My Stepbrother's Arrangement (A Stepbrother Romance) (2 page)

Oh God. Why did it have to be him?

I looked up at Kaleb, my stepbrother, knowing my bloodshot eyes were still brimming with tears, my cheeks stained with the dried remains of my grief at the news I’d just received.

Boy was he ever sexy. I knew this was totally not the right time to have those kinds of thoughts, but I couldn’t resist.

He had obviously just had a shower; his damp dark brown hair had that dishevelled, towel-dried-but-not-brushed look, and a few drops of water were slowly dripping down the sides of his chiselled face.

No, I had to stop doing this. My eyes moved lower down, his open hoodie revealing a tattooed, muscular body with just the right amount of chest hair, the dampness of his body giving his six pack a sheen that made him look like a fitness model. I forced myself not to look further down at the bulge in his pants I knew was there.

Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

Suddenly, I realized Kaleb was talking to me.

“What was that?” I asked, realizing as I was saying it how rude I sounded, and how choked up I seemed. It sounded like I had a bad cold. Great. Here was this guy standing before me, sexy as a movie star, and here I was looking bad enough that I’d probably be rejected as an extra in a zombie movie right now.

“I asked you what’s wrong,” Kaleb asked, his eyes suddenly softening.

I just shook my head. He wouldn’t understand. Kaleb didn’t care about his grades, he never had. He was gifted with an intelligence that allowed him to coast through school with good grades even though he skipped classes on a regular basis.

Sure, he was about to go into his third year of college, doing a business degree, but this wasn’t the sort of thing he would care about.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

Kaleb frowned, lines lightly creasing his face.

“You know, I know you’re smarter than me. Hell, we both know that. But I’m not
that
much of an idiot. You’re lying to me, something’s obviously wrong.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I replied, feeling the tears beginning to well up again in my eyes.

              “Try me,” he said, sitting down next to me on the cement stairs. I could smell the scent of the soap he used, his scent, as he sat only inches away. Hell, I could feel the heat from his body radiating towards mine, and I was suddenly taken by an impulse to lean over and rest my head against his shoulder, to let him hold me, to feel the touch of his skin against mine.

That’s enough, Olivia Elizabeth Scott.
I scolded myself mentally, forced myself to take a deep breath, and told Kaleb about Yale.

“I really, really wanted to get into Yale. I got waitlisted originally, and now I just got the letter that I’ve been rejected.” I let out another sob and stared at the cement step below me. I didn’t want to look at Kaleb. Why was I telling him? I knew why. I had no one else to tell, and it hurt so much I wanted to share my pain with someone. Even if that someone was the person most likely to make me feel awful for telling him.

I held my breath, expecting him to make fun of me.
“Oh, Liv, you care about such silly things, who cares, go somewhere fun and live your life”
was the kind of reply I could expect from a guy who’d gotten his first tattoo when he was fifteen.

That’s why, when I felt his arm wrap around me, the hard muscle pressing against my skin, with a confidence that made it comforting, I almost jumped in surprise. Was Kaleb… comforting me?

“I’m sorry, Kitten,” he told me softly. I hated it when he called me that, but he seemed so genuine that I wasn’t even going to complain about it. “I know you care about fancy schools and stuff, and I know that’s important to you. I know it won’t make you feel any better right now, but it’s their loss.”

I couldn’t help but smile. He was right, that didn’t make me feel any better right now, but I liked that he cared.

“Aren’t you going to make fun of me for thinking something so stupid?”

Kaleb looked at me, shocked. I could feel his muscles tensing underneath me, just slightly, and I briefly wondered what it would be like to have the rest of his body on top of me, his strong arms wrapped around my body, his legs and torso moving and he thrust in and out of me as we moved in unison…

This is so wrong, Liv. Have those fantasies about literally anyone else, please.

“Of course not. I mean sure, I don’t care about things like that. But you do. And that makes it important to you, and it sucks to have a goal and not reach it. I wanted to play varsity football in college, and I didn’t make the team. For a few days after I wanted to die. I’d trained and played football for ten years to get to that team, and I failed. It sucks. And it makes you feel like shit.”

