Best Friends, Secret Lovers

by Jessica Lemmon

  The leap from friends to lovers means they have everything to gain...

  or everything to lose...

  Colleagues, confidants and best friends for years, Flynn and Sabrina have never crossed that line. Until one searing Valentine’s Day kiss. And when circumstances force Sabrina to move in with Flynn...that line disappears. But becoming friends with benefits must stay a secret. Because if word gets out, they’ll be risking their professional reputations and their relationship...

  “What do you think?”

  Sabrina spun and faced him, the wind kicking her hair forward, a few strands sticking to her lip gloss. He was walking forward when she stopped, so he reached her in two steps. Before he thought it through, he swept those strands away and ran his fingers down her cheek and tipped her chin, his head a riot of bad ideas.

  With a deep swallow he called up ironclad Parker willpower and stopped touching his best friend. “I think you’re right.”

  His voice was as rough as gravel.

  “You’re going to have to let it go at some point. Give in to the urge.” She drew out the word urge, perfectly pursing her lips, and leaned forward with a playful twinkle in her eyes that would tempt any mortal man to sin.

  And since Flynn was nothing less than mortal, he palmed the back of her head and pressed his mouth to hers.

  * * *

  Best Friends, Secret Lovers is part of the Bachelor Pact series from Jessica Lemmon!

  Dear Reader,

  Sabrina Douglas has been best friends with Flynn Parker since college, though she’d admit she was sidelined for years during his marriage. Now divorced, Flynn inherits the president’s seat of Monarch Consulting, where he’s rapidly turning into his late, iron-fisted father. When the senior executives demand Flynn’s head on a pike or else they’ll walk, Sabrina volunteers to take him on hiatus before Monarch collapses and takes their jobs with it. If anyone can help get the old Flynn back, it’s her.

  But when a friendly Valentine’s Day date ends with Flynn kissing Sabrina, both of them are surprised by their newfound attraction. And when Sabrina’s apartment’s plumbing goes haywire and she’s in need of a place to stay, guess who offers to share his penthouse?

  Sabrina and Flynn have crossed the friend-zone line and landed in lovers territory, but they have a safety net: the pact Flynn took never to marry again. With Flynn determined to keep his word and Sabrina’s number one goal not to lose her best friend, these two are fighting both attraction and fate.

  And great sex isn’t worth risking a lifelong friendship... right?

  Happy reading!

  Jessica Lemmon

  Follow me on Instagram: @jlemmony

  Check out www.jessicalemmon.com.

  Jessica Lemmon

  Best Friends, Secret Lovers

  A former job-hopper, Jessica Lemmon resides in Ohio with her husband and rescue dog. She holds a degree in graphic design currently gathering dust in an impressive frame. When she’s not writing supersexy heroes, she can be found cooking, drawing, drinking coffee (okay, wine) and eating potato chips. She firmly believes God gifts us with talents for a purpose, and with His help, you can create the life you want.

  Jessica is a social media junkie who loves to hear from readers. You can learn more at jessicalemmon.com.

  Books by Jessica Lemmon

  Harlequin Desire

  Dallas Billionaires Club

  Lone Star Lovers

  A Snowbound Scandal

  A Christmas Proposition

  The Bachelor Pact

  Best Friends, Secret Lovers

  Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com, or jessicalemmon.com, for more titles.

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  For Jules. I’m so blessed to call you a friend.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Excerpt from The Secret Twin by Catherine Mann

  Prologue

  “Twenty minutes minimum, or else she’ll tell everyone you’re horrendous in bed.”

  “If you’re down there for longer than seven minutes, you dumb Brit, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “Spoken like a guy who has no idea what he’s doing.”

  Flynn Parker leaned back in his chair, his broken leg propped on the ottoman, and listened to his two friends argue about sex. Pleasing women in particular.

  “If either of you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be single,” he informed his buddies.

  Gage Fleming and Reid Singleton blinked over at Flynn as if they’d forgotten he was sitting there. Drunk as they were, they might have. Gage grabbed the nearly empty whiskey bottle resting on Flynn’s footstool and splashed another inch into Reid’s glass and his own.

  But not Flynn’s. Thanks to the pain medication he was on, the only buzz he would be enjoying was courtesy of Percocet.

  “You’re one to talk,” Reid said, his British accent slurred from the drink. “Your ring finger is currently uninhabited.”

  “The reason for this trip.” Gage clanked his glass with Reid’s, then with Flynn’s water bottle.

  Flynn would drink to that. His recent split from Veronica was what drove them all up here, to the mountains in Colorado to go skiing. The last time they were in Flynn’s father’s cabin had been their sophomore year in college. The damn place must be a time machine because they’d devolved into kids just by being here.

  Gage and Reid had been nonstop swapping stories, bragging about their alleged prowess, and Flynn had been foolish enough to try the challenging slope...again. His lack of practice led to his taking a snowy tumble down the hill. Just like the last time, he’d ended up in the hospital. Unlike the last time, he’d broken a bone.

