Mine - A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

Victoria knocked on the door a while later to inform us that a maid would be coming up with coffee and cake soon, and I felt another shock to my system. I’d never even dreamed of having a maid bring me food; hell, my job at the hotel had been to take food to other people. If I was ever hungry, then it had always been up to me to make myself a snack or go out and buy something.

“Er…Victoria seems nice,” I lied, trying to keep the conversation going.

Roy nodded. “Mm, yes, she’s very nice. Very astute. She’s been my personal assistant for…hmm, must be going on five years now. Sometimes I joke around with her saying I may as well adopt her, seeing as she’s always around for me.”

He chuckled, and I laughed nervously along with him.

He paused and then looked at me. “Like I said earlier, I know that the last week has been hard and it must feel like everything is being dumped on you at once, but I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?”

“I remarried a few years ago. She has a son, so technically he is your stepbrother. And she’s your stepmother, of course.”

“Oh. Wow. I…um…I’d love to meet them.”

He grinned with relief. “I’m glad. They’ve been dying to meet you since they heard. They should actually be home very soon, if you wouldn’t mind meeting them now. If not, that’s fine. I understand if you need some time to adjust.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, returning his smile. “I guess I may as well get it all over and done with now. Like ripping a Band-Aid off.”

“Well, they aren’t
that
bad,” he said with a chuckle. “But yes, I understand what you mean. Oh, that must be them now.”

He glanced out of the window, and I craned my neck to look. A black Tesla had pulled up out the front, and I was about to see who was in it when a young maid caught my attention. She’d slipped into the room like a ghost.

“How would you like your coffee, Miss Keller?”

Roy visibly flinched as she said my last name, and I smiled at the maid. “Call me Arizona, please. I’d like my coffee white with no sugar, if that’s okay.”

“Certainly. And the same as usual for you, sir?”

Roy nodded, and she busied herself pouring out our drinks into delicate china cups before nodding at us and leaving. I took a sip of the warm liquid and groaned with delight.

“This is amazing coffee,” I said.

“My favorite blend,” Roy replied. “Wonderful, isn’t it? Nice and strong.”

“Yeah. So what does your wife do?” I asked.

“She’s an actress,” he said. “Well, she used to be, anyway. Her name is…oh, there they are at the door now. Hold on a sec.”

He crossed the room to let them in, and something suddenly ticked over in my mind. Billionaire married to an ex-actress who had one son - I’d definitely heard of that before, and I knew I’d actually been thinking about it not that long ago.

Oh god.

Could his wife be Layla Wade Crest? If so, then that meant…no, it couldn’t be. There were probably heaps of billionaires married to actresses. But even as I thought it, she strolled through the door, perfect with her flawless skin, long sable hair and piercing green eyes. Eyes that I’d seen once before on the man I’d come to mentally refer to as the devil himself.

Mason Crest.

He followed immediately after her, and his eyes widened as he saw me standing before him and Layla. It was like he was looking right inside me with that stare, and ever-so-slowly, a cocky, self-assured grin spread across his face. A rush of blood to my head made my cheeks flush, and I tried to break eye contact but couldn’t seem to look away.

Holy mother of god. Mason was my
stepbrother
.

CHAPTER FIVE

MASON

No fucking way.

Arizona the hot-as-fuck Wisconsin waitress was standing right here in front of me, and my cock stiffened in my pants as my eyes roamed over her curves. She was wearing a cheaply-cut cardigan and jeans that would probably make anyone else look like a lumpy sack of potatoes, but she filled it all out perfectly.
Mmm
. Somehow knowing that she was apparently my new stepsister made her seem even sexier. There was something seriously hot about the idea of bending her over a bed and fucking her silly while our parents were in the same house, knowing we could be caught at any moment. It was like it added some scandalous, forbidden element to my fantasies of fucking her without actually crossing over into creepy, incestuous territory.

