Which is exactly why I’ll be announcing later to my mother that I’m leaving and heading back to law school.
It stings. It feels like running away, but I know there’s nothing left for me here. With Hunter presumably forced and threatened away, and the whole world knowing about us anyways, there’s nothing for me to do except crawl into my hole and let the whole thing fall into history.
I sigh and raise my brow arbitrarily at one of the hundreds of reporters waving their pens in the air.
“Okay, fine. First question?”
She stands, straightening her glasses. “Yes, Ms. Adams, you haven’t commented yet on how long this affair with Mr. Ryan had been going on for? Was it before the election or was it something that came—”
“Next question,” I say with a roll of my eyes, frowning as the room erupts into chaos again. I turn and look pleadingly at Emma.
“Any further questions that do not in any way relate to Mr. Ryan?” She says, more sharply than I’m used to from her.
The room goes quiet.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
I take a deep breath and look out over the gaggle of reporters. “Look, to settle it here and now so we can move on, it was…”
It was what?
The reporters lean forward, microphones ready, cameras rolling, lights flashing as the click of cameras echo through the room.
It was nothing I was looking for and everything I’ve always wanted. It was wild, and freeing, and made me feel alive.
It was love.
And I know that now, now that I can’t have it, and that might be the deepest cut of all.
I breathe in again. “It was complicated, so I believe we’ve decided to go our—“
“Yeah, I’ve got a question.”
The voice booms across the room, and everything else drifts away at the sound of that voice.
His voice.
Just like that, the sea of reporters parts, and a murmur rumbles through the crowd as people start to recognize him.
Hunter stands in the back of the room by the door, with his brother panting and wild-eyed behind him. He’s standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and that cocky, smug grin on his face. “My question is, what if no one gave a shit?”
The room erupts into titters and chuckles as I feel my cheeks burn and a smile starts to spread over my face.
Hunter arches an eyebrow as he starts to push his way through the crowd. “What if no one gave a shit, would that make it less complicated?”
I’m standing before I can stop myself, and grinning like an idiot as I step off the stage and start pushing past cameras and reports.
“Decidedly,” I say, feeling the rush of it all start to erupt out of me. And then we’re face to face, and we just stand there, holding our breaths, lost in the moment.
“Oh, good,” Hunter says, nodding nonchalantly as he looks around at the hundreds of cameras and microphones shoved in his face. “Anyone here give a shit about complicated?”
“Fuck no!” Dexter crows out from the doorway, and the crowd starts to laugh as Hunter shrugs. “Good, because I love this woman and I sure don’t give a shit what you all think about it.”
The reporters and everyone else in the room start to go nuts as he turns back, and reaches to pull me into him. “Guess I should have run that past you first.” He grins, “I love you, Maddie.”
“Damn do I love you too,” I manage to get out before I’m falling into him and melting as those lips sear across my own as the cameras click and flash and the questions come pouring out.
“Oh the hell with it!” The sound of Emma’s voice has me whirling back to the stage in time to see her bolt out of her chair, sending it tumbling behind her.
“Dexter Ryan,” she says loudly, her cheeks flushed and her hands clenched at her sides. “I love you!”
It’s absolute chaos, and I’m laughing as Dexter starts shoving and sprinting his way through the crowd, just in time for Emma to squeal and jump off the ledge of the stage into his arms.
“I…” Hunter furrows his brow, a smile creeping over his lips and he holds me close. “I did not see that coming?”
I laugh. “Right?”
He turns back. “Of course, I never saw you coming either,” he murmurs.
“Well how could you, with that mask on?”
“Exactly,” he grins at me. “Half blind. I’m calling a technicality.”
“Motion denied.”
“Good.”
And then he’s kissing me as the lights flash, and the cameras clicks, and the questions scream, and the crowd surges around us.
The whole world is watching; the whole world knows about my perfect, wonderful secret.
And I just don’t care.
The End
EPILOGUE
The masks that we wear come off.
Contrary to popular opinion and what people might tell you, we can change who we are. We can change, and maybe sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can let someone else take the mask off us and show us who we really are.
The aftermath of San Francisco wasn’t all fun and games, I’ll say that. The story caught like wildfire after that picture went to print, and Hunter’s very public declaration at the press conference only fanned the flames. From there, the story sparked into a million directions, and the rumors ran wild.
