Mine - A Stepbrother Romance (10 page)

To my complete and utter shame, I buried my head in his expensive grey shirt and cried.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MASON

I stood on the sidewalk, frozen in place as Arizona put her head on my chest and cried, her shoulders shaking from the sobs. I’d never really had to deal with a crying woman before, and I wasn’t sure how to react. Should I put my arm around her? Pat her on the head?

I felt a twinge in my heart as she continued to cry, and I wrapped my arms around her, gently holding her as the tears flowed.

“Shh,” I said, rubbing one hand up and down her back. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Usually being this close to a smoking hot chick would make me think of one thing and one thing only. Sex. But not now. In this moment, all I could think was how worried I was about her, and how much I wanted to fucking kill whichever bastard had made her so upset.

I opened my mouth again to ask her what had happened, but before I could say anything she pulled her head away from my chest and whispered in a ragged voice.

“I went to see my Dad.”

I frowned. “Roy upset you? Wait, you mean…you went to see Tom Keller?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. Black makeup was smeared around her eyes from all the tears, making her look like some sort of panda impersonator, but she honestly didn’t look any worse than half the chicks at the clubs I’d been to who purposely ringed their eyes with that much eyeliner and shadow in an attempt to look sexy.

No, Arizona was just naturally beautiful, panda-eyes or not, and believe me – I’d looked at a
lot
of women’s eyes in my life. I didn’t tell her any of that, though. Right now she was vulnerable, and I knew I needed to take care of her despite any differences we’d had in the past.

“Come on,” I murmured, ruffling her hair and linking my arm in hers. “You need some food and a stiff drink.”

“I have to get back to work,” she said as a solitary tear trickled down her cheek. I wiped it off her tearstained face with my thumb and raised my eyebrows.

“There’s no way you’re working when you’re like this. Roy will understand. I’m taking you for an early dinner. No arguments, ‘kay?”

She nodded and sniffed. “I guess you’re right. I am kinda hungry. And I could definitely do with that drink you mentioned.”

I smiled and pretended to doff an imaginary cap. “Well, follow me, milady.”

Fuck, I sounded like an idiot, but I was just trying to act all stupid in order to cheer her up a bit. It must have worked, because she gave me a watery smile and accompanied me down the street to an old Italian restaurant that had never failed to fill me up on good food and good wine.

My hand was resting on the small of her back in a sort of protective gesture, and my heart beat just a little faster as the sweet scent of her perfume filled my nostrils. She was wearing a tight grey pencil skirt that made her ass look like perfection, although I was sure it was perfect without clothes on as well.

Shit. I needed to dispel these thoughts right away. This was probably my one shot at getting her to like me as a stepbrother, so the last thing I needed to do now was fuck it up by letting
those
kinds of thoughts creep back in, courtesy of my male stupidity.

The hostess at the restaurant noted my arrival and directed me to my usual table at a cozy booth tucked away in the corner, and Arizona nervously fingered her cardigan.

“I feel like I should be all dressed up,” she said.

“Nah. You’re probably overdressed for this place,” I said with a grin. “It looks nice, but it’s actually pretty cheap. Good food too.”

We flicked through the menus, and I settled for my usual chicken carbonara. Arizona pressed her lips together in thought and then looked up at me.

“What should I get? I have no idea what’s good here.”

“Depends how hungry you are. The pastas are all pretty filling, but if you want something a bit lighter, anything with chicken or fish is a good bet.”

“Hmm…yeah, I think I’ll go with the involtini di pollo.”

A waiter appeared a moment later with a wine list, and I asked for a bottle of my favorite pinotage before putting in our dinner orders.

“What’s pinotage?” she asked as the waiter left.

“It’s a red wine from South Africa,” I explained. “Really nice stuff. The one I ordered is supposed to have subtle hints of heather and candy floss.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure it does. Wine experts say stuff like that, but they all taste the same to me.”

“The experts or the wine?”

“Very funny. The wine,” she replied.

“Trust me, you’ll be surprised,” I said.

She shifted nervously in her seat and looked at me, her hazel eyes almost melting me in their intensity. She was trying to put on a brave face, but I could still see how sad she was.

“This feels weird,” she said. “I feel like I should be throwing something at you and telling you to piss off, not having dinner with you.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I’m still kinda shocked you agreed to come. You ever gonna tell me why you’ve been such a bitch to me since you arrived?”

She cast her eyes down to her lap, and I backtracked. “Fuck. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a bitch. I mean, you kind of are, but I probably deserved it.”

Christ, I was digging myself deeper and deeper. ‘
You’re not a bitch but you kind of are’,
what the hell was that? Someone needed to slap me right about now.

“Can we talk about it later?” she asked. “I sort of just need to vent about my Dad right now. Crap. I mean Tom. I still keep thinking of him as ‘Dad’.”

“Sure,” I said. “But I’m holding you to that. By the end of the night, you’re gonna tell me exactly what I did to get on your bad side. Anyway, back to Tom…why did you go to see him?”

She filled me in on the whole story, and I listened intently, not even taking a bite of my food for five minutes after it arrived.

“Jesus,” I said when she finished talking. “That’s pretty heavy. Wanna know what I think?”

She took a quick nibble of her chicken and then peered at me. “Sure.”

“I know you’re hurting, but I think Roy was right. It might not feel like it now, but it was a good idea for you to see Tom. Since you found out about this, you haven’t been sure whether your Mom actually knew about it, right? The kidnapping thing, that is.”

“Uh-huh. I mean, he told the cops she didn’t know, but I was never sure if that was true.”

