Stepbrother Trouble_A Taboo Stepbrother Romance

by Nicky Harmony

  “Lucy, can I talk to you a minute?” Lucy fought the urge to look at Daniel.

  “No, I’m kind of busy,” she said quickly. “You two have a good day, though.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we will.” Sophie grabbed Daniel’s ass and grinned at her. “I’ve really been missing this one,” she added, because the ass squeezing hadn’t been enough, apparently.

  “Lucy, please?” he sounded desperate. He moved away from Sophie and over to Lucy, so she had no choice but to look at him. “It won’t take a minute.”

  “Fine,” Lucy sighed. They both walked out of the kitchen. Daniel’s eyes stayed fixed to the door, until he was sure that it was shut, before he looked back at Lucy. “What do you want to talk to me about?” she asked, avoiding his eyes.

  “Lucy,” he paused, shifting on the spot he was standing on, “I was going to tell you about Sophie, I just didn’t get a chance to,” he explained. Why was he explaining? Lucy shook her head lightly.

  “You’ve got no explaining to do. What you do with your life is your business.” She shrugged. “I hope that you two work things out this time.” She smiled tightly at him.

  “Is that all you have to say?” He looked frustrated. He looked like he’d been hoping she’d say something different. What had he wanted her to say? Had he wanted her to kick off? To proclaim her love for him, so that he would pick her over Sophie? That wasn’t going to happen.

  She already had too much to deal with. It wasn’t just that, though. Even if the court case wasn’t happening, she wouldn’t go there. He clearly still had feelings for Sophie. It was that, or he’d gotten back together with her to make Lucy jealous. Either way, she wasn’t interested. She wasn’t going to be just some other girl. She’d been that to Logan. She’d been just another name on his list and she wasn’t going to do that again.

  “Yes, I think that’s it.” She nodded. “You clearly want to be with Sophie, so I’m happy for you. Why wouldn’t I be happy for you? You’re my brother, after all.”

  “I wish people would stop saying that.”

  “Saying what?”

  “That I’m your brother.”

  “But, you are.”

  “I know that,” he sighed.

  “So, what’s the problem?” Lucy pushed him.

  He shook his head. “There isn’t one, I guess.”

  “Okay, well, that’s good then.” Lucy turned to walk away, but Daniel reached out and pulled her back gently by the shoulder. “What?” She turned to look at him again.

  He looked sad. It wasn’t all over his face, just in the corners of his eyes. A glimmering sadness that wasn’t being allowed to play out. “I just—” He paused. Desperation joined the sadness in his eyes. “It…it doesn’t matter.”

  “I really have to go.” Lucy shook his hand away from her shoulder. It fell to his side with dead weight. “I’ll see you later.” She turned and walked away from him. She could feel his eyes on her, until she’d turned the corner, but she didn’t stop to look back. She had too much going on. Her whole life was hanging in the balance. She stopped when her whole body became winded.

  “Oh, crap, sorry,” Josh said as she fell to the ground with a thud.

  “Don’t worry about.” She pushed herself back onto her feet. “It was probably my fault.”

  He frowned at her. “You know, you still look stressed.”

  “Thanks,” she said sarcastically, patting her jeans down.

  “Oh,” Josh’s cheeks burned red, “I didn’t mean that as an insult. Listen, if you want to get out of here, I could book us a nice restaurant for dinner? It might help take your mind off of things?”

  “Sure.” Lucy nodded. “That sounds good,” she lied. She didn’t want to go out for dinner with Josh. She wanted to go out with Daniel. She wanted to be with Daniel. Josh might look the same, but he wasn’t the same. He was everything that Daniel wasn’t, in the worst possible way. He was so boring and sensible, but he was the one asking her to dinner, so did she really have any right to complain?

  *******

  Chapter 13

  Josh hadn’t booked out the restaurant for them. He’d just booked a table, and Lucy was relieved with that. She’d been worrying since she’d accepted his offer that it would be another awkward night of just the two of them. The restaurant he’d picked was nice. It was a place that served Thai and they’d created a tropical forest within its walls.

