THE FRIENDS TO LOVERS COLLECTION

  LAUREN BLAKELY

  CONTENTS

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  About

  The Friends to Lovers Collection

  Sex and Other Shiny Objects

  1. Peyton

  2. Tristan

  3. Peyton

  4. Tristan

  5. Peyton

  6. Peyton

  7. Peyton

  8. Tristan

  9. Peyton

  10. Peyton

  11. Tristan

  12. Peyton

  13. Tristan

  14. Peyton

  15. Peyton

  16. Tristan

  17. Peyton

  18. Peyton

  19. Tristan

  20. Peyton

  21. Peyton

  22. Tristan

  23. Peyton

  24. Peyton

  25. Tristan

  26. Peyton

  27. Tristan

  28. Peyton

  29. Tristan

  30. Peyton

  31. Tristan

  32. Peyton

  33. Tristan

  34. Peyton

  Epilogue

  Another Epilogue

  Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend

  Prologue

  1. Summer

  2. Summer

  3. Oliver

  4. Summer

  5. Summer

  6. Oliver

  7. Summer

  8. Summer

  9. Oliver

  10. Summer

  11. Summer

  12. Summer

  13. Oliver

  14. Summer

  15. Summer

  16. Summer

  17. Oliver

  18. Oliver

  19. Oliver

  20. Summer

  21. Oliver

  22. Summer

  23. Oliver

  24. Oliver

  25. Summer

  26. Oliver

  27. Summer

  28. Summer

  29. Summer

  30. Oliver

  31. Summer

  32. Oliver

  33. Summer

  34. Oliver

  35. Oliver

  36. Summer

  37. Oliver

  38. Summer

  39. Oliver

  40. Summer

  41. Oliver

  42. Oliver

  43. Oliver

  Epilogue

  Hard Wood

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Another Epilogue

  And One More Epilogue

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  Contact

  Copyright © 2022 by Lauren Blakely

  Cover Design by KP Simmon

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  ALSO BY LAUREN BLAKELY

  Big Rock Series

  Big Rock

  Mister O

  Well Hung

  Full Package

  Joy Ride

  Hard Wood

  Happy Endings Series

  My Single-Versary

  A Wild Card Kiss

  Shut Up and Kiss Me

  Kismet

  Hopelessly Bromantic Duet (MM)

  Hopelessly Bromantic

  Here Comes My Man

  Rules of Love Series

  The Rules of Friends with Benefits (A Prequel Novella)

  The Virgin Rule Book

  The Virgin Game Plan

  The Virgin Replay

  The Virgin Scorecard

  Men of Summer Series (MM)

  Scoring With Him

  Winning With Him

  All In With Him

  The Guys Who Got Away Series

  Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend

  The What If Guy

  Thanks for Last Night

  The Dream Guy Next Door

  The Gift Series

  The Engagement Gift

  The Virgin Gift

  The Decadent Gift

  The Extravagant Series

  One Night Only

  One Exquisite Touch

  My One-Week Husband

  MM Standalone Novels

  A Guy Walks Into My Bar

  One Time Only

  The Bromance Zone

  The Heartbreakers Series

  Once Upon a Real Good Time

  Once Upon a Sure Thing

  Once Upon a Wild Fling

  Boyfriend Material

  Asking For a Friend

  Sex and Other Shiny Objects

  One Night Stand-In

  Lucky In Love Series

  Best Laid Plans

  The Feel Good Factor

  Nobody Does It Better

  Unzipped

  Always Satisfied Series

  Satisfaction Guaranteed

  Instant Gratification

  Overnight Service

  Never Have I Ever

  PS It’s Always Been You

  Special Delivery

  The Sexy Suit Series

  Lucky Suit

  Birthday Suit

  From Paris With Love

  Wanderlust

  Part-Time Lover

  One Love Series

  The Sexy One

  The Only One

  The Hot One

  The Knocked Up Plan

  Come As You Are

  Sports Romance

  Most Valuable Playboy

  Most Likely to Score

  Standalones

  Stud Finder

  The V Card

  The Real Deal

  Unbreak My Heart

  The Break-Up Album

  The Caught Up in Love Series

  The Pretending Plot (previously called Pretending He’s Mine)

  The Dating Proposal

  The Second Chance Plan (previously called Caught Up In Us)

  The Private Rehearsal (previously called Playing With Her Heart)

  Seductive Nights Series

  Night After Night

  After This Night

  One More Night

  A Wildly Seductive Night

  ABOUT

  A hand-picked selection of Lauren Blakely's signature friends-to-lovers romances!

  The Friends to Lovers Collection includes some of #1 NYT Bestseller Lauren Blakely’s bestselling and fan favorite friends-to-lovers romances. In these three standalone romances, you’ll enjoy some of what Lauren is best known for – helping friends fall in love with heat, heart and humor.

  SEX AND OTHER SHINY OBJECTS...Peyton asks her best friend Tristan to help her with a project to test the premise of sexy scenes in romance novels. When the buttons start flying, all bets are off!

  DEAR SEXY EX-BOYFRIEND... Summer never expected the letter to her sexy best friend Oliver would go viral. But now she needs him to pose as her fake fiancé, and he needs her to save his business.

