Best Friends, Secret Lovers

by Jessica Lemmon

Reid sauntered in next. “Morning, gentlemen.”

  “Singleton.” Flynn dipped his chin. Gage saluted.

  “Do you ever have one of those really good dreams,” Reid said as he rinsed his travel mug and set it in the drainer to drip dry, “where you’re with a woman and you’re so in tune with her that even the sunlight doesn’t snap you out of it?” He moved to the espresso machine and started the process of creating his next cup while Flynn blinked at him in disbelief.

  His best friend had read his mind.

  “Just this morning,” Flynn answered. “Except I woke up before I saw who it was.”

  “Perfect.” Reid nodded in approval. “Bloody perfect. When you can’t see who it is, all the better.”

  Flynn had spent the weekend sleeping on the sofa despite a brand-new $8,000 bed in the master bedroom. The vestiges of a vividly erotic dream loosened its hold the moment the sun crept over the horizon. He’d made a futile attempt to hang on with both hands, long enough to figure out who belonged to that husky voice murmuring not-so-sweet nothings into his ear.

  “How far’d you get?” Reid asked. At Flynn’s questioning glance, he added, “Were you actually laid in your dream or are you still blue-balled from it?”

  “Not far enough,” he mumbled. It cut off before the good part.

  “Mate.” Reid shook his head. “We need to get you a girl.”

  “He’s right.” Gage moved Reid’s espresso aside to make his own. “You can’t handle this much stress and not have sex. Stephenie has a friend, by the way.”

  “I thought you’d stopped seeing Stephenie.” Reid leaned a hip on the counter, settling in next to Flynn.

  “I did.” Gage poured milk into the steel carafe for steaming. “She’d let me set up Flynn with her sister. Steph and I didn’t end badly. We just ended.”

  “You ended it,” Flynn guessed.

  “I don’t need serious to have a good time. And you, my friend—” Gage dipped his chin at Flynn “—are way too serious lately.”

  “So I’m told.”

  The room filled with the sound of the steamer frothing milk to a perfect foamy consistency. If Flynn needed a second to Sabrina’s “serious” motion, he’d just heard it.

  A hazy, golden image filtered through his memory, the sun at the mystery woman’s back, a shadow blotting out her face. He closed his eyes and tried to see the woman with the sultry voice, but she faded much like early this morning. Odd. He’d never had such a lucid dream. God help him if that face belonged to Veronica. He didn’t have that much time to dedicate to therapy.

  “We’re here for the meeting you called, Parker. Where are we doing it?” Gage asked him.

  “Yeah.” Reid straightened from his lean, a delicate espresso cup dwarfed in one hand. “And what’s it about? Are you retiring to live off your millions?”

  “Dad’s millions were wrapped up in assets, not lying around in the bank.”

  “Bummer.” Gage shook his head.

  “You wouldn’t quit if you had millions, would you?” Reid asked.

  “I would.” Gage shrugged. “I can find something else to do with my time.”

  “Like what?” Sabrina strolled in, her phone in hand. “Which one of you fine baristas is whipping me up a cappuccino?”

  “Gage,” Reid answered.

  Gage retorted and Reid argued something back that Flynn missed. Reason being was that he was staring in shock as the face from his dream crystallized.

  The golden light receded as she leaned forward over him. He swept her mussed dark hair from her face with his fingers as her mouth dropped open in a cry of pleasure.

  “What the hell?”

  The coffee banter stopped abruptly and they all turned their attention on him.

  “What the hell...what?” Sabrina tipped her head and sent her long hair—the same long, dark hair from his dream—sliding over one shoulder. Desire walloped Flynn like a two-by-four to the gut.

  No.

  No, no, no, he mentally reprimanded himself, but the rest of his body parts had other ideas.

  His eyes took in her jewel-toned red dress and then fastened on the delicate gold chain sitting at the base of her throat. His ears delighted at her kittenish laugh in response to something Reid said. And the one part of him that absolutely should not be reacting to her stirred in interest as if waking from a deep, deep sleep.