When my mother had informed me of the whole situation with Roy finding his long-lost daughter, I’d only had one ear open. I could have sworn she said the girl’s name was Adriana, not Arizona. It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for Roy, it was just that the way my mother spoke about it made it seem like the daughter posed some sort of threat to her, and I hadn’t wanted to keep listening to her droning bullshit. Typical Layla. Always worrying about someone else stealing her thunder.

“I’m so honored to meet you,” Arizona said, taking my mother’s hand. “I’m such a huge fan.”

“Oh, no, the honor is all mine,” my mother cooed. “You have no idea how happy we all are that Roy finally found you.”

“Good to see you again, Arizona,” I interjected, stepping forward with a smirk.

She looked at me like I was something she’d just scraped off the bottom of her shoe, and Roy raised his eyebrows.

“You two know each other?” he asked.

“Yeah, we met at that fundraiser thing Mom sent me to. Arizona was working there,” I replied. “The uh…Wormwood Hotel?”

“Did we?” Arizona said, her expression impassive. “It’s Rosewood.”

My grin faded. “Er…yeah. It was only two weeks ago.”

“I served a lot of customers at that job,” she replied, throwing a rueful smile at Roy and my mother. “Sorry, I can never remember all the faces and names.”

Bullshit. There was no way she didn’t remember me. The disdainful look she’d thrown at me when I’d first said hi to her was enough evidence of that, so clearly she still couldn’t stand me. Jesus Christ, what the hell had I done to her? Surely she wasn’t
that
pissed that I’d tried to hit on her and slipped a note with my number into her friend’s hand to pass on to her. I mean, come on…she was hot as hell. She probably had guys hit on her all the time, so it wasn’t like it was a huge deal.

Whatever. If she wanted to be a bitch, then so be it.
Two can play at that game, princess,
I thought, cold seeping into my eyes as I watched her chat away with my mother about some old movie. After all the shit she’d been through with discovering she was secretly the daughter of a billionaire after being kidnapped as a baby, she was probably going to need years of intense therapy to get over it. So now she wasn’t just a bitch, she was a crazy bitch.

And yet I still wanted to fuck her brains out.

It was obvious what was wrong with me now. She was like the forbidden fruit; the one girl who I couldn’t have, not just because she was my long-lost stepsister, but because she’d made it abundantly clear that she would rather lick razor blades and swim with sharks than go within fifty feet of me.

“Well, it’s been great playing happy families, but I have somewhere to be,” I said curtly, turning on my heel and striding out.

“Mason! Get back here!” I heard my mother call out after me, but no one actually followed. Hmm, yeah, seemed like they
really
cared whether or not I stayed. Sarcasm aside, they were too busy fawning over the magical Arizona to worry about me.

I got into my car and tore out of the estate, seething. It was one thing fantasizing about a chick who’d straight up rejected me, but having to
live
with her for an undetermined period of time? Fuck. It’d be like having a daily reminder of that rejection and failure, as hot as my forbidden fantasies of her might be. Prissy bitch. I didn’t want her there. Maybe I’d have to move out.

I pulled out my cell phone and called up my best buddy, Anders.

“What’s up?” I asked when he answered.

“Hey man, not a lot. Just finished work for the day.”

“It’s one o’clock,” I said with a snort. “Already finished for the day?”

“Hey, you’re one to talk. At least I have a real job.”

I chuckled. He had a point. I’d dropped out of college when I was nineteen, much to my mother’s chagrin, and in the year since then I’d sorta just drifted along, occasionally helping my mother and Roy out with her charity stuff or his company. Roy always offered to pay me for the work I did, but I’d said no every time. I already had more than enough to live on courtesy of my trust fund. No pay was fine for me until I figured out what the hell I actually wanted to do with my life.

“Meet me at Clancy’s,” I said to Anders. “I have shit to tell you.”

“Guess I could go for a drink,” he said. “See ya there in half an hour, man.”

By one-thirty, Anders and I were seated at our favorite spot on the strip for afternoon drinks, and I filled him in on the situation with my stepfather and Arizona.

“Dude…the hot waitress turned out to be your
sister
? Oh man, that’s fucked up.”

“My stepsister,” I corrected him. “We aren’t related. I’m still allowed to think she’s hot.”

