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Then her phone vanished from her hand.
“Hey!” she squawked as Luke held it out of reach.
“I knew it.” He smirked. “This is a booty call, Sab.”
“It is not.” She swiped at the phone but he kept it away from her. Until she grabbed his ear and yanked.
“Ow! Are you serious?” Her brother rubbed his ear, affronted. “We’re not ten years old any longer.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” She glared at him before reading Flynn’s one-word reply. Home.
Not his old home, but the new one. Julian had been awarded the family estate and Flynn had been given Emmons Parker’s Seattle penthouse. Forty-five hundred square feet of steel beams and glass, charcoal-gray floors and dark cabinetry built by the finest designers.
She pecked in her response—that she’d be there in ten minutes—bottomed out her sparkling water and stood, blowing her brother a kiss. “Later, Einstein.”
“Booty call,” he replied.
“Shut up.”
“Be safe!” he called behind her, his laughter chasing her out the door.
At Flynn’s building, she pulled into the private parking area where she used the code he’d given her and tucked her compact into the spare space next to his car. Inside, she took the elevator to the penthouse, again using a passcode to zoom to the uppermost floor. The building felt far too serious for him.
Or for who Flynn used to be, anyway. He was pretty serious nowadays.
His seriousness had tripled when he and Veronica were married. Sabrina didn’t want to be unfair, but credit was due where it was due. He’d been a committed husband and now that Sabrina didn’t have to play nice any longer, she’d admit that Veronica had kept Flynn running in circles. His ex-wife had wanted to be pleased at every turn. With jewelry, more money and bigger, better everything. The house they’d lived in on Main and Eastwood was a friggin’ mansion and still Veronica had whined about it.
With that unsavory thought simmering in her veins, she stepped from the elevator and into his foyer, announcing herself as she walked in. Expectedly, her voice bounced off the high beams and rang from the glass windows. She opened her mouth to sing a song from The Sound of Music when she spotted Flynn walking down the slatted stairs.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned.
“Spoilsport.” She blew out a breath without belting out a single note and then relinquished her purse and coat to the dining room table. A white block with white chairs and in the center, oh, look, a white bowl with some weird porcelain white orbs in it. She palmed one and tested its weight. “Your decorator has no personality.”
“I didn’t hire the decorator for her personality.” Flynn glanced up from the iPad in his hand. “I hired the decorator to remove my father’s personality.”
She glanced around at the square black sofa and gray coffee tables. The gray rug. The white mantel over which hung a framed painting of a black smudge on a white background.
“Success,” she agreed with a placid smile. “What’d you need me for? I was under the impression you were sad or drunk or having some sort of belated episode because of the divorce.”
“What I am about to have is enough Chinese food to feed an army.”
“What about Gage and Reid?”
“What about them?”
“Um.” What she couldn’t say was that she felt the out-of-place need for a buffer or two. “Wouldn’t they suffice in helping you rid yourself of excess takeout?”
Setting aside the iPad, he looked down at her, his handsome smile dazzling. “I’d rather hang with you. I’ve felt lately like you’ve been on the outside for too long.”
“The outside?”
“In the background.” His mouth pulled down at the edges. “The four of us used to hang out more. Outside of work. And then...we didn’t.”
Sabrina’s heart swelled. She’d missed him over the last three years he’d been married, but accepted that marriage required attention. Still, it was nice to know that she mattered and that he’d missed her.
“Aw.” She beamed at the compliment and patted his cheek, not thinking a thing of it. Until she became acutely aware of the warmth from his skin and the rough scrape of his facial hair as she swept her fingers away. She cleared her throat and reminded herself that Flynn was her friend and nothing more. “There, was that so hard?”
His smile returned. “Begging is unattractive.”