  “Aren’t you jealous?” Reid asked. And because his arm was slung around Sabrina’s neck, it took Flynn a second to clear the fuzz from his head. “Of our fancy coffees.”

  “Flynn should make my cappuccino, and then he can make himself one, too.” Sabrina sashayed over to him, her skirt moving with her long legs, ending in a pair of pointy-toed black high heels. She took his mug from him and he stiffened. And he did mean all of him.

  “What do you have in there?” The husk in her voice caused his mind to nosedive into the gutter. But she wasn’t talking about what was going on in his pants, she was referring to his coffee mug. She sipped and then wrinkled her cute nose.

  “Plain old drip. Boh-ring. Cappuccinos for everyone and then we’ll get started. Oh! We could have the meeting in here!” She carried the mug to the sink and dumped it. “I’d much rather sit over there than in that conference room.”

  “Over there” was a grouping of leather sofas and chairs. Flynn focused on the furniture, desperate to reroute his thoughts from the insane idea that Sabrina was anything other than his best friend. He’d already done her a disservice by benching her. She didn’t need him sexualizing her on top of it.

  But thinking of the words on top only served as a reminder of where she was in his dream. On top of him.

  “Must’ve been the pizza.” He said that aloud and earned some raised eyebrows from his two male friends. He forced a shaky smile and went to the espresso machine, hoping to busy his hands for a bit, too. “Cappuccinos all around.”

  * * *

  Mugs empty, they lounged in the executive break room. Reid, leg crossed ankle-to-knee in one of the leather chairs, propped his grotesquely handsome head up with one hand, eyes narrowed in thought as Flynn continued listing the details that would need handling when—eventually—he extracted himself from Monarch as Sabrina had suggested. Gage sat across from him in the matching chair, his cell phone in hand as he typed notes into it. Sabrina had chosen the couch across from Flynn. She’d been scribbling notes in a fancy spiral-bound notebook she’d run to her office to fetch before they started.

  Flynn had been glad for the break. Her leaving the room had given him a chance to settle his formerly unsettled self. By the time she’d returned, he was back to looking at her like a coworker and friend and not like a man who apparently needed to get laid more than he needed a third cappuccino.

  “Understanding that spring is a busy season for us...” His mouth continued on autopilot, but his brain took a sharp left turn when Sabrina set aside her notebook and pen to slip off one shoe. She set the spiked heel on the ground and crossed her leg, massaging one arch with insistent fingers. He watched the movement, his eyes fastened on red fingernails, not too long, not too short. His own voice was an echo, and he hoped to God Reid and Gage weren’t staring at him while he stared at Sabrina. Not that it mattered. Flynn wasn’t capable of stopping.

  She bent to slip her shoe on and the neck of her dress gapped, giving him an eyeful of the shadow between her breasts. The lost dream cannonballed back into his subconscious so hard he sucked in a breath midsentence and didn’t recover right away.

  Sabrina over him.

  Sabrina’s red mouth parted to say his name.

  Sabrina’s long hair covering her nipples and hiding them from view.

  Were they pink? Peach? Dusky tan? Or—

  “As soon as what?” Reid asked, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his attention on Flynn.

  Flynn s
napped his head around to face Reid, who thankfully wasn’t wearing an I Know What You Did Last Summer smirk.

  “Sorry. Where was I?”

  “You said you figured you could take time off as soon as...”

  As soon as I pull my head from my ass. Or, more accurately, Sabrina’s cleavage.

  “May. I can take off in May.” What the hell was wrong with him? Maybe he was heading for a breakdown.

  “May!” Sabrina yipped, her voice a high-pitched complaint rather than the soothing alto of his dream. “I’m not letting you wait until May. Hiatus starts now.”

  Her stern exclamation glanced off him like a butterfly’s wing. He’d known her for a hundred years and had never wondered what color her nipples were. Did he notice she had boobs? Sure. Had he guessed what cup size she wore? Absolutely. Did he notice when other guys looked at her while she wore a bikini at the beach? You bet. But other than unwitting glimpses that were more male programming than intentional ogling, he’d never mentally stripped her down for his own pleasure.

