Trapped with My Best Friend's Dad: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 258) Read online

  Contents

  Trapped with My Best Friend’s Dad

  NEWSLETTER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  NEWSLETTER

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS

  BRATVA BEAR SHIFTERS

  LAIRDS & LADIES

  RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD

  IRISH WOLF SHIFTERS

  Collaborations

  About the Author

  Trapped with My Best Friend’s Dad

  AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE

  _______________________

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS, 258

  FLORA FERRARI

  Copyright © 2021 by Flora Ferrari

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

  Trapped with My Best Friend’s Dad

  It’s meant to be a girl’s getaway, but when I get there early and my best friend, Millie, misses her flight, I’m sure the trip is destined to be a disaster.

  Matters are made worse when I find out the cabin isn’t empty, as we thought.

  Instead, there’s a six and a half foot silver-haired giant living there, with ripped abs and muscles for days. I’m captivated when we meet, unable to take my eyes off him.

  Then he tells me who he is.

  Roman Robinson, the reclusive best-selling writer who has never shown his face in public – the millionaire who just so happens to be my best friend’s dad.

  I console myself with the fact this forty-two year old experienced man would never be interested in a twenty year old virgin like me. Roman might not seek celebrity, but a man with his looks and money can do better than a dorky inexperienced virgin.

  But then a storm strikes, the worst of the decade, trapping us in the cabin by the lake. It’s just me and him and the most adorable little doggie ever, Tanker.

  As the rainy and thundery days pass, it becomes more and more difficult to ignore my desires. Stranded with nothing to do, I start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Roman might feel the same way.

  When he claims me in the most feral and possessive way a man can, there’s no more room for doubt.

  He wants me just as badly as I want him.

  But surely it can never work. I might be a theatre student, but I avoid drama in real life at all costs. Millie is my closest friend.

  What the heck is she going to do when she finds out about me and her dad?

  I never thought I’d say this. But I’m starting to hope this storm never ends.

  * Trapped with My Best Friend’s Dad is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

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  Chapter One

  Rayla

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Millie asks.

  I smile and shake my head as I inch my way forward in the line to check my luggage. Millie and I were supposed to be visiting her Maine holiday home together for a week this summer, but her flight has just been canceled and she can’t get another until tomorrow evening.

  That’s the price we pay for arranging holidays when we live on opposite sides of the country.

  I’m flying over from California and she’s stranded in New York.

  “It’s just a day,” I tell her on the phone. “I’ll hang out. Maybe work on that play I’ve been neglecting. Maybe I’ll run some lines. Please relax.”

  “I just feel so bad.”

  She groans in that way I’m familiar with, all her empathy bursting through.

  Ever since we met by chance at college two years ago, it’s difficult to imagine life without her. We bonded straight away through our shared love of literature and drama and generally being silly. Neither of us had a bona fide bestie when we were growing up, and it’s like we’re making up for that fact as we threw ourselves into this friendship, our chemistry goes well beyond our two years.

  I find myself being able to read her far easier than anybody else, even my mom and step-dad, Markus.

  “Just relax, jeez.” I laugh. “It’s not your fault the flight got canceled, is it?”

  “Freaking mechanical fault.” She sighs. “It’s like the airline’s trying to trap me in New York.”

  “So you can work on your novel?” I tease.

  One of our running jokes is that we’re both constantly starting projects only to abandon them. Even though it always makes me laugh when we banter in this way, I can’t deny there’s a nugget of discomfort in there when I think about my unfinished play.

  I know it’s the same for Millie with her novel, and what are friends for if not to joke about your shared failures with you?

  “Yeah, exactly.” She giggles. “I’ve already rebooked for tomorrow evening, but that means you’re going to have the whole place to yourself for at least a day. What the heck are you going to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll set the place on fire.” I laugh. “You’re talking like I’m some helpless damsel or something, completely lost without you.”

  “Well, do you remember when we first met?”

  I groan, a smile touching my lips as the memory hits me. It was at an extra-curricular drama club and I was carrying all the props in the universe. At least, that’s how it felt at the time.

  As the newbie, I was tasked with carrying a bunch of hats, wigs, fake guns, cutlasses, and a bunch of other drama-related stuff into the big rehearsal hall. But of course, I ended up dropping the whole pile at the worst possible moment, right as the Queen Bee was launching into her lengthy monologue.

