The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

by Black, Natasha L.

  He finished his song and kissed Harper on the tip of her nose. I loved how good he was with her and felt a familiar surge of gratitude. Things could have been so different. He could have never come to find me. He could have never wanted anything to do with me. He could have found out about our daughter and withdrawn, not wanting to be a father. They were all possibilities, and I felt so lucky that none of them happened. Instead, I got an incredible man and an incredible father for my daughter.

  A few moments later, the waitress returned to the table with a sheepish expression on her face.

  “Are you ready to order?” she asked, obviously embarrassed by her oversight and hoping she could just gloss right over it and we wouldn’t notice.

  Jayson and I ordered, and the waitress disappeared again. When she was gone, Jayson turned his attention back to me.

  “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.

  “All right. Go ahead,” I said.

  “It’s time for the band to go on tour again. But this time, you’re coming with us,” he announced.

  “Oh, I am?” I asked.

  He gave a single sharp nod as if it were a forgone conclusion.

  “Yes. As our manager.”

  I laughed. “What kind of craziness are you talking now?”

  “Luke has been trying to manage us alongside our agent, but it’s really not working out now that we’re as big as we are. Let’s face it. You’ve been doing a lot of the work, not to mention doing a hell of a job tracking our expenses. So, I’ve talked to the guys and everyone agrees. You’re the new manager.”

  “Just like that? No talking about it or anything?” I asked.

  “Nope.” He shook his head, and I laughed. “And I’ve managed to negotiate for a bus to be just the three of us. I know it will be hard at times, but I can’t be separated from my family. Would you be willing to give being on the road with me a shot?”

  I nodded. “I knew you’d be on the road when we got together, and I expected you to be gone for stretches of time. It means a lot to me that you’d ask us to come. I don’t want to be without you, and I don’t want to deprive you of being able to watch your little girl grow up.”

  “Really? You’ll come?” he asked, sounding excited.

  “Yes. As long as Harper and I get some undisturbed sleep.”

  Jayson grinned. “I promise to make sure you do. And if I fuck up, you have my permission to call the landlord and have me evicted.”

  I laughed and leaned over the table to kiss him. I would live with all the noise in the world for a lifetime of those kisses.

  THE END

  Date Your Brother’s Best Friend (Sample)

  Enjoy a free sample of my previous novel!

  Forbidden.

  Irresistible.

  The only girl who can never be mine.

  My best friend’s little sister.

  I knew she was back in town.

  They kept us apart in high school, sent me away.

  The taste of her is something I never forgot.

  Her brother’s a mess right now with his divorce, and her dad is sick.

  She doesn’t need any complications.

  But we’re like magnets.

  There’s no staying away from her.

  We’re sneaking around like we did back then.

  She’s all mine to take, no one else's.

  And I always get what I want.

  I fight fires for a living, but this is one inferno I can’t put out.

  This blazing passion, this burning hot love.

  Her brother will lose his mind if he finds out.

  Her dad’s heart can’t stand the shock.

  So we have to keep things undercover.

  In my bar. In her office. I’ve had her everywhere and still want more.

  No one can know that she’s all mine.

  If they find out, this passion could burn down her whole family.

  Book 2 in the Forbidden Lovers series brings you Luke and Sarah Jo's story. Date Your Brother's Best Friend is a standalone, full-length romance with burning passion, secrets, and drama. And don't forget the HEA that makes it all worthwhile.

  1

  Sarah Jo

  I smiled at my brother, a little like how you’d smile at a puppy trying to catch its own tail.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Stop worrying. I’ve got this.”

  “I wish I could help more. It’s not like you’re used to running Dad’s lumberyard. Two weeks ago, you were planting flowers and crap,” he said.

  “Actually, I was working on a botany project for my graduate program… but that’s, you know, flowers and crap,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “You know what I mean,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll get some groceries and go by Dad’s later, have supper with him. You can take a break. I don’t think you’ve been out of that house unless you were here.”

  “Ryan, I wouldn’t have come home if I didn’t know I could do what needs to be done. I’ll take you up on the help, though. I wouldn’t mind catching up with my friends tonight, thanks.”

  “Anytime, little sister. Unless I’ve got to meet with the lawyer again. I had no idea Whitney was so crazy when I married her,” he shook his head, defeated.

  I hated seeing him like that.

  “I hate to say I told you so…”

  “I know, that was so supportive, by the way. I never thanked you for that. Telling me at the rehearsal dinner that you thought my fiancé was batshit crazy.”

  “Hey, in my defense, I didn’t object during the actual wedding, and you’re wrong. I didn’t say I think she’s nuts. I said I stood there during the bridesmaid dress fitting and listened to her rip into Bea Walters, who was hemming the gowns, and I knew for a fact she was batshit insane. Who in their right mind yells at Bea?”

  “Someone who wants their ass jabbed with a straight pin. She did my suit for the wedding, and I swear to God, she jammed a pin in my side when I argued with her about the length of the pants.”

