From Best Friend to Fiancée

by Ellie Darkins

  He remembered the first time he’d met her, at a party thrown by a sportswear brand. When she’d walked up to him with a tray of canapés she’d swiped from the wait staff, and had asked him if he was as bored as she was. She had suggested that they help out the servers to liven things up a bit. By the end of the night they’d been firm friends, and if he had known one thing it was that he wanted her in his life. Which put to bed any temptation he had felt to see if it could go further. Dating her would be a fast track to alienating her—he knew his limitations. He knew the damage that he carried around inside himself, and the harm that could do to others if they got too close. Hurting himself by taking a risk was unappealing. Hurting Lara was unthinkable.

  He loved to watch her in action at events like this—her complete lack of social niceties, which translated into charm rather than rudeness. If anyone else said half the things that she did, they’d be met with stony silence. And yet Lara always managed to cultivate a circle of guffaws that followed her around a party. He could always locate her by listening for the most outraged laughter.

  Spencer was not immune to her charms, it seemed. Lara was listening with rapt attention as he explained the features of his new banking app—a subject Jannes knew she wasn’t the least bit interested in. And all the time that she was nodding along and asking probing questions, she never once let go of his hand. It shouldn’t be the part of this that was holding his attention—and yet there was something about her warm palm pressing against his that had shut off key operating pathways in his brain.

  He snapped back to attention when he heard mention of the transatlantic record attempt, and he looked from Spencer to Lara, trying to catch up with the conversation.

  ‘Lara was just telling me your plans for next summer. You’ve got your eye on that speed record, eh?’

  ‘Well, he’s already the youngest to cross single-handed and the youngest to skipper a circumnavigation,’ Lara said without hesitation. ‘I keep telling him to leave some records for somebody else, but he doesn’t listen to me.’

  ‘Well, I like your ambition,’ Spencer said. But Jannes was having difficulty looking away from Lara, or from ignoring the swelling in his chest he felt hearing her list his achievements. He hadn’t known she’d been paying that much attention to what he’d been up to—they rarely spoke about work. ‘And I know there’s an issue with the press coverage. Sorry to bring it up—’ he slid an apologetic look to Lara ‘—but you seem like a solid sort of chap to me.’

  Which had to be entirely Lara’s doing, Jannes knew, mainly because he had barely managed to get a word in the entire conversation.

  ‘I’m not making any promises, of course,’ Spencer went on. ‘But I think that Chris and I have a lot to talk about.’

  Jannes looked at Lara as Spencer walked away. ‘How do you do that?’ he asked her, mouth agape.

  ‘What?’ she asked with a bewildered smile.

  ‘Charm people like that?’ Jannes said. ‘He would have given you anything you asked for.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I listen. I talk. I’m honest.’

  It was more than that. There was just something about Lara that was so easy to fall in love with. In a friendly way, he reminded himself, spotting the way that his thoughts were heading. He had only fallen in love with her in a friendly way. ‘You know,’ he observed lightly, ‘not everyone likes honesty.’

  ‘They do with me,’ Lara said with another smile, but narrowing her eyes at him.

  ‘I know. I noticed that. I’m wondering how we bottle that and sell it so you can be my next sponsor.’

  She laughed, and Jannes breathed a sigh of relief that they had swum out of deeper waters, for now, anyway.

  ‘Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I think I could stand being a billionaire, as an entirely selfless act, of course. So, do you have any more meetings, or shall we go have fun?’

  ‘Why does it always make me nervous when you say things like that?’

  ‘Because of the high probability of me stealing a yacht?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, God, Lara, please don’t steal a yacht. If you want one, there are half a dozen people here who would probably just give you one for free.’

  ‘Should we try?’ Her eyes lit up, and he couldn’t resist teasing her.

  ‘If you like. Do you get a lot of yachting opportunities in Hackney?’

