Flirting with the Frenemy

by Grant, Pippa

  Dude, seriously, get the stick out of your ass, fuck your pride, and use my place out in Shipwreck. Tucker will love the pirate festival, and you’re not gonna get a more comfortable bed. Or a better chance to teach him to play Pac-Man. Or a cheaper vacation. How much are you paying in alimony? Fuck.

  “That was funny, Dad. You were taking a bubble bath with a girl. Mom says I’m too old to take baths with anyone, but you’re way older than me, and you were doing it. Can we take a bubble bath together? I won’t tell Mom. Promise.”

  My heart trips again, but this time, it’s an entirely different reason.

  How much does he promise his mother he won’t tell me?

  He’s already grown an inch and a half since I saw him for two short days last month.

  What else am I missing?

  Forget Ellie.

  Beck’s not lying about how well she’s healing. She’ll be fine, and she can hate me all she wants.

  Tucker’s the only thing I need to concentrate on for the next week while I’m on leave. And then every spare minute the rest of the summer until I have to bring him back to his mom.

  “Yeah, bud. Let’s go see if there’s a big tub upstairs.”

  Hopefully Ellie will clear out by morning.

  But even if she doesn’t, we can avoid her. House is big, and we have tons to do in Shipwreck.

  She might’ve invaded this house, but she won’t interfere with my vacation with my son.

  Unless she needs me.

  Not that she’d ever admit it.

  And not that I want to admit it either.

  I scrub a hand over my face as we step into the first bedroom on the second floor. The queen bed is decked out with a comforter featuring Beck making moon-eyes in his briefs, and the pillow shams are printed with matching pictures of him winking.

  Crazy fucker.

  “Dad? Why’s your friend’s picture all over everywhere? And why’s he naked?” Tucker asks.

  This is going to be one long week.

  Three

  Ellie

  My doodle pad.

  I left my doodle pad in the living room.

  Where Wyatt Morgan is headed with his son.

  I yank my dripping phone out of the water—wonderful—and hoist myself onto the edge of the tub, stifling a groan at the ache radiating from my left hip to my knee. The scars aren’t red and angry anymore, but they’re still ugly and twisted, and I still can’t move as fast as I used to.

  Especially not after slipping in the tub three fucking times. So the answer would be yes, I still need that stupid anti-slip mat.

  Dammit.

  After I wipe the worst of the bubbles off my face, I do my best not to limp over the towels that I toss on the ground to prevent me from slipping on the slick tile floor. The air’s cold now, but my bathrobe is warm, thanks to Beck’s towel warmer.

  Once I have my slippers on—simple granny slippers with, you guessed it, grippy foot pads on the bottom—and my phone in my robe pocket, I carefully creak open the bedroom door.

  There are voices, but they sound like they’re coming from upstairs.

  It takes me longer than it should to get to the kitchen, dig out a box of Rice-a-Roni—no, my brother apparently doesn’t keep plain rice here—and get my phone drying out as best I can.

  And then I go in search of my doodle pad.

  It’s not on the glass end tables, in any of the magazine piles, or tucked into the crocheted ivory afghan on the brown leather couch. Nor is it between the couch cushions or hidden in the recliners. Not in the papers and random old mail on the coffee table, or on the fireplace hearth.

  I look at the stack of magazines again, my blood pressure starting to rise.

  No one gets to see my doodle pad.

  Especially anyone under eighteen.

  Or possibly thirty.

  Or with a penis.

  Or who creeps up on me in the bathtub.

  My brother is getting an earful as soon as my phone’s dry.

  I was doodling out here this afternoon after unloading my car, which I probably should’ve let Monica help me with, but it’s her wedding week, and I’m her maid of honor, dammit, not her friend who needs babysitting. I sat in that recliner, swiveled it to face the scenery, and drew—

  Never mind what I drew.

  The point is, I distinctly remember setting my doodle pad right there on the end table.

  And it’s gone.

  Nothing else is missing.