  “This place is pretty cool,” Lucy told Josh as they sat down at their table.

  “I thought you’d like it.” He smiled. “I get the feeling that you’re the kind of girl who wants to see the world.”

  Lucy smiled. “Sure, I want to travel. I mean, what’s the point in having a life if you don’t see everything there is to see?”

  “You know, there’s a lot of stuff out there to see.” He leaned back against his chair. “You think you’ll get it all done?”

  “I’ll give it a good go.”

  The waitress came over and took their orders. When she’d walked away, Lucy let her eyes scan over the other tables in the restaurant before she returned them to Josh.

  “So, I guess you’ve heard about Sophie and Daniel getting back together?” he asked her. Lucy could feel his eyes examining every small movement of her face.

  “Sure, I saw them in the kitchen this morning.”

  “They look happy together, huh?”

  “Yeah, Sophie seemed real happy to back with him.”

  Josh leaned back in his chair with a happy smile. “It was all my handy work, you know.” His hands rested on the table. “I saw how miserable he was, so I got in touch with her.”

  “It was all you?” Lucy asked him in shock. “You got them back together?” She tried to hide the sudden mix of emotions she was feeling. “Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged. “Why do you care so much?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You seem to.”

  “Well, he’s my brother. She’s no good for him,” she tried to defend herself.

  Josh laughed. “Lucy,” his eyes met hers, “you’ve been here for less than two weeks and you’ve met Sophie once. What makes you think that you know what’s good for my brother?”

  Lucy could feel herself getting angry. Her hands were starting to shake and everything she wanted to say ended with an insult. She took her eyes away from Josh in an attempt to calm down. All the tables in the restaurant were in use and she carefully took in each couple and family. She stopped. Her eyes fixed on a cascade of brown hair that was tumbling down a thin girl’s back. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, leaning on her seat so that she could see the girl’s face.

  “What are you looking at?” Josh turned in his seat. It didn’t take him long to focus in on Sophie. She was sitting across the table from some guy that wasn’t Daniel. It was clear that she was on a date. It was written all over her body language as she leaned over the table with a seductive smile and a twirling finger playing through her hair.

  “You were saying?” Lucy cocked her eyebrow at Josh.

  Josh’s cheeks had turned bright red. “This wasn’t meant to happen.” He slammed his hands down on the table. Lucy cringed as people at the tables close by turned to look at them. “You can’t tell Daniel that you’ve seen this.” He held his eyes firmly on Lucy’s. “Do you understand?” There was something threatening to his tone and Lucy didn’t like it.

  “Why would I keep this a secret?”

  “It’s going to destroy Daniel,” Josh said quickly. “He’s in love with Sophie. This will kill him. Are you really prepared do to that? Is being right really worth that much to you?”

  Being right? Was that what he thought this was about? “I wouldn’t be telling him because of that. I’d be telling him because he has a right to know. He has a right to know that the girl he loves clearly doesn’t love him.”

  “Why do even care?” Josh spat at her.

  “He’s my brother,” Lucy said weakly. “Why wouldn’t I
care?”

  Josh laughed bitterly. “Why don’t you cut the crap, Lucy? You don’t care about this family. You have never cared about this family. Your mom might be an idiot, but I’m not. Something happened at college. I don’t know what happened, but something did, and that’s why you’re back. It isn’t because you wanted to be with us. So, I’ll ask you again. Why do you care if Daniel is with Sophie?”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected the conversation to turn as it had. Josh had always seemed so mild mannered. She wasn’t sure where his anger was even coming from. “I just don’t want to see him getting used.”

  “I thought I told you to cut the crap?” Lucy frowned at him. “You can’t even admit the truth, can you?” His eyes were full of pity. “It’s sad, really.”

  “The truth?” she questioned him.

  “Oh, I don’t need to say it. You already know.”

