Friendship on Fire (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 3) Contemporary Romance

by Melissa Foster

  “Riley, you are my breath of fresh air. I’m a designer by trade, just like you will be one day, but inside, I’m just Josh Braden, Weston born and bred. I live in New York, but that doesn’t mean that I have the values and morals of a fast-paced racy city.”

  Every word he spoke made her heart open up to him a little bit more. He was so different from most men Riley had dated. They sailed the surface, while Josh dove deep. She touched his cheek, then rested her head on his chest.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Because I can only be me. I’m not perfect by any means, but it’s who I am, and I like who I am.”

  “So do I.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  IT WAS ONE thing for a man Josh’s size to run through Central Park alone at night, but walking through Central Park at night with Riley was a whole different story. He eyed every man who walked by, sizing them up before they got too close. Josh had never had a lick of trouble in the park, but like any New Yorker, he’d heard plenty of stories.

  Josh didn’t have a plan for the evening beyond dressing in a way that would hopefully render them unrecognizable. Hell, he didn’t have a plan for any part of what was happening between him and Riley, but he had faith that they’d have a wonderful night.

  “This is so pretty,” Riley said as they strolled along the path that ran through the park.

  “This is my favorite bridge. I love how it’s tucked into the park, like a hidden jewel.” They walked up the gentle arch of the bridge and stopped to admire the water below. Moonlight illuminated the nearly bare trees and danced off the water below Gapstow Bridge.

  Riley leaned over the edge and said, “It’s so peaceful compared to the streets. If I close my eyes, I can pretend to be out in the country somewhere.”

  “You’d have to work hard to ignore the city noises.” Josh came up behind her, pressed his body against her back, placing one arm on either side of her. He kissed her neck. “CK One?”

  “It’s scary how well you know perfumes.” She turned to face him. “This is so romantic.”

  “Lenny’s really pulls it all together,” he teased.

  She pressed her hands flat against his chest. “Believe it or not, it does. I just love being with you. I don’t care what we eat or where we go. I like your company.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers again, kissing the cold from her lips. Feeling gluttonous for kissing her so often, he pulled away.

  “I’m sorry. I could do that all day,” he admitted. “Let’s sit down.”

  They walked over the bridge to the edge of the water and sat on the cold grass. Riley leaned against his side, and Josh wrestled with how—or if—he should tell her about Claudia and what had happened earlier in the evening.

  “Do you do this a lot? Come here, I mean?” Riley asked.

  “Not anymore. When I first moved to the city, I came about once a week to walk through the park and just enjoy it, but then life got too busy.” He shrugged. “Now I run through it, but I almost never come to just enjoy it.” He squeezed her against him. “That’s why I wanted to bring you here, so we could enjoy it together.”

  “I love it. Thank you.”

  Josh opened their sandwiches and they began to eat. He was ravenous after running and working all day on nothing more than a few energy bars. He ate half of his sub in a few bites, then leaned back and watched Riley. He hadn’t noticed it the night before, but when she chewed, a dimple appeared just above the right side of her mouth.

  She looked away and covered her mouth.

  “You’re cute when you eat,” Josh said. The surety of his feelings for her were solidifying with every moment they spent together—and every second they spent apart. He couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “Listen, Riley, I really like spending time with you, and I know we haven’t shared our deepest secrets yet, or had any history together to speak of, but I want you to know how I feel.”

  She placed her hand on his knee. He covered it with his own and wished she’d never be farther away than she was right then.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I want you to know who I am, not who everyone else thinks I am. I’m a really private person.” He saw her eyes grow wide and read the disbelief in her eyes that he’d been expecting. “I know I have a public life, but I’m a private person by nature. You’ve seen the pictures of me with a different girl on my arm at every event, smiling for the camera, often even looking at them like they were special, like they were everything, but that was all a farce. That’s the persona that’s expected of me. I can count on one hand the women I’ve had any sort of real relationship with.”

  She dropped her eyes then and bit her lower lip. “Was Claudia one of those women?”

  “I told you she wasn’t, and she’ll never be.” He touched her cheek and held her gaze. “Not once, not ever.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I believe you.”

  “I’ve dated three women for five or six months, and while they were relationships of sorts, they were never anything real. They were time fillers, and I think that’s what I was for them, too. They were all between my last year of college and the two years after. I live a really busy life, and making time for a woman wasn’t ever a priority. Once I opened JBD, I was handed dates, and when you have everything at your fingertips, none of it means very much. The people you’re connected with are there for your status, or what you can do for them. I knew I wouldn’t find a meaningful relationship in the mix, and I wasn’t looking.”

  “I guess I know what you mean,” she said. “I’d never date you for your status. I hope you know that.”

  He laced his fingers with hers. “Yeah, I do. Ri, I’m not telling you this because I worry about your reasons for being with me. I’m telling you because I want you to know that I’m not a player. I’m not what I appear to be in the magazines, and I don’t want to be that person. You know about my mom dying when I was young.”

  “Yeah, that must have been awful.”

