Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2)

by Esguerra, Mina V.

  Never Just Friends

  Mina V. Esguerra

  Table of Contents

  Never Just Friends

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  EXCERPT FROM THE HARDER WE FALL

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  She liked air. The very idea of it. Of something ever present, always needed, but virtually invisible.

  Now, one could like something, on a philosophical level, that much, without having to put herself through an environmental science degree, do the internships, move to New York City to take a job as an air quality consultant, but that was Lindsay Kresta. Admittedly she took things too far sometimes.

  So far chasing air hadn’t turned out too badly for her, in any case.

  There was a look on Marnie’s face when Lindsay walked in. Marnie the executive assistant for the four environment consultants of the foundation was usually all business, except when anything worth gossiping about landed right on her desk. From then on it was like dealing with a tea kettle moments before it let out its shrill noisy steam.

  Their eyes met; Lindsay unconsciously touched her forehead to check if dirt got smeared on it from the bus ride. Because sometimes that happened, and of course if it ever did, it would be when she was on her way to a meeting with someone important.

  This was not the reaction Marnie was expecting. “You didn’t check your email on the bus,” she said.

  “You know me,” Lindsay retorted. She didn’t own the fanciest phone model out there, but she wasn’t going to go around using it in public transport. Hello, I’m distracted, mug me now.

  Marnie’s eyes were glittering. “Lucien, Kelly, and Krup confirmed for the ten-thirty at the Waldorf Astoria. But you need to be at the hotel before then to bring the contract over.”

  “The drinks to welcome the new spokesperson, right?” Lindsay was tying her hair into a ponytail as she said this, recreating the calendar entry in her head. “But I didn’t do anything for that at all. Who decided I would be delivering contracts for this?”

  “I did,” Marnie nearly squealed. “The new spokesperson is your Jacob.”

  Lindsay’s heart nearly stopped. “My who?”

  “Your Jacob Berkeley. Your Jacob. He’s at the Waldorf Astoria right now and he’s accepted the spokesperson gig!”

  Your Jacob Berkeley.

  My Jacob Berkeley.

  My Jake.

  Things that were true, and not, at the same time.

  No, it wasn’t Lindsay’s heart that was giving her trouble; it was her entire nervous system. She was going to fall right there on the carpet, in front of Marnie’s heavy oak desk, and get a layer of dust all over herself on top of the bus grime.

  “Did anyone tell me he was even shortlisted? Why are you...why are you getting actors to be spokespersons? I recommended...a whole bunch of people…”

  Lindsay had been asked for her input on this, and she sent what she thought was an awesome list. Kickass people. Knew their environment advocacies inside out. She may be the youngest person on the team but she was also the only air expert, and air was big again. She thought her people would be first on the list.

  “Obviously they went in another direction,” Marnie said, her voice now taking on the frequency of a bird’s chirp. “And thought that they needed to be more mainstream. He’s always been supportive of our projects, but you know that.”

  “I thought they’d get Lorena,” Lindsay was saying, but her mind was somewhere else.

  “Lorena? She can’t speak in public without everything on index cards. Last time she spoke for us I wrote everything with a Sharpie. Every word. It can’t be Lorena.”

  “She successfully launched that project in Bangladesh and—you know how embarrassing this is? I really thought she’d get it. Who nominated Jacob? It can’t have been Lucien.” Lucien Ramirez, director of the Caine Foundation, boss of them all.

  Marnie pushed something into Lindsay’s hand. “Krup did. But does it matter? He said yes, which means we’re going to get the most publicity we’ve ever had in years. Are you still avoiding him?”

  Lindsay looked down and saw an envelope, the nicer kind that Marnie reserved for Important People.

  “Make sure he’s signed the contract before the big guns arrive at ten-thirty,” Marnie told her. “You should have enough time if you leave now.”

  Lindsay’s head was still catching up. “Enough time for what?”

  “Wake up, Lindsay! Time for whatever you want to do with the guy. Go away now.”

  Chapter 2

  Jacob Berkeley, famous for his critically-acclaimed television show Rage Eternal, last year’s Hottest Male Ever, this year’s 30 Sexiest on TV Under 30, was not hers.

  Jake Berkeley, on the other hand, was a guy she met in college. Eater of her sister’s cookies. Playmate of her nephew and niece. The person she sat beside for three out of the last four Christmas dinners. Semi-annual “All-Clear Happy Hour” drinking buddy. Potential future Amazing Race partner. And, if that didn’t pan out, her zombie apocalypse buddy.

  But he wasn’t her best friend, no. That would be crazy. Calling him that would let them fall into that awful cliché, and list them among the dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of platonic male-female “best friends” out there who were really just waiting for the other to wake up and smell the love already.

  No they were not that. She was not that.

