My Billionaire Stepbrother (Lexi's Sexy Billionaire Romance #1) (8 page)

He stopped, noticing me. “Who are
you?”
 

I don’t know why I did what came next. Maybe it was the entitled way he requested my identity, as if knowing the answer wasn’t about curiosity but was his upper-crust
right
. Maybe it was the pomposity I sensed from the theater kids. Maybe it was the way he hadn’t flinched when he saw me leaning on a seat two rows from his non-putting-out, low-rent girlfriend. Most kids avoided me back then, but this kid asked like I was standing between him and the batch of ice queen pussy he felt entitled to.
 

When Carter the theater kid reached me, still giving me that angry, in-his-way look, I grabbed him by the shirt with my left hand and drove my right fist into his pretty face.
 

After enough experience fighting, I’ve learned a few things: Never start a brawl in public or hit the face. People who don’t fight, they think that slugging someone’s face is the way to get things get done, but skulls are hard as hell, and that’s a great way to break your hand. I’d usually aimed for the gut away from prying eyes. If you can get someone on the ground, you can use your shoe to break their face, but never your hand. It’s dangerous and threatens my playing guitar.
 

But I couldn’t help it. The impulse hit me. I saw his handsome, theater-kid face and wanted to smash it, where anyone could see. The first strike broke his nose. The second broke it more. He crumpled and staggered back against the other side of the aisle, sagging. But then he somehow miraculously recovered and came at me, his nose gushing blood.
 

His recovery pissed me off more. I already hated him and people like him for thinking they were better than me, and thinking they always
would
be. I already hated him for being good-looking. I hated him for having enough money to think of Angela’s family as trash.
 

But somehow, I also hated him for being on my turf. At the time (seeing as Dad and Maria had tied the knot almost immediately), I guess I thought that if he messed with my stepsister, he messed with me. I no longer think that was the reason I felt this kid was intruding on what was mine, but at the time that was the closest I came to making sense of my fury.

When Carter came at me, I lowered my head and tackled him. We went sideways onto the aisle’s concrete floor. I was a more experienced scrapper; I came up first, my temper red and obscuring my vision. I stood above him. I kicked him at least twice before Angela stopped me, maybe more.
 

She’d wrapped herself around me, pushing me back. It was the worst time to notice something new about Angela, but I saw it anyway: her chest was soft and full. Its press disarmed me some. The look on her face took me the rest of the way.
 

I blinked, my haze departing.
 

I realized what I’d done. I’d be in big trouble the minute someone found out. I might be arrested. My knuckles were lacerated and split, and I might have broken my strumming hand.
 

I met Angela’s big, brown eyes.

I waited for her to shout at me, call me an asshole and bully.

Instead, glancing down at Carter’s writhing, bleeding form, she whispered, “Thank you, Parker.”

ANGELA

I’
M
SWEATY
,
OUT
OF
BREATH
, my hair back in a ponytail that’s coming undone. My breath tastes like vomit, and I’m not 100 percent sure that I didn’t get any on my shirt. I don’t dress to flatter when running. It’s already a bad idea for a woman to run alone here with or without pepper spray and a rape whistle. It’s worse to be pretty. It’s like putting a cat near wild dogs, and wrapping it in bacon.
 

Parker closes the door to the long, black car slowly. He’s acting like there’s a fragile vase balancing between us and if he doesn’t move slowly, he’ll risk shattering it.
 

Something changes in the air.
 

I don’t want him here.
 

I want him gone.
 

I don’t like Parker Altman at all. He had his chances with this family and chose to run out on us instead. That’s fine; I’m not even close to his responsibility, and my mother, who always hated him, is clearly no one he’s bound to help or save either. He ditched his dad, too, but I can hardly fault him for that. Bill landing on my plate isn’t Parker’s fault. I could leave, like he left. I wouldn’t do it in a private plane or go to a paradise island filled with butlers and hedonism, but I could drive my shitty little car to another town, get a different apartment, and leave Mom and Bill to starve. Maybe I
should
do that, but I can’t. And maybe that — the broken switch inside me that makes
me
more responsible than I
should
be — is the reason I hate him so much.
 

Although I think a psychiatrist, if she knew the whole story, might feel different.
 

“Angela!” He raises a hand as if I might not have noticed him.
 

Maybe I
didn’t
notice him. Maybe I have plausible deniability. Maybe, if he’s thinking to raise his hand and yell for my attention, it’s feasible to pretend he doesn’t already have it. Never mind that my eyes have been on him for thirty seconds already. Never mind that my heartbeat is faster than it should be after my final mile. Never mind that this is the kind of place where cars get their hubcaps stripped, and Parker, right now, is in a goddamned tuxedo next to a goddamned luxury limousine with his goddamned perfect hair perfectly coifed. Maybe I can pretend I see that sort of thing all the time around here. Just another billionaire on the block.
 

I think about running. I have the shoes. Parker’s are the shiny kind that go with a tux. When I went to prom in my secondhand dresses, my dates both years wore the same kinds of things. They were hard with sharp edges and seemed to be made of plastic. I’m sure Parker’s are made of imported emu leather and inlaid with gemstones, but there’s still no way they’re suited for running. They’re more suited for walking along the Ibiza coast or attending $1,000-per-plate charity balls.
 

But as much as I want to turn and run, I can’t. I’ve run from Parker Altman before, both literally and figuratively. I’m twenty-nine years old now. I’m a big girl. I should really start facing things instead of stuffing them down, no matter how conflicted they make me feel.
 

But I can’t go to him. I’m rooted where I stand. The day has dragged into late afternoon, and soon it’ll be evening, but to me it feels like the shadows are deep and miles long. He comes toward me from the end of a long corridor. We are the only two people on the street, maybe the only two people in the world.
 

