They're Strictly Friends (Tough Love Spinoff Book 1) Read online

  They’re Strictly Friends

  A Tough Love Spinoff (#1)

  Chloe Liese

  Cover Art by

  Jennie Rose Denton of Lamplight Creative

  They’re Strictly Friends

  Chloe Liese

  A Tough Love Spinoff (#1)

  Copyright © 2019 Chloe Liese

  Published by Chloe Liese

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Playlist

  Enjoy this playlist while you read: 35 songs for 34 chapters and an epilogue. Listen while you read (one song per chapter) to have a soundtrack experience, or listen before you read and get a feel for where Lucas and Elodie are headed next!

  “There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her:

  They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”

  Much Ado About Nothing (1.1.50)

  Contents

  1. Lucas

  2. Elodie

  3. Elodie

  4. Lucas

  5. Lucas

  6. Elodie

  7. Elodie

  8. Lucas

  9. Lucas

  10. Elodie

  11. Lucas

  12. Elodie

  13. Lucas

  14. Lucas

  15. Elodie

  16. Lucas

  17. Lucas

  18. Elodie

  19. Lucas

  20. Elodie

  21. Lucas

  22. Elodie

  23. Lucas

  24. Elodie

  25. Lucas

  26. Lucas

  27. Elodie

  28. Elodie

  29. Lucas

  30. Lucas

  31. Elodie

  32. Elodie

  33. Lucas

  34. Lucas

  Epilogue

  To My Reader

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Chloe Liese

  One

  Lucas

  London, United Kingdom, July 2006

  Physician offices are the piss. They reek of infirmity and antiseptic, and I have a working theory they’re the unspoken repository for the world’s worst artistic endeavors. A poor attempt at a field of poppies set against a flat blue sky hung on the wall, directly at eye level. It was unquestionably supposed to evoke calm, but all I felt was rage as I stared at it.

  Perhaps that had more to do with what I knew was coming than the horrific landscape behind my childhood friend’s shoulder. Jo set her glasses on her desk and drummed her fingers on its polished surface.

  “No good way to say this, Luc, so I’m going to be direct with you. You have a few years. Five at most,” Jo said. “Based on your latest examination and test results, it’s picking up, unfortunately.”

  The clock in her office ticked ominously loud, an unwelcome reminder.

  Tick-tock. Time is not on your side.

  Apparently time had been good to me for years; I just hadn’t known it. Or perhaps, like a good Englishman, I’d known deep down but buried it deeper. Flashed a rallying smile and carried on.

  “I’m sorry, Luc,” she said.

  It was at moments like these that you could only be grateful for an old friend who didn’t mince words and whose shared history softened the blow. Jo wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know, even if only subconsciously. I was living it, feeling the walls close in on the life I’d known. But hearing it lent my condition’s inevitability a new terrifying weight.

  Dread fizzed to the surface of my body, my skin prickling and hot. I clasped my hands between my knees and squeezed so hard my knuckles throbbed. Pain localized, panic averted. For now.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, nothing we didn’t know, really.”

  Jo’s eyes pinched in concern. “Doesn’t mean you can’t have feelings about it, Luc.”

  That was precisely what it meant. If I could think my way through my feelings, I preferred to. It diffused them to aberrations, inconsequential noise in the data of my life that I could justifiably ignore because of their rarity. I was Lucas Edwards. Good-natured, if not a little dry in my wit. Even-tempered, healthy as a horse. Forever all right.

  That was unfortunately going to change. According to Jo, a little sooner than my denial had let me acknowledge.

  I gave her a look that said enough talking about the sticky stuff. “Feelings aren’t the purview of the physician, Dr. King.”

  Poor woman. What kind of first name is Jo, and not a middle name to be seen? Not Joanna. Not Josephine. Jo. King. Jo-king.

  Horrifying really, how cruel parents can be.

  My uncharitably named childhood chum stood and shirked her professional demeanor, wrapping me in an embrace that was as familiar as it was bittersweet. Friends are a blessing and curse in these situations. Acquainted with your every soft spot, they’re poised to love you well when the going gets tough. It’s deuced embarrassing though, that they know those tender places to begin with, especially as they grow in scope and dimension.

  I knew I was fortunate to have so many people who gave two flying figs about me. But the underpinning circumstances were a bitter pill to swallow, even if they were chased by the sweetness of abiding friendship.

  Jo squeezed my shoulders, then finally let me take a pride-preserving step away from her affection. “Call anytime. You know that, Luc.”

  I swept up my suit coat and patted my pockets, checking myself for the trifecta of necessities: phone, wallet, keys.

  “What, and risk my namesake picking up, and once again telling me Mum and Mummy are taking a loud nap?”

  “That was once. I’d been on night rotation and hadn’t seen a sliver of my wife in weeks. So sue me, we gave Lucy the telly and had a shag—”

  I threw up a hand and backed toward the door. “You know, much as I adore Rebecca, though I have no clue how she puts up with you”—that got me a shove to the arm—“I don’t need to hear the intricacies of your sex life, daytime or otherwise.”

