smiles and laughter to step onto the edge with her. Then left me there.
The woman she’d turned into had betrayed me, shown me in no uncertain terms that our friendship meant nothing.
The phone on my desk buzzed. I ignored it, my fingers creeping once more towards my mouse. The website I called up was one I was unwillingly familiar with, driven to all those years ago by that same crazy compulsion that fuelled everything to do with Savannah. That stuck onto my skin like an unwanted tattoo.
The page had been created before she’d become famous. Before she’d exploded onto the world stage and into the fantasy of every red-blooded male who set eyes upon her.
The Personal Fan Page of Savannah Knight: World’s Number One Plus-Size Lingerie Model.
Her pictures were plastered all over the page, each one more breathtaking than the last. Each shot showing a profusion of her signature dark gold corkscrew curls. Every single picture drove a hot spike of lust through my groin, and even before I was halfway down the page I was as hard as fuck, torn between frustration that she still had this effect on me, a hunger I couldn’t contain and a compulsion to keep going. Keep devouring. Keep salivating. Perhaps even unzip my fly, take out my cock and masturbate like a randy teenager right here in my damn office.
I resisted that last urge by pushing myself closer to my desk, as if shoving my lower half under my desk would kill the insane urge.
Mentally rolling my eyes at myself, I scrolled faster. An addict seeking his sweet spot.
Since launching her own lingerie brand, every runway show Savannah had staged had been a huge success. Every season had brought her more accolades until she now needed a couple of bodyguards for protection from sometimes overeager fans.
At one picture, I just stopped…stared.
Bloody hell, she was gorgeous.
Skin a dark sunset gold, so smooth and soft and warm, it’d been a challenge to keep from touching her when we were platonic teenage friends, when what we’d had between us had been too unique, too sacred to mess with. Adulthood had brought further challenges but, with more restraint, I’d had a better handle on it.
Or so I’d thought…
I shifted in my chair, forcefully reminding myself why Savvie Knight, the only person who’d made it onto a list of one labelled Friendship, no longer resided there. The memories kept tumbling through my mind as relentlessly as the pictures flowing up the screen.
She’d disparagingly called herself a mongrel. I’d thought her stunning beyond words.
Lucky enough to have the noble blood of African chiefs and the integrity of not one but two accomplished professors flowing through her veins. I’d listened with unbridled jealousy, sprawled at the foot of her teenage bed, as she’d offhandedly rattled off tales of her African heritage alongside vexed recounting of interminable Sunday family dinners where her parents had deigned to be present. Had had the audacity to ask her about her day, her month, her year.
So what if there’d seemed to be an underlying discontentment over her family’s single-mindedness about her life? I’d never drilled her over the details because I’d been too busy wondering why she wasn’t just…thrilled to have a caring family in the first place.
Experiencing that unique bond, even from the fringes, had been unparalleled. A reason to safeguard what we’d had.
It’d taken a full year of friendship to confess that Mortimers didn’t do Sunday family dinner. That we could barely tolerate one another even at Christmas. That birthday presents were often organised by executive assistants and presented by delivery men and one was lucky if one received a card. That to my memory and before she’d died, I’d never received a birthday or Christmas present directly from my mother, nor from my father.
That I’d swap my life for hers in a heartbeat. Hand over the multimillion trust fund with my name on it for a slice of the life she took for granted.
But all of that was before she’d shown her true colours.
Before she’d turned her back on me and married Daniel Fucking Wallis.
The name was enough to dispel my useless reminiscing and restore righteous bitterness to its rightful place. Enough for me to hit the X that closed the page and for my hard-as-rock erection to subside.
I slammed my laptop shut and veered from my desk. Across the bay my gaze flitted past skyscrapers and Singapore’s breathtaking Gardens by the Bay, with its hanging gardens and fifty-metre-tall supertrees, to the one building I’d placed my personal stamp on.
Originally named The Diamond Bay, but later changed to The Sylph, a better fitting name.
An iconic building already racking up international architectural awards.
My baby. My special once-in-a-lifetime project.
The one my ex-best friend wanted a piece of.
Savannah might not be my enemy in the true sense of the word but, after her singeing betrayal and dismissal of me from her life, we weren’t friends any longer. After my parents and family, she’d been the third and final strike.
My days of accommodating foibles and betrayals were behind me. She needed to be set straight on that score once and for all.
By this time tomorrow she would know in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake to resurface, to attempt to touch a place in my life that belonged on a crap pile of history.
I should’ve arranged lunch in my office just as I’d planned.
I knew I’d made a mistake even before the buzzer sounded in my Marina Bay penthouse apartment. I’d talked myself into the argument that geography didn’t matter.
Straight. Sharp. To the point before zàijiàn. Sayonara. Goodbye.
Easily accomplished in any language and as effective here as in my office half a mile away. So I’d arranged for my executive chef to prepare lunch here.
In my private space.
Where she could read into it. Where signs of my existence were everywhere. Where everything now seemed…way too personal.
Clever, clever Bryce.
I grimaced at the very vocal inner voice and pressed the button that activated my private lift. The ding sounded in seconds. My stomach muscles tightened as I pulled the door open and awaited my first glimpse of Savannah in three and a half years.
The lift doors parted.
My first reaction was a filthy curse at the internet for the shoddy portrayal of the woman who would turn heads wherever she went. Because the real-life version was so much better than the pitiful digital imitation.
Vibrant. Vivacious. So fucking beautiful.
Dressed in a blush-pink floaty top and skin-tight, chocolate-coloured leather trousers, she was a magnificent vision, powerful enough to slacken my jaw before I caught myself and pressed
