Grumpy Best Friend: A Second Chance Romance Read online

  Grumpy Best Friend

  A Second Chance Romance

  BB Hamel

  Contents

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  1. Jude

  2. Bret

  3. Jude

  4. Bret

  5. Jude

  6. Bret

  7. Bret

  8. Jude

  9. Bret

  10. Jude

  11. Bret

  12. Jude

  13. Bret

  14. Jude

  15. Jude

  16. Bret

  17. Jude

  18. Jude

  19. Bret

  20. Jude

  21. Bret

  22. Jude

  23. Jude

  Also by BB Hamel

  Copyright © 2021 by B. B. Hamel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  Jude

  Sometimes working for Lady Fluke felt like cooking a very expensive, painstaking meal over several hours, then smashing all that glorious food on the floor.

  I could spend weeks on a project, devote hours of my time and untold amounts of energy, and suddenly have it scrapped with no more than an email. She wasn’t a bad woman, and wasn’t particularly indecisive, but she spent most of her time in London and I was based in Philadelphia, which meant whatever I did was somehow less important than whatever was going on in England. The American office for the Fluke Biscuit Company was essentially my bedroom, and sometimes my living room, if I felt like working in front of the TV.

  All of which was why I felt surprised and a little upset when I got a call one Monday morning from Lady Fluke herself, instructing me in her very proper English accent, each syllable perfectly clipped, like she was trying to win first prize in a diction contest, that I was no longer to work on the Ackerman accounts, which was a series of competitive intelligence analyses I was supposed to write about an American cookie baking company and that I had been painstakingly researching over the last three weeks, because why not, apparently I write about cookie companies for absolutely no reason these days, and I was instead supposed to go running off to some downtown office building with basically zero warning or explanation.

  I wanted to jump off a bridge. Instead, I got coffee, and hustled my butt through the morning Philly traffic, along the dirty sidewalks past brick-front rowhomes and the sweeping arches of their old stone facades, past the young men carrying briefcases and wrapped in expensive suits staring at the ground like they wanted to break their faces through it, past Rittenhouse Park and the buskers already tuning up their guitars, and into a glass monstrosity of companies stacked one on top of each other. I signed in as a guest of Flowers Construction, Incorporated, up front, although I’d never heard of them before, and rode the elevator to the twentieth floor.

  The vista outside the window of the waiting room was surprisingly beautiful. The city was spread out along the space between the Schuylkill River on one side and the Delaware River on the other, jammed between two bodies of water and packed as densely as it could, the buildings glittering in the morning sun, people moving down on the sidewalks like toys. The receptionist gave me one look, pursed her thin, painted pink lips, and hit a button.

  “Judith Pike is here to see you,” she said, although I had no clue who she was talking to. I assumed it was Lady Fluke—but I didn’t know what she’d be doing in the office of a construction company, and I knew better than to ask. One too many questions would get only a flat stare, or a blank email in response, which was Lady Fluke’s way of saying, fuck off, Jude, and figure it out.

  The receptionist smiled at me in that sweet way front office workers had, like she knew she had to be polite but really didn’t feel like it, and I smiled back, feeling pretty much the same. I wracked my brain trying to figure out why Fluke would bring me to this place, with its old, out-of-date chairs out front, looking like a dental office from the ‘90s.

  She didn’t have any plans to build anything, at least that I was aware of. The Fluke Company made biscuits, these really bland, but surprisingly popular cookie things that British people went insane over. All of the Fluke Company assets and manufacturing were over in England, and I was the only employee in America. She kept me around doing small odds and ends for the most part, writing reports, researching competition, but mostly I was her guide and her assistant when she came to the States, which was less and less often.

  I’d been working for Fluke for the past three years. At first, she visited almost every few months, but slowly that tapered off, until it stopped completely. She hadn’t been back in a year, and I’d been left floundering on my own, doing whatever minor thing she sent my way, but mostly wasting my time. If it weren’t for the good pay and benefits, I would’ve quit a long time ago. Besides, I liked working from home, and I did have a strange amount of freedom, mostly because Fluke didn’t bother to check on whether I was actively doing my job or not, so long as I replied in a timely manner and did what was asked by the deadlines I was given.

  In some ways, she was an easy boss. And in others, she was a nightmare.

  The intercom buzzed and the receptionist beamed at me, probably glad to be alone again. “He’ll see you now.”

  I smiled back, stood, and let her lead me down a hall and into a cube farm. I didn’t know who he was, or what I was doing, but the place was nice enough anyway. A few men and several women sat behind desks, staring at their computers, hidden behind their beige cube calls. The receptionist took me to a large conference room toward the back, and I slowed when I looked through the glass at the long table with scattered phones on top and another view of the city.