  Jo helped herself to straightening my tie as she smiled up at me saucily. “You know, it felt a bit elicit. Sort of redeemed the sex-sabotaging aspect of little ones.” Patting my chest, the nonverbal cue that meant she’d finished fixing me, Jo glanced up. “You could have that still, you know? There’s nothing stopping you—”

  “Rubbish. There’s loads of reasons.” I gripped the handle behind me, then opened the door. “Genetics. My horrible, crotchety disposition that’s only bound to grow worse. My workaholic tendencies.”

  Jo waved a hand. “I’ll convince you yet. Marriage is good for us as we grow old, Luc.”

  I sighed in the doorway, momentarily surrendering to Jo’s uncanny skill at keeping me longer than I planned. “You make it sound as if we’re practically knocking at the pearly gates. We’re bloody mid-thirties. I’ve got enough on my plate without you prematurely aging me.”

  “We’re not getting any younger, is all I’m saying.” Her voice softened as she stepped close once again. “I can personally vouch for how life-changing children are, too. Think about it, Luc, a family—a wife, a few children before you’re forty.”

  “Yes, and how would that be for me? You’re ascribing luxuries to my married parenting years that you’ve had but I would never.”

  Jo sighed. “I’m not dismissing the fact that it would be different and in some aspects more challenging, for you. I’m
saying even with all that, it will still be just as worth it. Perhaps more so.”

  “And that’s where we diverge, dear friend. Nothing is worth giving me something else to fall short of, more than I already am. Now I’ve got to run.”

  I pecked her cheek and left. Strolling out, I hopped in my Aston and began driving, knowing full well I couldn’t go back to the office in this state.

  A few years.

  I’d remained stoic but that prognosis was a bit grim. Definitely worse than I’d been expecting. Panic crawled underneath my skin again, and I pulled over. Hands shaking, I phoned Gina and told her to reschedule my afternoon meetings. Thankfully it wouldn’t botch any client relations since I wasn’t yet fully at the helm—Dad was still president and CEO of the company. But the plan was for me to take over, and soon. Give the old boy his overdue retirement. Years with Mum to be a man of well-earned leisure.

  I knew how much Dad was looking forward to weeks spent in Cornwall with my sister, Sarah, her husband, Ollie, and their three little ones. Traveling and sightseeing with Mum. A month in Italy. A fortnight in France. I had to figure out how I was going to do the job while dealing with this. Disappointing Dad, leaving him stranded in the position for another indeterminate number of years while I wallowed, or else placing the company in outsider hands, were untenable options.

  I heard my own breath. Fast. Erratic.

  “Steady, Luc,” I muttered to myself. “Deep breaths.”

  I raked my hands through my hair, tried visualizing something happy and peaceful to coax my racing heart back to calm. But, of course, my brain’s a fuckwit, so it sent me straight to the heart of my deepest grief—what this illness was costing me.

  Elodie.

  Elodie Bertrand, who Zed, my best mate from footie days, had aptly dubbed The French Firecracker. Statuesque, wild-haired. Wide-set eyes, blue as sapphires, and chestnut curls that gleamed gold when the sun hit them. An absolute temptress, that one. Alluringly quiet and observant until she flared to life, tempestuous and witty. Not unlike her best friend, and Zed’s wife, Nairne. That woman floored me, too. Nairne was even more practical and anti-emotion than me, and she had an unnerving ability to handle Zed, who was by far the most stubborn, high-handed, tenderhearted bastard I had the privilege of calling friend.

  Yet between Nairne and Elodie, there was a fundamental difference. Nairne stayed squarely in the realm of the mind, rarely dipping her toes in the water of feeling. But Elodie? A bright mind, no doubt, yet fueled by emotion, affection, vulnerability. She carried hurt within her, which, unlike mine, was never far from the surface. It was the sadness in her eyes—the effort it took her to laugh hard. In our time among our mutual friends, I’d coaxed details of past loves, probed her for problems in university or footie—there she was all casual smiles and ease. It was some other realm that weighed on her. She’d been wounded, but by whom I didn’t know. All I knew was I was unwilling to wound her anymore, even if she was all I could think about.

  And I wasn’t thick enough to miss the mutual feelings. Ms. Bertrand lacked the ability to mask not just sadness but desire. It flitted across her aristocratic features and filled her gorgeous, curvaceous body as naturally as breathing. When I ribbed her over Scrabble, or beat her at lawn bowling and arm wrestling, she’d fire back repartee, a smile dancing in her eyes.

  Elodie was a glorious flirt, and in another life, I would have claimed her as mine months ago. And that’s not some alpha male show; it would be completely consensual. Because Elodie Bertrand was quite interested in being more than friends. She’d made it clear in conversation: she was through with casual dating, which translated to I don’t fuck around anymore. She always looked impeccable and wore a perfume that should be named temptation. She laid herself tastefully on a platter, and all I wanted to do was ravish her until kingdom come.