Parker approaches.

Loathing rises like bile. Each step is like a tack pressed into my neck. He has his hands in his pockets, a certain smile on his face. It took me a while, in my teens, to realize that Parker was handsome rather than rough. It was like seeing the hidden picture in one of those Magic Eye images. I couldn’t unsee it, as much as I’d wanted. At age sixteen, I’d had this scrubby, criminal, scratched-up asshole living in the next room. At age seventeen, I’d had someone who, if he hadn’t stayed an asshole or been my stepbrother, I might have found attractive. And of course I did anyway. Battling the shame of that realization had felt like another burden. I’d hated Parker for being attractive after that, adding one more loathsome thing to his growing pile.
 

He’s close. We’re in front of the MacGregors’ house. They have a low picket fence that was once charming, back around the time it was white. The MacGregors are old now, but Lucy told me they’ve lived here since they were practically kids. She says the neighborhood was different then. The fence was cute. Time changes everything.
 

As Parker comes nearer, I can’t help but think how true that is.
 

Parker used to be poor, like me. Now he’s the wealthiest man I know.
 

Parker used to be mean, dangerous, rude. Now he’s merely arrogant.
 

But I’m still the same.
 

Mom is still the same.
 

His father is still the same.
 

And as casual as Parker is trying to look right now, we both know that nothing has changed between us. What happened happened, and old mistakes can’t be undone.
 

“What are you doing here?”
 

I guess it’s too late to run. Or rather, it’s too late to run and pretend I didn’t see him. I could still flee, and very much want to. I probably look as disgusting as I surely smell. Parker is polished and beautiful. He’s parked his billionairemobile behind my piece of shit as if to show the people across the street how different two things can possibly be. I don’t like it. I have a sinking, hollow feeling in my middle, as if I haven’t eaten in days. As if I’m lightheaded or dizzy. Maybe I really did run too hard. Maybe I need sugar.
 

He shrugs. “I got your birthday card.”
 

I resist an overwhelming urge to clarify that I had nothing to do with that card. I also resist a similarly strong urge to tell him thanks for the card from his assistant, the one he surely knows nothing about.
 

“Happy birthday,” I say instead.

“Happy birthday to you.” Then he clarifies: “Belatedly.”
 

I don’t know where to take the conversation, seeing as I don’t want to be having it. He did this. He can carry the ball. I wait, trying to hide the resentment from my face.
 

“I’m sorry I forgot to send you a card.”

I can’t help myself, so I say, “You
did
send one.”
 

His eyebrows narrow.
 

“I got it today.”

Again, Parker says nothing. I want him to accept my implied thanks, if that’s how he chooses to take it. Or to at least wriggle off the hook I’m apparently willing to let him off of, not mentioning the assistant’s dismissive bullshit.

“Did Charlie send it?”
 

“Who’s Charlie?”
 

“My … the guy who keeps track of dates I tend to forget, and saves me from myself.”
 

I notice the way he sidesteps the word “assistant” as if I won’t figure it out. As if I’m five, and he can spell big words I won’t understand and shouldn’t hear. Words like A-B-A-N-D-O-N and A-S-S-H-O-L-E.

“Oh. I don’t know. I got it. With a gift card inside.” Then, hearing the word leave my lips without permission and hating myself, I add, “Thanks.”
 

Parker at least does me the courtesy of not accepting my thanks. He sighs and looks around. Back at his old house. Back at the path to the park he used to take when he wanted to smoke with his buddies. Back at the mailbox he used to pull birthday cards from back in the day, before anyone could see them, so he could steal any cash that might be inside. His big, black car is a blight in reverse. As bad as things sometimes look around here, I’m used to it all. The car just shines a spotlight on the way everything in my world is broken and dull.
 

He looks down at me. I think for a moment that he’ll comment on the weather because that’s all two people who shouldn’t be speaking usually say. He’ll tell me how nice it’s been lately, then we’ll both say, “Well, anyway,” then move on, this stupid awkward encounter finally finished. I can take my shower and rinse this taste from my mouth. And good riddance.
 

Instead of saying something about the weather, Parker touches on a different flavor of vapid conversation. “You look good.”

I laugh.
 

“You do.” But that’s all he can say. He won’t be specific. He won’t ask if I’ve lost weight because men should never ask that. He won’t ask if I’ve changed my hair because if I have he’ll look like an asshole. He surely won’t compliment my clothes. Not only am I in crappy workout gear; everything I own costs pennies to his twenties.
 

“So … ” I say.
 

“Anyway.”
 

Now I look him over. He wears the tux extraordinarily well. Parker used to have a nice body; I saw him wrapped in a towel every day for a while. He might be in better shape now, and he’s still kind of dashing. But I don’t want to think about any of that. Not while looking like a Sweat Hog.
 

“Did you just come from a … a gala or something?” I ask, unsure what to say.
 

“Oh, no,” he almost laughs. “I had an event earlier, though, and this was still out, so I tossed it back on.” But that makes him look uncomfortable too, and maybe right now he’s starting to realize how this must look. For all I know, this is how he’d go for groceries, if he didn’t employ someone for his shopping. Maybe for Parker Altman of WinFinity and
Rolling Stone
fame, this is errand casual. Take the shortest limo, dress in your shoddiest tux. Take your least qualified driver. Because hey, this is just a run out to say hi, no big deal worth primping for.

Maybe right now, he’s realizing how uncomfortable this would make me feel. Maybe he’s realizing that anyone who saw his car right now sees him as an arrogant braggart, flashing his wealth in front of all our poor faces. Maybe he’s wondering if his old friends and neighbors are creeping forward in the shadows now, clutching crowbars, ready to mug him and take what he’s gained, what they’ll never have.