Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2)
Read Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) Online
Authors: Mina V. Esguerra
Mina V. Esguerra
EXCERPT FROM THE HARDER WE FALL
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.”
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 anything 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.
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.