Christmas With My Best Friend's Dad Read online

  Christmas With My Best Friend's Dad

  Amy Brent

  Published by Amy Brent, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  CHRISTMAS WITH MY BEST FRIEND'S DAD

  First edition. November 13, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Amy Brent.

  ISBN: 978-1393470243

  Written by Amy Brent.

  Also by Amy Brent

  Teachers' Pet

  Filthy Box Set

  Knocked Up By My Brother's Best Friend

  My Best Friend's Brother

  My Best Friend's Ex

  One More Chance

  Say You're Mine

  Club Desire Box Set

  My Boyfriend's Dad

  Fighting For Her

  Forbidden Love Box Set

  Love Undercover

  Friends With Benefits

  The Doctor's Fake Marriage

  A Royal Menage

  Baby Fever

  Vegas Baby

  Brother's Best Friend for Christmas

  Christmas With My Best Friend's Dad

  My Son's Sitter

  Single Dad's Christmas Present

  Surrendering To 3 Alphas

  Because I Love You

  Catching Up With Daddy

  Claiming Cinderella

  Double Trouble

  First Love

  First Time

  Knocked Up By My Brother's Best Friend

  My Best Friend's Boyfriend

  Pretend Daddy

  Redemption

  Roomies With Benefits

  Royally Yours

  Rub Me The Right Way

  Show Stopper

  That One Night

  The Baby Contract

  Truth Or Dare

  Santa's Naughty List

  Quickie on Christmas

  Stepbrother For Christmas

  Christmas with my Best Friend’s Dad

  Amy Brent

  Contents

  1. Stella

  2. Anthony

  3. Stella

  4. Anthony

  5. Stella

  6. Anthony

  7. Stella

  8. Stella

  9. Anthony

  10. Stella

  11. Stella

  12. Anthony

  13. Stella

  14. Anthony

  15. Stella

  16. Anthony

  17. Stella

  18. Anthony

  19. Stella

  20. Stella

  21. Anthony

  22. Stella

  23. Stella

  Epilogue

  Stella

  I looked out the window, leaning my head against the cushy rest behind me and hardly believing that the next week or so was going to be real.

  Normally I worked right through all of our breaks, never daring to miss work when I had so many bills to pay. There was food, electric, my phone, and of course getting a head start on those student loans that were going to drag me into debt kicking and screaming.

  One would think that having my dad pass when I was young and being raised by a screaming narcissist would supply some sort of scholarship, but apparently there wasn’t a ‘my life is shit’ fund that I could apply to. It was a shame, really, I had a feeling I could milk that for quite a bit.

  Except it was hard to feel sorry for myself when I was in for possibly one of the best breaks of my life.

  I shifted in my cushy seat on the train. Normally such tickets were way out of my price range and I bussed it, but my best friend in the world had surprised me with some pretty high-class tickets on one of the more expensive train lines.

  I cracked my eyes open and looked over at her, a smile already on her pretty face. Rachelle and I went all the way back to middle school, where I had been the fat girl and she had been the mixed girl and neither of us had fit in. We had united, two halves of a dynamic duo together at last, and the rest was history.

  Unlike most friendships, we’d stuck together in high school. And then in college. Even though I was two years younger her and only got to equal footing by skipping a grade or two, we were still as thick as thieves.

  And now we were nearing the end of our second year in college. Still on the dean’s list, still working together, and still best friends.

  To think, it had all started because our work was closed down for a week as we renovated. Thankfully, we were all getting partially paid, so it wasn’t like I was losing out on all of the money in my budget that week, but I had been looking for any tutoring gigs I could take when Rachelle came up to me, and uncertain look on her face.

  I didn’t think I’d ever forget the surprise I felt when she asked me to come home with her. It’d been a while since she saw her dad and she wanted it to be just like old times.

  How could I refuse a request like that?

  And why would I want to?

  Rachelle’s place was a mansion and her family were literally loaded. And that wasn’t just from my perspective of being poor my whole life. Her family had multiple cars, multiple houses and multiple businesses. Her family name was a well known one, and her father had built it all up from nothing.

  As if life wanted to emphasize my inner thoughts, the train came to a stop and we pulled our luggage off with us. As soon as we were off the platform, there was a chauffeur waiting for us with a sign.

  “Wait, did you Dad actually send a driver just for us?”

  “Of course,” Rachelle asked, trundling towards him. “Neither of us have our license and he doesn’t trust ride share apps.”

  “Of course, he doesn’t. It’s not just that you’re his little Princess and he’s overprotective.”

  “My Dad is perfectly protective. The world is a scary place and that’s why I’m kidnapping you to stay with me our whole break! That way I know you’re safe and sound.”

  “As safe and sound as I can be if we get up to our usual hijinks.”

