The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy)
Read The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) Online
Authors: Gretchen Galway
Tags: #romance, #romantic comedy, #sexy, #fun, #contemporary romance, #beach read, #california romance
beautiful . . .
When her long-term fiancé dumps her,
34-year-old Lucy Hathcoat is determined to replace him as
efficiently as possible. Her best friend the supermodel is getting
married to a billionaire—what better place than their week-long
wedding in a luxury eco-resort to find a new man? Lucy isn’t picky;
she just wants a decent guy who’s eager to start a family. Someone
as logical, responsible, and practical as she is.
Definitely not the six-foot-five, fun-loving
Miles Girard. Being totally hot and charming is not important. She
doesn’t need a man who makes her laugh. A man who makes her jump in
his lap and kiss him. A man who is pathologically wary of marriage
and thinks she needs
him
more than she needs a husband.
Then again, Lucy’s starting to feel like
maybe, just maybe, she can’t live without him…
by Gretchen Galway
Copyright 2011 Gretchen Galway
Smashwords Edition
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author.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
This was not in the plan
, Lucy
thought, staring at the handsome face on her phone. Her fiancé was
supposed to be standing by her side, pen in hand, not using video
smartphone technology to dump her from another state.
I don’t
love you enough to let you ruin the plan.
“You must’ve known I had some doubts,” Dan
said, his voice as small as he was.
Lucy looked around the empty living room of
the spacious three-bedroom California bungalow with original plank
hardwoods and walnut built-ins. “You said you’d kill to have this
house,” she said, wondering if the real estate agent, laying out
the pages for their revised offer on the granite breakfast counter
in the kitchen, could hear them.
“It’s a great house,” he said, sighing. “A
perfect house. But now I see that it would just tie us down, drag
out the inevitable.”
She blinked, not sure what she was hearing.
“We’ve been planning this for almost five years.”
He hesitated. “I met someone.”
“When? This morning?”
Licking his lips, he said, “Why don’t we talk
later, after you’ve had a chance to calm down.”
She frowned. “I’m hardly hysterical,
Dan.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“You’d like me to be hysterical?”
“Forget it. Of course not. It makes
everything easier.”
She nodded, belatedly piecing together some
clues he’d dropped over the past few months. “Your six-month
assignment in Seattle wasn’t the opportunity of a lifetime,
then.”
“Well… ”
“Ah. A personal opportunity, you meant.”
“I wanted to be sure. For both—for all of
us.”
“Very considerate of you,” she said.
“Damn it, you don’t have to be
sarcastic.”
“You’re hardly in a position to tell me what
to do. I’m the wounded party here, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I think we’ll both need some healing.”
Lucy dropped the phone to her side and
noticed that Robin, the real estate agent, had come up behind her.
Her face was pale.
This was really going to screw over the older
lady, the two of them walking away from the deal now. Robin needed
a sale badly. Typical of Dan to think the world revolved around
him.
Lucy lifted the phone. “We’ll have to call
the mortgage broker.”
He jutted out his chin. “I already have.”
“You told Inez the mortgage broker before you
told me?”
“She kept after me to sign the latest thing.
It didn’t feel right to string her along anymore—” He stopped and
cleared his throat. “Look, you’re getting digitized. I think the
connection is breaking up… ”
“It didn’t feel right to string
her
along?”
He sighed. “So much of our lives together is
what you wanted. Not me. I felt… superfluous a lot of the time.” He
tilted the screen of his laptop so she was staring out the window
of his suite at the Extended Stay America. It wasn’t supposed to be
sunny in Seattle. It looked sunny. She wondered if the new
girlfriend was there, listening off-camera. Dan came back into view
with a coffee cup at his lips.
In Berkeley, outside the house she wasn’t
going to have, the sky was as gray as lint. “Our relationship was
always shaped by what you wanted. We talked about marriage years
ago. I hoped to have my first child before I turned thirty. But you
wanted to save up for the house first, so we did, even though that
was third on my list.”
“You and your lists. That’s one thing I’ve
learned from Brittany—how to trust my heart.”
“Ah, so she’s one of those.” She took a deep
breath and peered into the phone for a glimpse of her. “What else
did the little ho say?”
Dan’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“You wanted hysterical. This is my
version.”
He looked away, then back at the screen, his
lips popping up and down like a broken garage door. “Brittany is
not—” He shook his head and stared off to the side, made an
apologetic face, then jerked his head.
So she had been there. “Thanks for making
this such a private moment.”
“I can’t believe Brittany had to hear
you
call
her
a—a—I can’t even say it.”
“What? She’s been sleeping with my boyfriend.
For months, apparently.”
“Brittany has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Of course. She knows everything.”