  Skiing wasn’t his forte.

  So. Veronica.

  The ex-wife who had recently ruined his life and his outlook. His buddies had come here under the guise of pulling him out of his funk, but he knew they were mostly here because they hadn’t left each other’s sides since they were in college. Sure, Reid had fled back home to London for a short time, but he’d come back. They’d all known he would.

  Before he boarded the plane for this vacation, Flynn had learned two things: One, that his father’s diagnosis of “pneumonia” was terminal cancer and Emmons Parker would likely die soon, making fifty-three the age to beat for Flynn; and two, that when he returned home he’d be sitting in his father’s office with the title of president behind his name.

  Running Monarch was all Flynn had ever wanted.

  Was.

  Despite years of showing an interest and trying to please his father, Emmons Parker had shooed Flynn away rather than pulled him in. Now the empire was
on Flynn’s shoulders, and his alone.

  Reid howled with laughter at something Gage said and Flynn blinked his friends into focus. No, he wasn’t alone. He had Reid, and Gage, and the best friend who’d been a part of his life longer than those two, Sabrina Douglas. His best friends worked at Monarch with him, and with them in his corner, Flynn knew he could get through this.

  The senior employees were going to freak out when they found out Flynn was going to be president. He’d been accused of “coasting” before and would be in charge of all of their well-beings, which Flynn took as seriously as his next line of thought—the pact he’d been ruminating about since before his leg snapped in two on that slope.

  “Remember that pact we made in college? The one where we swore never to get married.”

  Reid let out a hearty “Ha!” UK-born Reid Singleton was planning on staying as unattached as his last name implied. “Right here in this room, I believe.”

  Gage pursed his lips, his brows closing in the slightest bit over his nose. “We were hammered on Jägerbombs that night. God knows what else we said.”

  “I didn’t adhere to it. I should have.” Flynn had been swept up by love and life. He hadn’t taken that pact seriously. A mistake.

  Gage frowned. “It’s understandable why you’d say that now. You’ve been through the wringer. Back then no one expected to find permanence.”

  “None of us wanted to,” Reid corrected.

  Flynn pointed at Gage with his water bottle. “You and this new girl have been dating, what, a month?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Get out now.” Reid offered a hearty belch. He lifted his eyebrows and downed his portion of whiskey, cheeks filling before he swallowed it down. “You and I, Gage, we stuck to the pact.” He smiled, then added, “If you were Flynn, you’d have married her by now.”

  Reid wasn’t exaggerating. Flynn and Veronica had been married on their thirty-day dating anniversary. Insanity. That they’d lasted three years was more a testament to Flynn’s stubbornness than their meant-to-be-ness.

  The final straw had been Veronica screwing his brother.

  Whatever, he thought, as the sting of betrayal shocked his system afresh. He’d never liked Julian much anyway.

  “He’s doing the thing,” Reid muttered not quietly, given his state of inebriation. His gaze met Flynn’s, but he spoke to Gage. “Where he’s thinking of her.”

  “I can hear you, wanker.” Flynn lost his marriage, not his hearing. Though “lost” would imply he’d misplaced it. It hadn’t been misplaced, it’d been disassembled. Piece by piece until the felling blow was Veronica’s head turning for none other than his older, more artsy brother. She was the free spirit, and Flynn was the numbers guy. The boring guy. The emotionally constipated guy.

  Her words.

  “Hey.” Gage snapped his fingers. “Knock it off, Flynn. We’re here to celebrate your divorce, not have you traipse down depression trail.”

  But Flynn wasn’t budging on this. He’d given it a lot of thought since he’d tumbled down that hill. It was like life had to literally knock him on his ass to get him to wake up.

  “I’m reinstating the pact,” Flynn said, his tone grave. Even Reid stopped smiling. “No marriage. Not ever. It’s not worth the heartache, or the broken leg, or hanging out with the two worst comrades in this solar system.”

  At that Reid looked wounded, Gage affronted.

  “Piss off, Parker.”

  “Yeah,” Gage agreed. “What Reid said.”

  With effort, Flynn sat up, carefully moving every other limb save his broken leg so he could lean forward. “I don’t want either of you to go through this. Not ever.”

  “You’re serious,” Gage said after a prolonged silence.

  Flynn remained silent.

  Gage watched him a moment, a flash of sobriety in the depths of his brown eyes. “Okay. What’d we say?”

  “We promised never to get married,” Reid said. “And then we swore on our tallywackers.”

  Gage chuckled at Reid’s choice of phrasing.

  “Which means yours should have fallen off by now.” Reid’s face contorted as he studied Flynn. “It didn’t, did it?”

  “No.” Flynn gave him an impatient look. “It didn’t.”

