Her BFF's Brother

by Regina Wade

  Her BFF’s Brother

  A Protective Possessive Instalove Romance

  Regina Wade

  Copyright © 2020 by Regina Wade

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Mile High Club Playlist

  1. Reed

  2. Rori

  3. Reed

  4. Rori

  5. Reed

  6. Rori

  7. Reed

  8. Rori

  9. Reed

  10. Rori

  11. Reed

  12. Rori

  13. Reed

  14. Rori

  15. Reed

  Epilogue: One Week Later - Rori

  Epilogue: Two Years Later - Reed

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  Her Big Brother’s Best Friend

  Her Billionaire Landlord

  Dad’s Private Investigator Best Friend

  Protecting Her Heart Series:

  Also by Regina Wade

  About the Author

  Mile High Club Playlist

  Mile High Club Playlist

  Airplanes, B.o.B

  Drunk on a Plane, Dierks Bentley

  Paper Planes, M.I.A

  On the Wings of Love, Jeffery Osborne

  Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters

  Against the Wind, Bob Seger

  Aeroplane, Red hot Chili Peppers

  Free Bird, Lynyrd Skynyrd

  Learning to Fly, Tom Petty

  Turbulence, Steve Aoki

  747, Saxon

  Beautiful Day, U2

  Danger Zone, Kenny Loggins

  Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver

  Steve Miller Band, Jet Airliner

  Chapter 1

  Reed

  Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now? — B.o.B, ‘Airplanes’

  Rori hasn’t seen me yet, but I see her.

  I’d know her anywhere.

  Once you’ve met her, there’s no mistaking Rori Stewart. No confusing the way she moves for anyone else. She’s got no business bouncing like that with every step, but then that’s Rori all over. She was a firecracker six years ago, and clearly, nothing’s changed.

  If anything, adulthood has only brought her charms into focus, softened the edges, and added polish to the impish eighteen-year-old I remember. My baby sister’s best friend through school, Rori spent more time at my house than I did most weekends all the way up until I left for boot camp. I can’t ever remember coming home from leave and not seeing Rori’s wide smile and long tangle of strawberry hair hanging around at some point.

  She was there every step of the way, a sly smile and quick, clever turn of phrase at her lips. I’ll never forget the day I came home with my gold jump wings, ready to launch my recon marine career.

  As usual, Rori was there. She was helping my sister Beth unload boxes of pizza from the back of her neon pink VW bug. The girls’ birthdays are only a week apart, and I can’t ever remember a time when they didn’t celebrate together in my parent’s oversized backyard.

  This time, they’d cooked up one of their double trouble schemes and wanted me involved. Prom was coming up, the ultimate farewell to adolescence. Every kid in school, hell, probably our whole town, would have beat down the door to take Rori to the dance. But Beth swore up and down that I should be the one to take her.

  “One of these days you’re going to come home and I’m the one that won’t be here.”

  At the time, Rori’s words made no sense at all.

  Of course she’d be there. Like my mother’s lasagna sauce, mowing the lawn every Sunday, and bright yellow squeeze bottles of mustard. Rori was simply part of coming home. A summer weekend just didn’t feel right without her and Beth making too much noise in the living room. It’s just one of those universal truths, like the fact that water is wet and toast always lands butter-side down when you drop it.

  “I’m too old for a high school dance.”

  She turned eighteen the next day. Two weeks later, I deployed for the Middle East. When I came home, Rori was gone.

  “Are we good to board, Mister Baker?” Rob’s nasally voice cuts right through the freight train of memories running through my head.

  The band manager is standing in front of me, stringy blonde hair greasy in the bright early-morning sunlight. He’s clutching a clipboard that he checks unseeingly every few seconds, looking from it to me to the private jet sitting on the runway behind me in a never-ending rotation.

  “Reed,” I correct him for at least the fiftieth time. “And almost. I still need a complete list of everyone who will be on the flight.”

  I began working private security not long after leaving the Corps. Most of the time life as a bodyguard for the rich and notorious works well for me. My training makes me one of the best at what I do. I get to travel— I don’t know a lot of other ex-marines that have seen as many exotic locations as I have by thirty-five.

  Usually, it means meeting interesting people, too. In the last few years, I’ve worked for royalty, a rather eccentric scientist, and politicians from every imaginable side of the aisle.

  “Well,” Rob flips through the sheets of papers on his clipboard. “There’s you and me. One flight attendant— Rori Stewart. Captain and co-pilot. The chef. Masseuse. Two fans that won a contest last week.” More frantic page fluttering ensues. “Oh! And Brash, of course.”

  Brash Knight is the hottest pop star in the world right now. Patty Cakes is the number one single and album in six different countries, and we’re about to embark on a tour of all of them.

  Keeping him alive would be a lot less difficult if the man didn’t insist on surrounding himself with incompetent sycophants.