  Everybody laughed as it all crashed down around me, but then Millie was there, kneeling down beside me with a soft smile on her face.

  She’s my opposite in pretty much every way, physically speaking.

  She’s thin and tall. I’m short and, well, not thin.

  She has blonde hair and I have dark brown.

  She’s got a tattoo on her wrist – a blue butterfly – and another of an angel spreading its wings on her lower back. I don’t have any tattoos, never even thought about it. I tell myself this is because I want
to keep my skin untouched for acting roles in the future, but honestly, it just doesn’t interest me.

  And needles?

  No thanks.

  “I think I’ve matured a little in the last two years. I mean, heck, look at me… ready to brave the dangerous terrain of Maine all by myself, ready to stay at a luxurious holiday home and completely raid your fridge.”

  She laughs. “Yes, everything’s already been stocked up. I spoke to Jensen earlier in the week.”

  I’ve never pried into just how wealthy Millie is, but I know she has a fair amount of money because her dad is Roman Robinson, one of the most successful authors of the last fifty years. His series of World War Two novels has been made into a hit television show and every single one of his thrillers are international bestsellers.

  Jensen is the Robinson’s fixer – a man who arranges for their lives to be easy and fluid and fun.

  So many girls would flaunt this wealth, rocking up to college with designer labels and draped in jewelry. But Millie has never advertised the fact she’s Roman Robinson’s daughter, and when she submits short stories to publications, she even uses a pen name so they won’t make the connection.

  “I don’t want to succeed just because my dad did,” she said to me once, while sitting up late one night in the drama hall, empty apart from us so our voices echoed all around us. “I want to do something important, significant, meaningful… and not just because my last name is Robinson, you know?”

  “Of course,” I told her. “But if my dad was a famous actor, you better believe I’d be riding his coattails.”

  She laughed and nudged me playfully. “I don’t believe you.”

  The line inches forward, calling me back to the present.

  Outside the floor to ceiling windows, planes take off and land in the gorgeous glittering Californian sun.

  I think about mom out in the garden, leaning over the flowerbeds, in full hippie mode as she tends to her paradise.

  “Are you going to work on the play?” Millie asks.

  “I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’m better just focusing on acting. It’s difficult enough to hone all those techniques without adding a bunch of writing on top, you know? Maybe I should leave the writing to other people.”

  I can almost see the pensive way she’s stroking her chin. She always does that, even when I lightly tease her about it. “I know what you mean. But I do a little acting even if my main focus is writing. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  The line inches forward even more until I’m face to face with the airline employee. She gives me that blunt hurry the hell up look that seems to be their specialty.

  “Listen, I have to go.”

  “Okay,” Millie says. “And again, I’m—”

  “Don’t you dare apologize again. See you later.”

  “Bye, bye.”

  I go through security and let my mind flit to what I’m going to do when I get to the cabin… That’s what Millie said, cabin, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be a simple humble wooden structure.

  But then again, I don’t know. Millie and I never discuss money, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  It simply isn’t part of our friendship.

  As I board the airplane, I can’t help but think about Roman Robinson, Millie’s dad. Even if he’s one of the most successful writers in the world, I have no idea what he looks like. He’s been very careful about never releasing an image of himself, and Millie has never shown me a picture.

  I know he raised Millie alone after her mother died in childbirth. I know he used to be an incredibly prolific writer until recently. He hasn’t released a book in the last three years, and Millie’s made hints here and there that he’s suffering from writer’s block.

  It’s part of his mystique, part of what makes him so famous – his utter refusal to participate in public life.

  It’s a testament to just how incredible his writing is too. What other author could get away with never appearing in public or online?

  As I rest my head against the window and watch the ground drift away, I can’t figure out why my mind keeps returning to this mystery man. Perhaps it’s because I finished one of his books last night, a thriller called Sometimes in the Rain, and the last paragraph keeps bouncing around and around in my head.

