Her Best Friend's Lover Read online

  HER BEST FRIEND’S LOVER

  An Ellora’s Cave publication written by

  SHILOH WALKER

  MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-537-6

  Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

  Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

  © Copyright Shiloh Walker, 2003.

  All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave.

  Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc. USA

  Ellora's Cave Ltd, UK

  This e-book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by email forwarding, copying, fax, or any other mode of communication without author/publisher permission.

  Edited by Pamela Campbell

  Cover Art by Scott Carpenter

  Certain images contained within this e-book have been digitally marked by Digimarc Corp. If you purchased this e-book from a source other than Ellora's Cave or one of its known affiliates, contact [email protected] immediately. Please note that reading this e-book without first purchasing it through legitimate means is illegal and can result in heavy fines. As always, our authors thank-you for your support and patronage.

  Warning:

  The following material contains strong sexual content meant for mature readers. HER BEST FRIEND’S LOVER has been rated NC-17, erotic, by three individual reviewers. We strongly suggest storing this electronic file in a place where young readers not meant to view this ebook are unlikely to happen upon it. That said, enjoy…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lauren glanced up at the sound of a door slamming. Her heart danced wildly for just a moment as she watched the lean hipped, lanky man head her way. At the same time, a weight she carried on her shoulders seemed to grow just a little bit heavier.

  He would never love her.

  The first time she saw him had been from a hundred feet away and her heart had simply flipped over within her chest. Lauren had been struck by love at first sight, though she had barely been able to make out his face. His face hadn’t mattered, because her heart recognized him.

  A week later she actually met him, face to face, when Dale strolled up her walk and knocked on her door, flashing that grin at her before holding out his hand and introducing himself. He flirted casually off and on for several months, raising her hopes, only to have those hopes die a slow withering death when it finally dawned on her that Dale flirted with any and every female he met.

  The thing was, Dale Stoner loved women, and women seemed to love him right back. He danced around the line that led to seriousness, but any time one woman got too close, he two-stepped back, quick and pretty as you please.

  But, lucky her, good ol’ Lauren was his buddy. His best friend.

  Yippee.

  She didn’t want to be his best friend. Well, not just his best friend. She wanted him. Ached. Hungered. Wanted to eat him down in three big greedy bites.

  “Stop it,” she ordered under her breath. “This isn’t helping you any.”

  Five years after losing her heart to him, just watching him amble in her direction, her heart still did the same little dance.

  More than six feet of mouthwatering, throat drying, smooth talking male made up Dale Stoner. He had the long, lean, muscled build of a runner, broad shoulders, narrow of waist and hip, and the loose-hipped gait of a cowboy. Dimples creased his face each time he flashed his endearingly sweet grin, burnished gold hair fell over his forehead, tempting women to brush it out of that impossibly handsome face.

  Sex appeal in spades, there was no doubt he had that. Lauren could feel her body go on alert whenever he was within ten feet of her. Heart racing, mouth dry, nipples erect, her groin tight and wet. Dale was a walking wet dream, one she saw almost every damn day.

  But the most mesmerizing feature about Dale was his eyes, the kind of eyes that could put you in a trance. Thickly lashed, heavy lidded eyes, with pale sky blue irises ringed by deep indigo. They could flash hot with need, burn with anger, or freeze with disdain. Every emotion was reflected in those eyes. When he turned them on Lauren, they held nothing but the deepest affection.

  Though Lauren had lost count of the different women he had dated, she was well aware that a number of those women spent a night or two wrapped in his arms atop the huge custom-built king-size bed that sprawled underneath a skylight. They’d leave with a slightly dazed smile on their face the next morning, and in a few days, a new face would appear.

  He was arrogant, cocky, funny, and at the oddest times, as sweet as any man could possibly be. When Lauren sprained her ankle earlier in the spring, Dale got up early every single Saturday for nearly a month to take care of her precious garden and cut the grass.

