Daddy’s Best Friend

by Crowne, K. C.

  Daddy’s Best Friend

  K.C. Crowne

  Copyright © 2019 by K.C. Crowne

  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

  Also by K.C. Crowne

  Description

  1. Elle

  2. Jeremiah

  3. Elle

  4. Jeremiah

  5. Elle

  6. Jeremiah

  7. Elle

  8. Jeremiah

  9. Elle

  10. Jeremiah

  11. Elle

  12. Jeremiah

  13. Elle

  14. Jeremiah

  15. Elle

  16. Jeremiah

  17. Elle

  18. Jeremiah

  19. Elle

  20. Jeremiah

  21. Elle

  22. Jeremiah

  23. Elle

  24. Jeremiah

  Epilogue

  Mountain Man’s Treat (Preview)

  About the Author

  Also by K.C. Crowne

  Bearded Brother’s Mountain Man Series

  Her Mountain Daddy| Beauty and the Beard| Bride and the Beard| Built and Bearded

  Triple Team Reverse Harem Series

  Men on a Mission| Christmas with Four Firemen| Dirty Cowboys

  Firemen Fantasies Series

  His One Night| His Baby| His Hose

  Knocked up by the Mountain Man Series

  The Storm | Junior for the Mountain Man| Knocked Up by the Mountain Man| Baby for the Mountain Man| Mountain Man’s Treat| Her Mountain Brothers

  Surprise Daddies Series

  Doctor Daddy| Taboo Daddy| Royally Damaged| Boss Man| Knocked Up by My Brother’s Best Friend

  Description

  17 years age gap…

  Why does something so wrong feel so right?

  Hot.

  Taboo.

  Strictly off limits.

  Jeremiah was my father’s older best friend.

  And now I can't get the single daddy of twins out of my mind.

  Misfortune could cause him to lose everything.

  And, I’m the only one who can clear his name.

  My late friend's daughter just told me she wants me in bed.

  At my age, I still have the stamina of a stallion.

  And parts of me have even been compared to one.

  But Elle’s innocent ocean blue eyes, full lips and long luscious legs...

  Leave me wondering if I'm fit for the job of mayor.

  I want to own her.

  Dominate her.

  Teach her how to use her sweet assets.

  But something tells me this little secret of ours...

  Won't stay little for very long.

  And this daddy of two...

  Will soon become a daddy of three.

  Elle

  Brace yourself, Elle.

  Butterflies flustered in my belly.

  Here he comes.

  “Eleanor. Mae. Shaeffer.”

  I recognized that raw and fiery passion in his deep manly voice.

  I loved the sound of my full name escaping the luscious lips of my adolescent crush.

  If it were a song, I’d play that sh*t on repeat.

  Growing up, if Jeremiah ever spoke my full name, it meant one thing and one thing alone: I was in deep sh*t.

  It had been a several years since I’d seen the man. I smirked to myself as I thought about how I’d tease him in one of my fantasies of him…

  Yes Daddy?

  Did I do something wrong?

  Are you going to punish me now?

  The door to my office swung open. As if seeing things in slow-motion, I watched as the man I’d crushed on since my adolescence sauntered in.

  Hot. Damn.

  Still a show stopper.

  Tall, dark, and insanely handsome but with a few light patches of gray on his head.

  It made him look even sexier than ever. How was that even possible?

  His gaze had a kind of intensity. It was almost as if his eyes could touch me and I felt that touch everywhere.

  I felt it on my arms, legs, my neck, and especially, on my nipples and in between my thighs. I felt moisture gather at my center and soak the thin fabric of my panties.

  Get it together, Elle.

  Sure, I had been turned on by other men in the past, but none of them had ever made me feel as hot and bothered as Jeremiah was doing at this very moment.

  Only a few minutes around him and he already had the strongest effect on me.

  My cheeks warmed and flushed a bright red as I pressed my thighs together to find some relief. Needing something to focus on other than the completely surreal reality I was living in, I cleared my throat shorted the documents on my desk.

  Jeremiah Jenkins was the mayor of Liberty.

  Also the man of my very wet dreams ever since I was old enough to dream about men.

  Too bad he was my father’s best friend.

  And, it was highly unlikely he felt the same way about me. While he was a divorced single dad, he always had plenty of grown and established women flocking for his affection.

  “Yes?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “And it’s nice to see you again too, Jeremiah. It’s been awhile. Over five years? You’re looking good. Keeping in shape, I see?”

  He scowled at me, but he was still as handsome as he’d ever been. It was hard not to squirm in my seat. Without breaking our eye contact, he took a deep breath and then opened those perfect lips.

  “Young lady, do you know what you’ve done?”

  Young lady.

  My thighs rubbed together involuntarily, building pressure between my legs.