  “I don’t really remember much about her other than what I’ve been told throughout the years. I was too young, I guess, but between Treat and my dad, I feel like I know everything about her, like she was there for all those years, even though she wasn’t.”

  “That’s nice, right? I mean, it would seem worse if you didn’t know what she was like. This way you have a picture of her, an idea of her personality,” Riley said.

  “Yeah. Treat spent years talking about her like she was right there. He’d tell me stories she’d told him, and he’d try to talk like she did. I’m really lucky that he did that, because while my dad filled me in some, too, I was always afraid to ask him too many specifics about her. He’s always missed her so damn much.” One of the earliest memories Josh had was at his tenth birthday party, when he turned to his father and said he wished his mother could have been there. His father’s eyes filled with tears and his voice with emotion when he said, “She’s right here with us, son.”

  “My dad has never strayed from the memory of my mother, at least as far as any of us knows, and that’s so honorable. To me, that’s what love is. It’s a commitment for a person that goes beyond their being physically present, and maybe it’s even beyond being defined.”

  “So you believe in true love?” Riley asked. “Real, heart-pounding, breath-stealing, forever and beyond love?” Her eyes lit up.

  “I guess I do,” he said.

  “And what about lust?” She wrapped her arms around her knees, pulled them in to her chest, and crossed her ankles, looking at him expectantly.

  “Lust is definitely real.” And very much alive in me for you.

  “But what role does it play in love?” She scooted closer to him.

  “I think there’s lust in love. I mean, how boring would it be without a bit of tawdry lust?”

  “And desire? Different from lust?” she asked.

  “You are full of questions. I think so. Desire is a want, a craving, an urge, and it can be felt for anything. I can desire ice c
ream or I can desire you.” He touched her cheek. “While lust goes way beyond, and to me, lust encompasses only a sexual urge. I don’t lust for a run in the park, but I lust for your naked body beneath me.” Even now, in the park.

  “And”—she lowered her voice to almost a whisper—“do you think what your parents had included those attributes, or were they just in love? I think there’s a difference. Like with my parents, I know they’re in love. I can see it in the way they look at each other across the room, but I’m not so sure about desire or lust. I think what they have is comfortable, and maybe that happens after so many years. I don’t know. But I’d like to think that desire and lust can be part of love forever.”

  Josh thought of the look in his father’s eyes when he was down by the barn, taking care of his mother’s horse, Hope, and he had no doubt that what his parents had included all forms of love. “I think it can be, but I’m not naive. Life gets in the way of lust and desire sometimes, and I can see how after coming home to someone night after night it might be hard to leave the stress of the office behind, but that doesn’t mean that desire or lust is gone.” He looked at the water and realized that he had never thought about these things until just now. “I think it takes effort to recognize that outside stress can take over if you let it. Couples need to make time to be intimate and maybe do things that are outside of the norm to spice things up every few years, but yeah, I think desire and lust can remain if you help them.”

  Riley nodded and leaned her chin on her arms. “You might be right.”

  “What’s worrying you?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Really, Ri, I sincerely want to know. Remember, I’m that guy who likes to talk. I love sex as much as the next guy, but not in place of really knowing someone.”

  “It’s just…I see how happy and committed Rex and Jade are, and believe me, neither of us saw that relationship coming.” She smiled. “I just hope I can have that someday.”

  “Rex is a very passionate guy, always has been. He protects the things he loves fiercely. He stands up for what he believes in and fights what he doesn’t.” Josh had spent his life feeling less manly than Rex, the brother he saw as the epitome of masculine and heroic, and he wanted to be honest with Riley, even if it was embarrassing. If she wanted a Rex, that wasn’t him.

  “Ri, I’m not Rex, and I never will be. I don’t have that same outwardly apparent level of anger, or passion, or whatever it is that he has that makes him so…macho. I have the same level of love and passion, and I stand up in my own way, but I’m not someone who will get into a fistfight. I’m the guy who works things out with methodical, rational thought. I’m big and I’m strong, but I just don’t handle myself in that way. I never have, and I probably never will.”

  “That’s one of the things I admire most about you,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “I don’t want someone like Rex. I hope that someday I’ll be loved to the ends of the earth the way Jade is, in whatever form it comes. And I’m not asking you to love me, Josh. I’m just talking. You asked; I answered. I’m not under any weird illusions or trying to pressure our relationship into being anything more than it is.” She shrugged.

  “I don’t know how any man could not love you to the ends of the earth.” The words were on the tip of his tongue. I love you. It was too soon. He’d scare her away if he said them aloud. Hell, it even scared him a little to think about saying them so soon. Instead, he took her hand in his and took a deep breath in preparation for sharing part of what had been nagging at him all afternoon. He’d get to Claudia soon enough, but first he needed Riley to understand the type of man he really was.

  “Ri, I’m not really like any of my brothers. I’ve been thinking a lot about Treat, and I’m probably more like Treat than Rex, but I know myself, and I could never give up my career the way he did for Max, no matter how much I loved the person. I enjoy what I do too much, and I know that sounds self-centered. When you fall in love, you’re supposed to be willing to give up everything for the other person. I’m just being honest with you.”