Lucy snorted. Her college advisor would’ve
broken out in a rash to hear her insult a woman for exercising her
sexual liberties, but to hell with it. She was under a lot of
stress. “Ho.”
Dan’s eyes went wide as he leaned into his
laptop camera. “She is completely innocent. Brittany’s not in such
a hurry to take her clothes off. Unlike
you
.”
Lucy felt an odd snapping inside her, her
last grip on reality disengaging from Dan’s voice. “We lived
together for five years. You think we should have waited until we
were, what, forty?”
“It’s not how long we waited, it’s how
often
you wanted it. And how much you wanted to do it. I’m a
man, Lucy, and I didn’t need half as much sex as you did.” Then he
ran his hand over his eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I never intended
to talk to you about this.”
Her throat suddenly felt tight. She realized
Robin the real estate agent was hanging on every word. “Did you
talk to her about this? Brittany?”
His sheepish look grew sheepier; he leaned
away from the camera. Faintly, she heard him say, “That’s how we…
how we knew we were perfect for each other. She was avoiding her
boyfriend, and I… I was taking a break, too.”
“And where was this? Her convent?”
“Lucy,” Dan said, shaking his head, looking
so
disappointed
in her.
Humiliation didn’t feel right, so she tapped
into the rage, breathed it like oxygen. “I’m just trying to get the
full picture here. I deserve to know the details.”
“Information isn’t knowledge, Lucy,” Dan
said. “Knowing everything doesn’t make you wise.”
“And having a penis doesn’t make you a man,”
Lucy said.
Robin snorted and patted her hard on the
back. Lucy closed her eyes.
He didn’t like having sex with
me
, she thought
.
It’s not like she had a he-harem of
previous boyfriends to call up for rebuttals. She was thirty-four,
but she’d started late.
Damn.
It took him five years to
propose. She didn’t have another eight to work on someone new.
There were houses to buy, retirement accounts to fund, ovaries to
harvest.
She frowned at him. “You’ve really messed up
my plans.”
“Sometimes I think that’s all I was to you,
Lucy. Just part of your plans.” He leaned back and put his hand
over his heart. “I’ve learned that I need a partner who acts
without analyzing everything to death. Someone more flexible.”
Lucy glanced at Robin, but it was far too
late for any privacy. Holding the phone up to her mouth, she said,
enunciating each word, “One of my plans was for decent sex. I was
flexible about giving up on that.”
She drew back to see his reaction, but the
window had gone black.
Robin peered over her shoulder. “He hung
up?”
Teeth clenched, Lucy shoved her phone in her
bag. “He never could handle a fight.”
“Or much of anything, from the sound of
it.”
Lucy looked at her.
“Sorry,” Robin said.
“It’s true.” Lucy thought of what he
said—
unlike you
—and crossed her arms over her chest. She
didn’t know what to say. She was angry and embarrassed. Too upset
to think clearly, an unfamiliar experience for her.
Robin touched her shoulder lightly. “Maybe
you can explain to Inez—”
“No. Half the income now—less than half,
since his big wanking Y chromosome gets him a higher salary.
There’s no way I can afford it now.” She closed her eyes.
He
didn’t need sex half as much as you did.
An old pain flared to
life, like bumping a bruise you didn’t know you had.
“I’m sorry,” Robin said, moving away into the
kitchen to give her some space.
Lucy leaned against the window and stared out
blindly at the overcast sky. To her annoyance, her heart beat too
fast and her hands shook.
Just like that, he’d ended eight years
together. Over the
phone
.
She needed another few minutes to calm
herself down before she could follow Robin into the kitchen.
“I’m really sorry,” Lucy finally said to her,
putting her hands on the counter next to the now-useless paperwork.
All that personal information, numbers and accounts and addresses.
She’d have to make sure every page was shredded.
Such a waste of… everything.
“Oh, honey,” Robin said, reaching out to
squeeze her hand.
“I know how much you needed this sale.”
Robin’s ex-husband was eager to see her fail at her new life away
from him.
“Not
your
fault.” Robin swept the
pages together on the counter, her hands heavily veined, the long
fingernails painted pale pink. Every time Lucy had seen her, she’d
been wearing the same black pantsuit—high-quality but at least a
decade old.
Lucy took a deep breath. “I just want you to
know, if Dan calls you back, wanting to buy it without me, go ahead
and do it.”
“No! I could never—”
“Any other agent would. You should too. You
found this place before it was listed, you should get the
commission.”
“Do you think he’d do that? Just go buy the
house without you? After what he did to you?”
Two weeks earlier, the moment he’d heard
about the house, even though it was after midnight, he’d insisted
they get in the car and do a drive-by. They’d been waiting at the
door at eight the next morning for the broker’s tour. With their
pre-approval loan package. He made an online photo album of the
pictures he took, emailed them to everyone he knew.
