Mine - A Stepbrother Romance (9 page)

CHAPTER TEN

MASON

I picked up a salmon puff and shoved it in my mouth before glancing across the table as my mother hissed at me like a cat on angel dust.

“Mason!” she said. “You’re not meant to be eating the appetizers just yet. We’re still waiting on Arizona.”

Of course. Arizona, the hot little thorn in my side. I’d barely seen her for the last couple of weeks, but that hadn’t stopped me from thinking about her every five fucking seconds. After the kiss we’d shared, she’d made it pretty clear that nothing else was ever going to happen between us, and I’d respected her wishes and left her alone. For now. I’d even volunteered to go to a bunch of charity events in California that my mother couldn’t be bothered attending just so I could get away from her for a while.

I wasn’t going to leave her alone forever, though. Oh no. I couldn’t hold out that long, so now that we were being forced to play happy families over lunch, I was going to have a bit of fun. How else would I liven things up around here? It wasn’t like I was getting laid. My dick still seemed to go limp every time I so much as thought about another chick.

“Sorry I’m a little late. I decided to get changed.”

A breathless feminine voice sounded from beside me, and I looked over, trying not to do a double take. Jesus. Arizona had just appeared at the table, and it took all the self-restraint I had to not stand up, throw her over my shoulder and walk out of the hotel restaurant right in front of Roy, my mother and all the reporters and photographers.

She was wearing a dark purple silken wrap dress, and my cock stiffened as I took in the slight hint of cleavage and the way it ever-so-slightly skimmed her curves, accentuating that perfect hourglass figure of hers. She had dark stilettos on to match, and as she walked around to the other side of the table, her hips and ass swayed with her every movement, almost drawing a tortured groan from my mouth until I jammed another salmon puff inside it instead.

“You look lovely, darling,” my mother cooed. “That color is so slimming on you.”

Ha. Just ten minutes ago I’d overheard her on the phone to Emile saying that Arizona needed to lose ten pounds and get a better haircut if she was going to be making public media appearances, even though this whole bullshit media lunch thing had been all her idea. Telling Arizona that the dress was ‘slimming’ on her was a thinly-veiled insult anyway. How did no one else see through her?

“You do look perfect. Very mature and stylish,” Roy declared, smiling from the head of the table as Arizona took her place. Was he kidding? She didn’t look ‘mature’. She looked like a sultry sex goddess, not some middle-aged accountant.

Her seat at the table was directly across from me, and I noticed she made a concerted effort to avert her eyes from mine.
C’mon, Arizona,
I willed her.
Look at me.
She leaned forward to take a sip of water from her glass, and just as I noticed that I could almost see straight down the front of her dress, that was when she finally decided to look at me.

Shit, now she thought I was even more of a pervy sleaze than she had before, if that was even possible.

“Well, let’s get started,” my mother said, snapping her fingers. “Dig in, everyone.”

Arizona poked some food around her plate, obviously uncomfortable with the whole setup.

“Mr. Vierra,” a brunette reporter said, thrusting a recorder in Roy’s face. I think her name was Megan something-rather. “What’s it been like for the last month with Arizona finally back in your life?”

Roy wiped around his mouth with a napkin and smiled. “It’s been like a dream come true,” he replied. “My daughter and I have been taking lots of time to get to know each other properly, and I have to say that I’m honored to be blessed with such a wonderful girl. All these years apart haven’t changed a thing. I still love her just as much now as I did when I first held her, and I’m extremely proud of the young woman she has become. I only wish her mother could be here today as well.”

“And Layla, how about you?” Megan said, turning her attention to my mother. “How did you feel when you found out your husband had a nineteen year old daughter?”

My mother threw her a dazzling smile. “Well, of course I already knew he had a daughter. We’ve prayed for all these years that she was still out there, safe and happy, and I’m just so pleased that I can be part of the effort to make her feel loved and welcome now that she’s come back to us.”