  “Ah, so you and Whitney were made for each other then. Both dumb enough to argue with a woman who has a mouthful of straight pins and isn’t afraid to use them.”

  He skillfully ignored me and cocked a crooked grin. “So, Luke was asking me when you’d come back to town,” Ryan said.

  I busied myself with some shipping forms on the desk, so I didn’t have to meet his gaze. Luke Maddox has been my brother Ryan’s best friend for as long as I could remember, which made him a close family friend. I wished that was all he was. But with Luke, it was complicated. It always had been for me.

  “So, how is he doing?” I said, trying so hard to sound casual. Please say he’s bald and has poor personal hygiene now—anything to make me want him less than I always have, I thought.

  “He’s with the fire department now, and he still helps out at Cecil’s when he’s off duty.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said as if that answered any questions I might have had.

  “Have you even seen him since my wedding?”

  “He was there, I guess. I forgot about that,” I said.

  Forgot was a euphemism for ‘was drunk at that reception.’ I had only hazy recollections of my brother’s unfortunate and over the top wedding to the annoying Whitney. I had spent serious time trying to reconstruct what happened because I knew I would have enjoyed thinking about a few things I was pretty sure took place. But I had spent some quality time with the open bar that night. Partly because I didn’t care for my new sister-in-law, and partly because Luke had brought a date, a pretty redhead whom I’d instantly despised. So I was three vodka cranberries in when Luke had asked me to dance. Things got fuzzy shortly after that, but I remembered his hands sliding from my waist down to the curve of my ass. I wished wholeheartedly that I recalled the rest of that scene. Instead, I shuffled papers while my brother looked off into the middle distance a little pathetically.

  “I remember dancing with Whitney at that reception, and I thought, man, this is
forever. I had my wife. I had a plan. I was gonna get promoted, we’d buy a little house, have a couple of babies. God, I can’t believe this is how it all turned out. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe she did this to me, Sarah Jo,” he said sadly.

  I nodded as sympathetically as I could. He was really torn up over the divorce. Anyone could’ve seen it coming a mile away—he worked all the time or hung out with his friends. He was never home, and she found ways to amuse herself. One of those ways was the newest deputy on the police force, who was famously six-feet-two of solid muscle. I hated seeing my brother so miserable. A tiny part of me wanted to say, well, Ryan, What the hell did you think was gonna happen? You didn’t pay attention to her because you’re so wrapped up in yourself like always. I didn’t say it aloud, because I didn’t want to hurt him. I’m sure he could stand there and rattle off my faults and failures with no trouble at all. So instead I listened, and I was nice, and thanked him again for keeping Dad company tonight.

  As soon as Ryan left, I started texting Maggie and Layla and Gracie. We decided to meet up at Cecil’s, the bar and grill that Luke’s family owned. I felt a fizz of excitement at getting to dress up and go out and see the girls. Sure, they’d stopped by the house to say hi when I’d got back to town, but there hadn’t been a lot of free time to see them since then.

  I was in grad school to be a landscape architect and working at a greenhouse part-time when my dad had a heart attack. There was no question of staying at school. I dropped out and came right home, although we were calling it ‘taking a semester off’ for my dad’s sake.

  My mom died when I was in high school, and he’d never remarried. Best I could tell, he’d never even considered it. So it was just him alone in that old house unless I came to take care of him. I cleaned and cooked and made sure he got his medications and went to his cardiac rehab and physical therapy appointments and his doctor visits. And I was running the lumberyard. He would’ve given his left foot if Ryan would’ve come and taken it over, but Ryan was white-collar all the way. He’d been promoted to a project manager at the bank in the next town over, so taking time off to run the lumberyard wasn’t an option for him.

  So, there I was, back home at twenty-four, just short of a Master’s degree and operating the poor man’s Home Depot in our little backwater town and listening to my more successful brother bitch about his divorce. I needed a night out with friends because I was getting resentful, and that was not a road I wanted to be on.

  I finished up with the receipts and started sweeping up. I’d let my part-time worker from the high school have the evening off because she had a chemistry midterm to study for. So, I got the broom and swept methodically down the walkways inside. It was like a trip into my past, the fresh, sweet sawdust smell and the slow whoosh of the broom bristles along the floor. Some girls liked French perfume and rose bouquets. I grew up loving the sharp, almost sugary smell of planed lumber and the warm, slightly musty scent of sawdust. I’d take it over perfume any day.

  At the house, I showered, cursing the trickle of water that came out of the showerhead in the upstairs bathroom. I missed my rainfall showerhead in my apartment back at school. After what seemed like forever rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, I hopped out and dried off, grabbing my blow dryer from under the sink.

  My old room was a maze of plastic storage bins and trash bags that held my belongings. It had been a sudden relocation, and the state of my packing reflected the panic I’d been in at the time.

  I put on the cute jeans I used to save for going out when I lived in the city. My ballet flats looked alien to me after two weeks of discount store steel-toed work boots. I put on a black top with the shoulders cut out and left my hair down and dug my silver hoop earrings out of the bottom of my purse. I put on actual makeup, including lip gloss. I felt like a million bucks just being cleaned up and knowing I had a few free hours ahead of me. My shoulders were still tense and achy, but I always got like that when I was stressed. My mama used to joke I was wound so tight that my shoulders would be up around my ears when I had a math test to take.

