GRIPPED: A STEPBROTHER ROMANCE
STEPHANIE BROTHER
Table of Contents
Copyright
About This Book
Excerpt
Chapter 1: Mackenzie
Chapter 2: Mackenzie
Chapter 3: Reid
Chapter 4: Reid
Chapter 5: Mackenzie
Chapter 6: Mackenzie
Chapter 7: Reid
Chapter 8: Reid
Chapter 9: Mackenzie
Chapter 10: Mackenzie
Chapter 11: Reid
Chapter 12: Mackenzie
Chapter 13: Mackenzie
Chapter 14: Reid
Chapter 15: Reid
Chapter 16: Mackenzie
Stepbrother Forbidden
Preview: Speed
About Stephanie Brother
Copyright
© 2016 Stephanie Brother
All Rights Reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
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About This Book
He’s back, and he’s brought all the old feelings I thought buried with him.
I thought I was over him.
I thought I’d gotten past my stupid teenage crush for my stepbrother.
But now Reid’s back to take care of his sick mother and I’ve been slapped with a rude reminder:
I still love him.
I still want him.
Even if I know it’s wrong.
I have to forget him.
There’s too much at stake.
But the way he looks at me…
The way he touches me…
I’m not sure I’ll ever come back from this.
I’m back, but the moment I see her again it’s like I never left.
She’s off-limits. Not only because she’s my stepsister.
But she’s with someone else.
I need to stand back.
I need to get the hell away from her.
I’ve got more important things to deal with than figure out what I feel for her.
But it’s a lot harder than I thought.
Because the way she feels in my arms…
The sweet sounds she makes when my hands are all over her…
It’s all proof she was meant to be mine.
Excerpt
My fingers ached to touch him. I curled them in tight against my palms inside my jacket pockets. This was neither the time nor place. There would never be the time or place to touch him the way I’ve always wanted to.
“You can drop the overprotective brother shtick now,” I said in bored tones. “And I especially don’t need relationship advice from you, Mr. Avoids Commitment Like the Plague.”
He shrugged. “I see no problem with fucking someone and then forgetting about them.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s pretty crass. And more than a little disappointing.”
“Life is pretty crass and disappointing, sis.”
“You’ve become bitter,” I said.
He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped closer, towering over me, blatantly crowding my personal space. This was new and strange and terrifying. Reid had never been this close to me willingly. More often than not, he sought ways to be as far away from me as possible. Case in point: leaving home to be a bounty hunter many years ago and never looking back.
“You’re still naive.” His voice seemed to ghost over my skin and I shivered. “Clueless.”
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked and a few birds shot out of the trees, taking flight. The air had dampened, a sign of impending rainfall. Reid’s eyes were as stormy and conflicted as the slowly darkening sky. I wondered if he heard how hard my heart was beating right now.
The weighty silence between us stretched on. Then his gaze dipped to my lips. My insides squeezed in surprise and anticipation.
Do it. Kiss me.
We shouldn’t. He’s my stepbrother.
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
He lifted his hand, reaching for my face.
I closed my eyes. Held my breath. Waited.
Yearned for his lips against mine.
CHAPTER ONE
Mackenzie
When I die, I want it to be immediate.
It should be painless. One moment I’d be alive and the next I wouldn’t. Dying of old age would be fine, too, because it meant I at least lived life long enough to earn that graceful departure.
Dying of a disease was unpleasant.
Dying of cancer was a literal fuck you from life.
Vera lay in the hospital bed asleep. The stark white pillowcases and bed sheet amplified her skin’s paleness. Even though there was a nasal cannula curving around her gaunt cheeks, her parched lips were parted as she sucked in air with a light wheezy, rasping sound.
Sometimes I hated seeing her like this. Yet sometimes I felt compelled to stare, to watch how a vibrant, healthy life could be so swiftly dimmed by sickness. There was this need to capture it, capture her like this, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to have this image of my stepmother in the worst period of her life be my final memory of her. After all, the last image I had of my real mother was her climbing into an idling taxi while my father clutched at the door, begging her not to go.
Old feelings of resentment and hurt filled me as my mind went back to that day almost twenty years ago. I sucked in a sharp breath and shook my head to clear my thoughts. Pointless to head down that road again for the umpteenth time. Twisting my body, I raised my feet up into the chair. I ignored the magazine sliding from my lap to the floor as I gazed out the window.
I had to leave soon. I hadn’t checked the time in a while, but I heard Nurse Rhonda’s voice as she chatted to her coworkers about her son’s softball game. Her arrival on shift meant visitation period was drawing to a close. A shame because Dad never missed a day to come see Vera yet he hadn’t shown up today.
The room’s door clicked shut. Startled by the sound, I turned away from the view of the hospital grounds then froze.
“Hey, Mac.”
I opened my mouth but no words came. My mind remained blank except for one sentence: Reid was here.