  “Please girl,” Rachelle gave her a look. “This is break, so no climbing on roofs, or up trees, or going exploring in the woods or any of the other crazy stuff you used to do to try to stay away from your parents a bit longer.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Aw, but where’s the fun without risking a few broken bones?”

  “…after all these years, sometimes I still don’t get you.

  We shared a laugh as we slid into the nice car and drove off. It was a relatively short distance from the train station to her father’s house, but I certainly wasn’t complaining about riding in the lap of luxury.

  Apparently, her family hadn’t always been so well off. In fact, they were new money, all curated by the incredible hard work of none other than her father, Anthony Sternlict. It was back when Rachelle was first born that he opened an auto shop with a huge amount of loans and cashing in on a whole lot of favors that people owed him.

  It had been dicey for a bit, but then it had really started to flourish, his hard work and dedication earning him a reputation that he was to be trusted. By the time Rachelle and I met in middle school, he was opening up his second location. Two years later, his third.

  And now he had one across the entire state.

  It had been strange to watch her family’s wealth grow in real time, and I would be lying if I wasn’t occasionally jealous. My family was dirt poor and only grew poorer in time, the tight noose of debt gradually dragging them down into quicksand. I wished I had the sort of nice things she did, but I didn’t resent her for having them.

  It helped that she shared them with me as much as my pride would all
ow. I hated to seem greedy, and I hated seeming weak enough to need charity, so sometimes I found myself having a difficult time accepting her little gifts. After all, I didn’t want to seem like I was using my best friend, or that I only cared about her money.

  It was a tricky balance, but thankfully I had gotten better at it in our many years of friendship. Granted, she was my only friend, so it wasn’t like I had a lot to distract me.

  After my father died when I was seven, it was just me and my jerk of a mother. Always with a snide comment, or a diatribe on how I had ruined her life that day, she wore me down whenever she could. So, I buried myself in my books and my studies, the only way I saw to get away from her on a consistent basis.

  And it had worked. I’d started high school two years early and got out from under her that much sooner. But, the one downside of the process was I never had time for much else.

  Especially not dating.

  Never a boyfriend. Never even a kiss and I was twenty years old. I knew that was a bit unusual, and yet I wasn’t too worried about it.

  After all, I had plenty of other things to occupy my mind.

  “So, first things first, we’re totally going to gorge ourselves on junk food!”

  I poked at my stomach, raising one of my eyebrows. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem for me.”

  “Girl, you act as if you don’t have at least three boys drooling over your thick behind at school.”

  “I highly doubt that,” I retorted, rolling my eyes again. “I think if men were salivating over me, I would notice.”

  She squinted at me, her grey eyes that she had inherited from her father staring right through me. “Really? Because I think in order to do that, you would have to give an actual man the time of day.”

  She had a point. “I’m busy! And so are you. Dating should be the last thing on our minds!”

  But Rachelle was already shaking her head. “The girl will climb up a tree like a squirrel but won’t climb up a man. I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.”

  “You don’t need to do anything with me,” I retorted, sticking my tongue out at her. While some might have took this for an argument, it was just more of our playful banter. “I’m the one graduating college two years early.”

  “Yeah, yeah, rub it in. You know, I’m only a year and a half older than you, so for the next six months it’ll seem like we’re only a year apart instead of two.”

  “But then for the rest of the six months the truth will be revealed.”

  We continued up right until the driver pulled up in front of the huge mansion. My mouth gaped as I realized that he had definitely done some expansion on it in the years since I had last visited. Goodness, I guess while I was burying myself in college, the Sternlicts were keeping busy.

  Well, at least Mr. Sternlict was. He and his wife had divorced over some pretty dramatic reasons and as far as I knew it wasn’t very amicable.

  But I pushed all of that out of my mind as we passed through the wide, open entryway. A sense of peace washed over me as I did, knowing I was about to be pampered and living like a Queen for the rest of break.

  Or at least I was at peace until a familiar, low voice greeted us from the foyer.

  “Hey, there are my girls! I thought you’d never get here.”

  My eyes flicked over to none other than Mr. Anthony Sternlict, the six-foot-two wall of muscle and deliciously dark skin standing there with his arms outstretched for his daughter to hug, his dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head while his grey eyes sparkled.

  It was in that moment that my heart dropped out of my body and somewhere into the Earth’s crust. It seemed that my fourteen-year crush on my best friend’s dad still hadn’t ebbed at all.

  Hopefully that wouldn’t be an issue.

  Anthony

  I whirled my daughter around, feeling a bit more relaxed now that she was home. I was incredibly stressed about some shady things that I was worried about going on with one of my managers in my farthest location but seeing my baby girl made it all worth it.

