The Stepbrother Bargain (Book 1) (2 page)

“Get out.
 
You’re riding with me.”

“I am definitely not riding with you.”

“Then how are you going to get there?”

“I’ll call a cab.”
 
I reached over and grabbed my cell
phone, pretending I was googling cab
companies
.
 
But in reality, I had no idea how I was
going to get to the rehearsal dinner.
 
I had no money for a cab, and if I called my father, he and Renee would
just find some way to blame me for ruining their night.

“Cabs don’t take broken debit cards,”
Cage said. “It’s a ten minute ride to the hotel.
 
Surely you can stand to be near me for ten minutes.”

“No.”

“Grace,” his voice was a warning with the
thin veil of a threat laced through it.
 
Which was bizarre – what could he really do to me out here, at a
gas station, just because I wouldn’t get into his car with him? And yet somehow
I had a feeling he was telling the truth, somehow I knew that if I didn’t get
into the car with him, there would be some kind of price to pay.

“Fine,” I said.
 

“I’ll call AAA and have your car towed.”

“Thank you,” I said grudgingly.
 
I left the key in of the ignition and
grabbed my bag off the front seat.
 
Then I stepped out of the car.
 
Cage was still standing there, in front of the open door, and he didn’t
make any effort to move back.
 

I was forced to slide past him.

As I did, my chest brushed against
his.
 
My pebbled nipples grazed his
shirt, and even with just the briefest of touches, I could feel how hard and
muscular his chest was.
 

My pussy flooded with warmth as a scene
flashed in my head.
 
The summer after my senior year of high school.
 
Cage was playing basketball in the
driveway with his friends, all of them with their shirts off.
 
They were all good-looking guys –
Cage had always hung out with athletes and popular kids like him, so there was
never a shortage of drool-worthy guys at my house.

But even though the guys playing ball
that day were all hot, Cage was the one I couldn’t take my eyes off.
 
I remembered his girlfriend at the
time, Carlie or Kaylie or something, had come over later, and Cage had kissed
her, his mouth enveloping hers, his tongue slipping past her lips.

I’d been watching from the window, ever
the outsider.
 

Later that night, I’d slipped my hands in
my panties, rubbing myself until I’d exploded in pleasure, imagining I’d been
the one Cage had been kissing.

I’d worked hard over the last few years
to get him out of my head, to stop thinking of him as anything more than a
brother.
 
To stop
thinking of him as anything at all.
 
To distance myself from my family and try
to build a life for myself.

And now, just like that, all the old
feelings came rushing back, threatening to pull me under like a tidal wave.

But I wasn’t going to let it happen.

I couldn’t.

I’d worked hard to get over Cage.

And I wasn’t going to put myself in a
position to have to do it again.

**

Once we were in his car, Cage pulled back
onto Route 15. He drove fast, but I didn’t mind.
 
I wasn’t looking forward to the rehearsal dinner, but I
figured the sooner I could get it over with the better.

“You upset about something?” Cage asked,
glancing at me from the driver’s side.
 
His eyes fell onto my legs, lingering over my crotch.

“No.” I shifted on my seat, aware that my
shorts were riding up and pinching into my thighs.
 
I tried to pull them down and cover myself.
 
“Why?”

“You seem distracted.”

I shrugged.

“Are you anxious?”

“I’m not
anxious,
Cage.
 
I’m
just pissed that our parents have decided it’s time to get married after all
this time and on top of it are having a huge wedding like they’re in their
twenties.”

“Everyone deserves a chance to celebrate
true love, Grace,” Cage admonished.
 

“Right.”
 
I knew he was just teasing me – Cage’s mother was a
gold digger who’d married my father for his money, and everyone knew it.
 
Even my
father
 
knew
it.
 
It didn’t bother him.
 
He liked it.
 
He was a strange combination of a man – he was the
basketball coach for the University of Clifton.
 
It was a D-1 school that had recently won a national
championship, even though they didn’t have the recruiting budget that a lot of
the bigger schools had.

My dad got a huge salary, and a fair
amount of local celebrity.
 
But
while he was great at his job, and had no problem not taking crap on the court,
when it came to my stepmother, it was a completely different story.

My father let her run the show.

And my stepmother believed that kids
shouldn’t piggyback off their parents’ success.
 
Which is why even though my family had a lot of money, I was
dead broke.

As if my dad was reading my thoughts, my
phone rang and flashed his number on the caller ID.
  

“Grace, honey,” he said when I answered.
 
“How are you?
 
How’s the drive?”

My dad was always interested in how my
drives were going.
 
“Fine,” I
said.
 
“Well, actually, not
fine.
 
I had a little car trouble.”

He sighed.
 
“Grace, I told you not to keep driving that car.
 
You need a new one, honey.”

I wanted to scream at him that obviously
if I had the money, I would have bought a new car.
 
Did he think I liked driving a piece of shit that stalled
out on me at every corner?

“Okay, Dad,” I said, because I didn’t
feel like arguing with him.
 
“Anyway,
I ran into Cage at the gas station and he’s giving me a ride.”

