Forbidden: A Stepbrother Secret Baby Romance (19 page)

"I can't say that I'm surprised by any of this. Honestly. I knew you wouldn't be able to keep a man like Paul. It's shocked me that you've managed to hold your relationship together for this long, quite frankly,” she hisses.

I stand up and grab Ryan. I don’t have to take this abuse. I hear a clearing of a throat from the doorway. It’s Jax. “That’s enough, Cassie.”

My mother looks horrified at his interruption. “Excuse me?”

Jax steps into the room. He’s seems bigger than usual; it’s like he’s puffing his chest out in a primal display. “That’s enough of you being an asshole to your daughter.”

My mother laughs darkly. “Oh, you’re her keeper now? You fuck your stepsister and suddenly you’re in charge around here?” Jax looks panicked. My mother laughs again. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? Give me a little more credit than that. Oh no. I will not let this fling between the two of you stand. The impropriety of it – what will people say? You have a child with another man, Tessa. It was bad enough when you were unmarried with a baby, but at least his father was in his life.”

I start to walk out of the room, shielding Ryan from her verbal blows. I don’t have to stand for this. “Paul was never in Ryan’s life, Mother. He can tell you all about that.” I smooth Ryan’s dark hair across his perfect, soft head.

“It’s hard for a man to be there for his child when he’s the only one bothering to get up in the morning and work,” my mother shouts.

Jax isn’t done. “I said that’s enough, Cassie.”

I step past him and look up at the top of the stairs. Jillian is standing there holding her suitcase. She’s blushing with shame from having overheard what was happening. “I need a ride to the airport,” she says.

Jax looks at both of us. “Pack your shit, Tessa. And Jillian, we’ll drive you to the airport.”

“Your father is not going to stand for you driving off in your car,” my mother says.

“Fuck you, Cassie,” Jax retorts. “Tell him to send a goddamned repo man for all I care.”

I walk out of the room to go pack, bracing myself for the last thing that will come out of my mother’s mouth. She always leaves the worst for last. “I just want you to know that Paul is still always welcome in this house. He will always be my son.”

She lets the words hang in the empty air. For once, I don’t feel threatened by them. Jax has emboldened me. He helps me up the staircase, his hand on the small of my back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

JAX

The only good part about being the son of a billionaire is that you’re never without connections. We had our pick of guesthouses to stay in: associates of my dad who mostly just wanted to piss him off. They were tempting offers. Within an hour of dropping Jillian off at the airport, Tessa and I had a place to stay. Sam’s girlfriend Julie offered us the tiny little guesthouse in her backyard. Tessa and I moved into it happily.

Julie is letting us live rent-free until we can get our bearings. It’s only five hundred square feet, but it feels palatial compared to living with the suffocating presence of both of our parents.

“How do I look?” Tessa asks me two weeks after we stormed out of my dad’s house, spinning around the small kitchen in her simple outfit. She’s wearing a jade green sundress with a cardigan over it. Her breasts look like presents to me.

“Gorgeous,” I reply with a grin. “You’ll fucking kill at the interview today.” I lean back on the tiny sofa. Ryan is on the floor playing with his favorite wooden blocks.

“Are you going to be alright? You look more nervous than I do,” Tessa replies.

I laugh, but she’s not wrong. “It’s just babysitting. I’ve been changing his diapers for the last two weeks, Tess. I’ve got this. You know that I’ve got this.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “You’re practically sweating bullets over there, Nanny McPhee.”

I wipe my brow. “It’s a little warm today, that’s all. Seriously, I’ll be fine. Now, go knock ‘em dead at the art gallery.”

Tessa beams at me and flounces over to give me a long kiss. “Mm,” I say. “Hurry home.”

“Be good for Jax,” Tessa says to Ryan, kissing him on his fuzzy little head. She walks out the front door and for the first time, it’s just me and Ryan.

“What will we do today?” I ask him. He claps his hands together happily, his long, dark eyelashes rimming blue eyes. “You sure are a happy little fucker, aren’t you?” He giggles in response.

Ten minutes later, I’ve exhausted my knowledge of kids’ songs and hand clapping games and Ryan is looking bored. He tries to pull himself up on the coffee table but ends up toppling headfirst into the hard surface. He screams at the top of his lungs and I scoop his rubbery, warm body into my arms. “Shh, it’s okay,” I murmur. But nothing’s working.

