King of the Friend Zone (Power of the Matchmaker)

by Pratt, Sheralyn

  Again, Hunter looked to Ash. “She’s kidding, right?”

  Ash shook his head. “Afraid not.”

  Hunter felt his face scrunch in confusion. “And what she’s saying makes sense to you? I mean, it’s nuts, right?”

  The other guy gave a helpless shrug. “It makes sense if Esme really does care about you. If she doesn’t love you, it will backfire hardcore. But if she does…”

  Well, that was that then. “So it’s settled. I’m screwed.”

  “Then what do you have to lose?” Grace pressed

  Hunter was lost. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if Esme loves you, she’s going to come flying into your arms. If she doesn’t love you, then she loses the guilt and things go back to being chill. Either way, I think you end up with a situation better than the one you’re standing in.”

  “All by posting pictures on social media of me hanging out with pretty people?” Hunter laughed. “That literally makes zero sense.”

  Grace and Ash shared a look and Grace frowned. “I’m not saying it right, am I, papi?”

  Ash reached out an squeezed her hand. “I get what you’re saying, babe.”

  “Yes, but you are truly advanced among men,” she said, her eyes dropping to Ash’s lips as if she felt tempted to kiss him. “Can you translate what I’m trying to say into man-speak for me?”

  Hunter could tell by the look on Ash’s face that he would have preferred not to. His instinct was the same as any other man’s on the planet: butt out and let Hunter handle his own messes. But for his woman, Ash would do as he was being asked.

  Hunter had once been that guy—bowing to Esme’s will and doing anything for the asking. What an idiot he’d been. He couldn’t blame Ash for doing the same, though. At least the woman he was bending his will for clearly loved him back. They were two-way idiots for each other. That was different than being a one-way pining idiot like him.

  Knowing he wasn’t getting away from the lovebirds until Ash did as Grace asked, Hunter looked at the other man with a look that said, Just get it over with.

  Ash seemed to catch the signal. “So…you mentioned the Red Sox before.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Think Babe Ruth in 1920—”

  “The Red Sox trade him to the Yankees to finance a freakin’ musical,” Hunter said, knowing where the man was going.

  Ash nodded. “$100,000 for Babe and a $300,000 loan for the musical.”

  Hunter shook his head, the factoid literally hurting his soul. “Idiots.”

  “For sure,” Ash agreed. “Because what happens from there?”

  “Babe Ruth hits 665 of his career 714 home runs with the Yankees while leading them to seven World Series and four titles.”

  “And a hundred years later, the Red Sox are still kicking themselves,” Ash said.

  “Definitely.”

  The other man shrugged. “Be Babe. That’s all Grace is saying. Hit a home run at all the venues, let it be front page, and let Esme find all the solace she can with her musical.”

  Hunter blinked as understanding washed over him.

  Okay, Grace might have a point.

  As he considered that, Ash stepped away, lightly pulling his wife after him. “It was good running into you, man, but we know you came here to be alone. We’ll leave you to it.”

  Grace allowed herself to be led away, but couldn’t help but have the last word. “You’re a good man, Hunter. And you’re a catch. Don’t be afraid to remind Esme of that over and over again.”

  Hunter sent them both a wave as they moved to another part of the beach, but he had to admit that Grace had definitely had her way with his mind. The wheels in his head were turning in a new way. And he kind of liked it.

  Chapter 42

  The nightly conversations with Jon had switched from Skype to simple phone calls. The main difference was that Esme could no longer see how annoyed Jon looked during most of their calls. She only heard it.

  “You said you’d be a week,” Jon said.

  “I said it would be another week at a minimum.”

  Pause. “Is it me, Esme? Is it something I did?”

  She was genuinely confused. “Where did that question come from?”

  “The reason you need all this distance?” he explained. “I know I made you mad with what I did at the engagement party, but I don’t feel like you being across the country while we need to work on us is a good choice.”

  “Once again, it’s my job, Jon.”

  “One you could always do from here until we started fighting.”

  “Well, I didn’t have any clients in crisis at that time.”

  She could hear the frown in his voice when he replied. “It’s just awful timing. I feel like if there was ever a time for us to stay close, it’s now.”

  “And I understand that,” Esme said. “But looking at it from the opposite side, if not being in the same room for two weeks is enough to make us a drift apart, that’s not a good sign either.”

  “I get that,” he said and Esme could almost picture his expression. She’d bet almost anything that he had his problem-solving face on.

  It was so interesting to realize that the very quality she found so endearing when they were together frustrated her the most when they were apart. Jon was a bit of a control freak. She’d always known that. When she was with him, that quality meant seamless evenings full of romance and fun. But with her across the country, he lost all the control he had over her environment and freaked out a bit. She was left with bouquets in her hotel room and conversations with a grumpy boyfriend…wait, fiancé. Not boyfriend. Fiancé.

  She glanced at her ring finger, noticing that she hadn’t put her ring back on after washing her hands. It was laying on the counter next to the hotel room’s sink. She’d put it back on in the morning.

