About The Authors
Lauren Milson writes sweet, smutty romance - the kind that you stay up past your bedtime to finish. ❤️
Daniella Cole is an NYC-based writer who loves a good mix of sweet and steamy. Her short fiction will leave you wanting more - guess you’ll just have to come back.
Get a FREE insta-love romance when you sign up for our mailing list! - http://eepurl.com/difde1
We can't be held responsible if your Kindle sparks, melts, or combusts. We are certainly happy to take responsibility if the same happens to your clothes.
Thank you for reading!
xx, Lauren
xo, Daniella
Pining For My Dad’s Friend
Daniella Cole
With Lauren Milson
Copyright © 2020 by Daniella Cole
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
About The Authors
Pining For My Dad’s Friend
1. Mandy
2. James
3. Mandy
4. Mandy
Mandy
Also By Daniella Cole & Lauren Milson
Pining For My Dad’s Friend
Mandy has always had a crush on her dad's best friend. After a terrible night in NYC (cheating boyfriend, no money, and a puddle-splashed dress) she calls the man she knows she can count on.
Little did she know he'd been waiting for her call...
Pining For My Dad’s Friend is a short, sweet, high-heat romance with a guaranteed HEA.
1
Mandy
I’m not me.
At least that’s what the man behind the counter is telling me.
“Nah,” he says, holding my (very real!) New York State Driver License up next to my face. Two teenagers push past me to slap a twenty on the counter and run off with their mini bottles of vodka. That’s not fair. I give the clerk a big, cheesy smile and shrug my shoulders in hope. His eyes flicker from the picture on the ID to my face. He chortles and shakes his head, slapping the ID onto the counter and sliding it to me. His voice is gruff like broken glass, and not in a good way. “That’s not you, honey.”
My eyebrows sink together as I dejectedly look down at the flimsy license. I check it again just to make sure. It’s me. Who else would it be? I should know!
“I’m wearing makeup in this picture!” I dig into my purse to grab my lipstick and mascara. “I can show you. Do you have a mirror? Let me just put on some makeup really quick and you’ll see!”
“This is not a beauty parlor, lady!”
The man jerks his head toward the door, giving me a dismissive wave.
“This is me!” I say, holding the ID up next to my face and waving my hand between my picture and my face in the flesh. “Please believe me? The wine isn’t even really for me. It’s for my boyfriend.”
“Then get your boyfriend to come here himself and bring a valid ID with him. You’re lucky I’m not calling the cops, sweetheart.”
My shoulders sink down and I put my ID into my wallet. Mention of cops being involved has me changing my tune.
“Thanks,” I say defeatedly. I’ll just have to try another liquor store, though it’s getting very late and I most definitely have somewhere to be. I pull my purse onto my shoulder and brave the rainy night, pushing my umbrella open as my sneaker plunges into a puddle. I look down and laugh at how wet my sock is. Of course. I take a deep breath.
Tonight is supposed to be the night. The night I go “all the way” with my boyfriend. He said a bottle of wine would help set the mood. He said he’d light candles and cook for me — all of the cliches were firmly in place. And, honestly, it all sounded so lovely at the time. But now I’m just feeling awful, and it has nothing to do with the wet sock.
It’s because everything seems perfect, but it’s not.
For my first time to be perfect, it would have to be with James. James, the man I’ve wanted for two very long years, the man who I’ve always been able to rely on, the man who would never give me a second look. He’s too good. Too honorable.
Too much my dad’s friend.
The last time I saw him was at my twenty-first birthday six months ago. I wasn’t expecting him to show up because he’d pretty much disappeared from my life two years prior to that. But there he was, at the door to the private room in the back of the Chinese restaurant on Mott Street, gift bag in hand.
Time seemed to freeze when our eyes locked. He moved through the room with his gaze on me, trapping me like a caged bird. I felt so warm and fuzzy, like I always did when he was around. He felt like safety and home in a tattooed, big, sexy package. But this time was different. This time, I felt my body respond in a way it never had before. In a way that was confusing but at the same time perfectly clear.
I felt my knees go weak when I stood up slowly to greet him. He put his hand on the small of my back and gave me a kiss, and when his salt-and-pepper stubble met the smooth skin of my cheek, it was like something inside me changed. I breathed him in, the air around us thin and thick at the same time. Thin to make me dizzy, thick with his strong, masculine scent, enough to push my body into some other world where there was heat growing inside my every cell, my every pore. I nearly fell to the floor when I went to sit back down. It was like we were in our own world for that moment. I swear there was something in his gaze, something in the way he looked at me that night.
It was…new.
He did’t look at me like he wanted me. He looked at me like I was already his.
But then, just as quickly as that feeling hit, it vanished. I’ve spent the last six months of my life analyzing that moment, looking at it from every angle, and deciding that it had to have been a figment of my imagination.