  Just my doodle pad.

  A shriek of laughter from above makes me eyeball the stairs. I could go ask Wyatt where he put it.

  Or be polite and ask if he’s seen it. The tones of his voice carry through the ceiling as well, low, deep, and carefully modulated, because that’s Wyatt for you.

  Always calm.

  Always in control.

  Always fucking right.

  Even about mistakes. Oh, fuck, Ellie, we shouldn’t have done that.

  I shake my head, because the two things I absolutely will not think about are Wyatt’s hot, sweaty, naked body on mine, and the sound of metal crunching on metal and glass at sixty miles an hour in the dark.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Now I’m thinking about it.

  About the dark. And the cold. And the pain.

  The chill starts in my left femur and spreads a shiver through my bladder and up into that spot right beneath the bottom of my breastbone. The scent of blood floods my sinuses. My vision narrows, my skin goes clammy, and I get that itch between my shoulder blades while my lungs shrink to the size of a walnut.

  I’m drowning.

  I’m drowning in hot metal and sharp glass and snowflakes.

  This is not real.

  I’m safe.

  This is not real.

  I grip the edge of the leather recliner and focus on a single green leaf fluttering on an oak in the front yard.

  Cool summer breeze. Warm summer sunshine.

  I’m safe.

  I’m safe.

  I’m safe.

  My fingers tingle, and my legs wobble, but I can see past the tree now. My lungs expand a little wider, and the rushing in my ears fades as quickly as it arrived.

  I’m okay.

  I’m okay.

  My skin prickles as the last of my panic recedes—it’s been two months since the last one, I should’ve been done with these by now—and a reflected movement in the glass makes me tense up harder.

  “Go. Away,” I grit out.

  Wyatt’s at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t hear him coming.

  But I hear Wyatt from six months ago.

  Fuck, Ellie…shouldn’t have done that.

  We made a mistake.

  You’re a mistake.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, because he didn’t say that.

  He didn’t say any of it beyond we shouldn’t have done that.

  But why shouldn’t we?

  Didn’t take much to fill in the blanks.

  I was a mistake.

  First Patrick—staying together this long was a mistake. If I was supposed to love you, I wouldn’t be in love with someone else—and then Wyatt. Fuck, Ellie, that was a mistake.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, and his voice prompts another round of cold chills.

  But this isn’t the same panicked cold chills still making my thighs and knees quiver, and sending that ache deeper into my left femur.

  Nope, that’s regret cold chills.

  “Just a little naked,” I reply, because I am naked under my robe, and I’m apparently feeling like being an asshole.

  I watch his subtle reflection in the window as his head jerks sideways, like he doesn’t want to look at me naked.

  Who’s uncomfortable now?

  “Beck didn’t mention you’d be here,” he tells the wall. “I didn’t mean to walk in on you. I thought—I thought one of his old flings had moved in.”

  I’m fully aware Beck didn’t mention me to Wyatt, because he didn’t menti
on Wyatt to me either. I love my brother, but he’s obtuse at best and mischievous at worst. “Sounds about right.”

  There. That was dignified and aloof without being a total asshole.

  “Tucker’s never been to the Pirate Festival,” he adds.

  I look past the trees to Shipwreck, nestled amongst more trees in the valley below.

  We’re 250 miles inland in the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia, an hour outside the booming metropolis of Copper Valley, overlooking a pirate town called Shipwreck, named thus because of the legend of Thorny Rock.

  Thorny Rock, the pirate. Not Thorny Rock, the mountain named after him and which this house is built on. Which is a crucial distinction, since mountains can’t smuggle pirate treasure in wagons, nor could they in the eighteenth century when Thorny Rock founded Shipwreck and supposedly buried all his gold here to hide it from the authorities who were on his trail.

  “I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time,” I tell Wyatt while I tighten my robe ties.

  I love the Pirate Festival.

  Adore it, even.

