Daddy’s Best Friend Secret by Lauren Wood

1

Clara

Abest friend was supposed to be someone who made you a better person. They were always supposed to support you and be on your side. When you were in the wrong, they were supposed to help you realize that. When you were sad, they were supposed to make you happy. They were supposed to be the person that you could talk to about anything.

I had a feeling that my best friend was broken.

She hardly ever listened to anything that I had to say. Instead, she talked about herself a majority of the time. But I didn’t really have a problem with that. Shae lived a very eventful life, and I had nothing better to do than to sit around and listen to her talk about her latest problem… which typically had something to do with some boy.

To her, my problems didn’t matter as much, which was fine. I was the kind of person who denied having problems anyway. To many people she would have been selfish and ignorant, and she still was. But she happened to be the kind of best friend that I needed.

I had my head thrown back against the pillow, resting on my chair. The sun was hardly touching me, thanks to the umbrella that I had pulled up. I had a bad tendency to burn easily. Not like a tan. No, I would turn bright red, and then everything hurt to touch. So I tried to stay out of the sun the best that I could, regardless of how much sunscreen I had on.

“What do you think about that spicy man?” Shae was biting her lip as she stared at one of the guys walking past us. In my eyes, he looked like every other guy that had walked past us in the course of the last twenty or so minutes.

He was blond with blue eyes. He had abs, and he sent us a smirk before continuing the volleyball game that he was playing with his friends.

“Hm,” I hummed, not caring too much one way or another.

“You could pretend that you care,” Shae pointed out.

“That would require more effort than I’m willing to put in.”

“I hate you.”

I smiled at my best friend. She looked the exact opposite of me. Instead of my pale skin, she had a beautiful brown complexion. Her hair was gorgeous, curly and dark compared to my straight red hair. And instead of being tall, she was petite and cute.

And our looks weren’t the only thing that were different. We couldn’t have been more different personality-wise, either.

“You’re weird,” she stated, getting comfortable in her lounge chair. “You’re twenty, your entire life should be boys. Nothing but boys.”

“That’s where I have to disagree with you.” I pulled my shades down. “There are other things in life, you know?”

“Really?” She asked, feigning stupid. “I never would have known.”

“Well, now you do. I’m happy to have taught you something new.”

“What would I do without you?” Shae asked sarcastically. “I’m just saying that there’s nothing wrong with getting a peek.”

“Do you forget the fact that I have a boyfriend?”

Shae frowned. “Oh, yeah.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

My boyfriend, Brendan, was sweet and nice as far as boyfriends went. And he definitely wasn’t anything like the guys that Shae went out with. I’d made sure of that after seeing Shae continuously getting her heart broken by the bad boy persona she tended to go after so much.

She never seemed to learn her lesson. She tended to make the same mistake over and over again.

“Nothing,” Shae said, quickly. “Don’t get so upset.”

“Don’t offend me, and maybe I won’t.”

I’d never had a boyfriend before Brendan. In high school, I was a nerd. The last thing on my mind was boys. The biggest importance in my life was studying and getting good grades so that I could get into a good college.

I didn’t want everything in life handed to me just because my daddy happened to make a lot of money. I wanted to make a name for myself, apart from him. Besides, he hadn’t always had money. He’d grown into this new wealth for himself, but before that, my father and I had been close to poverty.

And that was a place that neither of us ever wanted to be again. Besides, my father was too consumed by money to ever let that go.

“I just think you can find someone better than Brendan.”

How many times had I heard Shae preach this same message over the course of the last few months? She liked to tell me how far out of Brendan’s league I was even when I didn’t ask. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. Brendan was nice and cute enough to me.

But then again, I’d never been in a relationship before. I wasn’t completely sure of what a relationship was supposed to be like. Since Brendan and I had started dating, Shae had never liked him, although she hadn’t ever given me a concrete reason why that was. She always just said that something about him seemed ‘off’ and ‘strange’ whatever that meant. But she was never willing to elaborate.

Shae’s opinion didn’t matter much to me anyways. She didn’t get to have much of a say when every guy that she’d ever dated had broken her heart. Besides, I enjoyed the time that I spent with Brendan, regardless of what she said.

He was like my best friend. Things were never tense when I was with him. I never had to worry about being a person that I wasn’t. I could just be myself, and wasn’t that supposed to be all that I wanted in a guy? Someone I could consider a friend? Wasn’t that what all of the love stories were about?

“As you’ve been telling me since I started dating him.”

“Just, listen to me, Clara.” She sat up, and her gaze turned to the ocean and the people around it. “There are millions of fish in the sea.” Her tongue licked her bottom lip. “Why settle for just one?”

“Has being hurt so many times caused you to become a serial heartbreaker?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Nothing wrong with breaking a few hearts.”

“Not the kind of love story that I would like.”

Shae lifted the glasses off of her head and looked back at me. “Who said anything about love?”

I remembered when Shae wasn’t such a love cynic, but that had probably been about five men back. For some reason, she had the nasty habit of always managing to pick the wrong guys, although if she listened to me, she would have avoided the unnecessary heartbreak.

But Shae was the kind of person who had to learn for herself. She liked to act like she was the only one who had ever experienced such intense feelings before. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her differently.

Brendan was exactly what I needed, in my chaotic life. A good majority of my time was spent studying or with my dad or with Shae. I didn’t spend all day with Brendan like I’d seen other couples do, but he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. In fact, I think he preferred a relationship just like ours.