  “I don’t have to sit and listen to this.” Lucy pushed back from the table hard, so her chair scraped against the floor.

  “No, you’re right, you don’t,” Josh agreed with her. “You could always run away, like you have with whatever happened at college.”

  *******

  Chapter 14

  Lucy had two choices to make. Both were about telling the truth. Both would affect lives that weren’t her own. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right that she was being left to make the decisions. How had she managed to get herself so tangled up in other people’s messes?

  She could hear Daniel and Sophie from her room. It was mainly Sophie that she could hear. Lucy wasn’t a hundred percent on what they were talking about, but it must have been funny. All Sophie was doing was laughing. It was annoying. Daniel wasn’t that funny. Sure, he could tell a good joke, but he wasn’t laugh-every-five-seconds funny.

  Lucy thought about going downstairs and confronting her. The rippling image of Sophie’s outraged face brought her comfort. It was nice to think that she could stop Sophie’s laughter if she wanted to. The power gave her a rush, even if she wasn’t going to use it. That brought her back to the question that was plaguing her. Was she going to use it? Could she use it? Was it really for Daniel’s best interests to tell him, or was it for hers?

  She was in an impossible situation. She wasn’t even sure whether there was a right thing to do. The likelihood was that Daniel was going to get hurt either way. Secrets always came out in the end. Lucy knew that. Daniel would find out about Sophie cheating on him, whether it came from her or somebody else. She just wasn’t sure when he’d find out.

  Her decision over Daniel wasn’t like her decision over Logan. Logan was simple. She knew what the right thing was. She just wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to do the right thing. It was a different issue. Her issue lay with the way she used to feel about Logan. Her issue lay with her desperate hope that it had been an accident. That was what it was, though—a desperate hope that had been slashed when he’d called with his laid-back tone.

  The laughter stopped. Lucy waited until she was sure that Sophie was gone before she left her room. She found Daniel standing in the kitchen. His hair was messy. It looked like it’d had Sophie’s hands running through it all day. “You guys sounded like you were having a good time,” she broke the silence between them.

  He was standing close to the coffee machine. He’d turned when she’d walked in, but he hadn’t said anything. His eyes were fixed on her. She looked worried and stressed. Her normally bright eyes seemed dim. She had bags under her eyes that hadn’t been there a few days before. “Yeah, we were watching a film.” He nodded slowly. His mind was moving quickly. It was running over the changes that he could see in Lucy and trying to work out why they’d happened. Was she not sleeping? She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Why wasn’t she sleeping?

  Lucy stood looking at him. She wasn’t sure what she’d come down to say. She just knew that she needed to say something. “Will you come to court with me on Friday?” she blurted out, before her good sense could kick in to stop her.

  Daniel frowned. “You want me to go with you to court?”

  Lucy nodded weakly. “Yeah, I mean, if you would?”

  “Why do you have to go to court?”

  “I’m a witness,” she explained.

  “Is this something to do with why you got kicked out of college?”

  “Yeah.” She shifted her weight on her feet slightly. “It’s the reason I got kicked out.”

  “But, you’re just a witness?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to go and tell them what I saw.”

  “If you only saw it, then why did you get kicked out? You didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lucy told him firmly. “If you don’t want to go, that’s fine.”

  “No, I’ll go with you,” he told her quickly. “I just want to know what happened.”

  “Well, you’ll find out Friday, won’t you?” She avoided his eyes. She was panicking. He was going to find out what happened. He was going to know her secret. He was going to hate her. At least that made the Sophie problem easier. If Daniel hated her, then she could just leave them both alone.

  “You could just tell me now?” he pushed gently.

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  “Why?” His eyes were full of concern and pleading. He wanted to help her. He wanted to help make things better, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do anything if he didn’t know what was wrong.

  “I don’t want you to hate me before you have to. I want these last few days with my family, before everything changes.”

  “Nothing has to change,” he lied. He had no idea what she was talking about. How could he possibly claim that nothing would change? “Why does anything have to change?”

