Page 22 of Falling for His Best Friend

‘I think we’ll just take this one step at a time. One baby at a time,’ Cam said as he kissed his wife. ‘And see how we manage.’

Joe thought Cam’s logic was practical and sensible. There were a lot of unknowns in Cam and Jess’s future. The new baby was only one of them.

* * *

Dinner was finished—steak and a glass of red wine for Cam and Joe, fish and lime-flavoured sparkling mineral water for Jess and Kitty. Cam cleared the plates and said to Joe, ‘Come and join me for a beer while I clean the barbecue.’

Joe followed him over to the grill and took a swig of his beer. ‘Do you think this surrogacy thing is a good idea?’ he asked as he stood watching Cam work. ‘Actually, scratch that. You must.’

Cam didn’t answer immediately. ‘It’s what Jess wanted. I love my wife. I want her to be happy and this is what she wanted. I didn’t have the same burning desire to have children. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea, but if it didn’t happen for us I was OK with that. But Jess wants kids. I’m doing this for her. That’s what love is all about.’

Joe figured he wouldn’t know anything about all that but all the same his gaze was drawn to Kitty. He could see her through the window. She was standing by the kettle, pulling mugs off the shelf.

‘Speaking of love…’ Cam’s voice made Joe jump. He dragged his eyes off Kitty and back to Cam, wondering where he was going with this topic, but Cam was scraping the barbecue, seemingly disinterested in who or what Joe was watching. ‘Kitty tells me you’re seeing someone. Is it serious?’

Joe almost choked. ‘God, no. I try to avoid serious relationships.’

‘Maybe you just haven’t met the perfect girl yet,’ Cam said, echoing the words of so many of Joe’s friends, but Joe thought differently.

‘No one’s perfect,’ he said, ‘and nothing lasts for ever. I don’t see the point in starting something that won’t last.’

Even Cam and Jess’s relationship, as perfect as it might look from the outside, had its downsides in Joe’s opinion. Jess’s cancer and inability to get pregnant was far from their idea of perfect. But Joe wasn’t about to make an example of Cam’s own marriage as his argument.

‘What about Kitty?’

‘Kitty?’

‘Is that so hard to imagine? You and Kitty? You must like her.’

‘Of course I like her, she’s my best friend.’

He’d been trying to remind himself of that every day since he’d nearly succumbed to temptation and almost kissed her. He continued to tell himself he was glad he’d resisted. That would have been disastrous.

‘C’mon, Joe. You don’t think Jess and I haven’t talked about this? We think you guys would be good together.’

Joe wasn’t so sure. As tempted as he had been the other night, he was still convinced that a quick tumble between the sheets would have been a sure way to ruin their friendship. But that hadn’t stopped him thinking about it. And opting to take Victoria home that night instead hadn’t stopped him thinking about it either. But thinking about it was one thing, acting on it was another thing altogether, and there were dozens of reasons why he would steer clear. Starting with the biggest one—he and Kitty wanted different things out of relationships.

‘I’m not the right man for her,’ he said. ‘Kitty is looking for someone who can commit to her, someone who will promise to never leave her. I don’t believe in happily ever after. We’d be a terrible combination.’

‘You think?’

Joe nodded. He’d given this a lot of thought over the past couple of weeks, and no matter how much he might wish things had turned out differently he knew he wasn’t the right man for Kitty. He was not what Kitty needed. ‘Trust me, I’m not the man she needs and I really don’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship.’

Cam laughed. ‘There’s no such thing as a friendship between a man and a woman. You’ve heard that saying. Men will always muck it up by wanting sex.’

Cam definitely had a point, but Joe couldn’t agree with him. He was desperate to bring this conversation to an end before he admitted to something that had disaster written all over it. ‘Wanting and having are two different things, my friend,’ he said, ‘and it’s the having that mucks things up. Better Kitty and I stick to what we do best. It’s worked for us so far.’

‘OK, mate, whatever you say.’ Cam’s expression was sceptical as he covered the barbecue and knocked the lids off a couple more beers.

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