Bullshit. I knew my mother better than anyone. If she had her way, Arizona would be on a bus back to Wisconsin without a penny of Roy’s fortune. The way she saw it, it was
her
money, simply because she was married to the guy. But of course no one else could know that. Oh no, she had an image to uphold.

“Oh, of course. It really is fantastic, isn’t it? And so surreal,” Megan said. “Now, the lady of the moment…Arizona, what’s it been like for you to adjust to this new life? I understand you used to live in Leyton, Wisconsin. What did you do there?”

Arizona looked up from her plate. “I was a waitress at a hotel restaurant.”

“So you go from being a small-town waitress to being an heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune. It’s like a Cinderella story, isn’t it?”

“Well, not really,” Arizona said with an innocent smile. “I’m still waiting on my handsome prince to arrive. So far he’s nowhere to be seen.”

She looked right at me when she said that last sentence, and I narrowed my eyes. That was a subtle dig at me, but a dig no less. Everyone laughed at her quip, and she fielded a bevy of questions from around the table until Megan turned her attention to me.

“So Mason, you’ve grown up as an only child, and although you’re an adult now, it still must be difficult to adjust to having a new stepsibling. How would you say your relationship with your stepsister has developed so far?”

“Well, we’ve only had a month to get to know each other, but we’ve already shared a couple of
intimate
moments,” I replied, sliding my foot up over Arizona’s bare leg under the table.

She choked on her soda as I finished my sentence, prompting quizzical looks from everyone at the table.

“Sorry,” she gasped out. “My drink went down the wrong pipe.”

God, I’d missed making Arizona squirm. I’d rather she was squirming underneath me as I drove my cock into her, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon unless she got a lobotomy and completely changed personalities, so this is what I was stuck with. I could barely hold back my grin, and the journalist turned her attention back to me.

“Intimate?”

“Sorry, that probably wasn’t the right word. Close, I meant. We’ve hung out, been to a party together, had movie nights…all that kinda stuff.”

Arizona’s nostrils flared slightly, and I reached across and patted her hand before continuing. “It’s like we’ve known each other our whole lives, isn’t it,
sis
?”

“Mm-hmm. It sure is,
bro
,” she said, plastering a saccharin sweet smile on her face and aiming her foot at my shin under the table.

It was like a fly attacking a bulldog. I barely even felt her kick, and to be honest, it made me horny as hell. I loved it when she got angry. That wild, fiery look in her eyes drove me absolutely crazy, and once again I resisted the urge to grab her, bend her over my knee and spank her for being such a grumpy little tease.

As the journalists asked my mother and Roy more questions, I pulled out my phone and sent Arizona a text. Her phone vibrated a second later, and she set it down on her lap before looking at what I’d sent.

I can see down your dress when you lean forward. Is that for my benefit?

She threw me a dirty look and typed furiously, pulling the front of her dress up at the same time, and my phone buzzed a second later.

You’re a dirty pervert. Leave me alone.

“You know, I’m really surprised to see how well your family has come together like this,” Megan said to Roy at the head of the table. “This kind of drama could really affect other people, but it looks like Arizona has blended rather seamlessly into the family.”

I covertly sent Arizona another text:
I want to blend seamlessly into you.

She tapped out a reply immediately.
That doesn’t even make sense, moron,
she wrote, but I could see her sexy pout quirking up in a little smile. Aha. Gotcha, tease. A surefire way into any chick’s pants was to make her laugh, so maybe I was in with a chance after all.

My phone buzzed again a second later.
No,
was all it said. Jesus, she was a mind reader now? That girl was too smart for her own good.

As the lunch ended an hour later and the reporters and photographers packed up their cameras and other gear, I caught her off guard and pulled her aside.

“I was thinking we should go grab coffee, sis,” I said. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Really?” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “I thought we were the best of friends, hanging out all the time and having movie nights. At least that’s what you told the press.”