I look around desperately and see the baby carrier that Tessa wears sometimes. I put Ryan down on the floor where he screams louder. In this tiny space, the noise is like a jackhammer to my ears. I pick up the contraption and have no idea how to use it. “I started a business.” Ryan shrieks louder in response. “Alright, true. My business failed. But I can do this. I have a college degree. A baby carrier can’t be hard to figure out.” Ryan looks skeptical.

Great. I’m talking to a six-month-old. Three minutes of tangling myself up in the baby carrier leaves me nearly in tears. I look around and see curtains hanging from the window. “Okay, okay. This’ll be easier. We’ll do a Scarlett O’Hara, Sound of Music thing, Ryan.” I pull up a fabric wrap tutorial on YouTube and ten minutes later, I’m wearing floral curtains with Ryan facing outward on my chest. He’s kicking his feet happily.

The important thing here is that he’s finally fucking stopped crying.

We head out into the Santa Barbara sunshine, walking from Julie’s house down to Stearn’s Wharf. We wander past dog walkers, roller bladers, moms with strollers, and teens skipping school. I can’t blame them; the weather is just too good not to cut class. I stop to buy Ryan a baby hat from one of the beach vendors. “Looking good, little dude,” I say to him. He giggles when he sees his reflection in the mirror.

I make a funny face at him and he screeches with laughter.

A gorgeous blonde woman walks up to us. She flits her eyelashes at me and I automatically tense up. She eyes my muscular arms and tattoos and then reaches out to take Ryan’s hand. He looks as uncertain about her touching him as I feel. “Nice baby wrap,” she coos. Then she says some complicated brand name I can’t understand, asking me if it’s one of those.

“Nah, I made it,” I reply.

She laughs uproariously. “Wish I could find a man like you. And your baby is just gorgeous. He looks just like you!” she says.

“Oh, I’m not his dad,” I reply.

She laughs. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty damn sure. I think I would know if he were mine,” I say. Now I’m angry. I walk away from her and pay for the hat. I’m fuming as we walk back out onto the boardwalk. I have blue eyes. Ryan has blue eyes. But so does Paul. He also has dark hair. Just like Paul.

I try to breathe and kiss the top of Ryan’s head. It’s soft on my lips. He smells like Cheerios and some other delicious scent that I guess is the inimitable smell of infant. I sniff him again surreptitiously, getting a warm feeling in my sternum. We keep walking, and when I see a main painting on the beach I have an idea. I know there’s an art supply shop somewhere around here. I pull out my phone and navigate to one.

An hour later, I’m carrying a now-asleep Ryan along with three shopping bags of paint brushes, tubes of acrylic paint, and something called gesso. Under my arm are three different-sized canvases and a folding easel.

We pass a coffee shop on the way home and I order an iced latte. We sit under an umbrella and watch the ocean waves crash into the shore. A seagull lands a few feet away and Ryan screeches in delight. “Wish I were as easily amused as you are,” I whisper into his soft head. He smells good. Really good. I keep sniffing his ears as I sip my latte.

Ryan grabs my straw and tries to drink my drink. I let him think he’s won, and Ryan is happy. An old man wearing a bucket hat that looks a lot like the one I just bought Ryan smiles at us. “Like father, like son,” he says.

“He’s not my-“ But I stop and smile, my heart quickening. “That’s right. He’s a good kid.”

Ryan and I take our drink and head back home. I unwrap him from the baby wrap and carry him into the bathroom. I set his legs into the sink and let him lean back against me. I look at both of us in the mirror, letting down my hair.

We have the same hair. But Paul has curly, dark hair, too, my brain whispers. We have the same eyes. Paul has the same eyes, says that annoying little voice. Ryan smiles at me and his dimples fall into sharp relief. Paul doesn’t have dimples. I do. I smile back at him and for the first time I realize that we do look a lot alike.

The way I feel about this possibility could not surprise me any more than it does.

I feel hopeful. I feel happy.

When Tessa comes home, Ryan is sound asleep in his crib. She’s smiling. “Okay, I got the job!” she says, jumping up and down excitedly.

I stand up and take her into my arms. “I fucking told you that you would,” I say, kissing her.

She wrinkles her brow. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you look funny. You’re acting weird,” she says. She steps back from me. “Was Ryan okay today? Did he cry and cry and you want to move into a hotel away from both of us?”