  I met the girls at Cecil’s—Maggie with her pretty red hair in a messy bun looked stunning as any Instagram model, and Layla in her overalls. Layla had worn overalls in some form ever since she moved to town sophomore year.

  “Welcome home, babe,” Maggie said.

  “Thank you. I’m so glad to see you guys,” I said.

  “Like them? They’re new. Got them at the feed store yesterday,” Layla joked, indicating her overalls. They were actually cute gray ones that she’d cuffed and wore with booties and looked like an outfit from some catalog. I squeezed her.

  “I talked to Cat earlier, and she said to give you a hug,” Maggie said, “So this one’s from her.” She hugged me again.

  “Gracie can’t make it either; she’s got some big deal at work,” I said sadly.

  We hurried into Cecil’s. It wasn’t the same as I remembered. There was a new bar of beautiful polished wood, and pewter dishes of nuts and olives lined the bar along with a steady stream of patrons. The old vinyl booths had been replaced with luxurious burgundy velveteen. There were counter-height tables scattered throughout the room and a single long table by one of the large flat-screen TVs bolted to the far wall.

  “I swear to God, is there a candle on this table?” I said, picking up the votive in its glass holder and promptly putting it down and muttering to myself because it was hot.

  “Yeah, they’ve classed up the place,” Layla said, “still get all the crowds for the big game, but this half of the place is more grill than a bar. The menus are even real—not laminated.”

  “Then maybe it’s too classy for me,” I joked.

  We ordered drinks. Layla talked about parts she located for the classic car she was fixing up, and right after the drinks arrived, I worked up my courage.

  “I’m just gonna go say hi to Luke,” I said, seeing him behind the bar.

  I took a deep breath and walked up to the bar with a confidence I didn’t feel.

  “If it isn’t the All-American,” I said, forcing a casual smile.

  I had teased him about being the star football player in high school when we were teenagers, but the nickname wasn’t wrong. He was six feet of wholesome, boy next door sex appeal. Sandy blonde hair, square jaw, blue eyes, and the kind of broad shoulders that used to make me chew on my hair. I had to forcibly remind myself that I was an adult, dressed up to go out, looking good, and not the kind of person who chewed on her hair nervously while crushing on her brother’s friend.

  Luke looked up from the glass he was polishing with a clean rag. His eyes took me in from my hair to the shoulder cutouts on my black top and back up to my eyes. It was a cool, appraising look. Not disrespectful, not creepy. Those icy blue eyes always seemed to pierce me, to make me lose my voice.

  “Ryan said you were back in town. How’s your dad?” he said.

  “He’s holding his own. How have you been?” I said, trying to keep the worry out of my voice.

  “Same as I’ve always been,” he said, lifting one shoulder.

  “This place looks great. You’ve really fixed the place up.”

  “Dad and Mom finally let me bring it into this century,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of it. Ryan helped with it—well, with the loan,” he said.

  I nodded, knowing Ryan would help with paperwork, but wouldn’t so much as hand someone a hammer if it looked like manual labor. “That’s good. He said you’re down at the fire station now.”

  “Yeah. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

  “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

  “It’s really good of you to leave school and take over the lumberyard. I knew you would,” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met. Always were.”

  “Yeah, well, someone had to do it, and we both know it wouldn’t be Ryan.”

  He chuckled. “Hey, Ryan’s goo
d at what Ryan’s good at. We can’t all be saints like you,” Luke teased.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m hardly a saint. I just couldn’t let Dad worry about the yard or rush his rehab to get back before he’s ready to.”

  Luke smiled at me and gave me another appraising look. “Face it Sarah Jo, you’re a do-gooder.”

  “Says the guy who runs into burning buildings for a living,” I tossed back.

  “Fair enough,” he cocked his head to the side. “Hey, why don’t you order a round for yourself and the girls over there on the house.”

  I thanked him and took my leave. I walked back to the table, every part of me feeling sweaty and on alert. Back at the table, I downed half of my drink in one gulp. Maggie nudged me, “So, how’d that go? You looked pretty friendly.”

  “We are friendly. He’s Ryan’s best friend since forever. So he’s practically a brother to me.”

  “You should go for it with him. I mean, you’re single, you’re back in town… he’s hot…” Layla said.

  “Did you not catch the part where he’s basically part of my family?” I protested.

  “That is not the way my brother looks at me,” Layla said. “Trust me on this.”

  “Look, even if there were the slightest interest on my part or his, Ryan would shit himself,” I said.

  “No offense, but Ryan’s a hot mess. I wouldn’t worry about his opinion on anything,” Maggie said.

  I dropped my head onto the table in defeat, “Guys,” I said, my voice muffled, “I’m not hooking up with my brother’s best friend. Drop it. I’m here to help my dad.”