Forbidden Touch
Iona Rose
Some Books
Contents
Author’s Note
1. Brooke
2. Blaze
3. Brooke
4. Blaze
5. Brooke
6. Blaze
7. Brooke
8. Blaze
9. Brooke
10. Blaze
11. Brooke
12. Blaze
13. Brooke
14. Blaze
15. Brooke
16. Blaze
17. Brooke
18. Blaze
19. Brooke
20. Blaze
21. Brooke
22. Blaze
23. Brooke
24. Brooke
25. Blaze
26. Brooke
27. Blaze
28. Brooke
29. Blaze
30. Brooke
31. Blaze
32. Brooke
33. Blaze
34. Brooke
35. Brooke
36. Blaze
37. Brooke
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Author’s Note
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Forbidden Touch
Copyright © 2021 Iona Rose
The right of Iona Rose to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Publisher: Some Books
ISBN: 978-1-913990-98-5
Chapter One
Brooke
“Can you believe we’ve finally done it?” I asked my best friend, Blaze. We stood in the middle of the moldy smelling living room and stared at the two-family townhouse that now belonged to us.
“Yep, I do,” Blaze said. “Were those cracks there last week?” he asked, wrinkling his nose at the peeling walls.
I closed the distance between us and placed my hands on his massive shoulders. I stared at Blaze fondly then wrapped my hands around his neck and hugged him. Having a house was my dream, not his, but he had agreed to partner with me in buying the dilapidated townhome.
The clincher had been that after we finished renovating it, we would each have an apartment. Mine would be on the ground floor and Blaze would take the top floor. With our combined savings and a gift of fifty thousand worth of bonds from my late grandmother, we had done it.
Now, all that remained was to start working on it.
“Thank you,” I mumbled into his shirt. He smelled so good. I didn’t want to break contact but I had to. I’d been fighting my physical attraction to Blaze for years. He was my best friend and my secret crush. One that I would never act upon. I reluctantly stepped away. “I can’t wait to get started,” I told him, rubbing my hands together in anticipated glee.
“Me too,” Blaze said.
“Let’s go sit on the backyard steps and have our lunch.”
We had bought takeout grilled chicken sandwiches and bottles of water to toast to our new home. I grabbed Blaze by the hand and tugged him through the kitchen to the back.
Turning the lock, I pushed the door open. The backyard had been part of the reason why I had fallen in love with the townhouse. It was unkempt with overgrown grass and bushes but the potential was there. I could imagine Saturday afternoons spent outdoors sipping ice-cold wine and watching the day drift by. With Blaze in the downstairs apartment, it meant I would always have someone to hang out with.
This had a downside to it though. Blaze could decide to live with a girlfriend. Luckily, there was little risk of that happening. He changed girlfriends the way people changed clothes. Blaze was your textbook player, though he insisted he was a short-term one-woman man.
I’d come prepared and I had a small blanket in my handbag which I laid on the dirty steps and we sat down.
“Now, this, I can visualize the end result,” Blaze said as he reached for a sandwich and bit into it.
His words excited me and made me feel less guilty about pushing him into buying a house with me.
“Yeah, a beautiful lawn with flower gardens at the edges and maybe a table and some chairs,” he said.
“That right there, is why you’re still my best friend,” I exclaimed.
Blaze and I had met in kindergarten. We rode the same school bus and I had always found him in the very back seat when I entered the bus in the morning. He had smiled at me the first day and then looked away.
On the way home, I’d gone to sit with him and we had chatted all the way to my stop, counting all the white cars we saw. Even then, I’d been drawn to him but all we had ever been was friends. Which was a good thing, I told myself firmly.
There were times when I’d allowed myself to imagine Blaze as my boyfriend. He was hot and all my friends had a crush on him at one time or another. But even in my fantasies, the relationship ended badly. I loved Blaze too much to jeopardize what we had.
“I’m the luckiest guy in the whole world,” Blaze said.
“Why?” I asked as I watched the movements of his mouth. Blaze had to be the only guy I knew who made chewing look sexy.
“I get to have lunch with my best friend everyday!” he said and smiled.
In addition to being best friends, Blaze and I worked for the same recruiting company. He was a head recruiter, in charge of five other recruiters and I was in the accounts department. We’d worked together for two years now, and the worries I had when he suggested I apply for the opening, had not materialized.
I’d worried that we’d bring over any conflict we had in our personal