  She was his best friend. It’d never occurred to him to imagine the color of her nipples any more than he would imagine the color of Gage’s.

  Flynn had no earthly clue how he’d made the leap from sharing Chinese food with her on Friday to waking Monday with morning wood from a dream where she was stark naked and moaning his name.

  Unless she’d been right about his not dealing with the emotional toll the last year had taken. His entire life had been in upheaval when he’d been handed the company. He’d been acting president, but there was a safety net in place—his father. After Emmons had passed, Flynn was on his own. He’d lost his mother at fifteen, his brother to betrayal and his father right around the same time. He had no one, save the three people in this room.

  He couldn’t let them down. Taking his mind and hands off the controls would have to come with some sort of reassurance—the reason for this meeting, or else Monarch Consulting would sink like the Titanic.

  Flynn wiped his sweaty brow and attempted to regroup. Not a simple task since Sabrina spoke next, forcing him to look directly at her.

  Six

  “Are you insane?”

  Even as she asked the question, she thought to herself that while Flynn wasn’t insane, he certainly did look a little...unhinged. His gaze wouldn’t settle in one place, bouncing from her face to Gage to Reid to his lap before going around again. Maybe he’d had too much coffee.

  “May is two months away,” Gage said. Sabrina was glad she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that.

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not going to take two months for you to hand over our assignments.” Gage set his phone aside and sat on the edge of the chair. “We’re capable of doing what needs to be done.”

  “I emailed Rose my vacation hours this morning,” Sabrina said of the HR manager. “We’re taking off starting Monday.”

  “We?” Reid turned toward her. “Where are you going? And why are you at this meeting if you’re not going to be here helping us battle the powers of evil?”

  “I oversee design and social media and my teams are perfectly capable of handling my being away from the office. Plus, I already told them they can reach out if there’s an emergency.”

  “You said you wanted to paint,” Flynn said, his voice gruff.

  “I do. I will.”

  “You lectured me nonstop Friday night about taking time away and doing something other than working and now you’re promising your team you’re available for an emergency? You said you’d paint me something for the mantel.”

  “You two went out on Friday? I wasn’t invited.” Reid frowned.

  “Fine. I’ll ignore my phone and email, too,” she told Flynn before turning to the other two. “We ate Chinese in Flynn’s personality-free apartment—”

  “Penthouse,” Flynn corrected.

  “Sorry. His personality-free penthouse.” She flashed him a smile. “Where I tried to explain to him that vacation is different from retirement.”

  “I still don’t understand why we weren’t invited.” Reid tipped his chin at Gage. “Where were you on Friday, Fleming?”

  “My sister’s boyfriend dumped her so I was on ice cream duty. I couldn’t have showed up anyway.”

  “Well, I could’ve.” Reid folded his arms over his thick chest. His dark hair was slightly wavy, his jaw angled and stubborn. His mouth was full and his eyes were piercing blue. If he wasn’t acting like a ten-year-old right now, she might admit he was stupidly attractive.

  “This isn’t about you, Reid.” She sighed. “It’s about Flynn and how he’s different than he used to be. Admit it, he’s not the guy you became best friends with. If you were married to him, you’d be in counseling right now.”

  “If I was married at all I’d be in counseling right now,” Reid quipped.

  Gage laughed, but sobered when Sabrina communicated via a patient expression that she could use backup. Thankfully he showed up for her.

  “Sabrina has a point,” Gage said. Flynn shot him a glare that plainly said he did not want to talk about it. “Hear me out. Since Veronica...uh, left...you haven’t been yourself. I understand that she and Julian simultaneously stabbed you in the back and kicked you in the balls. I’ve tried to be here for you, buddy. And your dad dying was another blow. I know you believe you don’t have to mourn him as long since you two never got along, but you do.”

  “Agreed,” Reid interjected. “I hate to admit it, but Sab is right.” He winked at her to let her know he was teasing. “Since the funeral, you’ve been behaving like Emmons back from the dead. Frankly, none of us want to work with the next generation of wanker.”

