Friendship On Fire. Joss Wood

groaned and ordered a double whiskey.

      Jules...

      Jules heard the muted sound coming from her phone and, without looking at the screen, silenced the alert. Eight thirty in the morning and today was, Jules squinted at the bottom right corner of her computer, Thursday. The only way to stop thinking about Noah, and his wet, naked, ripped body, and the fact that he was back in her orbit, was to go back to work. Instead of taking the break she needed, she slid right back into sixteen-hour days and creating long and detailed schedules so that nothing slipped through the cracks.

      Jules moved her mouse and today’s to-do list appeared on her monitor.

      The reminder of her 9:00 a.m. meeting with the girls was followed by a list of her appointments with clients, suppliers and craftspeople. Her last appointment was at five thirty, and then she had to hustle to make her appointment with her beautician, Dana, for an eyebrow shape and a bikini wax. She was not going to dwell on the fact that the bikini wax was a last-minute request.

      It had nothing to do with looking good for a brown-eyed blond.

       You keep telling yourself that, sweet pea.

      Jules reached for her cup of now-cold coffee and pulled a face when the icy liquid hit the back of her throat. Yuck. Resisting the urge to wipe her tongue on the sleeve of her white button-down shirt, she pushed back her chair. Her phone released the discreet trill of an incoming call and Jules frowned down at the screen, not recognizing the number. As early as it was, she couldn’t ignore the call; too many of her clients and suppliers had this number and she needed to be available to anybody at any time.

      “Jules.”

      She recognized his voice instantly, the way he said her name, the familiar tone sliding over her skin. “Noah.”

      There had been a time when she’d laugh with excitement to get a call from him, when her heart would swell from just hearing his voice. But those were childish reactions and she was no longer the child who’d hero-worshipped Noah, or the teenager who’d thought the sun rose and set with him. He was no longer her best friend, the person she could say anything to, the one person who seemed to get her on a deeper level than even her twin did.

      “What do you want, Lockwood?”

      “We need to talk.”

      “Exactly what I said to you ten years ago,” Jules said, wincing at the bitterness in her voice. After their kiss, he’d avoided her, ducked her calls. She hadn’t suspected he was leaving until he came by her mom’s house one evening to say goodbye. The kiss was never mentioned. When she asked to speak to him privately he’d refused, explaining that he didn’t have time, that there was nothing to discuss. He and Morgan were still engaged. He was dropping out of college. He was going sailing. He didn’t know how often he would be in contact.

      Please don’t worry about him. He’d be fine.

      She’d been so damn happy to receive his first email, had soaked up his news, happy to know that he was safe and leading the race. He’d spoken about the brilliant sunsets, a pod of southern right whales, a squall they’d encountered that day, the lack of winds the next. Reading his words made her feel like they were connected again, that their relationship could be salvaged...

      Then she noticed the email was sent to a group and that her mom, her siblings, his siblings, plus a few of his college buds, received the same message. Jules never received a personalized email, nor did she receive one of his infrequent calls back home. She’d been relegated to the periphery of his life and it stung like a band of fire ants walking over her skin. She still didn’t understand how someone who meant everything to her had vanished like he was never part of her life at all.

      “There’s nothing to say, Noah. Too much water under the hull and all that. We’re adults. We can be civil in company, but let’s not try and resurrect something that is very definitely over.”

      “Oh, it’s not over, Jules. We’re just starting a new chapter of a yet-unwritten book,” Noah replied softly. Then his voice strengthened and turned businesslike. “I do need to talk to you—I need to hire you.”

      Jules dropped her phone, stared at the screen and shook her head. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Speaking of work, I’m late for a meeting.”

      “Do not hang up on me, Ju—”

      Jules pressed the red phone icon on her screen and tossed the device onto her messy desk. Work with him? Seriously? Not in this lifetime.

      * * *

      The display room of Winston and Brogan doubled as a conference room, and most mornings Jules, Darby and DJ started their day with a touch-base meeting, drinking their coffee as the early-morning Charles Street pedestrians passed by their enormous window. Jules sat down on a porcelain-blue-and-white-striped chair and thought that it was time to redesign their showroom. It was small, but it was the first impression clients received when they walked through the door, and it was time for something new, fresh.

      “Creams or blush or jewel colors?” Jules threw the question into the silence before taking a sip of her caramel latte.

      Darby didn’t look up from her phone. “Jewel colors. Let’s make this place pop.”

      “Whatever you two think is best,” DJ replied, as she always did. Jules smiled, her friend was a whiz with money but, unlike her and Darby, she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. They made an effective team. Darby designed buildings. Jules decorated them, and DJ managed their money.

      The fact that they worked so well together was the main reason their full house design firm was one of the best in the city. Oh, they fought... They’d known each other all of their lives and they knew exactly what buttons to push to get a nuclear reaction. But they never fought dirty and none of them held grudges. Well, she would if they allowed her to, which they never did.

      Darby crossed her legs and Jules admired the spiky heel dangling off her foot. The shoe was a perfect shade of nude with a heart-shaped peep toe. So, she’d be borrowing those soon. Hell, they’d shared the same womb, sharing clothes was a given.

      “Tina Harper, she was at college with us, is pregnant. Four months.” Darby looked up from her cell and Jules noticed that her smile was forced. Her heart contracted, knowing that under that brave face her sister ached for what could not be. When they were teenagers, Darby was told that, thanks to chronic endometriosis, the chances of her conceiving a child were slim to none. Closer to none... It was her greatest wish to be a mama, with or without a man. And the way their love lives were progressing, it would probably be without one.

      “Didn’t she date Ben?” DJ asked.

      Darby shrugged. “God, I don’t know. At one point, Ben had a revolving door to his bedroom.”

      “Ben still has a revolving door to his bedroom,” Jules pointed out, thinking of the youngest Lockwood brother. He was probably the best-looking of the three gorgeous Lockwood boys and he was never short of a date or five. She could say the same for her brother, Levi, and Eli and, she assumed, Noah.

      Noah. Jules sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. As always, just thinking his name dropped her stomach to the floor, caused her heart to bounce off her rib cage. Remembering their half-naked kiss threatened to stop her heart altogether.

      “So, how does it feel having Noah back?” DJ asked.

      “He’s back in your life, not mine,” Jules replied, trying to sound casual.

      She’d been interrogated by every member of her family so they could find out what had caused the cold war between her and Noah. Her stock answer, “We just drifted apart,” resulted in rolling eyes and disbelieving snorts but she never elaborated. They periodically still asked her for an explanation. She knew Noah was staying mum because a) Noah wasn’t the type to dish, and b) if he had, then the news would’ve spread like wildfire. The Brogan/Lockwood clan was not known for discretion. Or keeping good gossip to themselves.

      Sometimes