I’m the wounded party here, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I think we’ll both need some healing.”

  Lucy dropped the phone to her side and noticed that Robin, the real estate agent, had come up behind her. Her face was pale.

  This was really going to screw over the older lady, the two of them walking away from the deal now. Robin needed a sale badly. Typical of Dan to think the world revolved around him.

  Lucy lifted the phone. “We’ll have to call the mortgage broker.”

  He jutted out his chin. “I already have.”

  “You told Inez the mortgage broker before you told me?”

  “She kept after me to sign the latest thing. It didn’t feel right to string her along anymore—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Look, you’re getting digitized. I think the connection is breaking up…”

  “It didn’t feel right to string her along?”

  He sighed. “So much of our lives together is what you wanted. Not me. I felt… superfluous a lot of the time.” He tilted the screen of his laptop so she was staring out the window of his suite at the Extended Stay America. It wasn’t supposed to be sunny in Seattle. It looked sunny. She wondered if the new girlfriend was there, listening off-camera. Dan came back into view with a coffee cup at his lips.

  In Berkeley, outside the house she wasn’t going to have, the sky was as gray as lint. “Our relationship was always shaped by what you wanted. We talked about marriage years ago. I hoped to have my first child before I turned thirty. But you wanted to save up for the house first, so we did, even though that was third on my list.”

  “You and your lists. That’s one thing I’ve learned from Brittany—how to trust my heart.”

  “Ah, so she’s one of those.” She took a deep breath and peered into the phone for a glimpse of her. “What else did the little ho say?”

  Dan’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  “You wanted hysterical. This is my version.”

  He looked away, then back at the screen, his lips popping up and down like a broken garage door. “Brittany is not—” He shook his head and stared off to the side, made an apologetic face, then jerked his head.

  So she had been there. “Thanks for making this such a private moment.”

  “I can’t believe Brittany had to hear you call her a—a—I can’t even say it.”

  “What? She’s been sleeping with my boyfriend. For months, apparently.”

  “Brittany has nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Does she know about me?”

  “Of course. She knows everything.”

  Lucy snorted. Her college advisor would’ve broken out in a rash to hear her insult a woman for exercising her sexual liberties, but to hell with it. She was under a lot of stress. “Ho.”

  Dan’s eyes went wide as he leaned into his laptop camera. “She is completely innocent. Brittany’s not in such a hurry to take her clothes off. Unlike you.”

  Lucy felt an odd snapping inside her, her last grip on reality disengaging from Dan’s voice. “We lived together for five years. You think we should have waited until we were, what, forty?”

  “It’s not how long we waited, it’s how often you wanted it. And how much you wanted to do it. I’m a man, Lucy, and I didn’t need half as much sex as you did.” Then he ran his hand over his eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I never intended to talk to you about this.”

  Her throat suddenly felt tight. She realized Robin the real estate agent was hanging on every word. “Did you talk to her about this? Brittany?”

&n
bsp; His sheepish look grew sheepier; he leaned away from the camera. Faintly, she heard him say, “That’s how we… how we knew we were perfect for each other. She was avoiding her boyfriend, and I… I was taking a break, too.”

  “And where was this? Her convent?”

  “Lucy,” Dan said, shaking his head, looking so disappointed in her.

  Humiliation didn’t feel right, so she tapped into the rage, breathed it like oxygen. “I’m just trying to get the full picture here. I deserve to know the details.”

  “Information isn’t knowledge, Lucy,” Dan said. “Knowing everything doesn’t make you wise.”

  “And having a penis doesn’t make you a man,” Lucy said.

  Robin snorted and patted her hard on the back. Lucy closed her eyes. He didn’t like having sex with me, she thought. It’s not like she had a he-harem of previous boyfriends to call up for rebuttals. She was thirty-four, but she’d started late.

  Damn. It took him five years to propose. She didn’t have another eight to work on someone new. There were houses to buy, retirement accounts to fund, ovaries to harvest.