  But I’m not here for the pirates this week. Or to help dig up the town square—again—in search of Thorny Rock’s treasure. Or even to hunt for the peg leg hidden somewhere around town.

  Not for myself, I mean. I’m here to be maid of honor while my ex-boyfriend plays best man in my best friend’s pirate wedding, since she’s marrying his brother.

  Apparently while Wyatt gets to dig for treasure and hunt for the peg leg and drink his heart out at The Grog.

  Or maybe not the drinking part.

  Not when he’s here with his son.

  That would be a mistake. And Wyatt Morgan doesn’t make mistakes.

  Not twice, anyway.

  An uncomfortable silence settles between us. I want to squirm, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s getting to me.

  “You looked like you needed help,” he says. “In the bathtub.”

  I bite my tongue, because my pre-teen years were basically me telling Wyatt I’ll tell you when I need help, now back off, followed by my early teen years where he grew a foot, discovered weights, got hot, and finally left me to my own devices while he did everything with Lydia.

  Pretty, perfect, helpless-without-Wyatt Lydia.

  Who is none of my business.

  Although I’d rather think about Lydia than think about the last time I saw Wyatt.

  “Thank you for trying,” I say, politely, because it would make my mother proud, and my mother thinks Wyatt hung the fucking moon. And I don’t want to argue with him right now. I have to save my energy for tonight. And tomorrow. And the next day. All the way until Friday, when Monica and Jason are getting married in the biggest pirate wedding ever seen in Shipwreck.

  “Are you…sticking around for a while?” he asks.

  “All week.” I study the furniture again, looking for the sparkly cover of my doodle pad, but no luck.

  He clears his throat like he’s eaten a bad banana pepper.

  “But I won’t be here much,” I add “so…”

  “Yeah. Us either.”

  Wyatt and Ellie, sitting in a tree. A-W-K-W-aaaarrrr-ding!

  “Great. I’m actually leaving in…” Shit.

  My phone.

  I don’t have a phone.

  I can drive. I’ve been driving again for two months. In a new hybrid car with more airbags than a bagpipe convention and sensors everywhere because other than refusing to drive a gas-guzzling tank, I didn’t have it in me to argue when Beck decided it was his job to make sure I had every safety feature known to man, including the freaking color of car least likely to be in a car accident.

  Except the one feature none of us thought I’d need—internal satellite phone support.

  I’ll always have my phone, which has a voice assistant, and that’s plenty good enough, we all agreed.

  I don’t drive without a phone.

  And I can’t call Monica—or Grady, my date for the week—because I don’t have a phone.

  Fuck. Dammit.

  If I don’t show up for dinner and the parade tonight, she’ll send someone up here to find me, because that’s exactly what I’d do if she was my maid of honor and she didn’t show up for a planned event on my itinerary when I knew she was still a little jumpy driving and that she had to come down off a mountain to get there because she desperately needed space from a certain other member of the bridal party and therefore wasn’t doing the easy thing and spending the week at the Inn.

  I didn’t tell her I was bringing Grady as my plus-one, just that I was bringing a date, so she won’t know she can go to a local for help.

  And the only person in the wedding party other than Monica who knows the backroads up the mountain is Patrick.

  I flinch at the thought of his name, because while Wyatt was happy to tell me we shouldn’t have done that, at least he didn’t proclaim to love me with all his heart first.

  And at least he didn’t bring his smart, skinny, beautiful new girlfriend along for the week.

  That would be even better.

  Look, Ellie, everyone but you is worthy of love. You couldn’t even get a fake date without asking four guys first.

  I need to get off this mountain.

  And get to that dinner.

  I turn to head to the kitchen—Beck might have a spare phone in his junk drawer, not because he thinks of things like spare phones, but because he’s unpredictable and just when you think he’s completely irresponsible, he pulls out a spare cell phone—and for a moment, I forget that my hip doesn’t like to move that fast.

  My knee buckles, but I catch myself on the end table before I go all the way down.