  Sitting at toward the far end of the table was Lady Fluke. She was an older woman in her fifties, long, salt-and-pepper hair worn in a tight bun. Her clothes were conservative, tasteful, and very expensive, in muted grays, beige, and cream. Her black bag was on the table in front of her, and her thin lips were pulled back into a look of utter dissatisfaction—which was standard. She had resting bored face at the best of times.

  I had no clue she was in the States, since she hadn’t told me she was visiting. I didn’t know who booked her flights or took care of her travel, but apparently it was someone else. I was taken aback—that was more or less my whole job, and it suddenly made no sense that she kept me around. For one crazy moment, I wondered if she was about to fire my ass.

  But no, that didn’t make sense either. She wouldn’t bring me into some strange conference room to kick me to the curb. She’d do it over the phone, with zero remorse or pity.

  This was something different then. Two men sat at the opposite end of the table, both of them in crisp business suits. The first was older, with a slight double chin, and bright blue eyes. And the other was young, maybe a few years older than me—and very handsome. As I stepped into the room behind the receptionist, something about him nagged at me, something in his eyes, in the shape of his lips, how the right side was tugged up from a light white scar, and the dimple of his chin, and the curl of his dark, thick chestnut hair, and those piercing green eyes—

  I stood gaping at Bret like I’d seen a ghost.

  Because in a lot of ways, I had.

>   He smiled back at me, and seemed genuinely delighted.

  Nobody moved, and I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t seen Bret in years, not since I was in braces. Back then I was going through a serious emo phase and wore almost exclusively black. Seeing him again pulled so many uncomfortable memories into my head that I thought my brain might explode.

  The receptionist melted away and left me standing there like a total moron until Lady Fluke’s sharp tone yanked me abruptly back into my body.

  “I called you thirty minutes ago,” Lady Fluke said. “It’s nice of you to join us then.”

  “Sorry,” I said, stammering my reply. I kept glancing at Bret, and he definitely noticed—his smile got bigger, like he was happy to see me flustered. “I didn’t know you were in the States, Lady Fluke.”

  “Yes, well.” She frowned at me, glanced at Bret, then gestured for me to join her. “Come sit down. We have some things to discuss.”

  I hesitated, looked at Bret, and considered my options. I could run, and lose a lucrative and frankly pretty cushy job. That would be incredibly mortifying, and I might as well run right up to a window and jump on out. I could come up with some excuse—but nothing came to mind, at least not something I could bear to say out loud.

  That left me with sitting down and pretending like I didn’t know Bret, even if we’d been best friends for the first sixteen years of my life, and he broke my heart into a thousand million pieces and left me a wreck of a human to try and finish high school all on my own.

  Easier said than done, but I was game to try anything. I took the seat across from Lady Fluke and kept my eyes on her, ignoring the two men at the opposite end, mentally praying that I might wake up from this nightmare at any moment.

  “I apologize for being late,” I said, since that was easier than trying to argue with her.

  “You’re here now.” She glanced at Bret again then sat up straight—even though that seemed physically impossible. “Well then, shall we get started?”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Bret said, shattering the silent ice wall I’d been building my head between us. “I’m Bret Flowers, and this is my associate, Neal Bull.”

  “Jude Pike,” I said. “Nice to meet you both.”

  Neal smiled at me, a little uncertain, and glanced at Bret, who was staring at me with an open and naked smile. I knew that smile so well, it made me sick. He looked so much like he used to—except grown, with stubble on his cheeks and chin, and about twenty pounds of extra muscle. He looked good, frankly, and I hated him for making me think that.

  I’d spent the last ten years actively not looking at his social media. Any mention of Bret Flowers was immediately ignored. Any hint of a tweet, any like on Facebook, any Instagram post was block, deleted, sent far, far away. I didn’t want Bret Flowers in my life, didn’t want to hear about him, didn’t care anymore whether he lived or died. Maybe that was harsh, but ten years ago he made a similar decision, and it nearly broke me.

  Now, I was over him, and over it, and I was going to be a total professional.

  Probably. Maybe. I could try, anyway.

  “I get the feeling Lady Fluke didn’t inform you about what we’re doing here,” Bret said, his voice a smooth baritone, like satin boxers.

  “Unfortunately, she didn’t tell me,” I said.

  Lady Fluke pursed her lips. “I must have. I sent an email.”

  I let out a breath. Lady Fluke was a smart woman, but she managed to make computers malfunction spontaneously on a regular basis. I was constantly piecing things together from half-written emails, or guessing what she wanted from her silences and the phases of the moon.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because, again, apologizing was easier. “I didn’t get anything.”

  “Well.” She glanced at the men and cleared her throat. “Jude, I called you here because I want to open an American wing of the Fluke Company, and I’d like you to be involved in running it.”

  I sat back in my chair, utterly floored.

