My Stepbrother's Arrangement (A Stepbrother Romance) (14 page)

Kaleb nodded.

“Someone’s been stealing from the company. I don’t know who. But I figured it out in the meeting and immediately wanted to make sure. That’s why I was late. And I’m telling you because I don’t know what to do about it.”

There we go. The secret was out. Now to see what was going to come of it.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Had I seriously just heard Olivia right?

“Wait up. So you’re telling me someone’s stealing from the company?”

She nodded, those adorable little eyes wide as saucers. I knew she was nervous about this. I could just tell. No wonder she wanted to go back to her desk and figure this out,  this was some big fucking news.

“Yes.”

“Show me,” I ordered. I wanted to understand exactly what was happening. I wanted to understand how it happened.

“Sure, I’ll be right back, I’ll go get some documents,” she told me. A minute later she was back, laptop in hand. I moved my keyboard back and let her put the computer down in front of me. She had a bunch of spreadsheets open, and some notepad documents with stuff scribbled on it, and a bunch of old balance sheets from projects the company had done in the past.

“It started when I was trying to find some old data for projects built in Boston, to get an idea of costs, that sort of thing.”

“OK.”

“I noticed on the balance sheets that some things didn’t really seem right. Like, it was just a hunch. At first I ignored it, figuring that it had to be me that was wrong. Especially since I didn’t actually have anything solid, or any proof, or anything. It was just a feeling that something was off. Then I started thinking about it more, and it came to me in the meeting.”

“What was it?”

“There were a bunch of items in the journals that doubled up. So there would be two different charges for plumbing, or three different charges for construction. It was done well, they were never next to each other, and they were listed so that realistically it could be payments to the same companies. But I checked, and they weren’t. In fact, I did a business search on some of the companies that were charged and they don’t exist. Anywhere.”

“So someone was funnelling money for services never rendered to non-existent companies?”

“Exactly.”

“Fuck,” I said under my breath. This was bad. Like, really fucking bad. “So I’m guessing you don’t know who the guilty party is?” I asked Olivia, and she shook her head.

“No. That’s why I didn’t know what to do. I was hoping you would.”

“You’re amazing, you know that? My dad hires so many people, and yet you come here and find this when you’re just an intern?”

“Well, no one else here really has any reason to go through old files, do they?”

“No, but still. What you’ve done is pretty impressive.”

“Thanks,” she replied, that little face of hers looking down at the ground and blushing in that oh-so-cute little way. It was crazy to think that someone that adorable could be so fucking smart. And she was smart. I wasn’t just saying that shit to make her feel better. It was amazing that she’d found out about this.

Now I had to help her find out who did it. After all, the person stealing this money was stealing both our inheritance.

“You know what? Leave this to me. I don’t want you more involved in this than you have to be.”

I could practically see Olivia’s brain whirring as she thought about what I said. She wanted to agree, I could see it. But, she ended up shaking her head.

“No. No, I’m going to help you with this. I have to. I was the one who found it, and it’s not fair that you should have to deal with it on your own.”

“Kitten, I told you I can handle it.”

“I know you can. I’m telling you I don’t want you to. Besides, I’m the one who’s spent days looking at this stuff. I’m the one who can show you what to look for.”

“Fine.” I relented. Why not? After all, it meant getting to spend more time with that tight little ass. And that could never be a bad thing.

“Good. First things first, do we tell your dad?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Ok. Why not?” I loved how she questioned things, how she had to know the why, and that it wasn’t just enough to know.

“Because I’d be willing to bet any amount of money that this goes pretty high up in the company. For one thing, it’s not your average lackey who gets to both make decisions about contractors and also have access to the line journals. I also think it’s far more likely that someone up top covered things up, someone without that kind of power at the company would have likely been found out.”

“But so why aren’t we going to your dad? I mean, obviously it wasn’t him.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because it’s his company?”

“So? That’s never stopped people before. The company and my father’s personal finances are separate. Maybe my father wanted a bonus that the board wouldn’t give him. Maybe he felt he deserved it.”

I watched Olivia’s mouth dropped open as she realized that maybe my father was the one who had stolen the money. I honestly didn’t think he had, I was just saying those things mostly to rile her up. But they were all true. He could have, in theory, done it. I’d have been just as shocked as anyone else if he had though. It didn’t seem to be the sort of thing he would do. But she had to realize it was a possibility. More importantly though, I didn’t think my father would take this seriously unless we knew who was behind it.

“Ok. So where do we go from here?”

Olivia was leaning over the edge of my desk, her back arched in a perfect curve, the soft hump of her ass driving me crazy. Fuck, she had a nice ass.

“Well,” I started, leaning over and rubbing my hand all the way up the inside of her thigh, fingering the soft fabric of her panties before slipping my hand up her ass, rubbing the soft skin, imagining my hand slapping it as she lay under me... “Obviously the best course of action is to pretend nothing happened, that we don’t know anything different. So go back to your desk, go back to work. We’ll both work separately to try and find anything about who’s doing this. Just make sure that you don’t tell anyone except me what you find, ok?”