  Still sensing his annoyance on the other side of the line, Esme threw out a compromise. “How about you come visit me over the weekend? Fly out after your last consult on Friday and fly back on Sunday night. They have non-stops. You’ll be here in no time.”

  “Which means you could fly back here.”

  Esme bit her tongue. He didn’t get it. Before she could always let his willful ignorance about her work slide. Prior to this trip, his lack of understanding resulted in an obnoxious comment from time to time and she could let that go. But the conversations they’d had over the past two weeks were more than obnoxious. They were a downward spiral. At the moment, Jon’s continued ignorance was about two seconds from starting an actual fight.

  “I’ll be working over the weekend,” she said. “Maybe they’ll want me in the office, maybe I’ll be called to coach a media interview, or maybe they’ll call me and ask a question over the phone. I don’t know which one, though, and that means I can’t leave. Does that make sense?”

  “Don’t you have all that scheduled out in advance?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, working hard to keep her voice calm. “This is PR, Jon. Think of it like fishing. I throw a lot of lines into the ocean and wait for a tug. Let’s say I have thirty fishing lines baited and cast out right now. Based on the bait, I have a sense of what might bite and maybe when, but all the fish might be full on other bait or swimming somewhere else entirely. I don’t know. But when one of those lines tugs, I need to jump. It doesn’t matter what day that happens or what time. If I don’t act immediately, I’ll likely lose the fish, the bait, and maybe even the pole.”

  “And I’m a surgeon,” he returned. “A short trip like that will mess with my sleep schedule enough to make me off my game for a couple of days.”

  “Then say ‘no’,” Esme snapped. “It was just an idea.”

  “I appreciate it, but it’s a long way to go for a booty call, Esme.”

  Esme pulled the phone away from her ear so Jon wouldn’t hear whatever sound might come out of her as she took several calming breaths.

  If that’s where his head was at, then they were definitely on different
channels. If she’d been talking to Hunter, she could have said something like, Does that mean you’re going to stop acting like a twelve-year-old girl between now and then? Because the whole whiney and pouty thing really doesn’t do it for me.

  But she wasn’t talking to Hunter. She was talking to Jon. And there wasn’t a thing he was saying that made her miss him…especially like that.

  Her frustration had her reaching for the cookie housekeeping had left with her turndown service. She really should call the front desk and tell them to stop leaving them. She hadn’t seen a scale since landing in DC, but based on how her clothes were fitting, it wasn’t unlikely that she’d put on ten pounds on this trip. She’d even bought a new skirt two days ago to replace a pair of dress pants she couldn’t fasten anymore. It seemed unthinkable that she could actually put on weight that quickly. But even knowing that she was ballooning, Esme couldn’t stop eating.

  “I miss you,” Jon’s voice said out of the phone in a white-knuckle grip at her side. “But I don’t think a weekend flight is the solution.”

  Yeah. Esme knew what his solution was. Ignore her job, fly home, and change her life to revolve around him. Well, that wasn’t happening.

  “Esme? Are you there?”

  With a mouthful of cookie, Esme made a snap decision and brought her phone back up to her ear. “You know, I’m realizing that you and I aren’t good at distance,” she said in a tone she usually used more in business than in personal conversations. “I think we might be focusing too much on the distance, instead of going with the flow.”

  Jon hesitated. “Okay. What does that mean?”

  “It means, why don’t we skip our call tomorrow night and both do something else instead? I’ll go out, you’ll go out, and we’ll send pictures to each other. We can have fun and share it, which will stop us from recycling this same conversation over and over like we’ve been doing. I’m pretty sure it’s a downer for both of us.”

  “Esme, if I go out without you, women will hit on me.”

  “So don’t flirt back,” Esme said. “Men will flirt with me, too. We’re not obligated to reciprocate, Jon.”

  Had those words come out of her mouth? Seriously? Was that something she literally had to remind her fiancé of?

  “It’s…just easier with you.”

  Easier? Did that mean even part of him was tempted when she wasn’t there? Something clicked in her mind as she considered that.

  “Wait a second,” she said as realization washed over her. “Is that why you don’t trust me with Hunter? You think I’m tempted by him if you’re not in the room?”

  Jon didn’t reply.

  She stood firm. “I’m going to need an answer to that question, Jon.”

  There was another beat of silence. “I work in cosmetic surgery, Esme. I know when a man is good looking.”

  “That’s not an answer. Do you honestly think I would cheat on you with Hunter if you weren’t around?”

  Another hesitation. “Yes.”

  The admission stunned her. “Yes?”

  “To be honest, I find it impossible to believe that you two haven’t been together in the past.”

  Well, that wasn’t news. “We haven’t.”

  “So you say.”

  The reply felt like a smack. “So I say? Does that mean you think I’m lying?”

  “I think you and Hunter have an agreement about what you say and don’t say to others about what goes on between you two. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that your alleged best friend would do anything you asked, including hiding out on the down-low for as long as you asked him to.”

  Esme skipped the whole mess of points he’d just thrown at her and jumped to the heart of the accusation. “Then why are you with me? If you are convinced that Hunter is my ace in the hole, why in the world did you propose?”

