Books and Suits

  A friends-to-lovers romance

  S.C. Principale

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Books and Suits: A Friends-to-Lovers Romance

  ALSO BY S.C. PRINCIPALE

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Healing Hope

  It’s Business, Baby

  Books and Suits

  Copyright © 2022 by S.C. Principale

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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

  For information contact:

  https://scprincipale.wixsite.com/website

  https://www.facebook.com/WritesandBites

  Book and Cover design by Designer : S.C. Principale using public domain, free-for-use, free-to-alter, no attribution required images.

  First Edition :09/ 08/2021

  Dedication:

  To my incredible husband, who makes writing happy endings a matter of personal experience.

  To my writing family : Judy, Rachelle, Katherine, Kathleen, Hebi, Sofia, Lois, Terry, Michelle, Dawn, Jen, Susan, Annee, and so many more.

  ALSO BY S.C. PRINCIPALE

  Contemporary Romance/Romantic Suspense

  Passion: Sisters of Sin Femme Fatale Series

  Repairs

  Turning the Tables

  It’s Business, Baby: Mature, Curvy Erotic Romance

  The Lady of the House: Mature, Curvy Erotic Romance

  Chocolate Krinkles and Two Kris Kringles

  Belgravia Security: A Bodyguard Romance

  Paranormal Romance

  Pale Girl

  CrossRealms: You an’ Me Against the World

  CrossRealms: Healing Hope

  CrossRealms: Gestures

  CrossRealms: A Helpful Gentleman

  CrossRealms: Wicked Woods

  CrossRealms: Shattered

  CrossRealms: Mended

  CrossRealms: Whole

  Mountain Bound: A Monstrous Love Story

  Vampire in Vegas

  The Man with The Umbrella (What Happens in Venice Anthology)

  Historical Romance

  Alliance

  Introduction

  Amanda Gardella and Joel Martin were best friends growing up in the same suburban town. Secure in the knowledge that they could defy the stereotype that “boys and girls can’t be best friends”, they steadfastly resisted the lure of being high school steadies- even if they fed the rumor mill a little too much! They were sure they’d always have time for each other as adults- but Amanda followed the books- becoming a librarian at the local university. Joel followed the suits, leaving town to join a high-pressure investment firm in the city.

  Time, distance, and a little bit of resentment that Books and Suits came between them, Amanda and Joel’s close relationship dwindled to little more than wistful memories. Then, one day Joel’s world gets turned upside down and he realizes there’s only one person who can make things right again.

  Chapter One

  June, 2012

  Amanda swayed, her brown-blonde wayward hair escaping from her up-do to join the smudgy mascara and make-up stains on Joel’s white dress shirt.

  “Are you seriously crying again?” he chuckled, patting her back with his smooth dark hand, soothing little circles as his scratchy goatee tickled her forehead.

  “It’s our last dance as high schoolers. In five days, we graduate. In five days, we’re adults!”

  “We’ve been eighteen for months, girl.”

  “Shut up, I’m nostalgic.”

  “Don’t you have to be over eighty for nostalgia to set in?”

  “Maybe you’re thinking of dementia?” She sniffled and smiled at him, a crooked, teasing smirk. “I read that some people-”

  “Here we go. Books again.”

  “Says the smart dude with the A in AP Calculus and a full-ride to Haven College of Business!”

  “All ‘bout the sharp suits and the big money, baby,” he laughed and teased right back. That’s how it was with Amanda. Ever since he moved in up the street from her in fourth grade, they’d been best friends. They joked together, laughed together, and got in trouble together.

  “My God... I would glare at you but I can’t see you properly.” Amanda struggled to blink away her tears and all the annoying silver specks in danger of blinding her. She was tempted to retrieve her cat’s eyes glasses out of her tiny, fashionable purse and rush to the restroom to scrub off the sparkly lash gunk her sister had talked her into trying.

  Joel briefly looked concerned. His best friend was a total English nerd, a lit chick or whatever geeky title she’d proudly and loudly proclaimed for the week. He hadn’t seen her without her glasses except when they went swimming at the beach every summer or when he showed up at her house way too early. “I wasn’t going to ask but...”

  “Laura wanted me to look ‘glam’ for the dance and prom pictures. Seeing as I almost never get dressed up...” She self-consciously tugged at the silvery-white gown which was held up by spaghetti straps and covered with light-catching sequins. She had a deep purple rose on her wrist and amethyst drop earrings adorning her ears. They matched Joel’s killer purple tie and the single onyx and amethyst stud he had in his right lobe.

  “I’ll be glad when you move into dorms. She’s a bad influence on you.” He wasn’t fully teasing. Laura was hot enough to turn every head on the street, but she was high maintenance, demanding, and liked to make people feel a little off-balance. How anyone as sweet as Amanda could have been raised by the same people who created Laura Gardella was beyond him. Although, he and his brother were certainly nothing alike. A.J. was sure the path to riches was achieved through hard work on the hardwood, while Joel knew it came from crunching the numbers and hustling.