  My family was the reason I worked so hard. The reason I put my nose to the grindstone and never stopped running. Sure, there had been quite the hiccup when I found out my wife was cheating on me with an old friend, but that certainly hadn’t made me lose my love for my daughter.

  Hell, it hadn’t even made me lose my love for my wife. I had tried counseling, and for a bit it seemed like we were on track to fix things.

  And then I found her sending nudes via email to a coworker.

  Email.

  Not only did she violate our wedding vows and my trust, but she did it in such a lazy way it was like she had wanted to be caught.

  And who knew, maybe she did. Goodness knows her settlement was pretty big, even though she was the one who cheated. She was comfortable, and setting her teeth into her next victim, I had no doubt.

  “Dude, Stella and I are starving! You said you made us lunch?”

  My daughter’s voice brought me back to the present and I smiled. It seemed like forever since I had her all to myself for an entire vacation, and I didn’t want to waste any of it thinking about my ex.

  “Yeah, it’s just something light because I didn’t know how your stomach would be after travel. If I recall right, you sometimes get car sick, right Stella?”

  It was only then that I glanced to my daughter’s best friend and for a split second I was completely shocked. Somehow, in the time that I wasn’t looking, Miss Stella had turned into quite the woman. Gone was her meek sort of countenance while she hid in her oversized sweater. Instead a curvaceous, comfortably dressed adult was in her place.

  I blinked for a moment, quite stunned, but I drew my attention back to my baby girl. “Shall we go to the kitchen?”

  “Let’s!”

  I lead them to our spacious kitchen. I remembered when I had first hired the renovators to change our cooking area from a tiny little half-room. It had been my first big splurge at the time and I had been wracked with nerves that it wouldn’t work out.

  Thankfully, it did, and we’d had quite a nice, spacious room with plenty of light and cooking area. I’d used it as sort of a model to base the rest of the house on. Most people would just move to some sort of mansion, but I’d never had that sort of desire. I just liked adding bits onto our place until we had quite a nice home. It was the kind that my parents never could have dreamed of. I wished that they were around to know how far the discipline that they had taught me had gotten me,

  Oh well. I liked to think that they were watching me from above and would be proud.

  “Are those sandwiches for us?” Rachelle asked, sliding onto a comfy stood at the kitchen island and pulling one of the plates I made towards her.

  “Yup.”

  “Is the meat from that deli I like?”

  I nodded. “Of course, it is. Wouldn’t be a proper snack without Skip’s meat.”

  “I remember when you first served me this,” Stella said with a laugh before taking a hardy bite. “Changed my life, man. Now deli meat just doesn’t taste the same.”

  I shared her chuckle and poured us all glasses of water. It made me feel oddly relaxed to just sit there and watch them enjoy themselves.

  It was also nice to see Stella expressing herself so enthusiastically. I remembered when she had first showed up at my house, Rachelle holding onto her arm and talking a mile a minute. She had been a sullen thing then, round and soft and clothed in a ragged, worn outfit that was clearly a sort of second-hand or hand-me-down. It hadn’t taken me long to catch on that maybe her family situation wasn’t the best, and I had encouraged my daughter to bring her over often.

  Little did I know, I was encouraging one hell of a friendship. The two girls were practically inseparable, but I didn’t mind. In fact, it made it a bit easier to watch over her.

  She was whip-crack smart and good at reading people. Although she didn’t talk a whole hell of a lot, when she did, she had purpose beh
ind what she was saying. For the first few months, I had been afraid that perhaps her parents were hitting her, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was just more that her father was negligent and hardly there while her mother was a bitter, degrading woman who seemed to want to harp on everything and anything about her daughter.

  But still, a childhood of being told how annoying or useless she was had obviously done its damage to little Stella, and there was only so much that my daughter and I could do. We took her in as much as we could, and treated her out when it was appropriate, and now I was just happy that she was back with us again. According to what my daughter told me over the phone, Stella’s mother hadn’t grown any kinder. In fact, she might have even become more sharp tongued and bitter, eager to get her licks in during the reduced time she had with her daughter.

  “So, what else is new with the two of you?” I asked, taking a long gulp. I certainly didn’t drink enough at the shop so I might as well try to make up for it while I was on a break.

  Well… kinda break. I still planned to call plenty of my managers and investigate what was going on with my errant worker.

  Rachelle soon started to go on about their classes and I listened. But even at I was making sure to pay attention to what she was saying, my eyes couldn’t help but keep flitting to Stella as she chewed.

  It had only been a year or so since I had last seen her. Was it possible for someone to change so much in such a short amount of time?

  And yet she had. Her hips had filled out, her waist had tapered and her breasts definitely larger than average, to put it lightly. She was certainly a woman and had that beautiful sort of glow of femininity to her.