I laugh and pull her back into my arms. “No, not at all. He was great. We went down to the Wharf and walked around for a while. It was great. He was great.” I have a funny feeling in my stomach. I’m supposed to hate kids. But I like Ryan. “It’s just – are you sure that Ryan is Paul’s?”

Tessa laughs. “Yeah. I mean, you and I used condoms. Paul and I…well. We didn’t. The night I got back from San Francisco.” She shakes her head. “It was stupid and reckless but I was desperate for him to love me again.” She squeezes my hand. “I know now that I was just trying to fill the void of not being with you, though.”

I swallow hard. “We didn’t use condoms every time, actually.” I say this slowly and let the words marinate in the air between us. “I only found two wrappers the next day. I know that we were really, really drunk.”

Tessa puts her purse down and sinks into the sofa. “Oh, God. I didn’t know that.”

“He has dimples, Tessa. You don’t. Neither does Paul or your mom,” I say.

“My dad had dimples,” she says slowly. “Don’t be ridiculous. He has to be Paul’s.”

“How sure are you?” I ask.

“I’m…sure,” she says. “Oh, God.”

I sit next to her and wrap my arm around her shoulders. “We should do a DNA test. It’s the right thing to do.”

She nods. “Okay. Okay.” She’s in shock. She looks over at the bare, curtain-less window. “What happened to the curtain?”

“Fashion emergency,” I reply vaguely. She looks at me like I have six heads and I laugh. “I couldn’t figure out the baby carrier so I made a wrap out of the curtains.”

Tessa’s eyes go wide. “How do you solve a problem like Maria,” she murmurs.

I’m thankful for the change of subject. I tickle her until she can’t breathe. When she’s begging me to stop, I kiss her. “Ryan and I set up a little surprise for you in the back closet.”

Tessa looks curious. “Really?”

I grab her hand and lead her the few feet to the tiny room. “You want to guess what it is?”

“It can’t be too big. That room is like fifteen square feet,” she says.

“Fifteen square feet with north-facing windows and a window for fresh air,” I add.

She laughs. “Well, if it needs ventilation, I’m going with the sensible guess. You’ve set up a meth lab so we can make some fast cash.”

I laugh. “Open the door.”

Tessa opens it slowly as if expecting someone to jump out. Then she gasps. I look around her to make sure the scene I set up is having the proper effect. I set up the folding easel with one of the canvases. I dragged a small side table and a kitchen chair into the space. The light really is perfect in here, and I’ve opened the two small windows to let in the fresh, seaside air.

“Oh my God,” Tessa whispers. I look at her face. She’s crying.

“Do you like it? I know you love to paint but you haven’t been able to,” I say.

“How do you know that?” she asks, breathlessly. “I mean, I know I mentioned painting at dinner that first night at your dad’s house, but how do you know I haven’t been painting?”

I shrug. “Jillian let it slip when you were packing up the other day. That’s how. I thought I would change that. Every day when you get home from work, I’ll make sure dinner’s ready and I’ll get Ryan into bed. Then you can paint to your heart’s content. Maybe go down to the beach and paint the sunset?”

Tessa gapes at me.

“Well? What do you think?” I ask her, already knowing her answer.

“I think I want to fuck your brains out because this is the sexiest thing anyone has ever done for me,” Tessa whispers. I run my hands through her silky hair and sweep her off her feet, carrying her up the narrow steps into the loft where our mattress awaits. It’ll be another hour before Ryan’s up from his nap. That’s plenty of time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

TESSA

“So basically you’ll just greet customers as they come in. We’re having a private viewing today and you’ll just need to be here to answer questions for the women.” Roxy, my manager, smiles at me. “You’ll be great. The group is just a bunch of old women from the country club. They’ll pretend to know more than they do about everything here, and you just smile and nod and try to get them to pull out their checkbooks. Got it?”

A shock goes through my body. “Which country club?”

Yeah. It’s that country club. Twenty minutes later, they’ve arrived. My mother is standing ten feet away from me, pretending not to see me. It’s awkward. This is my first day on the job and I feel like a small child. It’s bullshit.

I see the tall, skinny woman who seemed amused by me and Jax in the pool wave me over. I nod and walk quickly past my mother to the woman. “I hate bullshit functions like this,” she mutters unexpectedly. My eyes widen. “I’m Cindy, by the way.” She holds out a slender hand and I shake it.