  “You want to try running this place?” Flynn practically yelled.

  “Yes.” Reid didn’t so much as flinch. “While you, and evidently Sabrina, paint and ride horses bareback or live in a yurt or whatever she has planned for you.”

  “Things to Do When You’re Twenty-Two,” Sabrina announced proudly. Every pair of eyes swiveled to her in question. “That’s what Flynn and I are doing. We’re going to live like we did in college.”

  “In a cramped dorm that smells of old gym socks?” Gage asked. She ignored him.

  “I’m going to help Flynn remember what life was like before we were given the keys to the city. Before there was a Veronica. Before any of us knew we’d be running the biggest consulting firm in the Pacific Northwest. Before I could afford a six-hundred-dollar pair of shoes.” Flynn’s gaze lingered on her shoes for a moment before it met her eyes. “When we used to share a car because we couldn’t be bothered to own one separately.

  “Back when Bennie took my virginity and Gage was engaged.” She sent him a glance and he paled slightly at the mention. She focused on Reid. “Back when you were sleeping your way through half of campus.”

  “It was a service I provided. Girls back then didn’t know what good sex was until they met me.” He offered a cocky smile.

  “You two were twin disasters back then, but Flynn and I... We were good.” She smiled at her best friend and his features softened. “We were better than we are now with our expensive sports cars and our gourmet coffees and our bespoke clothing. We were better than the corporate drones we’re turning into.”

  “I’m not a drone,” Gage argued.

  “Me neither. We take umbrage to that accusation.” Reid straightened his shirtsleeve. “Though I do enjoy nice cuff links.”

  “I wouldn’t go back to being engaged. That was a mistake.” Gage’s tone suggested he needed to state that for the record.

  “Hear, hear,” Reid agreed. “I had a lot of fun in college, but I have no interest in reliving my past.”

  “That’s why you’re not invited to our hiatus,” Sabrina said, her tone implying the “duh” she didn’t say. “You may be fine balancing work and play, but I, for one,
am terrible at it. And so is Flynn. I need to paint and he needs to focus on something other than Monarch’s well-being.”

  Stress showed in the lines on the sides of Flynn’s eyes and the downturn of his mouth. Two more months of not dealing with his feelings and she feared she’d lose her momentum. He was saying yes to the hiatus, which was huge. It’d take only a nudge for him to agree to starting it on Monday.

  “Flynn. You can trust Reid and Gage. Monarch won’t implode if you walk away. You can start your hiatus on Monday. With me.” She reached over and palmed his knee, noting that his nostrils flared when she did. The way he looked at her wasn’t impatient or upset, but more...aware. It reminded her of the way she’d looked at him on Friday evening.

  “I’ll put it in my calendar.” Gage lifted his phone, typing as he slowly spoke the words, “Flynn and Sabrina’s sabba...ti...cal. There. Done.” He showed them the screen. “Monday’s Valentine’s Day by the way.”

  “I know.” Sabrina grinned. “Flynn and I are going out.”

  “On Valentine’s Day?” Reid’s voice was comically high. “That day should be treated tenderly. Every single man knows that occasion is a minefield. What are you going to do, love? Take him to a fancy couples’ dinner and shag him afterward?”

  Sabrina let out an uncomfortable laugh, looking to Flynn to laugh with her, but he looked as if a grenade had gone off in his general vicinity. His shoulders were hunched and his face was a mask of horror. So...possibly she misread his expression a moment ago.

  “Thanks a lot.” She let out a grunt. “I wouldn’t be that bad to sleep with!”

  Flynn rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “I’d happily sleep with you, Sab. I’ve been offering for years.”

  “No way.” She rolled her eyes at Reid’s offer. She couldn’t imagine sleeping with, kissing or being romantically involved with Gage or Reid. She winked over at Gage, who smiled affably. They were like brothers.

  Her gaze locked with Flynn’s next and they had a brief staring contest. His slightly crazed expression was gone and now he simply watched her.