  Riley sat up straighter. “Why would you even think to say that? I’d never want you to give up your career, any more than I’d expect you to want me to give up mine.”

  He’d expected her response, which opened the door for him to continue. He knew what he was saying was true, and Riley deserved to know it, too.

  “Look at Rex and Jade. They weren’t able to keep their relationship a secret for very long, and I just want to be sure you know what you’re getting into if you get involved with me,” he explained.

  “If I get involved with you?”

  “You know what I mean. Involved for the long term.” The conversation was becoming too heavy, and there was much more to say and much more he wanted to know about Riley. He took a deep breath and said, “I just want you to know where I stand. I’m not trying to scare you off, Riley. God, that’s the last thing I want. You deserve to know.”

  Riley looked away, and tension filled the silence.

  “Do you want to walk a bit?” Josh offered.

  They threw away the remains of their subs and he reached for her hand. Holding in his thoughts was making Josh’s stomach ache. He needed to get the rest of what he had to say out in the open. Now. “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  “Sounds serious.”

  “I’m an honest guy. I just don’t know how to be any other way, not with the people I care about. And I want to be honest with you.” He stopped walking and placed his hands gently on her arms. “There was an incident with Claudia tonight.” He felt her stiffen beneath his touch. “She came into my office and made it very clear that she wanted to be with me. Sexually.”

  He watched Riley swallow that chunky, awful pill.

  “I made it clear to her that it would never happen, and I told her I was involved with someone. I didn’t tell her who, and I’d never do so without your consent, but I don’t want her pawing after me on any level. And I made it quite clear to her that she’s not to take my denial out on the office staff. There’s no way she didn’t understand what I said.”

  Riley looked down, but not before Josh spotted the worried shadows within her eyes. “Josh, you don’t have—”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t know where you and I are headed, but I want to go wherever it is for however long it lasts, and we can’t do that if Claudia is always undermining our relationship. I never want you to worry, especially about her.” Josh felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. That was only the first step in a long line of things that would need to happen to clear the way for them to have a relationship, but it was a start.

  “Thank you for that,” Riley said.

  They walked in silence, and as Josh opened his mouth to break it, Riley beat him to it.

  “I can’t blame her, really. I mean you are charming, even if a little too handsome.”

  “Too handsome?” He grinned. He’d never met a woman who could take a threatening situation and turn it into a joke. “What does that even mean?”

  “Oh please.” Riley laughed. “It’s like walking around with a Photoshopped model. I love it, but whew, I can’t take my eyes off of you, so how can I expect anyone else to?”

  She laughed, and Josh shook his head. He knew that women found him attractive. He’d graced magazine covers and been told how handsome he was all of his life, but that didn’t mean Josh gave it any credence. Hearing it from Riley—that drove it home and meant more to him than any magazine cover ever would.

  “I want you to know, to really understand and believe, that as long as we’re together, I’m fully committed. You’ll never have to worry about me straying with anyone else. Especially Claudia. There is something I need to ask you,” he said.

  “Go ahead, but the answers are no, I won’t wear edible underwear, yes, I will make out in a movie theater, and…well…we’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.”

  I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. “Damn, no e
dible underwear?”

  “Well, maybe you can convince me,” she teased.

  “While I think about you in edible underwear, we probably need to come up with a backup plan in case—or for when—people find out about us. I’ve always thought of myself as a patient guy, but I’m not so sure I can publicly deny my feelings for you for very long, and I know it may mean hell for you to pay. Even if I do talk to Claudia, she’s just the tip of the iceberg. You probably will encounter gossip about sleeping with the boss, which hurts me to admit, but…So I think we should try to come up with a strategy for how we’ll handle things if and when people find out. A way that will protect you as best we can.”

  Riley walked in front of him, then turned around and stopped, forcing him to stop walking, too. She stood on her tippy-toes and kissed him. “Can I just say that I love how you think about me? There aren’t many men who would worry about a woman’s feelings as much as you do, and there aren’t many men who would want to take steps to protect them in a situation like this. Thank you.”

  He pulled her to him and dipped her over his arm, lowering his mouth to hers and kissing her like she was a movie star on a stage.

  “I can’t stop myself from thinking about you,” he said as he brought her upright once again. “I am worried about you having to deal with gossip or whatever our relationship might stir up. The last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable about us in public or at work.”

  She put her head on his shoulder as they strolled by the water. “I don’t have an answer. Any way I look at it, it’s torturous. I guess I could quit working for you and try to get another job, but I know from experience that it won’t be in fashion design.”

  He heard the regret in her voice. “That’s not even an option. Your design skills are superb. Maybe it was a mistake to have you learn the nitty-gritty of the business first. I should have brought you in as a designer.”

  She squeezed his arm. “You think I’m that good?”

  “I know you’re that good.”

  “Then why couldn’t I get a job after college?”