Some of them, like the one where people actually believed I’d stabbed Hunter in some sort of lover’s quarrel, were comical. Others, like the one where a special interest group raised millions to investigate my mother on possible impeachment charges, were not. People can act like heroes, or people can act like garbage, and unfortunately, this world is full of both types.
The thing is though, Hunter’s very public words - albeit crude - hit a nerve. Because really, who does give a shit? And as it turns out, aside from the people who were going to hate everything anyways, the answer was “no one”.
There was a whirlwind of interviews and appearances, and the PR team even managed to convince me to go back on “Good Morning to the Nation” and sit there smiling while the three hosts fawned all over Hunter. There were articles in everything from highbrow political blogs to trashy celebrity magazines analyzing our relationship; articles that analyzed our relationship in terms of democracy and the free world to the latest trends on chunky bracelets a juice cleanses.
Yeah, people are weird.
Someone even wanted to opt a movie script about our story, to which Hunter replied at the meeting with “only if he could do his own nude scenes”, while I groaned into my hands.
“Not a chance,” I’d whispered to him in the hallway after they’d hastily wrapped the meeting when Hunter had started unzipping his pants. “That’s a private viewing only, thank you very much.”
“Heck of a jealous streak you’ve got there, doll.” He’d grinned at me, his hand pinching my butt as we walked out the building.
“Oh, you really want to see me when I get jealous?”
“Absolutely,” he’d growled in my ear.
But after all the interviews, and the pageantry, and all of that, things calmed down. I went back to law school, and finished, and now I’m back in D.C., working on veterans rights reform. Yeah, I know; back in D.C. and back in the place I never wanted to be in the first place. But honestly, I like it here. My family’s here, my work is here…
Oh, right, and my husband lives here. I mean, he has to, at least when Congress is in session.
Like I said, the masks we wear can come off, and it just may surprise you - or really everyone - whats on underneath. Because underneath the hot-headed bossiness, the scars, the tattoos, and the armor, was a whole new part of Hunter Ryan waiting to come out.
Congressman Ryan I should say, representing the fine people of his home state of South Carolina and on his way to becoming the youngest Speaker of the House in United States history.
You see, as it turns out, that mix of cocky swagger, home-grown charm, and maybe just a touch
of ego does wonders with pig-headed and stubborn members of the House. It turns out a decorated war record, a touch of a dominant streak, and a downright criminally charming smile is some sort of magic formula when it comes to making feuding members on both sides of the aisle shake hands and agree on things that actually benefit the country.
Dexter did end up going back to school, majoring in business and programming at Stanford. He’s already been offered an absolutely ludicrous position in Silicon Valley when he graduates.
“Hey, the rest of you suckers can save the world and lead the country. Somebody in this family has make money.”
Yeah, he’s pretty fond of that joke. Oh, he stopped smoking; Emma’s work.
Emma herself tried to insist on her own firing - firing, not even resignation; I’m telling you, she actually thinks like this - but my mother wouldn’t have it. She and Dexter are doing the distance thing with her still in D.C., having now moved up to head PA for the Office of the President.
I gave her a glowing reference.
My mother and Alec went right ahead and got married that summer, as planned, on the lawn of the White House, and without a single care given to the naysayers. They received a standing ovation at “I do” from ten presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and heads of state that were in attendance, and it was the media event of the summer.
Months later, when she finally had to go testify at her own utterly absurd “obstruction of national security interests” hearing, she answered exactly three questions before she stood, chastised the committee on the “disgusting” waste of time, efforts, and taxpayer money, and walked out of the room.
She was acquitted on all charges.
Well, obviously, since she’s about to be sworn in for a second term.
That brings us to now, right back where we started on the freezing cold January afternoon on the steps of the U.S. Capital. Only this time, there’s no past nipping at my heels, no memories of masks and dark rooms and strangers lingering in the back of my mind, and no secrets.
This time, it’s all out in the open, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This time, I’ve got the man I love standing beside me, with our daughter in his arms, for all the world to see.
…Well, ok, we’ve got one more secret, but I don’t think anyone but Hunter needs to know I’m not wearing any panties.
Did you enjoy Secret? Scroll forward for a two-chapter previews of both Crude: A Stepbrother Romance and Cockney: A Stepbrother Romance!
Crude: A Stepbrother Romance
Knox Shepherd is a total d*ck. A really, really big one.
He’s a swaggering, cocky prick who blows through women the same way he roars around town on that motorcycle of his - fast.