  HARD WOOD...Mia just hired Patrick's adventure tour company for her business, but things are about to get hard in the woods when they're stuck in a tent...and a cabin...and the shower.

  THE FRIENDS TO LOVERS COLLECTION

  By Lauren Blakely

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  SEX AND OTHER SHINY OBJECTS

  The second the test-the-sexy-scenes offer landed in my lap, I said yes.

  After all, I've been damn curious about a few things I've read in romance novels. Do buttons truly go flying across the floor when you rip off a guy's shirt? Is staircase nookie hella hot or does it leave you with a big old bruise mark on your back? And don’t even get me started on all that panty shredding, and whether it even works.

  Time to find out as I embark on Project Romance Novel Scenes Research, at the request of my hotshot book editor bestie.

  All I need is a willing scene partner. Enter Tristan, my best guy friend. The witty, tell-it-like-it-is, bearded hottie volunteers for the experiment.

  He's also the guy who gave me the most devastating, toe-curling kiss of my life ten years ago. But nothing has happened since then.

  And nothing will come between my panties and our friendship now since we have a plan to keep it PG.

  But once the buttons start flying, all bets are off...

  1

  PEYTON

  There’s just something about white lace.

  Though red lace is delicious too.

  And I can’t forget about pink lace.

  Who am I kidding? From satin to silk to cotton, every shade and every style, it all entices me.

  There is nothing quite like lingerie to make a girl feel pretty.

  My grandma instilled in me this appreciation for intimates. An elegant aficionado of both class and undies, she took me shopping for my first bra when I was thirteen—a white cotton number with lacy embroidery. Lace and I fell in love at first touch, and I haven’t looked back since.

  My grandmother also taught me the most important thing to remember when choosing indulgent undergarments: “Whoever said sexy lingerie was more for the man seeing it than the woman wearing it had it all backward.”

  Or, put another way, if you buy a Kelly-green panty and bra set, it damn well better be because you love St. Patrick’s Day.

  For you.

  As one of my semi-regular customers tries on the matching set, I’m hoping the confident and brainy Daniella is keen on all things Irish for her underthings.

  From the privacy of the dressing room suite in the back of my Madison Avenue boutique, she shouts out to me, even though I’m only feet away, sorting through an order of bustiers. “Peyton, I need your prediction. What is the likely outcome of me wearing this set?”

  “Let’s see what we’re working with.” I set the gorgeous black satin darlings in their box as Daniella opens the scalloped door a smidge.

  A nagging worry pricks at the back of my mind, since she’s not a shy woman.

  She nudges the door the rest of the way.

  “You look like a gorgeous four-leaf clover, and it fits you perfectly.” It’s true, but something is still off.

  She giggles, and my Spidey senses tingle again. Daniella isn’t a giggler. She’s chatty and analytical, a statistician who loves to talk about outcomes and probabilities, not the type who titters demurely at a compliment.

  Hmm.

  If this color and this style make her giggle, is it right for her? I don’t want her to go home with something that makes her feel anything less than fabulous. Some women love bright green. Others do not. And if Daniella’s not enamored, this lush ensemble will wind up in the back of the drawer, aka the lingerie graveyard. It’s a fate no sexy underthings should suffer.

  And it’s not good for the peddlers of them. Let a customer go home with something she won’t wear, and you might as well say sayonara to that client.

  So, for both our sakes, I pose the key question. “How does it make you feel?”

  With the door open, she regards herself in the mirror inside her dressing room. “It’s an odd color, but Jamie says he loves this shade of green because of . . .”

  I wonder what goes in the blank that she hesitates to say.

  Money?

  Christmas?

  Wait. No. I’ve got it.

  “The Green Lantern!”

  She swivels around, her jaw falling to the plush rose carpet of my shop. “How did you guess?”

  I smile, because now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. “I can tell you, but you’re going to have to keep it a secret. Pinky swear?”

  Her eyes glitter with the promise of intel. “Of course.”

  I cup my mouth, whispering, “I have lingerie ESP. It skips a generation, but it’s passed on through the women in my family.”

  She laughs, then gestures to her pile of clothes on the pink cushion in the corner of the dressing room. The top item is a pair of gray panties that look like they’ve seen five too many years. “As you can probably tell, I don’t have any predictive power of the sort. But seriously, did I tell you about his Green Lantern obsession last time I was here?”

  I shake my head. “No, but you did mention his predilection for comic books the other week. You said he likes it when you dress up as Wonder Woman, right?”

  “He’s obsessed with her,” she says in a whisper, then shudders, like the thought makes her skin crawl. “And that’s the heart of the issue right there. He wants to rip my panties off when I wear red and blue. I bought a pair of bright-red satin panties last time, and I wore chunky gold bracelets on my wrists to complete the look. He went crazy for it.”

  “And do you love that?”

  She shrugs, a disinterested look in her eyes. “It’s not really my thing, nor are ripped panties, because . . . hello! All I can see are numbers, numbers, numbers of how much money I’m setting on fire. Can you say ‘expensive habit’?” She fiddles with her bra strap. “But aren’t relationships about give and take?”

  “Of course. But the underwear is on your body. Turn around. Look in the mirror. And tell me how you feel in this set.”