  I was wild about her.

  But I couldn’t hurt Elodie. I wouldn’t. Yet after this wretched appointment, I missed her so badly—this friend of a friend who I’d come to care for and rely on—that I knew what I needed. A paltry substitute that would give me a weak fix of the woman I wanted.

  Zed’s number was on speed dial, and he answered after the second ring.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  His flat American accent was as intense as his personality. I laughed and felt the unfamiliar tug of a smile on my face. “A heaping bowl of your mushroom risotto and a night in with my godson.”

  Zed whistled, and I heard little Jamie—the godson in question—gurgle in the background. “Must have been quite the day. You’re kicking us out again.”

  “It’s been a week,” I said defensively. I triple-checked my mirror before shifting lanes. “And I just saw Jo, who didn’t hesitate to remind me it’s a bit hard for new parents to find time for the activity that got them in their predicament in the first place. I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

  “I won’t say no. I have eight thousand things to do to finalize plans for his baptism party, Jamie’s slept like shit this past week, and Nairne’s been working nonstop. All I’ve got in days is a shower quickie—”

  “I don’t need the details, mate. Just keep it high level, yeah?”

  I couldn’t see it, but I knew Zed was shrugging. He wasn’t loquacious about his sex life, but he found no need to keep it exactly under wraps either. “Fine. Mushroom risotto and Jamie await you.”

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Be there, say…five o’clock.”

  “Great,” Zed replied. “Oh, and, Luc?”

  I paused, thumb over the button that would end our call. “Yes?”

  “Thanks. An evening out with her is just what I needed. I miss her.”

  I smiled even though the words stung. Zed gloried in a world—a wife, a child, a nuclear family—that I believed wholeheartedly wasn’t mine for the having.

  “That’s what friends are for, Zeddy.”

  “Yeah, well, you might want to pick up your pace a little bit with The French Firecracker if you want a chance of me returning the favor, friend. I have it on good wifely authority that the woman’s not going to wait around forever.”

  “Nor should she. Now let me go before I wreck.” I rang off before he could prod me, and tossed my phone to the passenger seat. Time wasn’t waiting for me, and Elodie wasn’t either.

  Bloody time. The concept might be an abstraction, but it was a buggering nuisance. One day, when time came and demanded its due, its passing wasn’t going to feel one bit abstract anymore. In that hour, I would be truly alone.

  “And that, my dear boy, is the entire history of my career in a nutshell.” I sighed, bouncing my godson on my legs. Jamie was just three months old, but he was a plump little fellow. Fat though he might be, he still looked miniscule nestled in my thighs, which stretched off the length of Nairne and Zed’s sofa.

  He was fast asleep, head fallen to the side, one cheek squished adorably against my leg as he snored. According to Zed, Jamie was only nursing, no formula or foods yet. Baffling, that tits could make a baby this fat. Now that I thought of it, though, Sarah had exclusively nursed her littles too, and they’d all been right porkers. Not that I delighted in considering my sister’s breasts doing anything, let alone her having breasts to begin with. Sarah was supposed to stay a prepubescent girl forever, but instead she’d gone and grown up tall and lovely and married one of my childhood friends. Capital offense among men, marrying each other’s sisters, but I had to begrudgingly admit Oliver was a fantastic husband to Sarah.

  Jamie fussed. I shifted him so that he was nestled tighter in the valley of my legs. I swayed them side to side and he settled then, tiny fists falling in a pose of surrender.

  “That’s right, mate, no crying on my watch. Your dad would have my head, the uptight arse.”

  “Hey.” Zed strolled in and gave me a disapproving, paternal look. “No swearing in front of the baby. You know the rules.”

  I chuckled as I accepted the beer he handed me. “So says the foulest mou
th in the house. I’ve been around enough to hear what you say when you change his nappy.”

  Zed huffed dramatically as he dropped into the chair across from me. “That is the exception. His shits deserve every foul word there is in the book. Christ, they’re terrible.”

  “Baby shit really is the worst.”

  “And what experience, pray tell, has the recently self-declared childless bachelor?”

  I scowled at him as I took a drink of my beer and set it down. “I’m an uncle. I’ve changed loads of nappies, plenty of which have been horrors to the nose.”

  “That wasn’t the point of my critique,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  When Zed and I met in his hometown of Boston, playing footie for an American team—the twilight of my career and the promising start of his—I’d had vocal plans to return to England once I retired, and settle down. Since then, I’d changed my tune drastically, once Jo told me what I was dealing with. It wasn’t easy news, and I still hadn’t told Zed, meaning he was in the dark about my reasoning for such an abrupt change of plans. He was none too happy I was keeping him there.

  I bought myself time and had another drink of my beer. “I’ve told you, it’s complicated.”

  “And I’ve yet to hear you elaborate on such a pathetically vague explanation,” Zed fired back.

  I dropped my head on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s a spectacular chandelier.”