  Wyatt’s crossing the room before I can think boo, but I hold a hand up. “Foot fell asleep,” I lie.

  Those gray eyes bore into me, and his full lips go flat. Between the military haircut, the square jaw, the broad shoulders, and that glare, I feel like I should offer to drop and give him twenty.

  And no, I don’t want to talk about what the combination is doing to my libido. My body doesn’t get a vote in this.

  It did last time, and that didn’t end so well.

  And I’m not talking about the accident.

  I straighten myself and make my way more slowly to the kitchen.

  If he notices the limp, he doesn’t comment.

  If he notices the go away message I’m trying to send him telepathically, he also doesn’t comment.

  Or go away.

  “What do you need?” he asks, and I get another shiver, like he’s not asking what I’m looking for in the drawer, but what my soul needs.

  I jerk my head toward the island, where my phone is in a bag of rice.

  “Ah. Did you take the SIM card out?”

  “Yes, Wyatt, I know enough to know to take the SIM card out.”

  “Right. Of course you do,” he mutters. “You need to call someone?”

  I instantly feel like a jerk, because we’re not kids fighting over the right way to shoot a free throw or kick a soccer ball anymore, and we’re not whoever the hell we were six months ago when he was home for Christmas and Patrick had just dumped me and he’d just gotten a horrific divorce settlement and we were both miserable enough to think we could drown ourselves in meaningless sex between two people who hated each other.

  A lot’s changed since then.

  Mostly me.

  “I’m meeting friends in town.” I move aside a hand squeezer, fingernail clippers, a set of cards with Beck’s picture on them, condoms, and taco sauce packets, among other things, but I’m not finding any spare phones.

  Beck changes his number on occasion, and because he’s Beck, I’m pretty sure he forgets to cancel his old contracts, but if he has any spare active cell phones, they aren’t in this drawer.

  I should keep a burner phone up here.

  “You lost your keys?” Wyatt says.

  “I need a phone.”

  There’s a pause, then a he
avy, “Oh.”

  And now there’s also this gigantic guilt giraffe standing in the kitchen, leaning all up in my space.

  “Not that it matters, because I don’t know anyone’s fucking number,” I mutter as I realize my other problem.

  “You want a lift?” he asks. “Tucker wants to see the parade.”

  I open my mouth to tell him that’s not necessary, except…it kinda is.

  I can either take his help, or I can scare my friend.

  Monica was right on my parents’ heels getting to the hospital. She’s gone out of her way to have girls’ nights—without Patrick’s new girlfriend—because just because I’m marrying the idiot’s brother doesn’t mean I’m giving up my best friend. And she begged to ride out here to Shipwreck with me because you are not driving that far alone right now, period.

  She doesn’t sugarcoat it.

  And I couldn’t be more grateful.

  And Grady is adorable and kind and well-loved in Shipwreck, and the perfect foil to Patrick and his wonderful new girlfriend, but he’s not the kind to panic over me, because he’s just a nice guy from town doing me a favor by pretending to be my boyfriend this week.

  He’s not actually interested.

  Wyatt’s watching me like he always has. Alert. Focused. Aware.

  He probably watches everyone like that. I wonder how many other women have had their hearts broken just because of those eyes.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” I say.

  “We’re already heading that way.”

  “Right. Sure. Thanks.”

  “When do you need to leave?”

  “We have reservations at six.”

  One corner of his mouth hitches. “Crusty Nut?”

  I fucking love Shipwreck. And I love that Monica loves it enough to get married here. “Not like The Grog takes reservations or has good seating for the parade.”

  “We’ll be ready at five-thirty.”

  “Thank you.”

  It’s just a ride. And I’m doing it for Monica.

  And I refuse to feel uncomfortable just because he’s seen me naked, played wild bucking stallion to my free-range cowgirl, and then decided to return me for a refund.

  If he wants to remember that night, that’s his problem.

  I am officially moving on.

  And I am officially not going to let him see that I care anymore.