  Reid swiped his hand over his brow in mock relief.

  “Come on, Parker, you’re high on drugs,” Gage said with a head shake. “We made that pact because your mom was sick and your dad was miserable, and because Natalie had just dumped me. We were all heartbroken then.” He considered Reid. “Except for Reid. I’m not sure why he did it.”

  “Never getting married anyway.” Reid shrugged. “All for one.”

  “So? Swear again,” Flynn repeated. “On your tallywackers.” That earned a smile from Reid. “Big or small, they count.”

  The first time they’d made the pact none of them truly knew heartache. Breakups were hard, but the decimation of a marriage following the ultimate betrayal? Much worse. Reid and Gage didn’t know how bad things could get and Flynn would like to keep it that way. He didn’t want either of them to feel as eviscerated as he did right now—as he had for the last three months. All pain he could have avoided if he’d taken that pact seriously.

  His buddies might never find themselves dating women who slept with their family members, but it wouldn’t matter how the divorce happened, only that it did. He’d heard the statistics. That 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce was up to around 75 nowadays.

  He’d heard some people say they didn’t harbor regret because if they’d never married, and divorced, they wouldn’t have learned life’s lessons. Blah, blah, blah.

  Bullshit.

  Flynn regretted saying “I do” to Veronica all the way down to his churning stomach. The heartbreak over her choosing his brother would have been more bearable if she’d told him up front rather than three years into an insufferable marriage.

  “I swear,” Reid said, almost too serious as he crashed his glass into Flynn’s water bottle, then looked at Gage expectantly.

  “Fine. This is stupid, but fine.” Gage lifted his glass.

  “Say it,” Flynn said, not cracking the slightest smile. “Or it doesn’t count.”

  “I promise,” Gage said. “I won’t get married.”

  “Say never, and we all drink,” Flynn said.

  “Wait.” Reid held up a finger. “What if one of us caves again? Like hearts-and-flowers Gage over here.”

  “Shut up, Reid.”

  “One of your monthlong girlfriends could turn into the real thing if you’re not careful.”

  “I’m careful,” Gage growled.

  “You’d better be.” Flynn stared down his friends. The enormity of the situation settled around them, the only sound in the room the fire crackling in the background. “The lie of forever isn’t worth it in the end.”

  Reid eyed Flynn’s broken leg, a reminder of what Flynn’s stupidity had cost him, and then exchanged glances with Gage. These men were more like Flynn’s brothers than his own flesh and blood. They’d do anything for him—including vowing to remain single forever.

  “Never,” Gage agreed, holding up his own glass.

  Reid and Flynn nodded in unison, and then they drank on it.

  One

  Flynn Parker, his stomach in a double knot, attempted to do the same to his tie. His hands were shaking from too much coffee and not enough sleep. It wasn’t helping that the tiny room in the back of the funeral home was nearing eighty degrees.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead and slicked his palms. He closed his eyes, shutting out his haggard reflection, and blew out a long, slow breath.

  The service for his father was over, and when Flynn had left the sweltering room, the first thing he’d done was yank at his tie. Bad move. He’d never return it to its previous
state.

  God help him, he didn’t know if he could watch his father being lowered into the dirt. They’d had their differences—about a million of them at last count. Death was final, but burial even more so.

  “There you are.” Sabrina Douglas, his best friend since college, stepped into view in the tall mirror at the back of the funeral home. “Need help?”

  “Why is it so hot in here?” he barked rather than answer her.

  She clucked her tongue at his overreaction. Much like this moment, she’d come in and out of focus over the years, but she’d always been a constant in his life. She’d been at his side at work, diligently ushering in the new age as he acclimated as president of the management consulting firm he now owned. She’d been with him for every personal moment from his and Veronica’s wedding to his thirtieth birthday—their thirtieth birthday, he mentally corrected. Sabrina was born four minutes ahead of him on the same damn day. She’d jokingly called them “twins” when they first met in psych class at the University of Washington, but that nickname quickly fizzled when they realized they were nothing alike.

  Nothing alike, but unable to shake each other.

  Her brow crinkled over a black-framed pair of glasses as she reached for the length of silk around his neck and attempted to retie it.

  “I do it every morning,” he muttered, Sabrina’s sweet floral perfume tickling his nose. She always smelled good, but he hadn’t noticed in a while.

  A long while.

  His frown deepened. They hadn’t been as close in the years he was married to Veronica. His hanging out with Reid and Gage hadn’t changed, but it was as if Veronica and Sabrina had an unspoken agreement that Sabrina wasn’t welcome into the inner circle. As a result, Flynn mostly saw her at work rather than outside it. The thought bothered him.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He was speaking of his own reverie as much as his lack of ability to tie his necktie.

  “Flynn...”

  He put his hands on hers to stop whatever apology-slash-life-lesson he suspected was percolating. As gently as he could muster, he said, “Don’t.”