And after dinner, when we all went back to my parents’ house for cake, he didn’t show up. I kept my eyes glued to the front door all night. It was pathetic. He wasn’t coming. I should have known he had somewhere more important to be than his friend’s daughter’s birthday party. I told myself I was being silly and making a big deal out of nothing. But the dampness between my legs wasn’t nothing. The way I pictured him on top of me, his lips locked on mine and his hands roaming my body, that was definitely not nothing.
Oh, it was something, alright.
“Watch where you’re going!”
A bike zooms past me, shaking me out of my memory of James. The biker throws a look over his shoulder as his tires grind and kick up drops of water and pebbles of asphalt on my shins.
“You should be wearing a helmet!” I yell after him. I definitely appreciate that he’s riding a bike instead of driving a car, but, still, safety needs to come first!
My first time has to happen at some point. It’s not going to be with James, so I just have to bite the bullet and get it over with. That or I might end up going to my grave a virgin.
Before I’m given another moment to bemoan my current situation, my phone vibrates from the deep cavern of my purse. When I’m able to dig my phone out I see that it’s Ray calling me. I force myself to smile.
“Hey babe,” I say, trying to put on a sexy voice. It doesn’t sound sexy to me, though.
“Babe?” the voice on the other end of the call says. Shit. That’s not Ray. It’s a woman.
“Hello?” I say. My voice isn’t sexy now. It’s shaking like a leaf in an autumn storm.
“Hi,” she chirps cheerfully. “Who is this?”
“This is…Mandy?” I shut my eye
s and smack myself on the forehead with my phone. I’m an idiot. The man in the liquor store didn’t believe I was who I said I was, and now I’m having an identity crisis over it.
“Mandy,” the girl on the other end says. She sounds like a true mean girl, the kind of girl I’ve been trying to avoid my entire life. “Umm, why exactly were you calling my boyfriend babe?”
I walk to the corner and a black SUV races through the yellow light, splashing me with a tidal wave of dirty street water. I don’t care that my face and hair are wet. I only care about the fact that my dress is now both dirty and see-through.
This is classic.
I clutch my phone. I’m squeezing so hard that it might break in my fist. The girl on the other end of the call keeps chirping into my ear, but I’m not listening anymore.
“Excuse me,” I say, cutting her off. I put on a fake sugary-sweet tone, but I know that my voice is about to crack. “May I speak to Ray for a moment?”
“You little…!”
I pull the phone away from my ear as she goes on a tirade. In the background I hear Ray trying to calm her down, and when the screaming stops I bring the phone back to my ear.
“Mandy, listen…”
“Hello, Ray.” I cut him off and pull my shoulders back, standing up a little bit straighter. I suddenly strong and powerful, a woman who knows her worth rather than the wet street rat that I must actually look like on the outside. “I just wanted to tell you myself that I don’t care about this other girl. In fact, I should probably thank her for preventing me from making the biggest mistake of my life. From now on get the class notes from someone else. Goodbye.”
I hear him starting to speak again but I pull my phone from my ear and hang up on him.
I feel…hell, I feel fantastic. I dodged a bullet - a huge bullet. Where did this sudden spring of nerves come from? I have no idea. If I’d had the nerve to turn Ray down the first time he asked me out, I wouldn’t be on a random street corner off Astor Place and getting sprayed in the boobs by disgusting street water.
But just as fast as my mood changed, it’s now changing again. A posse of middle-aged guys with leather jackets passes me, their big boots making it feel like the ground below me is rumbling. One of them says something and throws me a grin, and I think he’s about to come over to me before his friend grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back. I turn around and I’m met face-to-face with two more guys, bouncers outside a noisy bar. I feel like I’m a little ball being ping-ponged around the sidewalk by people much bigger and much stronger than me. The rain is starting to let up, but my dress is still soaked through. I don’t have enough money in my checking account to get a cab back to campus uptown, and I cannot get on the subway in this condition. All I have on me is a twenty-dollar bill.
I don’t know who else to call but James. My parents would kill me the second they saw me. I don’t have any friends with cars, and I’d feel terrible asking another poor college student for money anyway. I bite my lip as my finger hovers over James’ number, a million crazy thoughts whirring through my head.
Tonight was supposed to be the night…
And I know that once James starts asking me questions there is no way I’ll be able to keep the truth from him…
2
James
I am a dirty old man.
At least that’s what my dick is telling me.
I open the door to my apartment. The woman standing in front of me is the one woman I’ve had to stay the hell away from for six months. She’s the woman who’s throw a death-blow to my dating life. She’s the woman who could absolutely bring me down to my knees and make me her personal servant for the rest of my natural life. And she’s the one woman I can’t lay a hand on.
Mandy stands before me in a little white dress, her long black hair matted to her chest, her lips parted as though she’s about to say something, and her arms crossed in front of her perky little tits like she’s either trying to cover them or present them to me on a platter to feast on.
