Jessica Lemmon - Best Friends, Secret Lovers

Her smile was short-lived as she approached Flynn. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

That question right there was why he hadn’t told her about the finalization of the divorce. He wanted to drink away his feelings on the topic, not discuss them.

Flynn sent a glance over her head to Reid and Gage.

Little help, guys?

“You wouldn’t have wanted to accompany us even if we invited you,” Gage said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her frown returned, but she aimed it at affable Gage, which was fun to watch. He finished stirring his own coffee and sent her a grim head shake.

“Darling.” Reid looped an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t make us say it.”

“Ugh. Did you all pick up girls?” She asked everyone but her eyes tracked to Flynn and stayed there. “And why wasn’t I invited? I’m an excellent wingwoman.”

Flynn felt a zip of discomfort at the idea of Sabrina fixing him up with a woman—or being there while he trotted out his A game to impress one. He’d suffered a few crash-and-burns last night and was glad she wasn’t there to witness them.

Sabrina pursed her lips in consideration. “Did the evening have anything to do with you three reaffirming your dumb pact?”

“It’s not dumb,” Flynn was the first to say. Family and marriage and happily ever after were ideas that he used to hold sacred. He’d seen the flip side of that coin. Broken promises and regret.

Divorce had changed him.

“You’re single with us, love. Did you want in on the pact?” Reid smiled as he refilled his paper Starbucks cup.

“No, I do not. And I’m single by choice. You’re single—” she poked Reid in the chest “—because you’re a lemming.”

“I’m to believe you’re single by choice,” Reid stated flatly. She wisely ignored the barb.

“A pact to not fall in love is juvenile and shortsighted.”

“We can fall in love,” Gage argued. “We agreed not to marry.”

“Pathetic.” She rolled her eyes and Flynn lost his patience.

“Sabrina.” He dipped his voice to its most authoritative tone. “It’s not a joke.”

She craned her chin to take in all six feet of him and gave him a withering glare that would’ve shrunk a lesser man’s balls.

“I know it’s not a joke. But it’s still pathetic.”

She turned for the coffeemaker and Reid chuckled. “You have no effect on her, mate.”

“Yeah, well, vice versa,” Flynn said, but felt the untruth hiding behind his statement. Sabrina had enough of an effect on him that he treated her differently than he did Reid and Gage. As present as she was in his life, it’d always been impossible to slot her in as one of the “guys.” And in a weird way he’d protected her when he’d excluded her from last night’s shenanigans as well as the skiing weekend. Flynn was jaded to the nth degree. Sabrina wasn’t. He needed her to stay positive and sunshiny. He needed her to be okay. For her own sake, sure, but also for his.

“Heartbreak isn’t a myth,” Reid called out to her as she walked for the door. “You’ll see that someday.”

“Morons.” She strolled out but did so with a twitch in her walk and a smile on her face. Immune to all of them, evidently.

Three

Sabrina had lectured Flynn as much as she dared. She’d pushed him to the point of real anger—not the showy all-bark/no-bite thing he’d just done in “the Suit Café” as she liked to call their private break room, but real, shaking, red-faced anger. Which was why she recognized the sound of that booming timbre when she passed by a closed conference room door later the same afternoon.

Definitely, that was Flynn shouting a few choice words, and definitely, that was the voice of Mac Langley, a senior executive who had been hired on at the beginning by Emmons Parker himself.

She bristled as more swearing pierced the air. She’d seen a glimpse of the old Flynn when the four of them had fled the funeral to go to Chaz’s for fish and chips and ice-cold beers. In that moment she’d realized how much she missed hanging out with him, and how his marriage to Veronica had been the beginning of her new, more distant BFF. In college Sabrina used to bake him cookies, do his laundry, make sure he was eating while studying.

She felt that instinct to take care of him anew. Maybe because Veronica was so classless, having tossed aside what she and Flynn had, or simply because Sabrina wanted Flynn to be happy again and their college years were when she remembered his being happiest.

Flynn loudly insulted Mac again and Sabrina winced. There’d be no putting that horse back into the barn. No man could call another man that and not pay the price. It’d take time to smooth over, and some distance. And with a man like Mac, the distance would have to be Tokyo to London.

The heavy wooden door did little to mute the noise, and as a result a few employees had gathered outside it—staring in slack-jawed bewilderment.

When the shouts ceased, a charge of electricity lingered like the stench from a burnt grilled cheese sandwich—like the tension couldn’t be contained by the room and had crept out under the door.

She pasted a smile on her face and turned toward the gathering crowd—two gawping interns and Gage.

“Yikes.” Gage smirked, sipped his coffee and eyed the interns. “Unless you want to be on the receiving end of more of that,” he leaned in to say, “you might want to clear the corridor before they come out.”

He kept his tone light and playful, adding a wink for the benefit of the two younger girls, and when he smiled they tittered and scooted off, their tones hushed.

“Do you have to charm everyone you come in contact with?”

“I wasn’t charming them. I was being myself.” He grinned. Gage was both boyish and likable. The thing was he wasn’t lying. He hadn’t been trying to charm them. Flirting came as naturally to him as breathing. Still, she doubted the wink-and-smile routine would silence the girls permanently. They would tell a friend or two or be overheard dishing in the employee lounge and then the entire company would know about Flynn’s outburst. Damage control would take a miracle.

She didn’t want anyone to think poorly of him, even though he’d been an ogre since he’d taken over the company. But couldn’t they see he was hurting? He needed support, not criticism.

Gage came to stand next to her where he, too, watched the door. “Who’s in there with him?”

“Mac. And, judging by the voices, a few other executives. I don’t hear Reid.”

He shook his head. “I passed by him in his office before doing a lap to check on the sales team.”

A meeting where none of them had been included. Hmm. She wondered who had called it.

“Did something happen this weekend?” she asked as they faced the door. Maybe the bar night where many drinks were consumed prompted Flynn to admit his feelings...though, she doubted it.

“Drinks. More drinks. Reaffirmation that the pact was the right thing to do.” Gage shrugged.

“Seriously how can you continue with that cockamamie idea?”

“You know no one says cockamamie any more, right?”

“Veronica is a hot mess, but you can’t celebrate the end of her and Flynn’s marriage like a...a...”

“Bachelor party?”

“Yes.” She pointed at him in confirmation. “Like a bachelor party. Especially when you are celebrating being bachelors forever and ever, amen.”

“Sabrina. If you want in on the pact, just yell.”

“Pass.” She rolled her eyes. Why did everyone keep offering her an “in” like she wanted to be a part of that? “I’ve never been married, but I’ve watched friends go through it. Divorce is devastating. And after losing his father, it’ll be like another death he’ll have to grieve. A weekend of shots isn’t going to remedy it.”