  She frowned at him. “You’ve really messed up my plans.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s all I was to you, Lucy. Just part of your plans.” He leaned back and put his hand over his heart. “I’ve learned that I need a partner who acts without analyzing everything to death. Someone more flexible.”

  Lucy glanced at Robin, but it was far too late for any privacy. Holding the phone up to her mouth, she said, enunciating each word, “One of my plans was for decent sex. I was flexible about giving up on that.”

  She drew back to see his reaction, but the window had gone black.

  Robin peered over her shoulder. “He hung up?”

  Teeth clenched, Lucy shoved her phone in her bag. “He never could handle a fight.”

  “Or much of anything, from the sound of it.”

  Lucy looked at her.

  “Sorry,” Robin said.

  “It’s true.” Lucy thought of what he said—unlike you—and crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t know what to say. She was angry and embarrassed. Too upset to think clearly, an unfamiliar experience for her.

  Robin touched her shoulder lightly. “Maybe you can explain to Inez—”

  “No. Half the income now—less than half, since his big wanking Y chromosome gets him a higher salary. There’s no way I can afford it now.” She closed her eyes. He didn’t need sex half as much as you did. An old pain flared to life, like bumping a bruise you didn’t know you had.

  “I’m sorry,” Robin said, moving away into the kitchen to give her some space.

  Lucy leaned against the window and stared out blindly at the overcast sky. To her annoyance, her heart beat too fast and her hands shook.

  Just like that, he’d ended eight years together. Over the phone.

  She needed another few minutes to calm herself down before she could follow Robin into the kitchen.

  “I’m really sorry,” Lucy finally said to her, putting her hands on the counter next to the now-useless paperwork. All that personal information, numbers and accounts and addresses. She’d have to make sure every page was shredded.

  Such a waste of… everything.

  “Oh, honey,” Robin said, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

  “I know how much you needed this sale.” Robin’s ex-husband was eager to see her fail at her new life away from him.

  “Not your fault.” Robin swept the pages together on the counter, her hands heavily veined, the long fingernails painted pale pink. Every time Lucy had seen her, she’d been wearing the same black pantsuit—high-quality but at least a decade old.

  Lucy took a deep breath. “I just want you to know, if Dan calls you back, wanting to buy it without me, go ahead and do it.”

  “No! I could never—”

  “Any other agent would. You should too. You found this place before it was listed, you should get the commission.”

  “Do you think he’d do that? Just go buy the house without you? After what he did to you?”

  Two weeks earlier, the moment he’d heard about the house, even though it was after midnight, he’d insisted they get in the car and do a drive-by. They’d been waiting at the door at eight the next morning for the broker’s tour. With their pre-approval loan package. He made an online photo album of the pictures he took, emailed them to everyone he knew.

  “I’ve never seen him so excited about anything in his life. Yes, if the nun is willing”—Lucy snorted—“and even if she isn’t. Yes, I think he’ll contact you about buying it alone.”

  “Yes, but…” Robin shook her head. “It’s so heartless of him.”

  “Apparently he does have a heart.” Looking at her phone to check the time, Lucy sighed. “What a surprise.”

  * * *

  Even among adults, Miles was used to looking over people’s heads. Coaching his kindergarten volleyball clinic, he was a California redwood in a patch of sorrel. An ent among hobbits. A frickin’ giant.

  Man, he loved Saturday mornings.

  “Got it!” A five-year-old girl with long black hair ran right under the net (without having to duck) and plowed into him. Before he could react, she bounced off his legs and fell to the gym floor, her glittering purple Twinkle Toes sneakers up in the air. The white volleyball she’d been chasing rolled into the cluster of kids behind him.

  Miles bent down and offered a hand. “Way to go after the ball, Caitlin!” He helped her up and guided her back to her side of the court. “Next time you gotta stay on your side, okay sport? But way to move those feet.”