  When she had the flu over the winter, he hand delivered some of his prize winning chicken soup, a recipe passed on to him from his mother. He had a fear of anything contagious, which stemmed from a serious distrust of doctors. But he braved the flu, just to take care of her.

  Lauren sighed, watching him close the distance between them. She had fallen in love with him the moment she first laid eyes on him, maybe even before that. She had known, deep inside, after that one look. That’s him. He’s the one I’ve been waiting for.

  But Dale hadn’t been waiting, or even looking, for her.

  “G’mornin,” Dale drawled, opening the waist-high picket fence that separated their two yards. His eyes were more heavy lidded than normal, his hair still wet from his shower, and a grin of satisfaction curved his mouth.

  Lauren Spencer barely glanced up from her precious roses as she asked, “Did you have a good time last night?”

  “Ohhh, yeah,” Dale murmured. “She’s…amazing.” The little actress he had spent the night with had picked up some unusual talents. That woman could do things with her mouth…

  She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Oh, please.” Rising, Lauren dusted her grimy hands off on a towel she had tucked into her back pocket. “I have a feeling you aren’t talking about how well she acts with her theater group.”

  Dale grinned wickedly. “Not exactly. I was referring—”

  Cutting him off with a narrowed stare, Lauren said, “Spare me the details.”

  “And let me guess, you spent the night at home, alone. Again.”

  “No. I had a roaring orgy with five different men.”

  “Impossible. You don’t know five different men.”

  “Sure I do. I just don’t know any whom I would welcome in my life, or my home. Much less into my bed.”

  Sighing, Dale followed her through the mudroom into the kitchen. “If you aren’t careful, you are going to grow old alone, Lauren. What are you looking for? Why are you so picky?”

  Because the man I love doesn’t love me. Because the man I love is in love with another woman, a woman he can’t have.

  Bad enough that he had screwed half the female population between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, Dale was also still in love with a woman from his past, a girl who was happily married to her high school sweetheart.

  Several moments passed with no answer from Lauren so he repeated himself. “What is it you want?”

  Pausing in the doorway, she looked back at him, one hand resting on the wall. “What do I want?” she repeated. After a moment of silence, a rare look entered her eyes and her mouth curved up in a sad, bittersweet grin. “A fairy tale,” she finally replied softly, shaking her head.

  “A fairy tale? I didn’t think a knight on a white charger was your style, Lauren,” Dale responded.

  “I want something I can’t have, Dale. Just like you do. The difference is that I don’t see the point in trying to substitute.”

  He scowled at her, his brows drawing down over his eyes, his mouth sulky, snarling. Lauren chuckled at the look. “Dale, you’re free to see whomeve
r you choose. As many as you choose. And likewise, I’m welcome to see as few men as I want.” As she spoke, she headed down the hall, passing the recessed living room, her feet padding silently over the pristine white carpet.

  Pausing in the open doorway at the end of the hall, Lauren looked over her shoulder. Calmly meeting his gaze, she told him, “I don’t believe in settling, Dale. Surely you know that by now.” She then placed her hand square in the middle of his chest and gently shoved him back. “I want a shower, Dale, if you don’t mind.”

  Dale lounged on the deep blue sofa, a can of coke in one hand, the remote in the other. In the bathroom upstairs, the shower was running. He flicked through the channels, frustrated with Lauren, but not sure why.

  Her quiet gray eyes always saw too damn much.

  It seemed as though she could see right through him, clear down to his soul, yet Dale could never quite fathom what was going on inside that brain of hers. Every emotion she felt was hidden behind cool gray eyes, a serene face, and the smile of a Madonna.

  Shit, she had gone and ruined his mellow mood, in less than one minute.

  He could spend all night fucking a woman’s brains out. He’d wake up feeling pretty damned pleased with himself, and then he would see that appraising, slightly disappointed look in Lauren’s eyes.