“I told them what they wanted to hear,” I said. “And so did you, hypocrite. Now come on, let’s go.”

“I’m busy. I have to get back to work. Something you probably have no concept of.”

“Oh come on, there must be the teensiest window of time for you to fit me into your incredibly
busy
schedule,” I said, my lips curling up in the famous Crest smirk.

“Believe me, if there was a window, it’d be a really high one and I’d throw you right out of it,” she replied.

With that, she turned and sashayed away, and I stood and watched her go, hypnotized by her perky ass as it swayed from side to side with each step she took.

A small part of my brain was telling me to just give up, let her go. If I cultivated this feeling of mutual dislike, maybe I could do that. Maybe it’d be okay. My dick seemed to have other plans, though. Plans I didn’t like one bit. I hated feeling out of control. It freaked me the fuck out. And Arizona seemed to make lose all sense of control.

I was screwed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ARIZONA

Another day, another dollar, or so the old saying goes. It was early afternoon in the office, and I was replying to a bunch of emails and trying my hardest to keep Mason off my mind. Story of my life. Now that he was home from L.A., he’d gone straight back to trying to piss me off as much as possible. He was just trying to get under my skin, and it was working.

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how many girls he’d hooked up with while he was over there. L.A. was filled with models and starlets, and with his looks, it wouldn’t be hard for him to have a veritable revolving door of them coming in and out of his hotel room. I hated how it made me feel. I had no idea why, but I wanted to be the one he kissed. I wanted to be the one he pressed up against the wall just like he had at that party, and I could barely look at myself in the mirror for wanting those things. It was so wrong. He was such a jerk, and also my stepbrother on top of that.

Victoria stepped into my cubicle and cleared her throat. “Arizona. Your father would like to see you in his office.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said.

She nodded, gave me a flicker of a smile and then walked off, and I stared after her, completely mystified. She was off her game. She hadn’t said a single bitchy thing to me in a few days now, and I wondered if our little chat the other day had actually had some effect.

I walked up to Roy’s office and knocked.

“Come in,” he called out.

He was sipping on a tumbler of scotch at his desk, and I raised my eyebrows.

“Bit early to be drinking.”

He gave me a rueful smile and gestured for me to sit. “How’s your day been, darling?”

“Busy, but good,” I replied. “By the way, where’s Layla been? I haven’t seen her around the house for a couple of days.”

He looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. “She’s err…she’s had some meetings to take care of in New York. Anyway, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

I sat down and watched as he drained the rest of the amber liquid, and I wrinkled my forehead, wondering what it could be that he needed to discuss. It must have been serious if alcohol was involved at two in the afternoon.

“Tom Keller has been transferred to a prison right here in Rhode Island,” he remarked, studying my face for my reaction. “Seeing as this is the state where he committed the crime, this is where he’ll be tried and sentenced.”

I looked down at my lap. “Oh.”

“I was thinking that you might want to go and visit him.”

My head jerked up. “What? Why would I do that?”

Furthermore, why would
he
of all people want me to go and see him? Maybe he’d had one too many drinks. Even billionaires must be susceptible to bad drunken decisions.

He held his hands up. “This is…err…difficult for me to say, but I think it would end up being for the best. You must have a lot of questions for him. Questions that only he can answer.”

“I don’t want to see him. I never want to see him again,” I said, color rising in my cheeks.

Roy sighed. “I can understand that. Just hear me out.”

He poured himself another scotch and then continued. “I spent the last nineteen years hating whoever kidnapped you, Arizona. When Tom Keller took you, he took all those years from me. Worse, he took them from you. You could have had so many different opportunities in life that he prevented you from having. I will never forgive that man for what he did, but for some reason, I cannot bring myself to hate him any longer.”

“Why not?” I asked, my eyes wide. Out of anything that I might have expected him to say, it certainly hadn’t been
this.