“Maybe you’re pushing your past experiences onto Brendan because he’s one of the good guys, and that’s the easiest thing for you to do.” I shrugged because it could be true. She had been against him from the start.

“Whatever,” Shae scoffed and rolled her eyes in pure Shae fashion that meant she could care less about what I said. But what did I expect from someone who was as self-oriented as she was? Or, had I forgotten that the world completely revolved around her?

“Brendan’s been nothing but nice to you whenever he’s met you, and you’re still a bitch to him. Maybe it’s not him that’s not trying hard enough. It’s you, and it’s about time you started trying harder. He’s a big part of my life, whether you like that or not, and you can’t run him off so will you please stop trying to?”

Shae looked taken aback by my words, probably because I never actually stood up to her, usually. It wasn’t that Shae scared me, far from it, actually. I tended not to even attempt to deal with her drama, and the best way to do that was by keeping my mouth shut.

But this was different.

“Look, Clara, I love you, and I just want what’s best for you. You know how good I am at reading people, and something about him doesn’t feel right. I wouldn’t tell you if I really didn’t think it was the right thing to say.”

Shae was the worst judge of character. But this was supposed to be our vacation, and I wouldn’t be dragged into another argument with her, especially not about Brendan.

I lay back down against the chair, not about to let a petty argument ruin my vacation. I slipped a book out of my bag and lifted my sunglasses up so that I could see the words. I wasn’t the kind of person who played in the water or volleyball with friends. My ideal day at the beach was simply lounging and reading.

Thankfully, this time around, Shae wasn’t forcing me to get into the water, so I had that to be grateful for. Instead, I could hide underneath the umbrella and simply enjoy my time in a book.

“Oh, hello, you,” Shae purred, as she set her eyes on another man. She started making weird, cat calling noises, and I ignored her. She was my best friend, but even I had to admit that she was over the top boy crazy like an actual lunatic. That didn’t mean that I love her any less though.

“You could put kids in me any day.” She continued commenting about this man. If I didn’t know her, I would think that she was drooling about this man. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? Shae drooling? “Honey, where have you been all of my life?”

“Shae!” I snapped her name. “Will you hush?”

“I can’t.” There was a smirk on her face. “Not, when I’m looking at perfection. Look at him.”

“If I look at him, will you shut up?”

“I’ll consider it.”

I rolled my eyes and put my book down so that I could look at the guy who was ‘perfect’ as Shae had described him. I didn’t have to search the beach long before I found the guy that she was talking about. When I laid my eyes on him, I understood why Shae had talked about him as much as she had.

He was perfection.

He had to be the most attractive man that I’d ever seen. His hair was light, but it was obvious that he’d dyed it blond. He had probably been a brunet, but that didn’t make the blond suit him any less. In fact, it may have made him more attractive. His hair was long, not quite shoulder length, but long enough to curl around his ears and hang in front of his eyes.

And those eyes. They were hazel, unique in themselves. He had a bit of scruff on his chin, and he was tan from all of the time that he spent in the sun. In both cheeks, he had the most adorable dimples.

But he wasn’t a boy, far from it. He was a man. Everything about him screamed how old he was. He wasn’t like the other fake blond surfers who didn’t have a clue what they were doing and were trying to show off to the girls sitting on the beach.

Nothing he was doing was for attention. Instead, he seemed like he did it because he wanted to. There was a power that surrounded him that had women swarming to be around him.

He was perfect.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes, and, unsurprisingly, there were girls attempting to flirt with him, smiling and twirling their fingers around their hair. But I couldn’t blame them. If I were in their situation, I probably would have done the same.

No boyfriend to tie me down and no idea who the mysterious stranger was.

But I did have a boyfriend, and I did know who he was. Even then, I still felt myself wishing that he could do some dirty things to me, even if it was only for one night.

“Doesn’t he look just yummy?” Shae asked me once I’d been staring for too long.

I grabbed my book and laid back down. “I know who that is.”

“Ha-ha, funny joke, Clara,” Shae said and rolled her eyes.

“It’s not a joke.”

Shae’s expression turned serious. “You really know who that is?”

“He’s a business partner and friend of my dad’s,” I explained. “My dad invited him on the trip. He’s known him for years. His name is Klaus Ledger. You’ve probably seen his name in magazines. He’s a billionaire playboy, and he happens to be the man who gave my dad the investment he needed to start his business.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Shae asked, sounding betrayed.

“Tell you what?”

“That an Adonis was joining us on vacation?”

“He’s good to look at, alright,” I agreed with her. “But you don’t want to get involved with him, trust me. He’s not worth the heartbreak.” I’d heard plenty of stories about him from my dad and all the magazine articles. “He has all of this money and thinks he’s better than everyone else. And he’s not a hard worker, in the slightest. He spends all of his time goofing up and going on vacation and being with women.”

What kind of adult man lived the life of a frat boy, in college? His lifestyle was deplorable.

“You know what I hear?” Shae asked. “That he can spend all of his time with me, all of his money on me, I don’t have to work, and we can vacation anywhere I want to go.”

“You’re so shallow.” I rolled my eyes.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. “I’m surprised you’re just now noticing.”

“Oh, I’ve known for a long time.”

Shae laughed. “So, you’ve never once thought of doing Klaus? Damn, even his name is attractive!”

I could tell her the truth. She was my best friend, after all. When I first met him, the only thing I could think about days after was how good he would feel inside of me, making me his. But they were thoughts that would never become a reality. Besides, I had a boyfriend.

“No,” I answered her, my eyes going back to my book. “He’s just my father’s best friend.”