  There is a pain that will never leave, he wrote. It’s a pain that will hammer into you every second of every day for the rest of your life. And that, my friend, is the pain of not taking a chance: of not acting when the opportunity arises. It’s a pain that will haunt you long after you are gone, corrupting the flowers which attempt to grow around your grave. It is a pain…

  And then the novel freaking ended, leaving me feeling enraptured, curious, and changed in some way, a feeling only great novels can achieve.

  But none of that matters, I assure myself as the plane soars through the air.

  This summer break is about relaxing and spending time with Millie.

  Not thinking about her dad.

  Chapter Two

  Roman

  I let out short puffs of air as I slam my fists into the punching bag, rocking it on its frame as I duck from side to side. It squeaks as it moves back and forth, beads of sweat flying from my bare chest and hitting the gym’s floor.

  It’s like I can block out the thoughts with every punch – the thoughts that I can’t write a single goddamn word, can’t drag anything out of me.

  I sit at the keyboard and stare at the screen and nothing happens.

  All my life – I reflect as I pick up speed, hammering my fist like I’m pummeling my worst enemy – I’ve been able to sit at a computer and simply type.

  That was all I had to do, sit and type, and as if by magic the words would flood the page, filling it up, up, up, until sometimes it felt like somebody else had written the book. It was like hypnosis or mindfulness or whatever the fuck people want to brand it.

  I didn’t care what people called it, as long as it worked. As long as I could get rid of this clawing need inside of me, the need that’s always been there, this hole I’ve only ever been able to fill with writing.

  But now the words won’t come, and I’m left with nothing but the landscape of my mind. And I hate it, that’s the goddamn truth, hate it because I’ve always felt like there’s this emptiness inside of me.

  I’ve filled the emptiness with fictional people, with plot twists and prose.

  But now…

  I snarl as I hammer the bag even harder, turning my whole body into the movements. The timer goes off, cutting through the gym.

  I turn to find Tanker grinning up at me, his tongue hanging out as he lets out long breaths. He’s a cute-as-hell Jack Russell terrier with a black spot over his eye, called Tanker because of his naturally squat body.

  Kneeling down, I reach out and run my hands over his head. He whines and tilts this way and that. I feel something as I pet my best friend. Of course, I do. I’d be a monster if I didn’t.

  But just because I feel it doesn’t mean the emptiness evaporates. It doesn’t mean I’m able to ignore this clawing hole inside of me, a hole which sometimes feels as though it’s cannibalizing pieces of me, chewing them up and spitting them out over and over until there’s nothing left.

  Millie brings me some happiness. Of course, she does.

  And raising her helped to keep the darkness at bay for a time. But she’s an adult now and she doesn’t need me. I’m glad she’s so independent.

  People have to be able to stand on their own in this world, or it will consume them.

  I smirk, chuckling darkly. “Am I the grimmest bastard in the world, boy?”

  Tanker grins and tilts his head as if to say, Do you really want to know the answer?

  Standing, I scoop him up and cradle him to my chest as I walk around the gym, strolling over to the window and looking out at the glittering lake.

  The lake was the main reason for purchasing this home. Millie loved to swim in it as a girl, a
nd Tanker still loves to swim in it now.

  I’d often sit by the water after long writing sessions, closing my eyes and letting the calmness soothe me.

  I turn away with a dark sigh. “Hungry, boy?”

  Tanker squirms and licks my chin.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I put him on the ground and walk down the hallway, past the landscape paintings of nature scenes. This place is so different from my high rise apartment back in New York. Every inch of this little corner of Maine is rustic, with exposed wood and rafters and every painting designed to make the mind peaceful.

  Peaceful and – so the idea goes – ready for writing.

  But as I walk into the kitchen and head over to the treats cupboard, with little Tanker at my feet every step of the way, I can’t help but think about how much this cabin has failed me. Or I’ve failed the cabin, by not fulfilling its purpose, by not quietening my mind down enough to let myself work.

  “What is it, boy?” I say as I take out one of his sausage treats, his favorite. “Eh? What is this emptiness inside of me? It’s like I’m missing something. But I’ve got everything a man should need. I have money and I get to do what I want – and all that without the burden of being famous. My daughter is happy. I’ve got you, eh?”

  I tickle him behind the ear as I feed him the treat. He grins and wolfs it down, making loud munching noises. I find myself watching him with something like a smile on my face, but it’s the ghost of a true smile, tinged with sadness.