Redemption: A British Stepbrother Romance (32 page)

I
couldn’t win
. Even when I behaved myself I managed to mess everything up.

It had taken every ounce of willpower in me to not punch that guy. When he’d been talking during the panel, I’d wanted to strangle him just so that I wouldn’t have to hear him speak.

I’d kept an eye on him after the panel, and sure enough he went over and spoke to April. She clearly didn’t want to speak to him, but I let her deal with it. I was there to keep an eye on her, not fight all her battles for her.

But then something changed. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he clearly threatened her and she looked distressed. The guy she was with didn’t look too pleased with what he’d heard either.

My instincts had taken over at that point, but all I’d done was joined in the conversation and asked if everything was okay. If Zach had half a brain in his head he would have walked away and that would have been that.

The public often had a misconception that lawyers were intelligent, in addition to being money-sucking bastards. The truth was that lawyers came in all shapes and sizes. Graduating law school wasn’t a challenge in itself, and some states’ bar exams were laughably easy.

The hard bit was getting a job, and that process usually weeded out the morons. Unless daddy owned a law firm, of course. I still didn’t count myself in that category, despite working for Mom’s firm. I got head-hunted on a weekly basis. I was still at Arrington & Hedges in spite of Mom, not because of her.

April had run off after Zach had gone tumbling over the table and made a complete fool of himself. I’d hardly touched him. The push was supposed to be ironic. I’d only wanted to push him as pathetically as he’d pushed me, which I’d barely felt. I didn’t know my own strength sometimes.

April probably wasn’t mad at seeing Zach go flying. She just didn’t like making a scene. April liked to blend into the background; she had no idea that was impossible for someone with her beauty.

It spoke to her modesty that she genuinely thought she was unremarkable. In reality, people stared at her whenever she entered a room, and in my case I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Now I had to make it up to her. Just when things between us had been heating up, I’d gone and put us back to square one.

April’s friend had tried to run after her, but I’d stopped him and told him I would find her. He seemed like a nice guy, and just didn’t like the idea of her walking around on her own late at night. That made two of us.

Her apartment was at least a fifteen minute walk away, but I knew D.C. better than most, and there were plenty of shortcuts back to her place for people who were prepared to walk through the less desirable parts of town. Right now I’d walk over broken glass, so a few drug dealers hanging out on the corner, didn’t pose a huge threat.

I made it to her apartment in just over ten minutes, although I was out of breath, and dripping in sweat.
Fuck this humidity.

I waited outside her apartment and sure enough, five minutes later she walked up the street towards me. She kept touching her hand to her face, which I initially thought was her tucking her hair behind her ears, but as she got closer I noticed she was just trying to wipe away tears before entering the apartment building.

April didn’t notice me until she almost walked into me while digging her keys out of her purse.

“What are you doing here?” she snarled.

Safe to say I wasn’t in her good books right now, then.

“I wanted to make sure you made it home okay,” I replied.

“Yeah, you’re my knight in shining armor. I’m home now. Mission accomplished.”

“Do I sense some animosity towards me?” I asked.

April opened the front door, but only made a half-hearted attempt to close the door in my face. I took that as an invitation to follow her inside.

“I guess there are some brain cells under all that muscle and testosterone,” she replied as she called for the elevator.

“No one’s ever accused me of being stupid.”

April wouldn’t look in my direction, but I could still tell she had been crying from the redness around her eyes, and the way she kept dabbing her face.

I’d never seen her like this. She’d been pretty cut up after the thing with Zach nine months ago, but she hadn’t cried, and even though I’d made her mad a few times, she’d always kept her emotions in check.

Tonight I’d fucked up. Big time.

“Zach had it coming,” I insisted.

The elevator arrived and we both stepped in.

“That’s not the point. You humiliated me in front of my friends and colleagues. All because you could resist the urge to hit someone.”

“I didn’t hit him; I pushed him. He just happened to go down like a sack of shit.”