  Silence fell. I didn’t know what to say. For the past three years, I’d been her glorified assistant. When she was in town, I handled her appointments, arranged transportation, and generally made sure she was comfortable. When she was home in London, she sent me odd jobs and had me write random reports about whatever the hell was on her mind—mostly related to the cookie industry, but once she wanted a summary about the show Supernatural, because apparently some niece was really into it, which was a whole thing.

  I didn’t know a thing about running a company, much less a cookie company. I’d picked up some things over the last three years, of course—it was hard not to, writing all those reports. But still, that didn’t qualify me in the slightest.

  “Why?” I asked, blurting it out like an atomic bomb.

  Her cheek twitched and I saw Bret practically laughing in the corner of my eye, and it took all my energy not to turn to him and tell him to fuck right off with his stupid handsome grin.

  “Perhaps that isn’t what you meant to say,” Lady Fluke replied, her tone measured and slow. “Perhaps you meant to say, yes, Lady, of course, Lady, whatever you want.”

  “Of course I’ll be involved,” I said quickly. “I’d be honored, but Lady Fluke, I don’t know a thing about running a business.”

  She seemed oddly relieved at that, like it was some minor inconvenience to be overcome, instead of the whole reason she shouldn’t hire me. “You’ll learn,” she said, shaking her head. “Truth is, Jude, I’ve been quite impressed with you, and I need someone I can trust involved at the highest levels of this endeavor. I’ve already found factory space, and started the process of getting all the necessary approvals, and so you will be organizing the top-level efforts. You’ll find competent employees, make sure the manufacturing process gets up and running, and keep a generally tight ship. You will, of course, get fair compensation.”

  I sat back in my chair and wanted to gag. Fair compensation wouldn’t come close to making this okay. She was taking me by the hand, lovingly leading me up to the cliff of a waterfall, and shoving me over with a smile. Enjoy the fall, you’ll be fairly compensated.

  “Lady Fluke,” I said, blinking rapidly and trying to gather myself, but Bret kept coming into my peripheral vision and it was hard to think with my past staring at me from ten feet away. I was dizzy, overwhelmed, my heart doing kickflips. “I’d be happy to help however I can… but I don’t know how to run a business.”

  “Like I said, you’ll learn, and Bret here will help you.” She nodded at him with her thin lips pulled back in some simulation of a smile, if smiles were actually frowns and made you look even angrier.

  I slowly looked over to Bret, my former best friend, the man that once ripped out my heart, the man I’d been running and hiding from for the past ten years, and resisted the urge to scream.

  “Don’t worry, Jude,” Bret said. “This isn’t my first time.”

  I nearly gagged.

  “Bret owns a very successful construction business,” Lady Fluke said. “We met a few years ago when he did some work for me. Now I’ve hired him to retool the factory I purchased, and he agreed to do some consulting work to get you up to speed. Depend on Bret, because he’s quite dependable, and he’s what you’ve got.”

  “Wait, Lady Fluke,” I said, getting desperate. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t appreciate this—”

  “Then that’s all you need to say,” she said, pushing her chair back. She stood, bag clutched in her arms. “Bret will get you up to speed. I have an appointment soon and I hate being tardy. Good luck, Jude, and don’t let me down. Otherwise, I’ll have to let you go.” She nodded at me, then nodded at Bret. “Good day.”

  And with that, Lady Fluke left.

  I sat there, stunned. It would’ve been better if she’d invited me into the conference room and proceeded to tell me that she runs a devil-worshipping cult or something. I wish she’d sacrificed me in some crazy ceremony.

  Instead, she left me alone wi
th Bret.

  I looked at him again and felt like I was going to be sick.

  “I know this is a lot,” he said, holding his hands out. “I tried to tell Fluke that she was throwing you to the wolves, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “You knew?” I asked him, incredulous. The thought that Bret knew about this before I did, and had been waiting for this moment for some untold amount of time boiled my skin in rage.

  “We’ve been in talks for months now,” he said, shrugging a little. “Opening a factory overseas isn’t exactly easy.”

  “You knew,” I said, pushing back from the table. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  Neal Bull looked from Bret to me, his face screwed up in confusion. “Am I missing something here?” he asked. “I feel like there’s some context I don’t have.”

  “Jude and I know each other,” Bret said simply, head tilted to one side. “We go back a while, don’t we, Jude?”

  I stood there and stared at him, and remembered the tiny Levittown house in Forsythia Gate, the stink of cigarette smoke and the TV tuned to sports, his father in the recliner shouting, sticky beer on the kitchen floor, and my mother wasting away on pills and long hours waitressing for shit tips, and the elementary school playground, the swings creaking as he laughed and told me he’d do anything to get out of Levittown, and I said I’d do anything too, and we made a pact to leave together—

  Until one day he left without me, and never looked back.

  I turned on my heel and marched out of the conference room.