“Good, good,” my dad said, sounding
distracted.
 

“How’s everything going over there? Are
you all set for the rehearsal dinner?”

“That’s actually why I’m calling,
Grace.”
 
I detected a hint of
nervousness in his voice.
 
“You
remember Ava and Emily?
 
Cage’s aunt
and cousin?”

I had no idea how or why I would remember
those people, but I just said, “Yes.”

“Well, it turns out they’re able to
attend the wedding after all!
 
 
They came into town tonight, and
unfortunately, they had assumed they could stay with us.
 
So they didn’t book a hotel room.”

I braced myself, knowing what was coming
next.
 
He was going to ask me if
Ava and Emily – these two strangers – could stay in my room with
me.
 
I had a double bed and
futon.
 
Probably they’d sleep in my
bed, and I’d have to take the futon.
 

But what he actually said was even worse
than I’d expected.

“Now, I hate to do this to you, honey,
but Renee was saying it might be easier for
you
to stay in a hotel.
 
That way you
wouldn’t have to deal with us, and Renee would get a chance to visit with her
family.”

I bit the inside of my mouth to keep from
freaking out.
 
I knew there was no
use arguing with him.
 
“Sure, Dad,”
I said.
 
“That sounds fine.”

“So I’ll see you at eight then?”

“See you at eight.”

I clicked off.

“What did he want?” Cage asked.
 
His eyes flicked to the rearview
mirror, checking the cars behind us.

“He wanted to inform me that I’ve been
kicked out of my room because your aunt and cousin are coming to stay.”

“So?
 
You’ll stay at the Copley.
 
You shouldn’t have been staying at the house anyway,
Grace.
 
Those two will drive you
fucking crazy.”

“Yeah.”
 
I bit my lip and turned to look out the window, not wanting
him to see that I was upset.
 
How
the hell was I going to pay for a hotel room?
 
I hated not having money, and hated even more that everyone
around me just acted like money was of no consequence.
 
They all seemed to think it was my
fault I had none.
 
And, I guess
when you really got done to it, it was.
 
I’d made choices in my life to get me to where I was.
 
And I didn’t regret those choices, but
they
were
choices.

“Hey,” Cage said.
  
“Have you noticed?
 
Has that car been following us the
whole time?”

I glanced in the side view mirror at the
black sedan that was behind us.
 
I
shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.”
 

Cage adjusted the rearview mirror and pushed
on the accelerator, speeding up.
 

“Why?” I asked.
 
“What’s wrong?
 
Is someone following you?”

“It’s nothing.”
 
But his tone sounded like maybe it was something.
 
Whatever.
 
I didn’t have time to think about whatever he had going
on.
 
Probably paparazzi.
 
Cage was enough of a celebrity that
people were interested in seeing pictures of him.
 
I’d poured over them myself, usually late at night when I’d
had a particularly hard day at work and had a couple glasses of wine in
me.
 
He was always with a different
woman, although lately he’d been with just one – Aria Wittington, heiress
to a hotel fortune.
 
She was
elegant and tiny – more Kate Middleton than Paris Hilton.
 
I wondered if she was coming to the
wedding tomorrow, if she was going to meet him here.
 

We pulled into the Copley Hotel a moment
later, and the black sedan went speeding past down Route 15.

Cage guided his car into a parking spot
and turned it off.

I sat there, not quite sure what to do
now that we were at the hotel and I had no money for a room.

Cage got out, went to the back of the car
and pulled out our suitcases.

“You coming?” he asked, opening my door
for me.

I got out and stood there, still not sure
what to do.
 
I shifted my weight
nervously from one foot to the other.
 

“What?”
Cage asked,
sounding exasperated.
 

“I don’t… “ I swallowed the humiliation
that was forming in my throat.
 
“I
don’t have money for a room.”

If he felt sorry for me, he didn’t show
it.
 
Instead, his eyes raked over
my body again, lingering on my tits.
 
I crossed my arms over my chest, blocking his view.
 

But he set our bags down on the concrete
and grabbed my arms, pulling them down and pinning them to my sides.

“What are you doing?” I demanded,
struggling to pull away from him.
 
But he held me tight.

“Looking.”
 
He grinned as he kept checking me out.
 
“Don’t be shy, Grace.
 
You’re body is fucking sexy.”
 
He pushed himself up against me,
pinning me against the car.
 
“You
never looked this good when we were growing up, did you?”
 

I wanted to fight against him, wanted to
push him away.
 
But I loved the way
he was talking to me, loved the way his hands felt around my wrists.
 
I even loved that he wanted to see my
body, that he was making no excuses for the fact that he was openly ogling me.

My breath hitched in my chest as he
leaned in close to me, his breath tickling my neck.
 
“Because if you had, I would have fucked the shit out of
you.”
 
He pulled back, lust burning
in his green eyes.
 
“You would have
liked that, huh, little sister?”

I was frozen, not knowing what to
say.
 
But apparently, he didn’t
require a response.
 
Because he let
my wrists go and started walking toward the hotel.
 
“Come on,” he called over his shoulder.
 
“You can stay with me.”