I smiled up at him, looking into those dark brown eyes that made me feel like I was looking into a black hole, they were so deep. It should be illegal for one man to be this sexy.
Ugh. You’re so disgusting, Liv. Seriously, get it together.

“Thanks,” I told him, not trusting my voice to say much else.

“No problem. Now what do you say we get out of here and get some cheap Chinese from a place I know?” He shot me a grin, that grin that said ‘no girls ever say no to me’, the grin that was so confident I was sure it was one of the reasons no one ever refused my stepbrother anything. Damn him. Why did his life have to be so perfect?

“Thanks, but I have to get back up to work.”

I was hoping my refusal would maybe drop him down a peg or two. Why? I mean after all, he’d just been so nice to me. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t seen him at work yet. Maybe it was just a stepbrother/stepsister thing. Either way, it didn’t work, much to my annoyance.

“No you don’t, I’m your boss, remember? And I’m telling you, we’re going out to get lunch.”

He stood up off the step and offered me a hand. I took it, feeling an electricity course through me as my fingers touched his that I tried to ignore, and he pulled me up like I weighed absolutely nothing. Grabbing the envelope and paper that I’d discarded on the ground, he folded them up and handed them to me.

“Here you go Kitten. You should keep this letter. That way when you’re President or whatever it is you want to do, you can frame the letter and take a picture and mail it to Yale with a note telling them to go fuck themselves.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and the motion made a few stray tears fall down my cheeks. Kaleb wiped them away with his hands, and I began to blush. “Don’t call me kitten,” I told him in reply.

“Why not, you love that nickname.”

“I do not. I hate it, and you know it.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he replied, shooting me that trademark grin once more. “I’m the one who loves it. Sorry kitten, I’m your boss now, I can call you whatever I want.”

Rolling my eyes, I followed him up the stairs and back to the lobby. Maybe some cheap MSG was exactly what my body needed to make me feel better. Although, I had to admit, Kaleb had done a way better job at that than I’d expected.

Yeah, I felt bad for Olivia. So? I’m allowed to have feelings too, to be sympathetic and shit.

I knew she cared about things like what school she got into. Hell, she’d been wearing the same old Yale sweatshirt her mom bought her since the eighth grade.

Plus, I’m not going to lie. That pouty little mouth of hers, the way she gets when she cries, well, it’d would look pretty good on my…

Nope. Not allowed to think that. She’s my stepsister. I mean sure, we’re not blood relatives. Definitely not. But still. My dad’s married to her mom. There’s no way that’s ok. Even if her lips would look so good wrapped around my cock.

Whatever. I invited her out to get Chinese food with me. Why? To make her feel better? At least if she got food poisoning from the place it would get her mind off that dumb college.

Haha. I was only kidding. I knew there was  only like a twenty percent chance of getting food poisoning at that place, and it was usually mild anyway.

I knew if my dad found out that was my favourite haunt he’d just roll his eyes and tell me I could get caviar imported in from Moscow if I wanted to.

Well, I didn’t want to. I wanted fried rice and ginger beef and sweet and sour pork in a square container that cost $4 and was the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with my intestines.

So I led my little stepsister, her eyes still red from crying, up the stairs and to the lobby. I was still dressed in my sweats and hoodie, but who cares, right? The two of us made one hell of a weird looking couple, anyway.

“Are you sure it’s ok to miss work like this?” Liv asked, and I had to laugh at her. She was so cute, so innocent. Instead, she glared at me.

“You know, not all of us just spend the whole day in the gym and doing nothing else,” she snapped as she sat down at the table while I went up to the counter to order.

“And look where your hard work has gotten you!” I replied. “Not to Yale! Relax a little, Kitten.” Now I was just teasing her for the hell of it. I knew she hated the nickname, but I thought it was cute. She did look like a kitten, with her wide eyes, and her cute little button nose. I wondered if I’d crossed a line by mentioning the cause of her meltdown in the stairwell, but she just looked resigned to it.