“When you were gone, I had no idea where you were or what happened to you. I spent countless sleepless nights wondering if you were scared, being abused, or even dead. When we finally found you again, and it turned out you’d never been hurt, it was like this crushing weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Like I said, I’ll never forgive Tom Keller for what he did, but in an odd sort of way, I am grateful to him. That man kept you safe from harm all these years. He kept you fed, clothed, and under a safe roof, which is the best thing I could have hoped for under the dire circumstances. You had a happy childhood, didn’t you?”

I frowned. “Well, yes, while my Mom was still alive. Sorry…Angela Keller. Tom was a bit of an ignorant drunk after she was gone, but he never did anything to hurt me.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Hate is a very powerful emotion, Arizona. It twists you on the inside, consumes you, and can turn you into someone you don’t recognize. I don’t want that burden on your shoulders. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life carrying around all this hatred, and I don’t want to see you become bitter and twisted. You don’t have to forgive him, but I think it would be cathartic for you to at least go and see him and get all the answers to your questions.”

“Um,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. My head was spinning like crazy.

“What I mean is, I know you’re settling in here very well, but I think you’re still clinging on to the past at the same time. I don’t think you’ll be able to fully get over that part of your life unless you face it head on,” he said. “Have a think about it. If you do decide to go and see him, I can have a car pick you up and take you to the prison as soon as you’re ready to go.”

I mulled it over. He did have a point. I still had a lot of unanswered questions, and only Tom could answer them. Now I knew why Roy was drinking so heavily this early in the day. Anyone else would have been baying for blood, so it must have been incredibly hard for him to sit here and say these things to me. He was even trying to put a vaguely positive spin on the situation in order to convince me to go and see the man who’d stolen me from him as a newborn, just so I wouldn’t end up having my heart filled with hate for the rest of my life.

If Roy could be this brave, then so could I.

“You’re right,” I said, nodding slowly. “I should go and visit him. Let’s get it over with.”

He nodded, a flicker of pride in his hazel eyes. “I’ll call and have it set up.”

***

My hands would not stop shaking as I signed into the prison, and the correctional facility guards did nothing to allay my fears. They were angry-looking bears of men, and they tersely told me that I’d have half an hour to speak with Tom and not a second more. Fine by me. I followed them through a dimly-lit corridor, and goose bumps broke out over my skin as I stared around at the dull grey brick walls. This was by far the most depressing place I’d ever been.

Tom was sitting at a table in the visitor’s room, and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, just like I’d always seen in movies about prisons. My heart raced as I took a seat across from him, and the guards watched us carefully.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said in a gruff voice.

“Neither did I,” I replied truthfully.

“So what are you doing here?” he asked, ice blue eyes narrowed.

“I…I came to get some answers. I want to know exactly why you did it. How you could have lived with yourself all those years. And I need to know if Mom knew.”

He chewed his lip for a second and then sighed heavily. “All right. Guess I owe you that much. Your Mom had no idea. Never even suspected you were anything other than a prom night dumpster baby.”

“But she must have heard on the news that a baby had been taken from a hospital.”

He looked down for a second and then focused on my face again. “You don’t know what she was like back then. She was so depressed. All she wanted was a baby, and she couldn’t have one. She never even watched the news or any TV at all. She just…she just sat there. She quit her job and everything. When I brought you home and convinced her that we needed to keep you rather than tell anyone what I’d supposedly found, it was the first time I’d seen her smile in a year. She was a good woman, Arizona. If she ever heard or suspected you were that kidnapped baby, she would have said something, even if it killed her to do it.”

Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes as much as I tried to stop them from coming. The woman who’d raised me wasn’t to blame for any of this, and now I knew I had no reason to feel bad for still loving her even though she wasn’t my ‘real’ mother. She’d taken me in when she thought I’d been abandoned and loved me like I was her own, and that made her a real mother, whether we shared blood or not.

“So you couldn’t have just adopted like anyone else?” I asked, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.

“We didn’t qualify. Those adoption agencies only like upper middle class families.”