  Grinning, he looked over into the stands to see if Felicia was enjoying the game, but her glossy blond head was bent over her iPhone. He shrugged it off and got the kids to rotate positions for the next serve. Or roll, since the little ones couldn’t usually get it over the net.

  “Everett, your serve, sport. Get closer to the net, that’s it.” Everett swung his arm like Tiger Woods at tee-off; the ball slipped out of his fingers and bounced past the stationary feet of three small children frozen in the ready-squat position. Miles had another ball ready in his hand and tossed it over. “Here you go, Everett. Now try again from right up here, dude. That’s a lot of power you’ve got in that swing.”

  Everett stepped forward, swung, and the ball tripped and rolled over the top of the net into Caitlin’s waiting arms.

  Miles clapped. “Way to pay attention, Caitlin!” Beaming, Caitlin hugged the ball to her chest. “Next time you go ahead and swing your arms. No need to hold on to it.”

  After another five minutes attempting a game, Miles called a water break, sending off a dozen squealing kids to the fountain or to their parents. Miles strode over to Felicia, who was flinching at the noise and wore a skin-tight black and red tracksuit that showed off her long, lean body. Though she liked to meet him in Berkeley on Saturday mornings, she usually went for a run instead of sitting around the clubhouse.

  “Morning, honey,” he said, stealing the Starbucks cup from her hand and taking a sip. “Didn’t expect you until ten.”

  She frowned. “I’d rather you let me buy you one of your own.”

  He swallowed another mouthful of coffee, handed the cup back to her. “I only wanted a sip.”

  “You always say that.”

  He leaned down to her ear, lightly touched her thigh. “Afraid of getting my germs?”

  Her leg jerked away and he drew back to study her face. She looked cool and put-together, her straight hair sleek along the sides of her narrow face, her soft brown eyes carefully made up with mascara and something faintly shimmery. She must have skipped her run altogether, not just finished early.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Stifling his annoyance, he scanned the gym for aimless balls and children just as his watch beeped. “Got to get back.”

  “Miles, we have to talk.”

  The kids were starting to go wild
. They liked to run up and down the bleachers to make them rattle, usually knocking over the adults’ assorted coffee containers in the process. “Sure, soon as I’m done here.” He jumped down and jogged over to the net, calling the kids back for the second half hour of almost-volleyball.

  Arms folded over her chest, Felicia scowled at him. The coffee cup sat abandoned at her feet.

  He shook off his dread and got back to work. He only had to remind Caitlin six times to stop running under the net, which was progress, and by the time they were in the end-of-clinic huddle for a go-team shout, he’d almost forgotten his angry girlfriend was watching.

  No, not watching. Back to her phone.

  The kids scattered to their parents and grandparents and he went around the gym to collect the stray balls. Fourth through sixth grade boys’ basketball was at noon, but he had Ronnie coaching that group. He was off until Monday morning, just like corporate types, which was probably what was annoying Felicia again—how he wasn’t one.

  When the last ball was locked up and the net put away, Miles stood in the middle of the gym with his hands on his hips and regarded the classic profile of the brooding blonde staring at the neon exit sign.

  Marriage. Another birthday had come and gone; she was still single; it was all his fault.

  He climbed up the bleachers two at a time to reach her. He sat down beside her and didn’t touch the coffee, though he was dying for it. “I’ll marry you this weekend,” he said, kissing her sweet-smelling hair, “if you agree to move into my place.” She hated his two-bedroom condo in the Mission District of San Francisco, calling the neighborhood a ghetto. He’d sunk all his savings and years of sweat equity into it and really didn’t want to give it up. He knew she’d learn to love it if she gave it a chance.

  She twisted around, tilting her head back to look down her nose at him. “Excuse me?”

  He raised his eyebrows. Managed a grin. “Kidding?”

  She stood up and he had to lurch forward to grab the Starbucks cup before it tipped over. He got tired of mopping up spilled coffee under his bleachers.