That Friendzone Feeling (The Dashwood Billionaires) by Nicky Redford

Author:Nicky Redford [Redford, Nicky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Up All Night Publishing
Published: 2024-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

18

WALKER

Few things beat the satisfying fizz when you pop the cap off a bottle of beer. But I barely even hear it. It’s eleven thirty, Emily’s still not home from work, and she hasn’t replied to any of my texts.

My heart’s running one gear higher than normal, my stomach’s had a constant tremble in it for hours, and my head is abuzz with worry that she’s not okay.

Christ, I think we all know by now that accidents can happen out of nowhere.

I wish I could stop myself, but there’s no way to control the snapshots of her trapped in the mangled wreckage of a car, or lying in the road after being hit while crossing the street, or being dragged into an alley by a knife-wielding mugger that flash across my mind.

I can only hope she’s just avoiding me. That’s not great, but it’s better than the alternatives. And, I can sympathize, I’ve pretty much felt like moving into the brewery up in Bathgate and never coming back after last week’s unbearable zipper incident.

How the hell I found the willpower not to reach inside her dress once I’d undone it, slip my hands around her waist to her soft warm belly and pull her ass against the straining ache in my crotch that was fit to burst, I will never know.

Well, I do know.

She’s made it very clear she doesn’t even want to talk about what happened on Hornby Island, much less build on it.

If I keep pushing it, I might lose her completely, and that’s something I can’t risk. What would I be without Emily? Certainly not the owner of a company that’s on the brink of being worth a billion dollars—if Chase Cooper rescues us, that is.

If she doesn’t want to be anything more than my best friend and business partner, then I have to learn to accept that, to take more cold showers, and to think of my grandmother in her curlers whenever Emily’s around in one of her figure-skimming dresses and knee-high boots.

Christ, those boots kill me. I dream of slowly unzipping them and sliding them off as she sits back and holds her leg up in the air for me.

I guess I’m more into zippers than I ever realized.

I pace toward the window and take a swig of my third beer of the night. The sparkling chill down my throat does nothing to cool the worry that’s been rising in my gut for the last couple of hours.

I rest my elbows on the sill and gaze at the dark street below. Something stirs in the shadows from the streetlight on the other side of the road. As my eyes adjust to the low light, the shape of a raccoon comes into focus—a raccoon sitting on its hind legs, munching on something that looks like a burrito clutched in its front paws.

I pull my phone from my pocket and check it again, just in case Em replied and for some reason it neither pinged nor vibrated.

Still nothing.

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