  Tuning off the television, he started mentally trying to work out the kinks in his current work in progress, a tale about a magician who had accidentally turned himself into a mouse and couldn’t quite figure out how to turn himself back. A twist of sorts, on the old Beauty and the Beast legend.

  Lauren loved it. It wasn’t anywhere near finished and he wasn’t sure how he was going to end it, but the basics were there.

  Absently, his eyes drifted over the familiar room, deep jewel toned furniture on pristine white carpet, the paintings and photographs that adorned the walls, all without really seeing anything.

  He glanced over at the canvas by the backdoor, drifting away before being jerked back. A new one.

  A landscape of the ocean, but not the way he saw it. The sand, the brush, the seashells, the sea, all glimmered with a pulse of life underneath. On the shore, turned so that the viewer could see only her nude back, stood a woman, hands stretched high and wide overhead, head tipped back, staring up into the sky. A faint glimmer of wings surrounded her.

  Her paintings always seemed…otherworldly, almost ethereal, as though she saw it through the eyes of one of the faeries he wrote about. How somebody as down to earth and logical as Lauren Spencer managed to paint like she did was one thing that confounded him.

  Lauren had sold her first painting in her first year of college, to an art professor, of all people, who had been astonished at the rough talent of the eighteen year old. By twenty, Lauren had exhibits in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. By twenty-three, she had refused an offer from a master to come to France for further study. At twenty-five, she was living what most people considered a dream.

  One of her pieces hung over his bed, a Christmas gift from her two years ago. The piece of canvas was one of his most cherished possessions. He did the artwork for the stories he wrote, but his drawings were like that of a child’s cartoon, rosy-cheeked princes and princesses, witches with hooked noses and warts that somehow managed to be cute and only slightly scary. Cute and clever, not something that could bring a tear to the eye.

  Lauren had taken a scene from his first tale, A Prince’s Wish, and turned it from a child’s bedtime story into a painting that seemed too beautiful to have been done by human hands. It was when the prince, Osrel, had stumbled upon the faerie princess in the woods, sitting by a stream. This time, Osrel wasn’t a picture perfect, pretty little boy with a playful looking sword and a sweet looking horse. She had painted only the suggestion of a man, standing in shadow, staring at a seductively lovely creature that was reaching out her hand to her reflection in the stream. Tumbled blonde hair fell over a bare shoulder, lowered lashes hid her eyes. The faintest suggestion of wings in the background.

  All of her work was stunning. And sad. It was as though she was observing these incredibly lovely things, coveting them, wanting to be part of that beauty, but unsure of how to reach out for it

  As she towel dried her hair, scowling at her reflection in the mirror, Lauren decided she should shoot herself. Or maybe just accidentally bust her head wide open. It was bound to be less painful than what she had agreed to do. She was going on a double date with Dale and some golf buddy and the alluring Allison, his latest actress, to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat in downtown Louisville.

  Oh, joy.

  Why in the hell couldn’t she say no to him? She sure as hell didn’t have trouble saying it to anybody else. An hour and a half later, she thought dismally, she was about to get more practice. The golf buddy was going to be another groper. He topped her five-foot-nine by four inches and should have had no trouble meeting her gaze, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her chest.

  A problem she was familiar with and had been since she had started wearing a 36 DD in eighth grade. Her dress, a sleeveless, long, pale green column that fell to her ankles, slit up both sides to just above the knee, had a high collar that closed at the back of her neck with a single button. It was an elegant and timeless style, modest and classic.

  As he introduced himself, his gaze once again fell from her face to land insultingly on her breasts. Later, her back rigid, she told herself if Derek’s hand drifted southward from her shoulder one more time, she would shatter every misconception Dale had about her being calm and logical by hunting down a knife and severing Derek Gaines’ hand from his wrist and feeding it to him, chunk by chunk.

