My Billionaire Stepbrother (Lexi's Sexy Billionaire Romance #1) (12 page)

She looks back at me. “This was cool.”
 

I cock my head, feeling playful and increasingly confident. Every minute she fails to jump down my throat for being a rich asshole, I feel my sense of certainty ramping up. I didn’t get where I am by being timid.
 

“Was?”
I say.
 

She looks across the city lights again. We’re headed toward my penthouse, but we pass it by. She seems to notice then looks over at me with adorable befuddlement.

I open a private channel to the pilot and give a command that Angela can’t hear. Then, subtly, the copter noses down a hair, and I feel the copter gather speed.
 

“Where are we going?” she asks.

Somewhere, I’m sort of thinking, that we maybe shouldn’t go.
 

“You’ll see,” I say.

ANGELA

I
DON
’
T
KNOW
WHY
P
ARKER
kidnapped me that one day, and I honestly have no idea where he got the car he kidnapped me in. I only know that on that day, while I was walking home from school, he pulled up in this Camaro that I felt certain he’d stolen.
 

I was with Sandy. We were on foot, and Parker was waiting dramatically for us on one of the side streets, leaning low with his window open. He waited until we were right next to the thing before gunning the engine and sticking his head out, laughing.
 

I jumped a foot. Sandy practically caught me. Then I looked over and saw the way she was looking at him, her eyes full of suspicion. Parker had been nothing but rude to any of my friends, and Sandy was no exception. He was passably rude to me in public, too, but after a year around Parker I’d learned to see right through him. He
was
an asshole, but an asshole I’d come to slightly understand. The best way to deal with Parker’s brooding temperament was to starve it of oxygen. To play off his insults and not let them bother me. Every once in a while, I could mock him right back — not in my usual style, but in a mimicry of his. That earned me more respect each time, and by then, I’d chiseled a hole in his armor. Sandy didn’t like it. And she sure didn’t want me to get into the car.
 

“Come on, Angela,” he said. “Got a surprise for you.”
 

I moved without thinking. Parker was strangely interesting to me, despite his drinking, his smoking, his insults, and the way my mother rolled her eyes whenever he got into trouble. I found his father insufferable, and Parker flat-out hated him. In a way, it had helped us to bond.
 

Sandy grabbed my arm.
 

“No
way
, Angie.”

“What?”
 

“Yeah, what?” Parker said to Sandy. “I’m just giving her a ride home.”
 

“How about Sandy then?” I asked. “You wanna give her a ride home, too?”
 

“No,” Parker said.
 

“Oh, wow, I’m hurt,” Sandy said.
 

“She’s just a few blocks up,” I told him.
 

Sandy didn’t seem to want my intervention, nor did she want me to get into the car with Parker. He pushed the door open.
 

“He probably stole that car,” she said, echoing my thoughts.
 

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m going. You want to go?”
 

“No,” Parker repeated, answering for Sandy.
 

Sandy pulled me closer and whispered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
 

“Getting a ride.”
 

“He said he’s got a surprise. Not just a ride.”
 

“Getting a
surprise
then.”

Sandy peeked at him, her gaze uneasy.
 

“What’s wrong with you, Angie?”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

Another glance. “You like him.”
 

I felt myself blush. “He’s my stepbrother!”
 

“Doesn’t mean you don’t like him, Ang. I know you. You’re stupid about this stuff.”
 

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not your fault. Maybe it’s a daddy thing. With your mom — ”

I yanked my hand away from Sandy. I wasn’t about to hear her armchair psychology, or listen to outrageous ideas about my being into Parker. Of course I wasn’t into him. That would be wrong. He was a jerk, and the son of my dickhead stepfather. I wasn’t that dumb.
 

That’s the impression I’d outwardly maintained, and what Sandy should have believed.
   

“Thanks for your assessment,” I said.
 

“I’m just saying it’s a bad idea to play into — ”

“He’s just helping his sister out.” I tried to repeat the word a few times in my mind:
His sister. His sister.
Maybe I should say it a few times to Parker out loud, to make sure we were on the same page.
 

“Parker Altman doesn’t help anyone out. Have you forgotten what he did to Carter last year?”
 

“He’s fine, Sandy.”
 

She stared at me. Parker was waiting, his door still open. He had his hair in messy spikes and was wearing a plain white tee, arms thick, his smile practically sideways — the grin of a man who’s clearly up to something, and probably no good.
 

I stood between them for a moment, then went to the car and got in. Sandy was still staring. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
 

Parker pulled away from the curb. He drove too fast through the neighborhood streets, daring pedestrians to get in his way. I looked over, my heart thumping, wanting to tell him to be more careful but not quite finding my voice.
 

It was clear almost immediately that we weren’t going home. He wasn’t just giving me a ride, which I already knew no matter how I’d justified myself to Sandy. I didn’t need a ride, for one; our house was a few blocks away, and the weather was warm — hot, even. The Camaro was also wrong. Parker owned a rusted-out Ford, and while this car wasn’t in much better repair, it was definitely nicer and apparently faster.
 

I wanted to ask where we were going, but Parker always made fun of me for never stepping a toe out of line. He was clearly getting us up to no good, and I knew it; he’d see right through my question. He was too cool for the phrase “goody two-shoes,” but it’s what he’d be thinking, though of course with more color.