“That’s not always the case. You could have fostered some children.”

His nostrils flared. “No. She wanted a baby. Her own baby to hold and keep forever. I loved that woman more than anything, and I did what I had to do to make her happy.”

“So you don’t even feel bad? You just consider what you did to be ‘something you had to do’?”

He slammed a hand down on the table in front of him, and I jumped at the sound.

“Of course I felt fucking bad. I never stopped feeling guilty. I could barely look at you. All those years, and all I could see when I looked at your face was my mistake.”

“Is that why you drank so much?” I asked. “Is that why you always told me you never wanted kids?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” he said, his gaze steely. “Had to do something to try and hide from myself. Y’know, it doesn’t even bother me that I’m in prison now, to be honest. Without your Mom, my life was basically one giant prison anyway.”

I paused, letting his words sink in.

“So you didn’t love me. Ever. You just did it all for Mom.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said.

“Well, did you?” I asked, my voice rising to a shrill pitch. “Did you ever love me?”

I didn’t know why I cared, but for some reason I couldn’t help it.

He was silent for a long time, and he couldn’t meet my eyes. “I cared about you,” he finally said, evading my question. “I did what I could to keep you safe. Always chased away any neighborhood boys roaming around looking for a piece of you. Made sure you went to school. Always made sure you had food. But with all the guilt I felt, there wasn’t much room for anything else.”

Tears were rolling down my cheeks in earnest now, and my voice was barely above a whisper as I choked my next words out. “So you admit it? You didn’t love me?” I said. “Just tell me I’m wrong. Tell me. Just say it once. Say that you loved me even a little bit.”

I was bordering on hysterical, and I stopped talking and stared at him, my eyes wide. He was silent again, and I abruptly stood up to leave. Roy had been wrong. Coming here was a bad idea. I’d found out what I needed to know about my Mom, but it had come at a high cost. I’d always had a more-than sneaking suspicion that the man I’d thought of as my father for so long didn’t really want me, but to actually sit here and have him basically admit he didn’t love me and never did was too much. After all this time, I still couldn’t help but see him as a father figure, and it hurt like hell to face him now.

“Arizona!” he called out as I turned around.

I faced the opposite way for a second to wipe my face and compose myself, then spun around to look at him again.

“Are you ever gonna come back?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not meeting my eyes as the guards approached him to take him back to his cell. “I’m sorry for everything I did. I just wanted to make Angela happy.”

And that was it. We were done.

My legs were shaky as I left the prison; hell, my whole body was shaky. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip during the drive back to Rosacorp, but as soon as I got out of the car and put my feet on the sidewalk, my eyes once again filled with tears. They were hot and stinging tears of despair, rage and disappointment, and suddenly I was sobbing so hard my chest hurt, so hard that I was sure my heart would literally split in two.

It was the late afternoon rush in the city, and cars, bikes and taxis whizzed past me on the street too fast for me to see more than a blur. Several passersby stared at me, obviously thinking I was insane, and I stood by a sidewalk tree, trying to regain my composure. Cold sweat trickled down my palms, and I took several deep breaths and mopped up my tears with my cardigan sleeve.

As soon as I felt like I was centered enough to go back into work and tell Roy what had happened, I set off down the sidewalk in the direction of the main office doors and accidentally barreled straight into an unfortunate person. I felt a hard chest, and I tilted my head up to see the man’s face and apologize for my clumsiness. My breath hitched as two green eyes stared curiously down at me.

Mason.

I was sure I had mascara streaked down my face, and I must have looked a mess. My throat clenched, and another flood of tears tried to fight its way out of my eyes as I uttered a choked word.

“You.”

“Arizona,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

I wanted to tell him to piss off like I usually did. I wanted to push on his muscular chest and tell him to mind his own goddamned business. I wanted to turn on my heel and walk away from the spoiled asshole who thought all women were sexual objects for sale, but I couldn’t do that.