  ‘You’re such a killjoy. And also annoyingly right,’ she said. ‘So maybe I should steal a really big yacht and just live in it here.’

  Jannes shook his head. ‘Come on,’ he said, pulling her gently by the hand.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Window shopping.’

  He led her down to the water, and along the jetty to where a long line of boats was moored, from the little dinghies the kids from the yacht club sailed to huge pleasure cruisers with their satellite masts, multiple decks and speedboats at the aft deck.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Lara asked again, grabbing hard onto his arm and nearly toppling them into the water as they stepped down onto the floating pontoon.

  ‘Woah, you all right there?’ he asked, grabbing her and pulling her towards him to steady her.

  ‘Didn’t realise I’d need my sea legs just yet,’ she said, and they both laughed. But his laughter died quickly when he realised how close he had pulled her to stop her falling. They hadn’t been this close since that night in Liverpool. He’d had to forcibly remove memories of it from his brain. How her high heels had tipped her forward so her hips had brushed his thighs, her breasts just barely touching his ribcage. The way she’d tilted her chin up so that she could meet his gaze, despite the difference in height between them.

  He was forcibly reminded of standing not unlike this at Pip’s wedding, with Lara’s forehead resting against his chest and his hands in her hair. He reached for a strand of it now, tweaking the end of a curl where it tickled against his hand. This was where they always pulled away. Pretended that neither of them had noticed the sparks flying between them. He never asked if Lara had felt them too. That hadn’t seemed necessary, considering he had no intention of acting on them. But now that they had blurred the lines between friendship and something more, it was hard not to wonder whether she felt the same. He could just ask her. He probably should just ask her—get it out in the open. Take the mystery and the danger out of it.

  Except he wasn’t sure that he wanted to talk about it. If it turned out he was imagining this—and he had no intention of acting on any of it—it would just be stirring things up for no reason. He just had to do what he always did when he had these thoughts—push them as deep down as possible and focus on something else.

  ‘So you’re in the market for a yacht,’ he said, getting his mind out on the water, where it was safer.

  ‘Absolutely.’ She threaded her arm through his and looked at him conspiratorially as they walked. ‘How do I do this? Do I just pick the biggest one?’

  ‘That’s one approach.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Or, you know, you think about which features are most important to you and how each vessel measures up, and the environmental credentials of each company and—’

  ‘Maybe one of the huge ones that has a little speedboat on the back. That seems practical. A boat for every mood. Or I could just pick the most expensive one. Or the cleanest or the shiniest. I like the idea of the cleanest one.’

  ‘What if you liked one of the others better, though, and then we just took a pressure washer to it?’

  Lara sighed melodramatically. ‘Darling, you are making this far too complicated.’

  A cannon sounded, marking the start of a race, but Lara startled, making the pontoon wobble again. Jannes pulled her tighter against him and wrapped an arm around her waist.

  ‘Should we get you back on dry land?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s an excellent idea. Window shoppi
ng makes me thirsty. And I’m pretty sure you owe me a G&T. Photos first, though,’ she said, holding out her phone. ‘You’re an Instagram boyfriend now. Got to start acting like one.’

  He took the phone from her and took a few pictures of her posing in front of the yachts, capturing her hair whipping in the wind and her shrieks of laughter as the pontoon wobbled and she nearly lost her footing again. She looked beautiful, of course. He wasn’t sure there was anything even he could do to a camera that would prevent that.

  ‘Really?’ he asked, scrolling through the pictures so that she could see them. ‘I still need to hear why it is I owe you a drink.’

  ‘Well, I’m pretty sure I just locked in that sponsorship for you. And I drove all the way down here and was nearly lost at sea.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re impossible.’

  ‘It’s why you love me.’