Olivia nodded.

“Anyway, I think I need a break from this shit. Come with me and get a coffee. I know a good place down the street.”

Had Kaleb seriously just asked me out to get coffee with him?

I mean yeah, he had. He just did. But this wasn’t a date. No, it wasn’t. It coulf she dn’t be. He just wanted to get out of the office, maybe talk about other things. After all, I had just dropped one hell of a bombshell on him.

We were just going as brother and sister. And no matter how much I tried to convince myself that maybe, just maybe this was kind of like a real date, it wasn’t. And I had to do tell myself how bad of an idea it was that I wanted it to be.

Kaleb and I left the office, he told Helen we’d be back in about an hour, and we made our way out onto the street. As soon as we hit the pavement I hoped the place he liked had air conditioning. The concrete jungle of Manhattan seemed to be multiplying the heat, reflecting it off the concrete and back onto us. It had been hot for a few days, if I had to guess I’d say the temperature was in the mid 90s, and oh boy did I like the air conditioning on days like this.

I briefly thought that I should call Annie and we should make plans to go swimming or something if she had the weekend off.

By the time we’d walked the five minutes to the café Kaleb wanted to go to, I was covered in a thin layer of sweat, which almost immediately disappeared as we walked into the nice, cool air conditioned shop, and I let out an audible sigh of relief. I didn’t do too well with really warm weather.

“So, you’re more the winter type, are you?” Kaleb asked, and I laughed.

“No, I do like the summer, but I don’t like being surrounded by cement. It’s like the city makes everything feel fifteen degrees hotter.”

“Fair enough. I like the cold, myself. Skiing is awesome.”

I nodded. I had never skied growing up, it wasn’t the sort of thing my mom and I had the money to do, and so didn’t really feel like learning when I was a teenager and everyone else on the slope looked like they knew what they were doing.

“What are you having?” Kaleb asked, and I ordered an iced caramel latte with whipped cream. After all, it was hot out, and I deserved a treat.

Sitting across from each other at a table at the back, Kaleb and I waited for the barista to bring out our drinks.

“They make the best coffee here. None of that shit like you get at Starbucks.”

“I like Starbucks,” I protested.

“Not after you drink this, you won’t. I guarantee it.”

Kaleb was right. So sure, I probably wasn’t going to give up my occasional Frappuccino, but this was
good
coffee. I sipped it slowly, enjoying the flavour of the beans mingling with the caramel syrup.

“So why did I get invited along to get coffee?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to be the loser who goes to a coffee shop on his own.”

“Really? Is that the only reason?”

“You have no idea how hard it is to be me. If I come here alone I’m constantly pestered by women who want to sleep with me.”

I rolled my eyes. Could the guy possibly be more arrogant?

“Yes, woe is you.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, to be constantly objectified by the opposite sex,” he replied, and by the grin on his face, I knew he was kidding. Lucky for him.

“Yeah, you men have it so hard,” I replied, rolling my eyes once more, and laughing.

“So have you decided what you’re doing this fall?” he asked, leaning back in his seat.

I paused for a minute. I had decided. Hell, I had even told Stanford that I accepted and wanted to register for their courses in the fall. So why didn’t I want to tell my stepbrother?

Was it because it would break the illusion? Make the fact that we were together, even if it wasn’t a real relationship and just sex, feel like it was going to end?

I had to admit it to myself: I didn’t want it to end. I really didn’t. Even now, sitting in the shop, Kaleb’s muscles bulged under his business shirt. I could just make out the outline of one of his tattoos, a snake that writhed along his left pec muscle. The way he was sprawled across the chair, the way he just held himself, with that self-confident air that only a man who got everything he ever wanted could pull off; the man just oozed sex.

I wanted to jump him right there, tear his clothes off and have him fuck me. Even though we had to have done it at least a dozen times in the last week.

I shook my head.

“No. I don’t know yet. I’m thinking either Stanford or Harvard.”

Good. At least it was only a half lie.

“Nice choices. I’m sure whichever one you pick will be good.”

“Thanks. Listen, I was thinking about what you said about wanting to be a pro sports agent, and running an agency.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you should give up on it. I think you should go for it. At least approach your dad about it. I mean, Leeman Investments has their fingers in so many pies, maybe you could run a branch or something?”

Kaleb shook his head, slowly.

“No. I tried talking to him about it once, and I was pretty quickly shut down. Told that I have to be a “real adult”, whatever that means.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, Kitten. Don’t worry about it though. Most people don’t get to live out their dreams, and my life’s pretty sweet the way it is. I’ll be fine, believe me.”

I knew he was right. He was always fine. Kaleb was one of those people who always got what he needed out of life.