  “Well, I hadn’t really met him at that point, had I?”

  With that implied accusation, the conversation quickly moved onto eggshells. But that didn’t mean Esme was going to back off. She just needed to choose her words carefully.

  “Are you saying you feel like I tricked you by waiting to introduce you to Hunter?”

  “He would have been nice to know about before we made things official, yes.”

  Esme took a deep breath, processing that.

  “I met Grace several times,” he added. “Why not Hunter?”

  “Because men I date are usually pretty intimidated by him. Historically, it doesn’t end well when they meet Hunter. Case in point, how you’re reacting right now.”

  From the silence on the other side of line, it seemed like Jon was processing that. “Be honest, Esme. Have you and Hunter ever hooked up?”

  “No,” Esme said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “Never. Not once. Ever. How many ways should I say it, Jon?”

  “Once,” he softly. “But it needs to be in a way I believe.”

  She snapped. “Well, you’re going to have to tell me what that sounds like, because we’ve had this particular conversation at least half a dozen times, and nothing I’ve said so far seems to have left a mark.”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Which part exactly?”

  “All of it. And I don’t feel like we can build our relationship on a lie, Esme. It will be hard to hear about your past with Hunter—I’m not going to lie about that—but I feel like I need to know about it if you and I are going to work moving forward.”

  “Okay,” she said carefully. “But can you help me understand why you find it so impossible to believe that I’m already telling the truth? Maybe that will help me say things in a way you will hear them.”

  An annoyed sigh came through the phone. “Esme, you’ve known the guy your entire life.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “You were a kid with him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a teenager.”

  “Also true.”

  “With all that said, you want me to believe that four-year-old you never puckered up, and neither did teenage you?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Okay. But if that’s really true, then why?” Jon asked, clearly exasperated. “You realize it’s completely normal for two kids of the same age and opposite sex to explore developments together, right? Kids do that. Teenagers do that. So why didn’t you two? Do you understand how weird that is? Especially when it’s clear that you both find each other attractive, and probably always have.”

  “It’s just a line we never crossed,” Esme said, trying to keep the exasperation from her voice.

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Neither of us wanted things to get awkward, okay? People who get together break up, and Hunter and I didn’t want there to be that kind of potential for things to go south. The risk wasn’t worth the reward.” Truth be told, she was winging her answer. She and Hunter had never talked about this, but it felt like the closest thing to the truth she could offer.

  When Jon didn’t reply immediately, Esme replayed what she’d said in her head to see if there was any way she could possibly be clearer. It didn’t seem like it, so she waited Jon out.

  “So you never kissed Hunter because you were afraid it might lead to losing him?”

  “Basically,” Esme said, feeling a cautious hint of relief. Jon seemed to be catching on.

  “So you love him.”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Obviously not the same way I love you—”

  “Because the risk-reward of kissing me was worth it?”

  Esme couldn’t hold back a groan this time. “Seriously, Jon? You have a sister. Have you ever kissed her?”

  “When I was like three years old? Yeah,” he confessed. “My mom has like a hundred pictures of it.”

  “But as an adult,” Esme pressed. “As a teenager. Did you ever kiss her?”

  “She’s my sister,” Jon said flatly. “Of course I didn’t. But did I kiss her hot friends? Absolutely.”
r />   “And are you still friends with the hot friends that you kissed?”

  “Not really,” Jon said, and for a split second Esme felt like she might have a victory on her hands.

  “See? That’s my point. Kissing makes things awkward. You can’t go back. That’s why Hunter and I have never kissed. We both knew there was no going back.”

  The other side of the line was silent for a beat. “Can’t you see how that’s worse than if you had kissed him?”

  Her thin hope that they’d made a breakthrough was dashed with his question. “No, Jon. I can’t. Can you explain to me why you think it is?”

  “Because you love him,” he said softly. “And you’ve never explored whether or not you could be in love with him because you feared it meant losing him. You’re willing to risk losing me, but not willing to risk losing him. Do you see why that’s a problem for me?”

  Well, when he put it like that.

  “I’d almost prefer it if you told me you two had dated and that it didn’t work out. That would make sense. Instead you’re telling me that it’s all unexplored territory while I know for a fact that Hunter wants to explore it. How can I let you stay friends in that situation? I don’t want to become the idiot whose wife marries him for his money only to get what she needs on the side with a poor-but-pretty fireman.”

  Esme was pretty sure she’d never been more offended in her life. She tried to shove the rest of the cookie in her mouth to stop herself from saying something she couldn’t take back only to realize she’d already finished it.

  When had that happened?

  “That…gives me a lot to think about, Jon,” she managed to say in a civil tone. “I think this is a good place to stop our conversation while I process all of this.”

  “I agree,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he repeated. “And Esme?”

  “Yes?”

  “I do love you.”

  She was supposed to repeat that back. She knew that. But the acid on the tip of her tongue wouldn’t let her. “I know. Call me tomorrow if you feel like it, otherwise let’s maybe give it a day or two before we talk again. Okay?”