“You still made a scene. As usual, you made tonight all about you. Why were you even there?”

“Your school invited me.”

“So? You must get invited to loads of those events. I’m guessing you usually turn them down because you’re too busy earning money.”

“I saw Zach was on the list of speakers. I figured it would be a good idea to go in case--”

“In case what? I needed protecting? Get over yourself Foster. I don’t need you to look after me.”

We stepped off the elevator and I followed April to her room. She didn’t want a scene, but if she thought I was just going to let her go without a fight then she had another thing coming.

“You looked like you were in trouble,” I said, lowering my voice so that it didn’t echo down the hall.

“I was handling it.”

April turned, putting her back to the door, and finally facing me head on. She’d stopped crying now, but her eyes were still pools of sadness.

“Can I come in?” I asked. The words sounded foreign on my tongue. I didn’t usually have to ask. Women would typically open the door and drag me through it.

“You need to leave,” she said quietly.

“I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“You don’t have a choice in the matter. There’s nothing you can say or do--”

I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her towards me. Our lips clashed together awkwardly, but we quickly fell into the rhythm we’d found nine months ago.

My tongue parted her lips and found its way inside her mouth, where it met with the soft embrace of her own.

She was clearly still mad with me, even though she didn’t resist the kiss. Her tongue pushed against mine as if she were trying to get it out of her mouth, however her arms remained down by her side, neither embracing me nor pushing me away, as I kept kissing her with all the pent-up frustration of the last few weeks finally coming to the surface.

Our lips eventually broke apart for air, but I didn’t let go of her head, keeping her mouth less than an inch from mine. We both gasped and panted for air, as I pressed my body against hers, letting her feel my eagerness bursting through my pants.

My hand stroked the back of her thigh, until I reached the hemline of her skirt. I pulled it up and took a firm hold of her ass, pushing myself against her in the process.

“I want you, April,” I groaned, as my fingertips moved down her ass crack towards her sweet folds. She gasped as my fingers lightly pressed against her asshole, and then moved on to her pussy, where I teased open the lips and found the entrance to paradise. “I want another night with you. How many times do I have to tell you?”

She kept her back to the door, but her hand fumbled with the key in the lock until she finally got it open.

The door opened.

This was it. After nine slow months without her, I would now go back to the sweet ecstasy that lie between her legs.

“No,” she mumbled quietly. “I’m sorry. This can’t happen.”

She backed away from me, my fingers torn from her soft skin, as she walked into her apartment and closed the door behind her, taking my hopes of a beautiful night with her.

I rested my head against her door trying to think of anything that would direct blood away from my penis.

Zach. That did the trick nicely.

I left and headed home. I’d fucked it up. April wanted me--or at least, she wanted my body--but that wasn’t enough for someone like her. All women wanted me to fuck them, and usually that was it. But not April. She needed more than that in a man.

She needed something I couldn’t give her. I just wished I knew what it was.

W
orking
at Foster’s law firm did have some advantages. Summer associates were paid the same amount as first-year associates which meant I had gone from being a student having to live off loans to cover my living expenses, to suddenly earning $3,000 a week.

Even after tax, I earned more in a week than I ever had in a month before now. I’d always been embarrassed by my bank account, and I still was, but for a very different reason.

The amount of money Arrington & Hedges paid me was absurd, but it’s not like I was going to give it back. Besides, it meant I could fly home to New York without having to worry about paying for the ticket or asking Dad for money, and right now what I really needed more than anything else in the world was to spend the weekend with Dad.

I texted him to let him know I was heading home and he replied telling me to go straight to Kathleen’s New York place. I guess that meant he was living there full-time now. I couldn’t really blame him. Given a choice between living in a mansion, or a small three-bedroom house that was falling apart, I would take the mansion as well.

Dad suspected something was wrong the second I’d told him about my visit. He usually had to beg me to come home, and I wasn’t one for surprise visits. I put a brave face on--easy enough to do via text message--and told him I just wanted to get away from the stress of work for the weekend.