He shot me a warning look. “Yeah, it might be okay between us friends, but can you imagine what other people would think if you actually fucked her? You know what your Mom’s like, always trying to look all kosher and sweet for the media. I can see the headlines now.
Layla Wade Crest Lets Own Son Bang Stepsister – Has She Fallen From Grace
?”

I snorted with laughter. “Yeah, I guess. Arizona’s a bitch, anyway.”

Anders gestured to a table of giggling girls, all clad in tight jean shorts and tiny tops. “Plenty of pussy in the sea,” he said with a smirk. “Fuck Arizona. I mean, don’t actually fuck her. You know what I mean.”

I took a sip of my whiskey and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Fuck her.”

“I’ll be back in a sec.”

He headed over to the table of girls and said something to them, and they giggled even more and came over to our table with him a moment later.

“Mason, this is Ally, Caity, and Beth,” Anders said, throwing me a sly wink.

“I’ve seen you before, Mason,” Caity simpered. Her eyes were ringed with far too much black eyeliner. “There were photos of you in the paper the other day, with your Mom. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”

I gave her a tight smile. Of course she wanted to meet my mother. They always did. Fuck, it’d be nice if a chick wanted to actually get to know me for once. Like really know me, not just hang on for a while in an attempt to meet my mother or get their picture in the society pages.

“Gotta go,” I said, abruptly standing up.

Anders gave me a withering look. “What? We only just got here. And these three seem like they have a
lot
to talk about.”

He pinched Beth on the thigh, and she giggled like some kind of schoolgirl caricature.

“Yeah…sorry, forgot I had some shit to do,” I lied.

He shrugged and mouthed ‘your loss’, and I nodded and walked away. Yep, my loss. It was the second time today that I’d given up on a chance to get my dick sucked or whatever those girls were willing to do to me, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Fuck. Maybe my new stepsister wasn’t the only person who needed therapy.

Whatever. I’d get back into the game soon. Hopefully Arizona would stay the fuck out of my way, and I’d be back to screwing chicks on a rotating schedule in no time at all. Once I was back in my car, I checked my phone. Seven missed calls. All from…well, you can guess.

“What?” I barked into the phone as I called my mother back.

“Mason,” she hissed. “How dare you storm out like that? We’re supposed to be making Adriana feel welcome!”

“It’s Arizona,” I said. “Maybe she’d feel more welcome if you could actually remember her fucking name.”

“I
said
Arizona,” she replied, her tone haughty. Oh, of course. Layla Wade Crest was never wrong. “Now, as you can imagine, once the media picks up this story, it’s going to be big news. We need to put on a united front and show them what a happy, well-adjusted family we all are despite the circumstances. That means spending lots of time together.”

“I was waiting for you to bring up the media,” I said in an acid tone. “Is that all you care about? What about the fact that your husband just found the daughter he thought he’d lost forever? He had no idea if she was even still alive…and all you’re thinking about is what the press thinks of you and your alleged family values?”

“Stop being dramatic, Mason. We’re having a family dinner at seven, and I expect you to be home for it. No excuses.”

With that, she hung up in my ear, and I fumed as I headed back home. I couldn’t figure out what was worse - sharing a house with Arizona, my bitchy new stepmonster who hated me for no reason, or having to deal with my mother’s incessant media whoring. It was really starting to get old.

Anders texted me as I drove, and I glanced at it briefly.
Man ur missin out. This Ally chick jst tld me she likes it up the ass. Guess who I’m takin hm tonight? Haha.

His message looked it had been hammered out by a masturbating orangutan, and I rolled my eyes. He’d probably catch chlamydia even if he double-wrapped his junk. Those girls had looked pretty skeezy, and I didn’t regret leaving for a second.

Arizona was nowhere to be seen when I returned, and I assumed she was unpacking and getting settled into her room. Hmm. That gave me an idea. I checked my watch and saw that I still had almost four hours till this bullshit family dinner thing.

Yep, that was definitely enough time to get something done. If I couldn’t fuck her, then I could at least fuck
with
her….