  A shiver ran down my spine at the way he spoke, and I couldn’t help but smile. The closer he got, the stronger the scent of his delicious cologne became.

  I pulled a deep breath through my mouth and grew a bit taller in my spine. My new posture made my large boobs stick out a bit and, I could see Jeremiah forcing his gaze away from my ample cleavage. I smiled.

  His brow furrowed, the dark brows pushing together. Jeremiah might have a little more grey around the temples, but his hair was still as black as I remembered it, and silky smooth. He wore it short as he always had because he couldn’t be bothered to style it.

  There was also a little silver sprinkled through his trimmed black beard. His face looked younger than his forty-five years, even with the scowl.

  That facial expression reminded me of the time he had to pick me up from a party, the one time in high school I’d decided to try alcohol. He was the reason I never touched the stuff again, at least not until I was twenty-one, and even then it was very uncommon for me to imbibe.

  He threw a copy of the latest Liberty Leader on my desk. His face was plastered on the front, no less gorgeous in black and white than it was in color. The by-line on the article was, of course, my name. Eleanor Shaeffer, but my friends called me Elle. Jeremiah used to too, unless he was angry. And right now, he was very angry.

  “Everything I wrote about you was good. Why are you angry?”

  “The fact that it’s been well over five years since I’ve even seen you and our first interaction is after discovering you’ve written an article on my personal life without my consent. How should I feel?”

  “You make it sound like I painted you in a bad light.”

  “You know what I mean. This is all so out of character for you.”

  I leaned forward in amazement. “I left you several messages to approv
e the article but your staff never got back to me, even after I provided deadlines of its publication. The town wants to know their mayor, and I wrote what I knew. With the upcoming election, it’s important to draw attention away from all the false drama in newspapers about you. I thought I had a realistic perspective that others might appreciate. It’s my duty as a friend and a citizen of this town.”

  “You wrote about my daughters.”

  “I mentioned you have two little girls, but that’s it. Beside the fact that you’re a single dad. I mean, none of that is false, is it?”

  His gaze narrowed on me, and he leaned closer.

  “You’re no longer a kid, Elle. We’re in the real world and if I let myself get concerned about all the allegations about me then I probably shouldn’t be a mayor anyway. Life isn’t fair and we just need to focus on what we can control. You’re better off not wasting your time, or mine.”

  He was back to calling me Elle, that was a good sign.

  It made me sad to think about how jaded he must have become since the last time I’d seen him. Perhaps all the drama from the office had really gotten to him – and that coupled with his failed marriage could make anyone feel fed-up.

  On the good side, the scent of him was the same as when I was younger. Musky and natural, but delightful to my nostrils. I closed my eyes for a second and inhaled the scent, taken back to a different time.

  A time when my dad was alive.

  Of BBQs on our back patio.

  Flaunting my bikini body in around Jeremiah, by the poolside.

  Based on his choice of women, I knew he had a distinct appreciation for curvaceous women. Compared to my classmates in school, I leaned on the side curvy and voluptuous and I always loved that about my body.

  When it came to Jeremiah, I didn’t think twice about flaunting my curves. I yearned for his attention like a giddy little school girl.

  Skin tight sweaters and jeans were my signature look those days. Much to my disappointment, Jeremiah was always a gentleman. He never came even close to crossing the taboo line I yearned for him to cross.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Then what did I say?” He stared down at me with such a serious expression on his face that I burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?” He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “Just that you remind me of my dad right now,” I said, wiping the tear from my eye from laughing so hard. “So serious. So mad. You look like you’re ready to burst a blood vessel or something.”

  He stared at me stone faced. He was always composed. Collected. I loved that about him. His composure was a world of a difference from the immature boys I grew up around.

  “I am mad.”

  “But why, Jeremiah?” My chair made a scratching sound as I scooted back from my desk. I stood up, but even standing, he still towered over me. He was at least a foot taller than me, but I didn’t let that phase me. He had never scared me before, and I wasn’t about to let him get to me now either. “You’ve always taught me to focus on the postive. It was all good, all very positive.”

  “When I’m ready to share my personal life in the media I want it by my terms, Elle.” He placed his hands on the desk and leaned across.

  I leaned forward too, my hands on the desk, mirroring him.

  “Jeremiah, I hate to break it to you, but once you became a public figure, your personal life became fair game. And if I wasn’t writing about you, then who would you prefer? Others are writing about you right now too, and I don’t know if you’re reading it, but it isn’t all that good. I thought you could use some positive publicity for a change, considering all that’s going on in the mayor’s office right now.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for his frown to deepen, but he did it. Deep frown lines etched into his face, making him more attractive and adorable.