  The worst thing about it was that she was right. He’d had to acknowledge to himself a long time ago that he loved her. Platonically, of course. Everybody loved their friends. And yes, the fact that he was wildly attracted to her could make that complicated—if he let it—so he just wouldn’t. It was as simple as that. If he wanted her in his life, he had to make sure he kept things safe. And friendship was safe. Anything more intense risked both of them getting hurt. And he didn’t want to hurt Lara any more than he could bear the thought of Lara realising he wasn’t worth sticking around for and leaving.

  He left Lara outside the yacht club, where she instantly entered into conversation with a couple who had crewed for him last year, and with whom she seemed to have struck up an instant friendship. When he returned, clutching two balloon glasses of gin and tonic, Lara was in hysterics, wiping her eyes, and looking instantly guilty when she spotted Jannes coming towards her.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you were talking about me?’ he asked.

  ‘They were just telling me what a tyrant you are.’ Lara laughed. ‘How have I never seen this side of you?’

  He raised an eyebrow at the two crew.

  ‘Tyrant seems a little harsh. I’m...competitive.’

  They all fell into hysterical laughter again and he decided he’d rather not know the specifics of what had been said in his absence.

  ‘Have you seen much of Harbourside?’ one of them asked Lara, and she shook her head.

  ‘So far just the yacht club and Jannes’s place. I’m looking forward to exploring.’

  ‘Well, if you ever want to get together... No, what am I saying? Of course you don’t. Just call me in a year or two when you’re out of the honeymoon phase.’

  Jannes hadn’t realised until he caught their pointed looks that his arm had sneaked back around Lara’s waist, as if it always rested there. He met Lara’s eyes and the expression there hit him somewhere in the gut, the top of his ears turning pink as he wondered whether his thoughts were as clear on his face as Lara’s were on hers.

  ‘You two are too cute,’ one of the crew said. ‘Don’t let him get away.’

  Lara nodded solemnly. ‘He’s a dictator but he’s one of the benevolent ones.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that resounding review,’ Jannes said with a laugh, ‘but I’m going to have to steal Lara away before you spill all my secrets.’

  ‘Everyone is so nice,’ Lara exclaimed as they walked back to his house that evening, the light fading from the sky and the sounds of the party still going on in the yacht club behind them.

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ Jannes said as they skirted round the side of his house and came straight out on to the deck behind, with its view of the stars reflecting on the water. ‘You have that effect on people—they’re never half so nice to me.’

  ‘Because they’re in awe of you.’

  He scoffed, but she tugged on his hand to pull him closer.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said, meeting his eyes and fixing him there with a look. ‘They respect you, and it’s obvious why. I like seeing you here, you know. You make sense here in a way you don’t in London.’

  He huffed out a half-laugh. ‘You do know it’s quite hard not to be offended by that, considering you have only ever seen me in London before today. Which basically means I have never made sense to you.’

  Lara smiled. ‘What can I say—you’re an enigma. Very mysterious. Impossible to know what you’re thinking.’

  Her voice had started out jokey, playful, but fell towards the end as her gaze dropped to his mouth and stayed there.

  ‘Do you really want to know what I’m thinking?’ he said. ‘You only have to ask.’ But he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to. He knew what he wanted the answer to be. He needed her to be sensible here, because he wasn’t sure that he could count on himself to be. He was watching her mouth now, as intently as she had been watching his.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, her voice rough. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘You.’

  The word slipped out before he could stop it. The monosyllable the only sound he could manage amidst the cascade of malfunctions in his brain at the thought that she wasn’t being careful with him.

  ‘That’s a coincidence,’ Lara said, her voice dropping to something low and breathy and unfamiliar. ‘I’m thinking about you too. Specifically, I’m thinking about kissing you. Does that freak you out?’

  This was such a bad idea. This was everything that they had both been fighting for three years. Fighting harder than ever since that day in the park when they’d both discovered that the two of them together would be every bit as intensely perfect as he had always imagined it would be.