“Exactly. You needed to hear him say it to your face, otherwise it would have been hanging over your head for the rest of your life with you wondering whether or not your Mom was complicit in your kidnapping. And now you know she wasn’t, and all the good memories you have of her won’t be tarnished anymore.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re right. But I just…it was so hard sitting there and hearing him insinuate that he didn’t ever love me. We were never exactly close, but I didn’t realize how much that could hurt.”

I took a sip of wine before replying. “I think he did love you in his own way, but he just can’t say it. I’m not defending the man or condoning what he did in any way, but he must have felt fucking awful for what he did. That guilt probably ate him up and made it hard for him to express any emotions towards you.”

“He didn’t feel bad enough to not do it in the first place,” she said before gulping down her entire glass of wine in a few mouthfuls. “Hey, this really does have a candy floss aftertaste.”

“Easy there, alco,” I said. “And yeah, I know. He still did it, and I doubt anyone’s ever going to forgive him for that. But just think about it…well, you know what Roy said to you earlier about he was at least partially grateful to Tom for taking care of you?”

“Yeah?”

“I kinda get what he means. If he really didn’t give a shit about you, he could’ve just chucked you out on the street the minute your Mom died. You wouldn’t believe how many terrible people there are out there who would actually do that to a kid. But he didn’t. He kept you and looked after you.”

“I guess.”

Her lips tightened and she began to look morose again, and I sighed. If I was really going to make her feel better, then it was time to start sharing.

“You aren’t the only one who has a bad history with Dads,” I said. “Believe me.”

“How do you mean?”

“My Dad doesn’t give a fuck about me. He’s some movie producer my mother met and married for about five seconds when she was shooting some drama thing. He gave her money and everything to support me after they split when I was a baby, not that she really needed more money, but he never bothered to get to know me.”

“Oh, wow. I had no idea,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t talk about it much. I went to visit him once when I was thirteen. I had this whole stupid idea in my head that he’d see me and suddenly feel something and want to bond with me. Go fishing, kick a ball around, that kinda crap.”

“And?”

“He gave me a hundred bucks and told me to go get some lunch, and then promptly forgot I was even there. I just flew back home to my mother and never spoke to him again, which he didn’t even seem to notice. Seven years since then and not a single call or letter.”

“That’s terrible.” She downed her second glass of wine and then rubbed her temples. “I’m already starting to feel a bit tipsy.”

“Cheap date, huh?” I said with a grin. “It’s all right. After the day you’ve had, you need to unwind and have a drink or two.”

“Or ten.”

She concentrated on her food for a while, and we sat in silence.

“It’s not just this whole Tom thing bothering me,” she said quietly a moment later, putting her fork down.

“Yeah?”

“It’s everything. This all happened so suddenly. One minute I’m making just above minimum wage and the next I have all of this along with a brand new family.”

She gestured towards the Balenciaga handbag the personal stylist had picked out for her and then continued. “It feels so weird to me. Roy’s given me all these credit cards, and there’s even some bank account he set up for me years ago in case I was ever returned to him. Like a trust fund sort of thing. I’m too scared to even look at it, because I know it’ll be some massive number I can barely comprehend. I feel guilty over it all for some reason. Don’t you ever feel strange just having all this stuff?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I was born into it. It just seems normal to me. But I do get where you’re coming from. It must be fucking weird going from one extreme to the other.”

“And not even just that,” she said. “Everyone treats me so differently now. I have friggin’ maids taking care of my washing and everything else at home, and they just speak to me so…so deferentially. Like I’m royalty or something.”

I chuckled. “Tell me about it. I’ve never really done anything worth mentioning, yet people are always falling over themselves to get a piece of me, all because I fell out of some famous actress’s vagina twenty years ago.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I doubt you fell out.”

“Fine. Squeezed out.”

I shuddered, and she grinned. “Not a fan of thinking about babies?” she asked.

“Nah, I love kids. Just the thought of being pregnant and giving birth freaks me out. I don’t know how you women do it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “
You
like kids?” she asked, the skepticism in her voice clear.

“Yeah, of course I do. They’re awesome.”

“Huh. Okay, I just figured most guys your age get all freaked out about that kinda stuff,” she replied.

“Nah. I mean, I’m not saying I want a bunch of them right now, but I do like them. They’re cool to hang around. Speaking of kids, did I tell you what my mother did once?”

“No?”

I told her the story about the African kid she’d adopted and then sent back home when she got sick of him, and her jaw practically dropped to the floor.

“Layla…she did that?”

“Yep.”

“Oh my god. She’s always seemed so…”

“So amazing? Yeah, I know. She’s full of it. She knows exactly how to play the media. But trust me, that Malawi story is just the icing on the cake.”

“Well, I guess I know why you have a problem with her now.”

She sipped on her wine, still looking utterly gobsmacked at my revelation.

“Sorry to change the subject, but back to what I was saying earlier about all the money…you don’t think I’m using Roy, do you?”

I furrowed my brows. “No. What do you mean?”

She let out a heavy sigh. “Yet another entry on the list of my issues at the moment. I’m worried people will think I only came back to meet Roy so I could get my hands on his money. You should’ve heard what Victoria said the other day. She pretty much implied that I don’t deserve anything just because I haven’t been around for the last nineteen years and acted like the only reason I’m even here is for the cash bonus.”

“Don’t listen to that bitch,” I said. “She’s fucking crazy. You know many times she’s tried to sleep with me? Doesn’t matter how many times I knock her back, she just keeps trying to latch on. She wants money and power, and she’ll do anything to get it.”