“You know what? Fine. I won’t do any work today. After all, your dad and my mom have gone to the house in the Hamptons for the weekend. They’re not working, so I’ll take a cue from your book and skip work today too.”

Olivia looked so proud of herself as she said it. “But tomorrow I’m going right back to work, and you had better be there too.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, Kitten.”

“I know.”

I placed our order and sat down at the table with her. I could tell she was still really close to crying again, and I could tell from the fake cheerfulness in her voice that she was doing her hardest not to.

Damn it.

“Hey, look at me,” I told her. “You’re going to be fine. Ok? Trust me.”

As Olivia looked up at me with those gorgeous kitten eyes, big blue ones, with huge irises, looking like the innocent little girl I knew she was, I felt a stirring in my pants.

Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

She was my stepsister.

Shit.

Thankfully, that was when the ‘waitress’, who was really just the owner who worked the counter, came out with our food.

This place didn’t actually have plates. Hell, I was surprised there were even tables. We were sitting at one of the three. It was one of those cheap plastic folding tables, and we were in cheap plastic folding chairs. I couldn’t help but notice the owner looking at me suspiciously when I saw down in one of them, like she was worried I was going to break it.

I passed Olivia a set of chopsticks as I opened my container, hoping that the comfort food would help her feel better.

Sure enough, after a couple of minutes she seemed to cheer up a little bit, and I thought I’d try my hand at the old Kaleb Leeman charm that sent most girls into a tailspin after me. Except this time I just wanted my stepsister to feel a bit better. Or so I told myself.

“So anyway, you’re serious about doing a good job with this project for my dad, aren’t you?”

I could tell by the way her face lit up that I was on the right track. Working hard seemed to be the only thing my stepsister cared about. What a weird girl.

“Yes! I’m glad he gave me the opportunity. To be able to put that on my resume will give me so much of an advantage over all the other who wait until
after
they’ve started college to get their first internship.”

She used her chopsticks like a pro, deftly slipping a bit chunk of lemon chicken and rice into her mouth. A small amount of sauce caught on the edge of her mouth and for a second it looked like…

Nope. Off limits. I don’t care if you’re only human, she’s off limits. Shit.

I smiled at her, trying to ignore the growing semi I had under the table. Shit, why did she have to be so perfectly innocent?

“You know, it’s funny. I think you’d be better at my job than I would.”

Sure enough, that got a bit of a smile out of her, but the reply she gave me was definitely not that of the innocent and shy schoolgirl.

“I know. You’re shit at working.”

I burst out laughing.

“Well, that’s not
totally
true.”

“Fine. You do the minimum required amount so that you don’t get into too much trouble, and the fact that you somehow scored six correct numbers – or more accurately, twenty three – in the genetic lottery means that’s not normally a lot.”

“Did you seriously just make a joke about how many chromosomes in the human body? You really
are
a nerd, kitten.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times to stop calling me that.”

“And you see where it’s gotten you? You may as well stop trying. It’s never going to work, kitten.” Yeah, I threw that last one in there just to annoy her.

Suddenly, she blurted out a question that I definitely wasn’t expecting.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

A million thoughts ran through my head.
Because I love your little doe eyes. Because I wish your pouty little mouth would wrap itself around my cock, but I know that can’t happen. Because you look like a little abandoned kitten when you’re sad and I just can’t stand to see that.

“Because you’re my sister?” I answered with a shrug. That was also a reason. I mean sure, I had this bad-boy reputation, and some of it was deserved, but I wasn’t some kind of monster. I still cared.

“That’s bull. First of all, I’m your stepsister. We’re not related.”

Shit, don’t remind me.

“Fine. You’re my stepsister, and so you’re family.”

“You’ve never cared about me before.”

“You’ve never come to me with any of your problems before.”

I watched as her brain whirred to life as she considered my answer.

“True. I guess. Still, don’t you have like, some random chicks to go bang or whatever it is you do with your life?”

I grinned at Olivia. She was so cute. Too bad she was off limits.