  Lindsay paused and shook her hair out of the ponytail, catching her reflection on the window of an idling cab. It was July, and she rarely saw him in July, come to think of it. Since they both moved away from Fremont in California, they didn’t see each other in the summer, when her hair was a bit more blond than brown, even when she did nothing new to it. She got the short end of this stick because she got to see him all year round. Got to see him buzzed and sweaty in photos of him working out to get in shape for his show. Got to see him be hot and handsome in the different time periods that his show’s seasons had been set in. (She didn’t watch the show, though, but the promotional photos were used as billboards, and she usually had to walk by one when it was that time of the year.) Got to see him and his perfect black hair, perfectly sculpted stubble, perfect blue eyes taunting her from magazine covers.

  She remembered that the dress she was wearing was a sexy crimson halter if she shrugged out of her brown knit sweater. So she did that. She caught her reflection yet again on a car window, and almost smacked the self-satisfied look on her face with her hand.

  What for? Why are you doing this?

  You have Victor. Maybe.

  And he is not your Jake.

  They (she and Jake) might not even be as friendly now as she thought they were. The last time she saw him was April, over a year ago, and it wasn’t the best time for either of them. He skipped that year’s August happy hour, and missed Christmas, and she didn’t hear from him the following April.

  Or any other time in between.

  Sometimes she wondered if she should be more worried about him, but the news didn’t report anythi
ng serious enough to get her attention. She’d find out along with everyone else if anything happened to the fifth sexiest guy on TV “under 30” yes? So she assumed the distance was deliberate on his part.

  And then this, having her walk five blocks to see him, on an assistant’s errand. A contract for him to sign. She’d find out that he was in New York this way? Because he probably flew in this morning. He liked doing that, flying into places early. Being up early. Doing things at dawn. She wouldn’t have met him, in fact, if on that day her sister Cordelia didn’t take the first flight out, and Lindsay woke up at five a.m. to help her with something.

  And saw him jogging past the house she shared with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their two kids.

  He ran by twice, probably circling the neighborhood, and then that was it.

  Lindsay woke up early every day to check if he would pass by again. For two days there was no Hot Guy sighting, and then on the third day…

  But no. She should be angry. Annoyed. Incensed. She should have put her foot down right there on the carpet and made Marnie do the welcoming herself.

  It didn’t matter if he was successful Jacob Berkeley now who got to act on TV, be on magazine covers, and take all-expense paid trips to be an environment poster boy. She was important too, damn it. Not in ways that he’d know unless he read the copyright page of policy papers (and who did really), but damn it.

  Chapter 3

  I have something to tell you.

  You’re gorgeous.

  I’m sorry.

  I was a grade-A dick.

  I give you permission to kick me wherever you want.

  Jake Berkeley had never seen Lindsay angry at him. There was one time when she probably might have been, but the greater concern was making sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit, so she didn’t let it show. He was certain though that she was mad as hell right now, might have been for a year at least. If he opened with the line about allowing her to assault him, she might actually do it.

  Stop getting turned on by that. By what exactly? Lindsay’s smooth, supple leg, that perfectly-shaped calf? Would she be wearing boots, running shoes, pointy heels when she kicked him? But the idea of her bare foot interrupted that thought, and it made him blink and shift. He adjusted his pants and threw a distracted smile at the hotel staff hovering around him, the way they did for VIP guests. Jake had already refused three attempts to make him feel more at home.

  “Later,” he had said, with a bright smile. “Just waiting for somebody.”

  He saw her before she saw him. He liked it when that happened. When they first met she was just as beautiful but not as aware of what that meant, the power she had over him if she used that same smile and paired it with a simple request. He spent the first few months of their friendship wondering if he should tell her about it, but that meant she might use it on someone else. And yes he was a selfish bastard about a lot of things, including this, most of all this.

  So he didn’t tell her.

  Their eyes met. He held back on the smile, let it instead creep up his forehead, his eyebrows, before it pulled at his mouth. He saw the same thing, the same relieved, comforted, happy smile, creep up her face but refuse to show on her lips.

  Lindsay bit down on that lush lower lip, to keep it from betraying her.

  He had this.

  “You can kill me later,” Jake said, as he stood to welcome her. “But you know what that means if you kill me.”

  The heels made her taller, made her rise up so that the top of her head came right under his nose. He pulled her into a hug but she remained stiff. Already smiling, but not quite ready to let him in.

  “One less mouth to split the rations with,” she muttered.

  It was an inside joke. A personal reference. Lindsay was mad, but she was going to forgive him. He could do this.

  He left a kiss on her head and pulled away reluctantly, but there was work to be done. “You say that now, but you’ll need to sleep. Who’s going to take the midnight watch and protect you from the zombies while you sleep?”

  Lindsay sank into the velvet sofa beside him, at a distance of approximately two small children away. She placed an envelope onto the glass tabletop in front of them and slid it toward him. “Your contract. You should sign it before my bosses get here.”

