Page 4 of My Best Friend's CEO Dad

“How long?” Mom yells when I tell her I’m taking a trip.

I lean back, holding my hands up. “There’s no need to yell, Mom.”

She smiles shakily. “I didn’t yell,” she says.

I don’t bother arguing. Ever since Dad passed five years ago, she’s been a little clingier than she was before. I get it. It’s not like I can judge her for it. I’m all she has left.

“Just a few days,” I tell her. “They canceled class. I’ve only got remote work to do. I figured, why not?”

“And you’re staying with Lukas Larson?”

“No, it’s his place,” I say. “It’ll just be Maci and me.”

Mom bites her lip. She’s a beautiful woman with long, flowing brown hair and a curvy body like mine, except she seems way more comfortable in her skin. She glances at Mark, frowning.

Mark smiles, taking Mom’s hand and squeezing it. “That sounds like it could be fun,” he says.

I can see what’s happening so clearly. It should make me warm to him. He’s trying to help Mom overcome her abandonment hangups. Yet every time I look at him, I wish Dad was sitting there instead. Still, I should try. “Thanks, Mark.”

“Just the two of you?” Mom says. “All alone out there?”

“Mom, it’s a property owned by Lukas Larson. I’m sure it has security.”

When I think about Lukas, I get this sort of, I don’t know, this weird feeling—an inappropriate feeling. That’s why I always shut it down straight away. I stomp on it hard. I won’t let my thoughts go there—ever. That’s that. Kayla and I are too close for me to entertain that sort of craziness.

“Well…” Mom leans forward, still talking loud but forcing a smile. “I think you’ll have a great time.”

And she’s right. We do. We spend the day in the indoor pool and later play board games.

Then I wake up, make myself a coffee in the shiny, expensive machine, and happen to look out the window.

That’s when I see him—all of him.

CHAPTER 3

LUKAS

Igrab a towel from the hook and wrap it around myself, then sit on one of the poolside chairs, rubbing my hands down on the towel and grabbing my phone. I’ve got ten emails that need a response and about a hundred others I can afford to push to the back burner until the VR stuff is dealt with.

Swimming naked always brings me a feral sense of freedom. Like I’m a wild man, not a CEO, and all I have to worry about is the next stroke, the motion of the water around me. Not all the responsibility that is weighing me down. Not all the self-pity that threatens to cling to me. Goddamn it. I’m sitting next to one of my two pools on this property and a house I don’t live in full-time. I seriously need to get some perspective.

I pause when I hear the tapping on the glass. Turning, I see Maci, a shopping bag in one hand, waving with the other. A smile spreads across my face, the morbid feeling leaving me.

“Kayla?” I yell, grinning.

She slides the door open. “I thought you’d still be in the city,” she says, dropping her bag and walking over.

She leans down, hugging me. I kiss her on the forehead.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Maci and I decided to have a little getaway,” she says. “Wait a sec… Were you swimming?—”

I swallow. “Uh, yeah. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Thank God I was out,” she says, laughing, “and Maci was asleep.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Marcy needs to see that.”

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