  ‘Yes, it freaks me out,’ he replied, too on edge to smile. But he was so tired of fighting something that he knew would feel so right. All his life, he had watched people walk away from him. He’d nursed those wounds through his whole childhood. And here was something good. Someone who loved him and had never walked away and had never hurt him. And he didn’t know if he could trust yet that that would never change, but he couldn’t carry on pretending that she wasn’t everything to him.

  ‘I don’t think that you should let that stop you though,’ he added at last, his gaze fixed on her.

  ‘From thinking about it or doing it?’ she asked.

  ‘Either.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘We agreed that it would be a bad idea. It would complicate things.’

  He nodded. They had, but he couldn’t bring himself to care right at this minute. ‘Things are already complicated,’ he told her. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. About us together. I’ve never felt like this before, and I don’t know what to do with that. This whole thing is complicated and I don’t have the answers.’

  ‘You’ve been thinking about it too?’

  He shook his head. ‘Jesus, Lara. Only every second since that day in London Fields.’

  ‘That does sound complicated.’ She nodded thoughtfully, her eyes still fixed on his mouth, and he wondered if she was ever going to put him out of his misery.

  And then, finally, after all the months and years of resisting this, he was done. He was out. He couldn’t do it any longer. ‘You’re killing me here. Are you kissing me or not?’

  Finally, she broke into a smile. ‘Not, if you’re not going to ask nicely,’ she said, even as her hands landed on his waist.

  He let out a growl of frustration, grabbed her by the hips and pulled her closer, tipping up her chin with one hand so that he didn’t have to break eye contact. ‘I can be nice.’

  She nipped at his finger with her teeth. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Nice is overrated.’

  She pulled him down with a hand on the nape of his neck and rested their foreheads together for a breath, and then another.

  He was braced for the feel of her, his body tense, but the kiss, when it came, was so gentle that he melted instantly. Her body sank into his as he wrapped both arms around her waist, pulli
ng her up towards him so that he could chase her lips before they ghosted away.

  He breathed in her scent as he gathered her close, nudging at her nose with his, tipping her face up so she could kiss him deeper. When she moaned into his mouth, he thought he might die. Or explode. Die then explode, explode then die. He didn’t know or care. All he knew was that he wanted more. More of this. More of her. More of her lips hungry against his and her tongue flickering into his mouth. More of her arching back against the hard brace of his arms.

  They had nowhere to hide this time. No excuses. No pretending that this was somehow for show, or for other people, or for whatever reason not real. This was just them, acting on the instincts they’d been fighting for years. Years. He pulled away abruptly. They’d fought this. For good reason.

  ‘Freaking out?’ Lara asked, and she was so out of breath it made him want to kiss her again.

  Instead, he nodded. ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Shall we make it hard to think again?’

  He threaded his fingers in her hair and kissed her again, aware of nothing but the taste and the smell and the feel of her. Every fantasy of the last weeks...months, years, coming alive in his hands.

  A boom overhead pulled them apart and he looked up to see a shower of colourful sparks falling to earth.

  ‘Fireworks,’ Lara breathed, looking up. ‘Think the universe is trying to tell us something?’

  ‘Just trying to tell us it’s the last day of the regatta,’ Jannes said, breathing heavily and looking for reason.

  Lara slapped his chest gently. ‘Killjoy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking directly at her and meeting her gaze for the first time in this new world. ‘We should probably talk about what just happened,’ he went on, real life starting to creep in at the edges of whatever this thing was.

  ‘I know. We should,’ Lara said, holding his gaze until another boom behind her made her jump. ‘After the fireworks?’

  He nodded and she turned in his arms, leaning back against him and watching the fireworks over the water, explosions in blue and green and red. In blinding white. He kissed the side of her neck, his fingertips exploring her collarbone, down the side of her arm, his hand circling her wrist and then back up to just behind her ear. Later, they would talk about this. They would remind each other about all the reasons they’d agreed that they didn’t want to do this. All the ways that they could get hurt, and the reasons why they couldn’t let that happen.