  Dale sat in the seat next to her, where she could feel his body heat, smell the sandalwood scent of his skin, and listen as he murmured in Allison’s ear. Where she could watch out of the corner of her eye as he stroked her thigh with long, skilled fingers.

  While she sat ramrod stiff and periodically disappeared into the women’s room just to avoid the Gaines bastard.

  Finally, the play ended and Lauren escaped into the lobby, pretending an interest in the artwork as a ploy to avoid Dale’s cheerful banter. Blind fool, she thought morosely.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass wall that made up the front part of the Kentucky Center for the Arts, her mouth turned down in a grim line. Most people found her attractive enough. Her hair was ebony black and her eyes were a pure clear gray. Her oval face was dominated by those eyes and a wide, mobile mouth. The top lip was a perfect cupid’s bow, the bottom lush and full. Lauren had been told, more than once, that her mouth had been designed for sex. The first time, if she recalled correctly, had been by a foster father at the age of eleven.

  She stood a curvy five-foot-nine and weighed one-fifty, her body well proportioned, requiring little maintenance to keep its hourglass shape. The three weekly classes of karate were for amusement and enjoyment. She could have easily maintained her weight and size without the classes, thanks to a healthy, quick metabolism.

  Even if it was nothing more than a physical attraction, Lauren wished Dale would notice she was alive. On some level other than his ‘buddy.’ But he was oblivious to the body many women would have cheerfully died for, the body she had given to no man. Until she had met Dale, she hadn’t met one worth the trouble.

  And Dale just plain didn’t want it.

  It was really pathetic, she mused sadly. A twenty-five-year-old virgin who would probably live to be a hundred-year-old virgin, all because her neighbor was a blind, deaf, and dumb idiot.

  “Maybe you just need to get laid,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe if you get rid of the burden of virginity with somebody, losing it with him wouldn’t be so damned appealing.”

  With a sigh, she followed the rest of the group out to the parking garage. Dinner. She still had to get through dinner. Stifling a moan of agony, she dawdled enough that Derek ended up sliding into the back of the car before her, thereby allowing h
er to avoid his ‘helping’ hands.

  Later, as the Explorer pulled up the driveway to Dale’s house, Lauren calculated the amount of time it would take to ditch the bastard who kept running his hand up and down her thigh, no matter how many times she had bumped it off.

  When the fingers of that hand grazed her high on the inner thigh, Lauren bared her teeth and smacked the hand away, hard enough to make her fingers sting. She was out of the truck like a rocket and said over her shoulder, “That’s it for me, folks. I’m going home.”

  Dale called after her, but she ignored him, ignored the murmurs that were undoubtedly coming from Derek. She had nothing on her mind but a hot shower to wash the feel of those cold fingers from her body.

  She would have been better off to have paid more attention, she realized just a few minutes later, as she was cornered on her porch by a leering advertising executive. He wasn’t just plain stupid or too ignorant to recognize a brush-off; he was a disgusting, perverted idiot who wasn’t interested in taking ‘no’ for an answer.

  “I know you want the same thing I do.” His long blunt fingers wrapped around her arms as he breathed against her neck.

  “I seriously doubt you want yourself to disappear off the face of the earth,” Lauren snapped, planting her hands against his chest and shoving back with every bit of strength she had in her body.

  The ad exec now lay on his back, somewhat stunned. Lauren backed away just slightly, turning so that he couldn’t corner her up against the wall, tensing her body.

  “Gonna play hard to get?” he laughed from his sprawl on the ground.

  Arching a brow at him, she coolly told him, “In your case? Not hard, try impossible. I’d rather bounce on the sheets with a leper.”

  His eyes widened, then narrowed, as her words sank home. Derek remained on his back as she shifted, his surprise clearly evident in his face. The surprise, though, gave way to anger and Lauren had a moment of fear as he shot to his feet. But when a girl of eleven wakes up to find her foster father leaning over her bed at night, she learns more than caution. She learns self-defense.