My Billionaire Stepbrother (Lexi's Sexy Billionaire Romance #1) (11 page)

“I told him to.”

“Why did he listen to you?”
 

The truth was that I’d given him a hand job and promised more. I don’t know why it shamed me, but it did. I was sixteen fucking years old, and my friends had done far more than getting sticky hands, but drama club was like being wrapped in naiveté. Half the guys were gay, and most of the other half were even more socially retarded than I sometimes felt. Carter wasn’t going to get hand or head from anyone outside the club. He huffed and puffed plenty, but really I was his only shot. Our fight had been half about my prudishness to begin with, but I’d decided to break my palm’s cherry, like two or three years after the other non-drama girls. It was no big deal, but somehow I felt bought.
 

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but he did.”

Parker looked at me for a long moment. I wondered if he believed me, or if he suspected there was more to the story.
If
he suspected, though, I was sure he wouldn’t suspect the truth. I’d hidden my time with Carter and had never broadcast the tiny, mostly-kissing dalliances I’d had before him. Parker was a player, and I was a nerd. He’d never think I’d be capable of making a guy cum. He probably thought I wore a chastity belt and still thought fairies brought babies.

“Hmm,” he said then turned back to the sink and the slowly defogging mirror. He didn’t seem remotely bothered that we were conducting our entire conversation with him in a towel. It wasn’t the same as him being shirtless at the pool, or going from his room to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I wondered if I’d be as comfortable talking to him while wearing a towel after my shower. I’d be more covered than in a swimsuit, but a shifting of fabric would be all it’d take to expose myself to him. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that at all — and yet for some reason, I was plenty uncomfortable now, despite being fully dressed.

I wanted to thank him again, but that wasn’t what I felt. In the moment, “thank you” had felt like the best thing to say. But my true feelings were somehow deeper, and something I didn’t entirely understand.

After another minute or so, Parker turned to gaze at me again, an
are-you-still-here
look on his face.
 

“What?”
 

What
indeed. It was too tangled. I only knew that I wanted to keep standing by that door. I wanted to help him apply ointment to his knuckles then wrap them in gauze. I felt the need to be there but had no idea why. I found I liked looking over his shoulders —
at
his shoulders. I wanted him to turn again and look at me fully. I couldn’t help thinking that a few minutes ago, he’d been in the shower rather than standing outside it. I couldn’t help imagining myself later that night, in that same tub. It was all a bunch of random nothing, but deep down I knew it wasn’t.

I felt somehow weak, standing beside him.
 

I felt gratitude for the brutish thing he’d done — not because I’d been in danger but because he’d done it for me. For my honor, maybe, as corny as that sounded.
 

I was sixteen years old. I wasn’t totally oblivious. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what was happening. I’d felt most of this before and knew
exactly
what was happening.

I wanted him. I wanted the boy in the next room — the son of the man my mother had married.
 

It was wrong and twisted enough to ache.

I walked away, back to my room, trying to convince myself I was confused and maybe traumatized by the violence. In truth, I felt nothing.

PARKER

A
NGELA
SITS
ACROSS
FROM
ME
again, but this time we’re thirteen thousand feet in the air rather than riding along in the limo, looking out on familiar streets. Now we’re above them, and I tell the pilot to fly over our old neighborhood so we can see the same streets from the air.

“You ever see helicopters overhead at home?” I ask Angela over the comm. Normally, people on a helicopter will have to yell. My luxury model has headsets. It was all absurdly expensive, but I have the money. And once you have a company copter, you’ve tossed “frugal” out the window. Besides, it’s barely the company’s. The WinFinity logo’s on the side, so I could pay for it out of corporate, tax-advantaged income then depreciate it. The loopholes available for people like me versus people like Angela are absurd. She needs the money, yet the government shovels it toward me.

She looks over at me and nods, smiling broadly. Her anger departed the minute we lifted off. I could tell she was trying to remain stoic and unimpressed, probably trying to hang onto her pride rather than getting swept away, but that all flew out the window once up in the air. I don’t know that Angela’s ever been on a plane, but she’s certainly never been on a helicopter. There’s a bar in here, like in the limo. The only difference is the way the bottles are sealed and the fact that nothing is carbonated.
 

I realize, somewhat uncomfortably, that I’m trying to impress her. That hadn’t been my intention. I’d merely wanted to talk — to see if it was possible to let someone back into my life after being shut out. But even that feels ridiculous; how exactly had I imagined this working? Were we going to establish a weekly ritual, meeting for coffee? Were we going to start attending Friday night movies in tandem? I’d opened a birthday card, become obsessed, and acted without thinking. I only knew that I desperately wanted to see her again. But was it for a novelty, or something else? I had a business to run; I had a ludicrously expensive penthouse; I had a girlfriend who could bend herself into a pretzel and couldn’t keep her social-climbing hands out of my pants — a girlfriend, I now remembered, I’d forgotten to break up with.
 

Where, in all of that, was Angela supposed to fit?

Why am I trying to impress her?

Is it wrong to try? Am I doing exactly what she’d been afraid I would do, earlier, on the ground, when she hadn’t wanted to talk about money? What we’re doing, right now with the old neighborhood below the rotors, is exactly all she’s hated me for. Right now, we are literally looking down our noses at my old life — at her current life. I’m still in my tuxedo, wearing a watch that must cost five times what she makes in a year. My cufflinks would pay her rent for months. Everywhere I look are signs of wealth, and suddenly I’m afraid she’s seeing right through me.
 

If my intention wasn’t to rub my money in her face and make her feel small, I’ve inadvertently betrayed that design. We’re trapped in the sky, and it might only be a minute before she sees how truly transparent I am. I hadn’t meant to be an arrogant asswipe, but it seems I can’t help myself.
 

