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Frisky with my Bestie—
a novella

 

Release date: May 23, 2022
Series: The Mixed Six-pack
Genre: Contemporary romance with rom-com leanings, new adult (heroine)
Tropes: friends to lovers, forced proximity, band of brothers, quirky family
Pages: 62

 

 

About the story

“Frisky With My Bestie is classic Danika Bloom rom-com. Cue the interfering siblings, the adorable grandmother, and a grand gesture to be remembered.” ~ Gabbi Grey, USA Today bestselling romance author

MORGAN

You’ve heard the stories. Boy meets amazing girl. Boy gets friend-zoned. Boy realizes he’s in love with girl. The aforementioned friend-zone keeps him from making a move.

Okay, screw it, it’s me, I’m the boy… well, the man. I’m totally gone for my best friend, Tamara, but I haven’t made a move yet. I’ve been waiting for the perfect scenario to make her see how good we can be as a couple.

Getting stuck in a ramshackle–not to mention cold–cabin together just might be what I’ve been waiting for.

TAMARA

It’s not that I haven’t noticed how hot my best friend is. I’m not blind. Morgan is eye candy and then some. He’s also the sweetest guy I know.

Friends since I was twelve, I’ve worked hard to not get too close, to not catch feelings. I don’t want to lose him as a friend. But when we’re forced to share body heat for survival, I can’t deny our connection.

When morning comes, will I be brave enough to take the leap and see what a future as lovers might look like?

~~~

Frisky with my Bestie is a stand-alone novella in the steamy, Mixed Six-Pack contemporary rom-com series.

It was the fifth story written but takes place before First In: Cheeky with the Fire Chief.

 

Read an excerpt

Excerpt from Morgan and Tamara’s weekend away

MORGAN

“It’s just overnight, woman! And you realize I am not schlepping your crap, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Survivalist. You may be fine living in your own filth for two days, but this girl needs fresh fabrics against her skin at least every twelve hours. And I am quite capable of carrying my own backpack,” Tamara replied with her trademark snark.

There was no doubt she’d be able to handle her bag. She could handle anything the world threw at her—even having me as her best friend since grade ten.

“Nick said the last time he was at the cabin, the previous squatters had left three bottles of wine. So do your weird manifesting thing and picture a case of Howe Sound beer, would you?”

She scoffed. “Well done, idiot. You just mocked the Universe by calling intention-setting weird. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if the last people there left a case of milk.”

I’d tossed one change of socks, a T-shirt, and sweatpants to sleep in into my backpack with my toothbrush, a sleeping bag, and a bunch of dehydrated food. Tamara was still laying out all the things she was planning to take on our five-mile hike into the wilderness. We were headed about an hour from Vancouver to a deserted cabin off an old logging road that we’d access from a little village called Lily Valley. I’d never been but my half brother, Nick, had.

Nick was a career firefighter, and a bunch of the guys he worked with had found the place a few years ago when they were sent to support the local volunteer department with a forest fire in the area. The cabin had been abandoned decades earlier. It was so far off the hiking and biking trails that until a fire burned a path to its door, they figured nobody had seen it since the last loggers left the area in the 1960s.

Nick and the guys put on a new roof, fixed holes in the floor, and weatherproofed the windows the best they could. Then they used their connections to have a search and rescue chopper deliver a couple of double beds and a small woodburning stove. The place was still barely known outside of the first responder community, but slowly people had been finding out about it.

He’d invited me up on the same weekend I’d promised Tamara I’d be here for her—the tenth anniversary of her brother’s death. Jim had died in a car crash on his way to the ski hill on the first day of the Christmas holidays. He was just seventeen.

Jim was my best friend through high school, and Tamara was a third wheel most of the time. She was a year younger and never unwelcome, but we never really considered her in our plans. If she was around and interested in hanging with us, she did.

After Jim died, Tamara was there to fill the hole in my life her brother left. And I guess I did the same for her and we just kind of became best buds. Through college, she was an awesome wingman, making it so much easier to meet women. And I like to think I’ve saved her from some questionable hookups over the years. Not that she has poor judgment, but she’s just too damn nice to tell a guy to fuck off when he starts to be a dick.

Lucky for me, since there have been a couple of times I’ve tried to cross the line from best friend to bed friend … fortunately, Nick was always there to stop us from doing something stupid.

Tamara grunted, trying to stuff her sleeping bag into her backpack.

“Okay, I know I said I’d carry my own stuff, but my sleeping bag is twice as thick as yours and I can’t get it into my bag. I’ll have to leave all the beer here unless …” Tamara held her hands in prayer position in front of her mouth. Her eyes were wide and sparkled with mirth. Mirth. That was one of her flaky words. “Unless you’d please, please, pretty please swap with me? I’ll let you have half my beer.”

“You manipulative little toad,” I said, picking up my backpack and unzipping it. “Here.” I tossed her my summer-weight bag. Nick said I wouldn’t need more than a light blanket since the woodstove heated the one-room cabin to about a million degrees in under an hour.

“I love you,” Tamara said, handing her arctic-rated sleeping bag to me.

“And I love negotiating with you. That extra beer will taste extra special, knowing you carried it five miles uphill just for me.”

“Well, just don’t forget that’s my sleeping bag when we realize Nick’s version of heated and a normal human’s can be quite different.”

“I can one hundred percent guarantee that you’ll be begging me to swap when you wake up soaked in sweat.”

Also in this series

First In: Cheeky with the Fire Chief

Second Breath: Dazzled by my Blind Date

Third Party: Merry with the Millionaire

Rhodes to Love: Daring with the Single Dad

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