“How about you? What’s your plan? Be a boring accountant your whole life? Or after this summer have you appreciated just how awesome sex is and are going to be the campus slut?”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “You know there is a healthy middle ground between the two, right?”

“I do. I also feel it’s my duty to let you know that you’ll probably never find any other men as good as I am. I mean, some men are pretty good, but I am fucking spectacular in bed.”

“I noticed,” I mumbled in reply, feeling the blush crawl up my face. Kaleb loved talking dirty to me when we were just sitting around talking. It drove me insane, knowing that people only a couple feet away at the table next to us didn’t know what we were talking about, but at the same time it embarrassed me enormously.

“I thought so. Just thought I’d let you know though. It’s not really fair to other guys, but hey, you were probably going to graduate a virgin without me, so it’s a pretty fair tradeoff.”

“I would not have!” I protested.

“Really? How many times did you have sex with Mike then?”

“I dunno… like, three or four?”

“In the two years you were together? Seriously?”

I nodded, a bit ashamed of having to admit that to my stepbrother.

“We fucked more than that since
yesterday
.”

“Yeah, well, as you and everyone else in the world seems to want to point out to me, the guy was shit in bed. So it’s not like I was chomping at the bit to do it more.”

“Don’t worry, Kitten. I’m sure you’ll find someone who’ll satisfy you almost as much as I do.”

Rolling my eyes, I told Kaleb I was going to the bathroom and I’d be back.

I got up and made my way to the back of the now-deserted store. We were the only ones in there, and had been for a bit. I supposed most other workers had eaten lunch and gone back to work, in the previous five minutes I’d only noticed one lady come in, buy a muffin to go, and leave.

I opened the door to the bathroom and went to the mirror. Good, the heat hadn’t melted my makeup off, that would have been embarrassing if I’d spent that whole conversation looking like a circus clown without knowing it.

I stared at myself in the mirror. I felt bad about lying about my plans to Kaleb. After all, why not tell him I’d settled on Stanford? Because it was so far away? What did it matter. For all intents and purposes, so was Harvard.

No, I knew the reason. I didn’t want it to become real, to accept the fact that this summer would end. And telling Kaleb my plans made it more real. More real than I wanted to handle.

Closing my eyes, I heard the hinges of the door behind me squeak as they opened, and felt the presence of someone else in the bathroom. When I didn’t hear the person move towards a stall, I opened my eyes, and found myself staring in the mirror at my stepbrother, standing only feet behind me, in the middle of the women’s bathroom.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed. “This is obviously the women’s room.”

“I know,” he replied with a grin. “I just couldn’t wait until we got back to the office.”

Suddenly it dawned on me what he intended to do, and my face blanched.

“Seriously?” I whispered. I mean, Kaleb had gotten me to do some crazy things with him before, but this was a whole new level. This was a public bathroom! Any customers could walk in whenever, or any of the staff, and find us.

“Seriously. Now get in the stall or I’m going to fuck you out here,” he growled, and my panties immediately began to feel moist.

I left my purse on the counter and moved back into the disabled stall, the biggest of the three. Kaleb followed me, his body only inches from mine, and I could feel his heat radiating against me.

The bathroom was super clean, luckily. I kept moving backwards until I felt my back hit the cool tiles of the wall behind me. Kaleb closed the door behind us, locked it, and then he was on me. He pressed one hand against the wall, next to my head, and used his other to roam down my body.

His mouth was on me before I knew what was happening. He kissed me hard, passionately, and I returned the kiss with urgency. This was so hot. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. My heart was pounding, half with anticipation for the sex, half terrified that someone was going to walk in on us in the middle of this.

With a quick motion, Kaleb’s hands moved to my hips. I could feel them sliding down the side of my pencil skirt, the feeling of his fingers making my skin tremble.

“You’re so fucking sexy,” he whispered into my ear and his fingers found the hem of my skirt and began to slowly slide it up my legs. The feeling of the soft fabric against my skin drove me wild, and I wrapped my arms around Kaleb’s neck and pulled him towards me, kissing him like it was our last day on earth.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he teased. Kaleb always loved making me talk dirty to him, and the more I did it, the more I loved it too.

“I want you to fuck me,” I whispered, not wanting to say it more loudly than that. “I want you to fuck me right here in this bathroom.”

“Good, he whispered as my skirt found my hips. His fingers found the hem of my panties, and he tore at them with a single quick motion.

I gasped as the sound of my panties tearing echoed through the tiled walls of the bathroom. Before I knew it they were on the ground, discarded, useless.

Kaleb’s erection pressed against me. I could feel his bulge straining against his pants, desperate for release, desperate to get inside of me.

And I needed him just as badly.

My hands moved to Kaleb’s pants and fumbled with the button and zipper. Seconds later he was free, his huge cock standing tall, and Kaleb pressed it against my sex.

“Oh my God,” I moaned as the huge organ found the folds of my pussy and he rubbed it in the juices that were practically spilling out of me now.