Best Friends, Secret Lovers. Jessica Lemmon
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.
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.”
Over the last six months, she’d watched Flynn deal with his father’s death. The grief had hovered in the anger stage for a while, before he’d seemed to lighten up. The day they did a champagne toast to their new offices, Flynn was all smiles. He stated how Monarch was going through a rebirth. There was a sincere speech during which Flynn thanked them for sticking with him, which simultaneously broke her heart and mended it at the same time. Now the optimistic Flynn was nowhere to be found. He’d looped around to the anger stage again and was stuck in the rut worn of his own making.
“He’s busy.” Gage palmed her shoulder supportively. “Running this place is stressful and he doesn’t have the respect he deserves. Don’t worry about his emotional state, Sab. He’s doing what needs to be done. That’s all.”
But that wasn’t “all” no matter how much denial Reid and Gage were in. She knew Flynn. Knew his moods and knew his values. Sure, they’d suffered a bit of distance since his marriage to Veronica, but Sabrina had still seen him day in and out at work. She’d shared countless meetings and lunches with him.
He used to be lighthearted and open and gentle. He used to be happy. Who he was now wasn’t in the same stratosphere as happy. Though if she thought about it for longer than three seconds, she might admit that he hadn’t been truly happy in years. Veronica, even when she hadn’t been cheating on Flynn with his brother,