  Amanda sniffed in again, her eyes clearing this time. Joel was determined to become some big name, some tycoon in a Fortune 500 company. A shark, making dealings, making killings. With his dark eyes and his sharp features, she could see something predatory there. “What kind of influence am I?” Amanda asked.

  When had the lights dimmed? Joel studied her face, wide hazel-flecked eyes, a beautiful, playful smile, staring up at him. She was sparkling. She was beautiful. “You’re the best influence, Amanda. You know I—”

  “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!”

  He was seriously going to kill the jerks on the football team.

  “Let’s get out of here, Suits.” Amanda tugged his hand and they escaped, leaving the prom early to a chorus of giggles and whispers about what the two of them were going to go do.

  “THOSE GUYS HAVE KNOWN us forever! Just because we didn’t have another date to the prom, they made all kinds of assumptions,” Amanda washed her makeup off in the kitchen sink while Joel raided the fridge.

  “Score! Your mom is an angel. Lasagne, baby!”

  “Save some for my dad or he’ll banish you from the house.”

  “He will not. I’m the son he always wanted.”

  “Ha. You’re just the one who saves him from ever having to clean out the fridge.”

  “I’m deeply wounded and I’m telling on you when he gets home. Go take off your dress.” Joel put the pan of foil-covered lasagne in the oven, at ease in the Gardella home as he was in his own.

  Amanda froze, wet, wadded paper towels dragging across her lids. “Huh?” So, they’d never really talked about it, but maybe, just maybe, she’d been starting to notice that her best friend was truly one of the most handsome men in the world. Still, even if their platonic friendship was flooding the rumor mill, it truly was strictly platonic.

  Completely oblivious to his poor wording, Joel was also taking out what was left of her mother’s chocolate cake and searching for clean forks and plates in the dishwasher. “Go take the dress off so you don’t get red stuff on it. You know you’re a messy eater, Books.”

  “I am not! I just like messy food!” she retorted, relief restored.

  Sort of.

  “Joel?”

  “Hm?”

  “Can you unzip me a little? I can’t—it’s too hard to—”

  He watched her wriggling in the skin-tight dress, her arm bending up the back to try to catch the minuscule zipper that was hiding between a sequined seam. “Sure thing. How far?”

  “Right about here.” She gestured to her mid-back.

  HIS HEART WAS THUDDING a little too hard for his liking. Amanda was so pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful. Beautiful and curvy. Amanda was gorgeous and he was a horny teenager, dammit. He knew he should not have curious thoughts about her body. Yet, sometimes (like this very second) he did.

  Joel stood so close to her that he felt her shift when his warm breath hit her bare shoulders. His fingers carefully slid the zipper down. He was silent. Joel wasn’t silent unless math was involved, his mouth was totally packed or the NBA playoffs were happening. Now, he was afraid to open his mouth and let his thoughts escape. The zippe
r slid until it reached her fingertips. His warm cocoa skin melted over hers for a minute, touching her spine. He realized the dress was falling free now, sliding down her body. Amanda grabbed it hastily and held it tight to her bust as she made her escape upstairs.

  “Be right back!” she called.

  “Okay! I’m gonna start with dessert first!” He was eyeing the chocolate cake.

  That sounded dirty in my head. Man, what’s happening to me?

  He’d folded Amanda’s laundry before, with her help, quizzing each other on SAT vocab while stacking clothes in her laundry room. He’d seen her underwear. He’d seen her bras.

  Never saw her in them, though.

  Joel shifted uncomfortably. Snap out of it.

  AMANDA RETURNED IN her Haven U. sweatshirt and pajama leggings. “I feel so much better.” She stretched and wiggled her rather swollen-looking toes. “My feet are killing me, though. Heels were made by Satan.”

  “Yeah, I’m always complaining about that,” he chuckled, serving himself a gargantuan slice of lasagne and giving her about half as much. “More?”

  “Duh, yes. Sprite or Coke?”

  “Coke.”

  When she turned around, Joel was shirtless. Of course. He didn’t want to stain the rental. He wandered into the laundry room and returned wearing an old t-shirt of her dad’s.

  They ate in silence. Part of it was because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d noticed that Joel had abs. Like— underwear model abs. When had that happened? Also, when had her stomach started to feel tight thinking about him?

  “Everyone thinks we’re in the backseat of your car right now,” she muttered, an internal observation that escaped into the open air.

  One choking fit later, Joel wiped his watery eyes and glared at her. “You could have waited until I was done eating.”

  “Then I would be an old, old lady.” She calmly passed him a napkin.

  “You don’t care what the gossips say, do you? Everyone who really knows us knows that we’re not—not doin’ that. Your dad and mom would straight up murder me if they thought I was—”

  “I think they’d be thrilled I had a good guy like you for a boyfriend. But no, they’d bury you in the backyard if you ate their lasagne and deflowered their daughter.” Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit!

  For the second time that night, Joel was silent. “I thought you and Thomas might have...”

  “Nuh-uh. He thought I was Laura 2.0.” She shrugged, old heartbreaks shoved away, warmed by Joel’s smile.