Sure, I wasn’t supposed to be sneaking out to bars or singing at open mics, but that didn’t give him a right to talk to me like that. No one’s ever said those things to me before - filthy, raunchy, crude suggestions that made me literally run for the door. Suggestions I wish didn’t make me feel so funny inside.
But hey, no big deal, right? It’s not like I’d ever have to see that smug, foul-mouthed jerk ever again.
If only he weren’t standing with that cocky smirk on my front porch right now, right next to my father’s new fiancé. His mom.
Yeah, that unbearable prick is going to be my new stepbrother.
OK, he’s gorgeous, and every time he looks at me I can practically hear him whisper deliciously dirty things in my ear. And maybe something about his cocky swagger makes me think I should break some rules for once.
...Maybe something about him makes me not so sure I want to go to college still holding on to my V-card.
But I definitely don’t want to lose it to my stepbrother. Ew.
So why can’t I stop thinking about it?
*****
Cockney: A Stepbrother Romance
There’s a reason I hate Oliver Beckett: he’s a huge, massive pr*ck.
London’s hottest new bad boy chef is a panty-dropper. He burns his way through party girls’ bedrooms as fast as he blazes around his military-precision kitchen.
He’s a face from my past I never thought I’d see again. The tattooed smooth-talking British exchange student from five years past. The one who brought me in like a moth to flame for one night of firsts... before he left me behind forever.
The one who almost had my v-card.
Except he’s not in my past anymore. Now I’m stepping off a plane in London to start my new job in his kitchen. London, where we’re moving because my mother is marrying his father.
Yeah, not just my boss. That smug, arrogant jerk is about to be my stepbrother.
He might be all grown up now - gorgeous and demanding and wildly successful. But what happens when the man who never hears no comes up against the one woman who won’t take his bullsh*t? The one that won’t submit.
He wants me to beg him for it, but I won’t.
I mean, I can’t, right? That would be so wrong.
So deliciously wrong.
I think I’m in big trouble.
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Aubrey Irons enjoys writing about bold, sassy, and intelligent women and the dominant, cocky, and quite typically forbidden alpha males who love and lust for them; gripping stories, happy endings, and enough heat to keep things extra steamy! In the real world, Aubrey is kept plenty entertained by her own tattooed Marine husband, their precocious and adorable three year old, and one very ill-behaved puppy.
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What a DICK!
I can feel my heart practically jump out of my chest as I slam on the brakes, narrowly missing the motorcycle that cuts me off at the foot of my own driveway. The guy on the bike only slows down enough to flip me off though, before he roars off.
My pulse thumping a mile a minute, my hands tight on the steering wheel at their ten-and-two position, and my foot still jamming the brake pedal to the floor. But mostly I’m just confused as I watch in shock as the biker goes tearing up the driveway to my father’s estate.
Who the heck is that?
I mean, I know they say most accidents happen within a mile from home, but “the mailbox” is kind of pushing it! On top of that, there’s the embarrassment that, as totally cautious a driver as I normally am, I know I wasn’t paying attention back there.
The other distractions of the day go tumbling through my head as I frown and start to follow the biker up the curving wooded drive to the main house. The dull, nagging whine in my head about my father wanting to have an “important talk” with me after my piano lessons today about Amanda, the woman he’s been seeing, comes thudding back to the forefront. Amanda, the mysterious woman I’ve only met once, even if I know they’ve been dating for more than six months now. And whatever, it’s fine that he’s dating. Heck, a guy like my dad should have been back in the field the day after my mom took off, the way she did.
So yeah, my dad dating is fine, but there’s something weird about dating the widow of one of his top foremen that’s a little weird. And a little classless, if you ask me.
But whatever.
At the top of the drive, it’s my turn t
o stick my finger out the window and flip off the guy on the bike, who’s now kicking back the stand and swinging his leg back over it. I slam the car into park and yank the keys out as I step out into the dry Texas heat.
Alright mister, you and I are gonna have word-
Oh.
The guy’s back is to me as he shrugs his leather jacket off, and slips the helmet off his head. His hand comes up as he stretches, the fingers raking through his short dark hair and the sleeve of his white t-shirt straining tight over the defined muscles of his bicep. A half-sleeve of tattoos curves around that arm, swirling around those muscles, and I find myself blushing a little as I stare.
Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance Page 26