  “Because, when the court case is over, I’m going to tell my mom about college. She’s going to freak out. I don’t know what she’s going to do. I don’t even know if she’ll let me live here.”

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Daniel said with growing uncertainty. What had Lucy done? What could be bad enough for her to be called into court?

  “Well, you can make up your mind when you know.” She walked over to the kitchen door and opened it. “I really appreciate you coming, though. So, thanks,” she told him softly, and then she left before he had a chance to say anything else.

  Her stomach was churning. She went back to her room, so she could worry in private. She’d done the right thing. If Daniel was in the courtroom with her, then it was going to be easier to tell the truth. She was sure of that. There was something about being in Daniel’s presence that brought out the best in her.

  *******

  Chapter 15

  It was Thursday, and Lucy was doing everything she could to ignore the fact that Friday was on the horizon. It wasn’t easy, though. Sophie was at the house again. Her laughter seemed to be undeterred by walls. It didn’t seem to matter how many walls, either. Lucy could hear her stupid school-girl giggles from everywhere in the house.

  By midday, she’d had enough. She headed out into the back garden. The sun gently kissed her skin. It felt good after being in the air-conditioned house all morning. She walked down to the pool and sat down on one of the chairs. The palm trees were swaying gently, but Lucy couldn’t feel any sign of a breeze in the air. It was nice. She’d finally managed to escape Sophie and her uncontrollable laughter.

  “Oh, Daniel,” Sophie’s voice floated across the garden.

  Lucy’s eyes drifted shut in frustration. She’d barely had more than a minute to herself. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t Daniel keep his animal in his room? “Oh—Lucy,” Daniel’s hesitant voice forced her eyes to open. “I didn’t know you were out here.”

  “Well, here I am.” Lucy kept her eyes on him. She could feel Sophie’s stare on her face, but she didn’t look at her. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to control herself if their eyes made contact.

  “Yeah.” He ran his hand through his hair. “
Here you are.”

  “Are we going to swim?” Sophie pulled on Daniel’s arm. “I really want to get in.”

  “Um,” he looked guiltily between Lucy and Sophie, “I’m not sure. I think Lucy might be out here for some space.”

  “Oh.” Sophie started to pout. “The house is plenty big; couldn’t she get some space in there?”

  Lucy smirked. What was Sophie trying to do? Why was she talking about her like she wasn’t right there in front of them? “The house is plenty big, but I kind of wanted some fresh air with my space.” She shrugged.

  “We should just go inside.” Daniel pulled on Sophie’s elbow, but she didn’t move.

  “Well, you could always open a window?”

  Lucy laughed. “You’re alright. I’m going to stay where I am.”

  “Daniel,” Sophie whined, her eyes turning to him. “I really wanted us to go swim in the pool.” She pushed herself up onto her tiptoes. “I’ll do that thing that you like if we get in,” she mock-whispered with her eyes focused on Lucy.

  “Sophie, let’s just go inside.” Daniel pushed her away slightly.

  She looked confused. It was like she didn’t know whether to be pissed or hurt. “Why are you letting your sister push you inside?” she demanded to know. “This is your house too. It was your house first. Who even is she?”

  “Sophie, can we just go inside?”

  “No.” She stomped her foot down. Lucy had to bite her lip so that she wouldn’t laugh. What was Sophie doing? She looked like a spoiled two-year-old who had just heard the word “no” for the first time. “Why are you even defending her?”

  “I’m not defending Lucy,” Daniel said, his patience slipping. “I just want to go inside.”

  “Well, you wanted to swim five minutes ago.” Sophie’s hands rose to her hips. “If you don’t go swimming with me now, then you’re choosing her side over mine. Are you really going to do that?”

  What kind of ultimatum was that? Lucy knew that her reluctance to move had caused more trouble than it was worth, but she was enjoying the show that Sophie was putting on too much to offer to put an end to it.