I’m also a walking cliche because I want to strangle whoever caused her to be alone at night on a street corner in a dress like this. I know she can take care of herself, but there is definitely something amiss.
Either she’s acting very differently than I remember, or my memory is fading.
No. My memory is not fading. Something is different about her. And I should know, because I have practically every little detail of her memorized.
“Hey,” she breathes. Her eyebrows raise a tick before settling back down. A smile grows on her perfectly bow-shaped lips.
“What happened?” I say, stepping aside for her to come in. The scent of rose and lemon pins me to the floor as she comes inside, putting her umbrella on the floor gently and pulling the hem of her dress down. It’s riding up her leg, showing a glimpse of her milky white skin before she’s able to make the small adjustment. While she’s not looking, I adjust my cock. It’s pressing against the zipper of my pants and it’s rock-hard and pulsing to get a taste of her incredible, sexy young body.
“I got stuck in the city with no money,” she says, turning to face me. Her big, bright blue eyes look up at me like a pair of pale moons. She nibbles on the corner of her lower lip as my eyes rake down. I don’t venture any lower because I don’t want to be alone in my apartment with her if I’d allowed myself to cop a look at her chest. I don’t know if I’d be able to control myself if I got a look at her tits. I can see, though, out of the corner of my eye that her breasts are pushed together and pushed up to form an incredibly sexy curve.
“I know you didn’t just get stuck, Mandy,” I say, pushing the door closed. “I’ve known you long enough to know you’re not a girl who gets stuck. Something happened.”
She follows me into my apartment where I make a quick left into the kitchen and pull down a bottle of scotch from my liquor cabinet. I’m going to need it if I want to get through this night in one piece.
“Can I have some?” she asks brightly. I freeze in place, my jaw clenching at the thought of her drinking. Clenching at the thought of her being in college and drinking. My mind instantly flashes to an image of her in some shitty dorm room, being groped by some drunk little asshole. The boys her age wouldn’t know the first thing about how to treat her, how to make her come, how to make her happy. I should know. I was one of those young guys once. It’s only with experience and age that I’ve grown to learn how to make a woman feel like a goddess - and I know I’m the only man who can do that for Mandy.
I’ve spent countless nights thinking of her, rubbing myself raw with the image of her spread out beneath me flashing on the backs of my eyelids. I admired her from afar for two years before I knew I had to stay out of her life - or risk losing her forever.
I told myself getting some space between me and her would be the solution to my problem. Find another woman, get into a good, appropriate relationship with a woman my age, and then I could go back to being the man Mandy could come to if she ever had a problem. Evidently, the plan worked half-way. She’s had a problem tonight and here she is, sitting at my kitchen island, looking like sex incarnate, temptation personified, a little piece of sweet, soft heaven and the source of all the sexual frustration that’s been building inside me for six months. What kind of man would I be if I made a move on her in this vulnerable state? I’d be no better than the men I want to protect her from.
And the other half of the plan? Well, that part hasn’t worked out for me. Find another woman? That’s been a task proven impossible again and again. I’ve been out on dates with other women - women my age, her age, and every age in-between. But I haven’t been able to pull the trigger because I knew it wouldn’t feel right. Hell, just having dinner with other women hasn’t felt right.
In my head, it is always Mandy.
“Here,” I say, pushing one of the glasses toward her. At least I know she’ll be safe here for the night. I’m not letting her go back to her parents’ house — her parents are picture-perfect
Connecticut country club snobs and I love them despite those trappings, but I know her father would flip his shit if she came home after midnight. He’s a real hard-ass, a trait he’s always had and one that flourished during our time together at the law firm where we’re both now partners. Mandy has never been rebellious, and I know she’s aching for some freedom.
And I’m definitely not letting her go back to her dorm tonight. There’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight if it means she’ll be walking into a sea of drunk frat boy idiots. No, she’ll be safe here with me, away from all the leering eyes and drunk hands waiting for her.
No, she’ll be safe with me. Here.
She wraps her fingers around the glass and brings it to her lips, taking a small sip. I watch as her tongue darts out to lick the strong liquor from the corner of her mouth, wishing that I could pull her into my arms and taste those lips for myself.
“Okay, you’re right,” she says, her shoulders falling. “I didn’t just get stuck. I had everything planned out, down to the tiniest last detail. I knew exactly where to get off the subway, exactly which liquor store to go to, I even deliberated over this outfit for an hour before I put it on!”
“Did you say liquor store?”
I freeze, my fist clenching into a knot at my side.
“Yes, I said liquor store,” she says, giving me a pursed-lip smile and a stare. “You know I’m twenty-one now. In fact, you willingly handed over this glass of scotch to me.”
Pining for My Dad's Friend Page 1