  “The fans stay. Otherwise, we’re good to—”

  “But,” Rob blinks up at me in disbelief. For being the person who initially contacted me, his weasely face seems to do a lot of that. “They won a contest!”

  “So,” I temper my voice with as much patience as I can muster. “Have them fly commercial. I’m sure Mr. Knight can afford it. This plane doesn’t lift off with those two groupies on it. I’ll see you inside.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see a swing of red hair, a flash of pale skin. Rori just boarded the plane.

  It’s going to be a bumpy flight.

  Chapter 2

  Rori

  I bet the fella on the aisle thought I was crazy. Cause I taped your picture on the seat back right beside me. Now I’ve got empty mini bottles filling both our trays. — Dierks Bently, ‘Drunk on a Plane

  Reed Baker is on this airplane.

  I woke up this morning excited. Pumped, primed, and ready. Talk about that first day of school feeling. It’s one thing to make a career change. Going from flight attendant on one of the airlines to working private jets is one thing. But a chartered flight for one of the biggest stars in the world on my first solo run? That’s getting thrown in the deep end without so much as a floatation device.

  Brash Knight is that guy. You can’t swing a cat without hearing his songs, stumbling across a hashtag of his name, seeing his face plastered all over. Here I thought Brash would be the biggest presence on this flight. As it turns out, I was oh so very wrong.

  I’m still buckling myself in for takeoff when I see him. The actual big bad wolf in midair.

  It’s impossible to miss Reed, it always has been. I spent my entire life trying to ignore him, block him out of my head and my heart. He’s stayed there, stubbornly lodged in
my memories despite the years and distance between us. Six feet five inches of pain in my ass. How any one man can look so beautiful with a permanent scowl on his face I’ll never be able to tell. It’s like he ate the sexiest Sour Warhead candy imaginable.

  Whatever flavor that is, I want a whole bag of it.

  Ugh. Here we go. One look at the big hunk of gorgeous and my brain is threatening to melt.

  What is he doing here, anyway?

  I left Nebraska, literally jumped on the first plane out of high school, and never stopped flying. I’ve been home exactly once in the six years since my eighteenth birthday, preferring instead to spend as much time in the air as possible. Mostly in an attempt to see more of the world than the block of tract houses I grew up on. But also because I thought if I got high enough, far enough away, Reed Baker would just disappear altogether. Now here we are, trapped in the same leather-lined cabin together for the duration of this flight.

  Reed broke my heart once, the week before my eighteenth birthday.

  “I’m too old for a high school dance.”

  Really what he’d meant was that he had better things to do on a Saturday night than spend four hours babysitting his little sister’s best friend on a pity date. Somewhere in the back of Bethany’s closet sits the dress I spent far too many days and fast-food paycheck hours agonizing over. It’s the same exact shade of blue as Reed’s eyes, and I’d been too sad to wear it for anybody else, and too embarrassed to tell Beth why.

  How do you tell your best friend you picked out a dress to give her big brother her virginity— and he never gave you the chance?

  “Can you believe we’re here with him?” Eliza leans in, her dark hair falling across my deep burgundy uniform. It takes me a minute to realize the bright-eyed massage therapist in the seat next to me is talking about Brash and not Reed. “He’s a little shorter in person than I thought he’d be,” she whispers.

  The corner of my lip quirks at that. As if on cue, a pair of pale blue eyes cut across the plane, pinning me in place on the supple leather couch. Say what you will, but the custom interior of these private jets makes the commercial airline furniture feel like burlap potato sacks.

  “He just looks shorter next to his bodyguard,” I murmur to Eliza. My gaze is still riveted to Reed’s face. Somehow, my best friend’s oldest brother has only gotten better looking over the years. There’s a rugged edge to his face, a honed sharpness to his cheeks that wasn’t there before he deployed. “Reed Baker can make anyone look small. The man is a mountain.”

  Eliza’s dark eyes widen in surprise beside me. She turns from my face to Reed’s and back again.

  “Uh. You want to tell me how you know the bodyguard’s name and stats? You holding out on us, red?”

  If only.

  I wish I had something to tell. A juicy secret, a tearful breakup story. Hell, even the grizzly details of Reed Baker being a big fat jerkface would be better than reality. I can’t think of a single good way to fess up to my cool new coworkers:

  Reed is the reason you’re looking at a twenty-four-year-old virgin, ladies. I could never put my feet on the ground, so I did the next best thing: I learned to live with my head in the clouds. Literally. I’m trying to outrun the ghost of a relationship that never existed outside of my own imagination.

  “Nah. He’s my best friend’s big brother,” I say instead.

  It kills me that it’s the truth, too. I’ll never be anything more to Reed than Beth’s friend.

  “Uh-huh.” Eliza doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

  Luckily, Brash’s overbearing manager chooses that moment to materialize in the aisle at my side.

  “Mr. Knight is ready for you to serve lunch now.” Rob manages to make the simple request sound lecherous.