There was some truth to that. I wanted to get away from the office, because the office reminded me of Foster. So did my apartment. I couldn’t spend any time in my bedroom without having flashbacks to that night nine months ago, and even the hallway now reminded me of a kiss I would rather forget.

Foster’s touch made me weak at the knees. It didn’t matter where on my body he touched me. This time he’d gone to my thigh and ass, but he could just as easily have held my hand or touched my back, he would have gotten the same reaction from me; a racing heart and a dripping wet sex.

The second I saw Dad, I couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer. I looked up at him as he opened the door, smiled, and then burst into tears.

Dad laughed and brought me in for a hug.

“What’s so funny?” I sobbed.

“You used to do that when you were a kid and you’d done something naughty,” Dad replied. “You’d look up at me just as I was about to tell you off, and then you’d burst into tears.”

“I remember.”

“I’m sure you did it just so that I wouldn’t punish you.”

“It usually worked,” I said, smiling. Dad and I went into the living room, and sat down on one of the soft leather sofa. “Is Kathleen around?”

“No, she’s gone out to run some errands. We have time to talk. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure I can talk to you about it.”

“Boy trouble?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Foster right now, and I didn’t think that was what had me so upset anyway. I wanted Foster and he wanted me. I’d felt that much digging into my stomach when we kissed. Why couldn’t I let him in?

“Girl problems?” Dad guessed.

“You really want to talk about girl problems?” I joked.

“Well, it depends what they are. I have a small selection of speeches I can offer you based on what I’ve read in women’s magazines. Let’s see, are you having your first period?”

I laughed. “No, Dad, we’re a little way past that one.”

“Ah, okay. Is your period late?”

“Nope.”

“Thank God for that. I think that’s all I have memorized. Tell you what, why don’t you describe the problem and I’ll try to improvise?”

Where did I start? I wasn’t happy at work. I was earning a small fortune. Dad would be giddy if he ever earned half of what they were paying me right now. But the work felt shallow and dry.

The only piece of work that seemed vaguely interesting and might have helped people was fighting the PorTupe fraud, but Foster had stopped me going anywhere near that. All because we had to keep the client happy, even when the client was a company run by awful people.

“Did Mom enjoy her job?” I asked.

Dad hesitated before answering, which I hadn’t been expecting. “I’m not sure she enjoyed the work so much as she thrived off the pressure. She wouldn’t have given it up for the world, but saying she enjoyed it is probably going a bit too far. We didn’t talk about work much to be honest.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t understand what she did, and she would often get stressed out just talking about it.”

“She always seemed so happy when she spoke to me. Mom made it sound like the best job in the world, but now that I’m doing it I’m not so sure.”

Dad smiled and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Have you ever asked a kid what they want to be when they grow up?”

“Yes, I guess so. Why?”

“They always give crazy answers, don’t they? Like astronaut, or fireman, or actor. Do you know what you used to say when you were a kid?” I shook my head. “You said you wanted to be a lawyer like Mommy.”

I smiled. I couldn’t remember having said that, but it sounded like the kind of thing I would say. “Maybe the dream is better than the reality. I don’t want to just be a lawyer. I want to be a great lawyer, like Mom.”

“I know. And your mother always wanted to support you in that dream. But if you remember, she also always told you to find your own path. She told you to consider other areas of law. You don’t have to do corporate law to make your mom proud, April. Hell, you don’t have to do law at all if you don’t want to.”

“Mom made it look so easy.”

“Yeah, she did didn’t she. Your mother was quite the actress at times. She certainly had me fooled.”

“What do you mean?”

I looked up into Dad’s eyes and could see he was struggling to hold back tears as well. He always got emotional whenever we talked about Mom, but I’d never seen him cry before. He’d always been strong in front of me.

“April,” Dad said softly, as he removed his arm from my shoulders, and turned around to look at me. “I need to tell you the truth about the accident that killed your mom.”