What was I afraid of? Parker? Whatever scheme he was up to? Going along with it so readily? Maybe Sandy had been right. It didn’t make sense; Parker and I didn’t hang out, and this was unprecedented, whatever it was. Maybe that’s why I’d gone: I’d sensed a rare chance to have him alone.
 

But now alone, I felt uneasy. What were we supposed to talk about? We were opposites with nothing to share.
 

“Where did you get this car?”
 

“Borrowed it.”
 

“From who?”
 

“Why the fuck you need to know that? Just buckle in, okay?”
 

I did. He’d shut me down so completely I didn’t want to say another word. I felt dumb for my questions — as if they’d been highly unreasonable, not at all what someone in my position would ask.
 

We left the dirty city streets and drove onto the highway. We’d only had a half day of school, so it was barely after noon, and the highway wasn’t yet packed as Parker headed west.
 

It was ten minutes before I summoned the nerve to speak again. It was so strange.
He’d
picked
me
up, and yet he seemed put out. I wondered if he’d been sent on an errand. It didn’t make sense — either of our parents decreeing, “Parker, pick up your tightass of a sister and drive her wherever” — but it made more sense than this being his idea. His profile was set, that eternally half scowl on his square, stubbled jaw. The abandon in his eyes.
 

I didn’t want to say anything more because he’d only make fun of me. Parker didn’t want to be there, and whatever bolt of excitement I’d felt earlier was just me being stupid, chasing the idiot fantasies I didn’t have the guts to declare.

I asked the obvious: “Where are we going?”
 

He looked over, still seeming half-annoyed. But there was something else there too — or so I imagined.
 

“The beach.”
 

The beach?
I must have misheard.
 

“Why?”
 

“Because it’s a hot day,
shit
.”

“But … why?”
 

“We got a half day. You wanna see the ocean or not?”
 

“I was going to help mom with the shopping.”
 

I watched him roll his eyes, feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
 

“Jesus, Angela. Do you do everything she tells you?”
 

“She didn’t tell me to do it. I just figured I’d help.”
 

I expected him to contradict then insult me. Instead, Parker turned his head fully toward me. The highway screamed by. I wanted to tell him to face forward, but that would invite mockery, too.
 

“See, that’s why I picked you up, right there. If I don’t save you, nobody’s gonna.”
 

“Save
me?”
 

“You’re such a goddamned Girl Scout,” he said, returning his eyes to the road, swinging us across two rows and into the diamond lane fast enough to thump my heart. “Look, we’ve lived together for a while now. All you do is go to school, do your homework, hang out with your group of losers — ”

“Those ‘losers’ are my friends.”

“And then, on top of it all, every time your mom says to do something, you hop right up and do it. ‘Yes, Mommy, no problem! I’ll do all that shit you should do yourself!’” He mocked my voice, injecting the parody with all the simpering goody-goody I’d always secretly feared others saw in me. Then he laughed. “Honestly, Angela, if you don’t learn to tell her no, you’ll be doing her shit your whole life. She walks all over you.”
 

“She’s my mother,” I said lamely.
 

“Oh, but now, it’s not just her. You know where I saw you yesterday?”
 

The idea that he’d seen me anywhere was disturbing. Sometimes, Parker and I managed to avoid each other for days, and I hadn’t seen him for a while before he’d popped up in the Camaro like a jack-in-the-box. The thought of him peeping in on me tickled my neck.
 

He didn’t wait for me to speak. “The auto parts store. You got a lot of need for auto parts, Angela?”
 

“I was just — ”
 

“Just getting shit for my dad? Yeah, I figured that out. He’s got legs. He’s got a car that runs, hence the need for a part. But no, you were out, so might as well take care of it, right?”
 

“I was going to drive right by it,” I said defensively.
 

“Uh-huh. Nobody fucks with me, Angela. Know why?”
 

I’d seen him beat people up. I knew.
 

“Because I don’t let them. It’s that simple.”
 

“This isn’t messing with me. This is me doing favors for my — ”

“You can’t even say the word,” he laughed. “At least do that. Say the word, Angela.”

“What word?”
 

“‘Fucking.’ I said ‘
fucking
with me,’ and you came back with ‘
messing
with me.’”

“You know what I meant.”
 

“Do I? If you can’t have a filthy mouth sometimes, how are you supposed to ever stand up for yourself?”

“I don’t see what one has to do with another.”
 

“Just say it. Say ‘fucking.’”
 

“I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
 

“Say it.”
 

“No.”
 

“Jesus, just say it, and I’ll leave you alone!”

“Fucking!”
 

He looked over at me for a second. A strange look passed through his eyes.
 

“It sounds good on you. You should swear more. Say, ‘cock.’”
 

I looked out the window. The silence almost made me think he’d persist, really wanting to hear me say it, but then he continued his berating.
 

“And it
is
them fucking with you. My dad doesn’t fuck with me anymore, but he’s found out he can fuck with you. He saw your mom doing it. And why not? You’ll do all their crap jobs without a complaint, thinking it’s your duty. It’s cute, Angela. Maybe even charitable and kind. But where are
you
in all of this?”