  “My daughters mean the world to me. And everything you know about me because of my friendship with your father is off limits, got it?”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Don’t you want to get re-elected, Jeremiah? We need to distract the media from the shitstorm and showing that you’re a good family man does exactly that.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes fell. He stared down at my desk, at nothing in particular. He didn’t answer me. I gave him a good two minutes, and he didn’t say a word.

  Finally, he growled, “Please respect my wishes, Elle.” He straightened himself and turned on his heels.

  My eyes fell to his ass even though I knew I should behave myself.

  Yep, still as tight as ever. The years hadn’t taken any sort of a negative toll on that man’s body.

  He didn’t say anything more to me, just punctuated his point with a slamming of my office door. I stood at my desk for a moment, staring at the door. His scent lingered in the room, surrounding me like a familiar blanket. I closed my eyes again, and this time, the memories came flooding through me.

  “Come on, Elle. You’re making words up now,” Jeremiah barked. “Whizbang? Carl, get over here. Your daughter’s cheating again.”

  I giggled. “Whizbang is a word! Look it up on that fancy smartphone of yours.”

  The year was 2007, and the first iPhone had just come out. Jeremiah had never been excited about the latest gadgets, but he was the owner of a big, fancy construction company. His contractors and insisted the phone would replace his laptop for work. He didn’t even use the damn thing; it stayed in his pocket most of the time.

  He nodded and pulled it out. “Alright, I’ll do that.”

  “For the record, it’s an adjective that means lively or sensational. It was also used during World War II. A small caliber, high velocity shell.”

  I watched as his eyes nearly popped from his skull. “How did you know that?”

  I shrugged and took a sip from my lemonade. I was sixteen years old, still in high school, and I loved educating the older man. Especially since Jeremiah was smart - super smart. He had an engineering background, so math and science were more his forte. Still, I loved impressing him with my vocabulary, and often learned new words just so I could have moments like this.

  If only I could articulate how I felt about him.

  A knock on the door pulled me from the reverie.

  “Yes?” I muttered, secretly hoping it was Jeremiah. I wanted nothing more than for him to come back into my office and tell me how happy he was to see me back in Liberty. To tell me he missed me and was so grateful for what I’d done.

  But it wasn’t Jeremiah. My assistant editor, Lucy, stood in the open doorway. “Is everything okay in here?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine.” I sat down at my desk, my gaze falling on the paper Jeremiah had left behind.

  My pride and joy, my entire life’s work, was wrapped up in that paper. As the owner and editor of the Liberty Leader, it was my responsibility to bring the news to the people. It has always been my dream - maybe not so much in Liberty, but somewhere more exotic, but as I aged, I felt compelled to return to my roots.

  Especially after losing my dad.

  Lucy took a seat across from me and saw the paper. Her face scrunched up as she read the headline and the first few lines. “What was he upset about? I don’t get it.”

  A sigh escaped my lips. “It’s a long story, Lucy. A very long story.”

  This newspaper was everything I had worked for. My dream. I should be happy; I had everything I needed. Yet something was still missing.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, my mama always said that if someone doesn’t like what people say about them, maybe they should be a better person.”

  I frowned. “Jeremiah is already a good person. One of the best people I’ve met. That’s the problem. I only wrote about the good things, the person I know and—”

  Lucy wasn’t getting it. The lights were on, sure, and she was watching me with her big, brown eyes, but not an ounce of what I was saying would matter to her. Unless you knew Jeremiah - really knew him
- you wouldn’t get it. He didn’t open up to just anyone, and most people would never get to know the side of him I did.

  “Never mind. Let’s drop it. How’s the article on the Liberty basketball team coming along?”

  “I mean, it’s coming along just fine. They lost, badly, but we’re writing about it anyway. There’s not much else going on to replace it.”

  The question was, did anyone really care? We weren’t a sports town, which was fine. Our kids played basketball for fun, not glory. It kept the game a little purer, in my opinion.

  “You know what? Nix it. Don’t write about them losing. Maybe interview the coach instead, talk to him about the teamwork or something else. Don’t focus on the negative.”

  “But it’s the news,” Lucy said.

  “Yes, but let’s be honest, Lucy, who in this town really cares about the fifth loss this season? It’ll only bring the kids down, and this town doesn’t need another disappointment.”

  I sighed and rubbed my temples. The fact was, print journalism was on the way out, and no one really cared about it much anyway. Liberty was small enough that everyone knew what was going on without picking up a paper. It was tradition for many families to do so, the older citizens, of course. But the younger generation had yet to pick up on that habit, if they ever would.

  I was on a sinking ship, and I knew it. I knew it when I bought the paper from Jasper Townsend, but I thought I could turn it around. I thought there’d be some kind of news, talking to the local businesses, exploring the beauty of Liberty, and of course, covering the good side of politics. Like how people like Jeremiah had real aspirations for our town.