  “Of course.” One of her hands fished for something in her bag, a pen, but he pulled one out of his jacket pocket, and relished the surprise that came to her face. It was beginning to be worth it, all of this. If he could collect those faces of hers, he would.

  He had seen this contract already. The three copies in the envelope, for him to sign, were a formality, but he skimmed through the relevant pages anyway, parts he had specifically commented on. Things seemed to be in order. He uncapped his pen and began to sign, every page.

  She watched him, foot tapping, until she couldn’t help it.

  “So, what the hell, Jake?”

  He had several pages to go and smiled as she seethed. “What?”

  “You can’t call to tell me that you’re doing this? What are you trying to prove? If you wanted to work in environment, any agency with more money than God would be knocking over themselves to sign you, and you go with us, behind my back—”

  “I don’t need to work with people who have more money than God.”

  “—we could have talked about this. I’m pushing an important project at the conference and if you really wanted to help me you could have told me—”

  Last page. Jake happened to like his real signature, the one he used for contracts, and out of habit would lean back to admire it after signing something. There was also a finality to the signature, because it only got used when he committed to something. A job. A location. This piece of paper, and signature, meant three weeks doing work he thought he had already left behind. Beside someone he thought he had already lost.

  “Lindsay,” he said, when he was finally done. “I’m here. Officially your colleague, if that’s what it means. If you need my help with anything then you have me for three weeks, let’s do this.”

  “Why didn’t you call?” she asked him.

  “My flight got in before seven, and I know you don’t—”

  “Not just today.” Lindsay’s voice was tight. “Why didn’t you call at all? After I went to Vancouver to see you?”

  Of course she wasn’t going to let him go that easily.

  He raised both hands. “Officer,” he said. “You’ve got me. I’ll explain everything later.”

  “Stop making jokes.”

  “Pay attention. This next one I’m dead serious about. Are you ready?”

  Then, in front of the hovering hotel staff and everyone else having coffee at the Waldorf Astoria, he made his move. He first leaned into her, mouth capturing hers, and then pulled the rest of her toward him, through the arm he had hooked around her waist. She gasped and instinctively raised a palm to smash his trachea, exactly what they talked about by the way so he was still proud of her, but then her fingers instead curled gently around his throat.

  Lindsay kissed him back.

  Her mouth opened slowly, taking quick and tentative swipes. She moaned softly when he decided it was his turn and swept her lips open a little more, kissed her a little deeper.

  His tongue plunged deep, then retreated, held, and then he pulled back, gently, gracefully. He congratulated himself on that perfect landing and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.

  “What the hell, Jake,” she whispered.

  “I want things, Lindsay,” he said. “I want to do this. I want to work in environment. You know it’s one of the things I had to give up when I left school but now I can do this. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable so I worked with Krup instead and he put my contract together.”

  “I can see that,” she said, still shell-shocked. “We’ve established that. It doesn’t explain—”

  “I also want you. You. Lindsay Kresta, my zombie apocalypse buddy. You might not believe it
because I’ve been invisible all year and more than that if you add everything up but I’m here now. I’ve pulled two and a half miracles so I can spend three uninterrupted weeks with you, because I want you. I know it’s not much of a promise, three flimsy weeks, but you’re practical and I think you’ll agree with me that we should probably test this out, being around each other again, before we start any—”

  “Hold on a second,” Lindsay said, the frown creasing her brow again. But he was ready for this. He knew this would happen. “You show up after dropping me out of your life and then you’re asking for what? An instant relationship?”

  “I’ve said it wrong,” Jake said, but smoothly, because the “fumble” was also a prepared move. “I’ll explain it all later, but we don’t have time right now. I wanted to give you the essentials though, before they arrived.”

  “The essentials? Before who arrived?”

  “Your bosses. We have a meeting in five minutes, right?”

  She checked her phone and shook her head. “Damn it.”

  “I think I have enough time to say it again. I want you. I want a chance to see if we can be good together. You and me. A relationship. We’ve never been physical but I’ve leaned on you for everything. I’m a greedy man and I want it all now—I want you, your lips, your body, your future. If you’re willing to give it. And if you are, I’ve signed the paperwork—I’m yours for three weeks. All yours.”

  Chapter 4

  The first “All-Clear Happy Hour” Jake and Lindsay had together was at the end of August, two weeks after they first met. Jake was twenty-one. Lindsay would be too, in a few weeks.

  Before then, they had only really seen each other three times. Once she managed to awkwardly introduce herself to him that early morning (he was really nice about it, but didn’t stop his jog), they’d had neighborhood small talk a few times. Oh you go to Addison Hill too? What’s your major? Do you know ___?

  Then that Sunday afternoon, she was running an errand on Tram Street (the closest thing to “downtown” for students of AHU, if they needed something done that none of the on-campus businesses provided), and she saw him standing by the curb. Looking dazed.