  “Sure,” I inject enthusiasm into my tone. Showtime. “I’ll just go set up.”

  Of course, Rob doesn’t move out of my way as I stand up, forcing me to squeeze past him on my way to the jet’s private kitchen. His thick trunk and hot breath are stifling in the aisle. For a moment, his hefty bulk fills my vision, blocking Reed from my view completely.

  It’s a quick, physical ache; having him right there in front of me and then being cut off without so much as getting to hear his voice. I was prepared never to see him again, but now that I have, I need more. Reed Baker is an addiction that I just can’t seem to quit.

  Frustrated with myself, I turn on my heel. The only person on this whole damn plane that matters is the award-winning artist. And he is waiting for a seared ahi tuna salad and cherry Dr. Pepper.

  That, at least, I can take care of.

  A hand on my wrist stops my forward motion. It’s Rob.

  “Also,” he waits for me to look at him before continuing. “Would it kill you to unbutton a few of those?” He motions to the front of my button-down uniform top.

  “I— what?”

  It sounds more eloquent in my head. More along the lines of what the actual fuck?

  “We had to leave behind the contest winners, So I feel like it’s up to the crew to fill in as eye candy—”

  “Enough.”

  It’s one word. Two gruff syllables.

  I haven’t heard it in six years, but I’d know that voice anywhere.

  Chapter 3

  Reed

  I fly like paper, get high like planes. If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name. — M.I.A, ‘Paper Planes’

  “Calm down, Mr. Baker.” Rob raises his hands in a submissive gesture. This time, I don’t bother correcting him.

  He’s nearly as tall as I am, making it easy to see the way his pasty palms have broken out in a thin sheen of sweat. I’m close enough to see the line of fresh perspiration along his forehead, the nervous tick in his neck.

  Good.

  He should be nervous. The fucking nerve. He’s lucky I didn’t just throw him headfirst out of the plane.

  “I was just suggesting that the stew—” he tries to fumble on nervously.

  I’m aware of Rori’s presence. This close, inside the confines of the plane, it’s almost a living, tangible thing.

  “And I suggest,” I cut him off through grit teeth. “That you watch your fucking mouth. I don’t think being ‘eye candy’ is in a flight attendant’s job description.”

  There’s the unmistakable flash of fear in Rob’s eyes. You don’t spend as long in the military as I do without recognizing that look. But he turns his lip up in a sneer anyway, clearly annoyed that any of the ‘help’ would dare defy him like this. It’s another look I’d recognize from miles away.

  “Gentlemen.” The voice is a perpetual sleepy gravel.

  The relaxed tone of someone who’s been given a billion-dollar gift and figured out how to capitalize on it. I was ready to take an instant dislike to Brash Knight, pop star extraordinaire, but the truth is he seems like the type of guy I’d like to have a beer with some time.

  He stands up from the working desk setup at the back of the plane where he’s been writing music since takeoff.

  Brash takes in the small cluster of people, the tension in the air— the way I’m staring his manager down. One look seems to be enough for him.

  “Rob, let the girl work in peace. Reed, try not to kill my manager until after lunch? I’m ravenous.”

  His tone is light, but definitive nonetheless. Rob turns and heads off to sulk in one of the armchairs by the window. Despite the fact that she still hasn’t spoken to me, I follow Rori into the small private kitchen.

  Behind the elaborately organized setup, the onboard chef is busy plating food.

  It’s the first time in six years I’ve been alone in the same space with Rori. She doesn’t need to do a damn thing to the uniform— even all buttoned up, skirt skimming over the full swell of her thighs and down the lush curves of her ass, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She wears the body of a woman even better than she did the blossoming curves of a college freshman.

  And just like that, the old f
eelings for my little sister’s best friend are back with a vengeance. Fuck.

  Rori’s hair has always mesmerized me. Soft ribbons of pale red. Like summer rhubarb spun into silk. It’s only gotten more beautiful with time. I shove my hands into my pockets to avoid the temptation to reach out and physically feel it falling through my fingers.

  I wonder if she even knows who—

  “Long time no see, Tall Reed.”

  Guess so.

  “I’ve missed you, Short Stack.”

  Even with her back to me, busily loading plates and trays onto a cart, it’s impossible to miss the way her entire body freezes, tensing at my words. There’s a snap of tension between us, a long, drawn-out moment where the chef pointedly looks anywhere but at the two of us.

  When she finally turns around, her hazel eyes hit me like a fist to the center of my chest. I have missed her, but it isn’t until this exact moment that I realize just how much. Rori’s laugh, Rori’s smile. Just… Rori.

  I spent so much time thinking about her as my little sister’s best friend that I missed the part where Rori Stewart became her own person.

  Too bad she’s still Beth’s best friend.

  “I missed you too, Reed.”

  Her voice is so small I almost don’t hear it as she brushes past me.

  Chapter 4

  Rori