  “Man was a damn fool. Give me the Amanda package any day.” Joel beamed at her and patted her hand.

  She sipped her soda hurriedly, blushing with pleasure. “It’s for the best. He’s going to UCLA, the other side of the country. Lots of our friends are already breaking up, like their love can’t go the distance! He’s one of them. He dumped Janelle.”

  “Carlos gave Min a promise ring and she gave it back when she got accepted to FSU.”

  They both stared at each other, having one of the unique moments that only best friends can share. “We’re so much smarter than them, Books,” Joel said.

  “Way less drama, Suits.”

  “Bros before hoes.” He held out his fist.

  She bumped it. “Chicks before dicks. We gotta make something that works for boy-girl besties, you know that, right?”

  “Umm... You and me before he and she?” he suggested.

  “It needs work.”

  “Well, we have four years to perfect it.” He raised his can to her. “To Haven University’s newest English Education major, Amanda Gaaardellllaaa!” His voice boomed and faded around the room as if announcing the MVP walking onto the court.

  She toasted him in return. “To Haven University’s Haven College of Business All-Star, Joooo-el Maar-tin! Give it up, folks!”

  As they cleaned up the food and put on Comedy Central, Joel let out a deep sigh. “I’m glad you’re around.”

  “Hey. We’re graduating, but we’re sticking together. Okay?”

  “Swear it?”

  She gave him a three-fingered salute before she crashed next to him on the couch. “On my books and your suits.”

  Chapter Two

  November, 2015

  “Joel! Joel, Joel, Joel!” Amanda came tearing through the campus coffee shop to where Joel was sat, and waved a letter in front of his face.

  He shifted, and she noticed his taut expression and the phone pressed to his clean-shaven face. “Hang on, Mom. It’s ‘Manda. What, Ma? Mom says hi.”

  “Hi, Renee! I’ll see you on Saturday for book club!” Amanda pressed her head on top of Joel’s to speak to her second mother.

  “All right, Sugar. Make sure that boy eats something green, will you?”

  “I’ll try!”

  “I’m sorry to hear about A.J.’s leg, Ma. I’ll call him tonight, okay?” Joel hung up and groaned. “That dumb idiot. He tore his ACL, not even during a team workout, working out alone, no spotter, off-campus. It’s not a ‘school-related’ activity or injury. The team might drop him and his scholarship.” Joel suddenly looked years older, his sharp eyes exhausted as they met hers.

  “Oh, no!” Amanda forgot her good news in the face of his troubles. “Can’t they fix it? Surgery?”

  “They can, but this is his senior year! This is the year. All the coaches who are studying the drafts are looking at players now, when he’s going to be on the bench at best, off the team at worst.”

  “But he’s not just there for basketball, he was working on a journalism degree, too!”

  Joel’s eyes closed. “Working on.” Air quotes framed the words. “I thought that we, as the younger siblings, got to be the screw ups?”

  “We keep breaking those stereotypes.” First, by continuing to disprove that old saw that men and women can’t stay friends without romance entering into it. Now, by being the “babies” that were actually making college and career a success. Not that Laura and AJ were struggling. Not exactly.

  Laura was doing great, teaching yoga six days a week and doing fitness-wear modeling on the side. She made enough money to keep her in designer spandex and had a string of handsome boyfriends from her exclusive health spa to keep her in everything else. She went through trainers, hot members, golf pros, tennis pros, and forty-something sugar daddies who wanted a sexy, flexible girl to spoil.

  Amanda’s father and mother weren’t speaking to Laura very much right now. Despite her sister’s insistence that she wasn’t sleeping with all of the men she was going through, her current method of paying the rent on her luxury condo hadn’t sat well with her parents.

  “They raised us to be more than our looks.” Amanda helped herself to Joel’s coffee with a savage slurp.

  “Mom raised us to be more than some Black guys who were good at sports. The idiot!”

  “Come on, anyone can get hurt.”

  “Not everyone half-asses his classes because he’s sure he’s going to make the draft! He’s in a mid-tier college, in the middle of the pack of players, and he’s short — well, he’s short for the NBA.”

  “Joel—”

  “I need a muffin.” Joel stomped off and came back with two ooey-gooey cinnamon buns. “Eat.”

  Amanda ate. The predatory look in Joel’s eye had turned up considerably since she’d seen him the day before. They ate in the dining hall together and hung out in one of their dorm rooms almost every night. People assumed they were a couple, even after numerous denials.

  Right now, she wouldn’t want to be this dude’s girlfriend. Her best friend was always on the verge of a smile, his eyes about to twinkle. The man across the table had the same face, but the lightness was dimming. There was something cold in the way he devoured the pastry, the fork jabbing in hard, the knife dissecting layers of sweet dough.

  “He’s not gonna be a burden on our mother; another wannabe, another drop out,” Joel seethed. “She’s worked too hard to raise two sons alone, two Black males in this upper-middle class town, to put us through college... You wouldn’t get it.” A napkin was crumpled angrily in his fist.

  “I know. I know I wouldn’t get it.” Amanda held out her hand. For the first time ever, Joel didn’t take it.