But judging by her face, Angela’s mind is elsewhere. She looks elated: a kid on Christmas morning. She’s wearing one of those smiles people can’t get off their faces even if they want to. It stretches her cheeks, forming adorable half moons around her mouth as her teeth show and her eyes fill with mirth and wonder. She’s hypnotized by all of this. Right now, I could get her to do or believe anything.
 

I want to reclaim my question. I wanted to know if she’d heard helicopters overhead, and when she told me yes, I was going to tell her that a few of those times, the copter had probably been mine. But the question, like my watch, tux, and cufflinks, suddenly feels like a slap in her face — a way of pointing out the wealth I’ve built, that I’ve kept from my father and his current family, that Angela doesn’t have because I’ve hoarded it like a dragon atop his piles of treasure. Everything around her right now — the helicopter, the bar stocked with aged scotch, the limo we rode in to the airstrip, and the penthouse — has made her angry for years.
 

This is a life she’s never had. And I’m trapped because there’s no way to offer a morsel. If I give her money, my father gets it, too. Even if I’m willing to give, she’ll never take. I realize that part of me has wanted for years to see her again, to do exactly what we’re doing now. But it’s all temporary. Where does she fit in this life, in any way, at all? She doesn’t. Angela’s pride would never allow her to stay, even if she had a place.
 

Wondering whom I’m trying to fool, I tell myself that she’s never been more to me than a girl I once knew. I lie to myself, pretending that all we’re doing now is some sort of charity, and that my goals are to assuage guilt and right a wrong.
 

This isn’t selfish at all.
 

I can’t reclaim the question. But she’s lost in wonder, looking out the windows, looking down. I don’t have to follow it up. Angela’s a child at Disneyland.
 

“Is that the park?” She points out the window.
 

I can’t see from where I am. It feels sensible, in something hovering high in the air, to sit on opposite sides of the body. But this is a Sikorsky S-76C, the same company that makes the Black Hawk, and it weighs over seven thousand pounds. My 190 pounds of shifted weight won’t make a difference.
 

Now I’m sitting directly beside her, looking out the window, both of us sinking into the soft, tan leather seats. I follow her finger and feel our legs brush one another.
 

“The park by the house, yeah,” I tell her.
 

I sit back in the big seat, feeling my wide smile and wondering if it’s appropriate. Now she’s out past dark, and I still don’t know what we’re doing here. I’ll obviously need to take her home in the limo. Then what? Do I say, “Well, it’s been nice seeing you again, Sis … have fun among the rabble, hope you don’t get shot tonight”?
 

But it’s not late, despite being dark. I tell myself to relax. If I’d had a plan, it would have required two stages. Stage Two was whatever conversation we’d eventually have, but Stage One had to open her first so she’d be willing to have it. We have time. We’re both adults, despite the
maybe-I’m-getting-myself-in-trouble
way I can’t help feeling. If it gets too late, that’s neither here nor there. For now, Stage One is working. Whatever makes Angela lower her guard enough to chat is good enough for now.
 

“It looks so small,” she says. “And look … there’s my house!”
 

“Want to call your mom? Tell her you’re in a helicopter above her right now?”
 

I wince a little, wondering if that will come off as pompous, too, but Angela seems to take it for the playful question it was meant to be. Call Mom; tell her to look up; wave even though she’d never be able to see. She’d already called, the way she used to when she was first driving, back when we met. I don’t know what she told her mother about when she’d be home, or who she may or may not be with.
 

“Yeah, right.”
 

“Do you want to?” I repeat.

She smiles and shakes her head. There’s a flicker of something in her eyes — something that regards “call your mom, and tell her you’re with Parker” as a laughable proposition. Then it’s gone. She looks out the window again then straightens in her chair. The helicopter’s interior isn’t what you’d expect from the movies. It’s more like a tiny private jet or a small but opulent living room. There’s a flash where I see our surroundings as she must be seeing them: awed and duly impressed but too lightheaded to resent me.
 

As if reading my mind, she suddenly says, “How much does a ride like this cost?”
 

I don’t want to answer, but she’s looking right at me. I can’t help but be bowled over by the change in her. The intervening years have settled phenomenally well onto Angela’s shoulders. She has the same girlish look as she had when I last spent any real time with her at eighteen, but now she seems to have grown into that quiet, classic beauty she had as a kid. She’s wearing her hair in the most casual of styles. Her clothes are nothing special, and I’m dimly aware I picked her up after a run without so much as time for a shower. And yet she’s somehow more striking than any of the women I’ve dated in the past several years, despite her lack of makeup or style.
 

“About as much as my old Ford,” I say.
 

She laughs a small, unthreatened laugh. We both remember my Tempo without the front bumper. We both remember the way it smelled like the cigarettes I always used to smoke. I’m probably the only one who remembers fucking maybe a dozen girls in it over the years, but I was never careful about concealment, so it’s possible the vehicle was known around town, possibly with a cool nickname like the BoneMobile.
 

But despite my attempt to divert, Angela says, “Seriously. How much?”

I don’t want to say, but resisting any more would be false modesty and make me look like an asshole.

“I think it was about $13 million.”

“Oh, sure,” she says. “No big deal.”
 

Is it terrible that I’m not even sure? I think it was $13 million, but it’s not like I wrote the check personally or noticed the hit. I have a small fleet of other vehicles, and right now their values are flitting in my head and making me uncertain.
 

“Pocket change,” I say, trying to play along.
 

Angela glances out the window. I realize how gun-shy I am and wonder if it’s time to relax. She seemed to have a rather large chip on her shoulder in the limo, but the helicopter’s spinning blades seemed to have knocked it off. Now she’s just a girl on a ride.