“Reid, you’re here.” I got to my feet. My shoes slid against the glossy cover of the magazine on the floor. I bent to pick it up and put it on the side table.
“In the flesh.”
I stood there for a moment not knowing what to do. Then I decided to approach him. Our hug was awkward and brief. I tried to overcome the awareness of his hands around me. He towered over me, his skin tanner, his hair thicker, his stubble unkempt, his dark blue eyes—so much like Vera’s—bloodshot and tired. He had changed since the last time I saw him five years ago, but my feelings for him were definitely the same. They resurged within me with a fierce power like a strong gust of wind enlivening a dying fire. I pressed the hard diamond of my
engagement ring against my thigh to remind myself why I had to forget these feelings for my stepbrother.
“You look like crap,” I said then realized that that wasn’t the best thing to say to a person whose parent lay dying right in front of them. “I-I mean you’ve looked better.”
“A thirteen hour flight from France with no sleep can do that to you.” He moved to his mother’s side, staring at her frail, resting form. Though he maintained a stoic expression, his jaw twitched and he curled his fists tight. I knew how he felt. It’s how I felt at the start before the sense of inevitability and acceptance cloaked me from the pain. I wanted to comfort him but I knew there was no true comfort for this.
His voice was tight. “How long?”
“A month,” I said quietly.
“You should have called me sooner.”
I grew defensive. “She didn’t want us to. She didn’t want you to worry.” I folded my hands across my chest. “Besides, it’s not like you’re the easiest person to get a hold of, Reid.”
He dragged his hands through his hair, down his face, before covering his mouth. Then he pulled the chair I had vacated closer to the bed and sat in it. Vera’s bony hand looked tiny in Reid’s large palm. When he leaned his forehead against her thigh, my heart squeezed from his visible anguish. I resisted the need to go and comfort him. I fought against the tears too. I left the room so that Reid could be alone with his dying mother.
CHAPTER TWO
Mackenzie
Dad met me in the hallway outside the room, his tie loosened and one of his shirtsleeves unrolled. His salt-and-pepper hair was wild as though he ran his hands through it constantly. There were bags beneath his eyes.
“Sorry I’m late, honey,” he said on a sigh. “Deposition ran later than I expected.”
We exchanged a quick hug. I took his briefcase and opened it to settle his documents properly so they no longer poked out the edges.
“That’s OK. Vera slept through most of the visit anyway.”
He nodded. “That’s good. I’m glad. She’s in pain a lot these days.” He glanced over at the nurses’ station and waved at Nurse Rhonda before turning back to me. “Why are you out here?”
“Reid’s here.”
“He is?” For the first time in a while, Dad’s blue eyes registered excitement instead of the regular sadness. A small smile played around his lips. “The prodigal son has returned.”
Back inside the room, Reid and Dad exchanged a firm hug. A strange sight because for most of Reid’s teen years, he and Dad hardly got along. Just as Dad gave Vera a kiss on her forehead, Nurse Rhonda poked her head into the room, an apologetic look on her round face.
“Sorry folks, time’s up.”
We left the room reluctantly. Dad and I never spoke it out loud but there was always this fear that one of our visits with Vera might be our last. No doubt this would be true someday but neither of us were ready for that.
“When did you get in?” asked Dad as we loitered in the empty waiting room. The scent of coffee spread throughout the room, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
“Two hours ago,” said Reid. “I came straight here. Didn’t even get time to book a hotel.”
“You don’t need to,” said Dad. “Plenty of room available back at the house.”
I looked between Dad and Reid. Say no, I pleaded in my head. I didn’t want Reid staying with us. In the short time since his arrival, feelings for him I thought dead and buried had resurfaced. Imagine the torment I’d endure if he was living with us again.
Reid glanced at me before forcing a smile at Dad. “Thanks for the offer, Harry, but I’ll pass.”
Even though he said what I wanted him to say, I felt a tiny bit of hurt. Why did he look at me before rejecting Dad’s offer? Then I remembered our relationship during the seven years we lived under the same roof. I remembered his impatience and annoyance with me. Our constant bickering borne from his dislike for me, and my frustration that he would never, could never feel the same way about me as I did about him.
Dad shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Reid. If you’re going to stay here for some time, a hotel would become costly.”
“Cost is not a problem.”
Dad moved closer to Reid, settling a hand on his shoulder. “Please, Reid, come stay with us.”
“Dad, don’t force him—” I began nervously, but I broke off at the vulnerable look on his face. Dad needed this. With Vera’s looming death and my impending wedding, he needed to have Reid in the house so that he could have a semblance of a family again. Reid must have seen the look on Dad’s face because he reached up to pat his hand.
“OK. I’ll stay at the house.”
CHAPTER THREE
Reid
For most of my childhood, I believed my mother invincible. And she was, to an extent. Tough. She did what she needed to do to maintain a sense of family and put food on the table when my deadbeat father wouldn’t step up to the plate.
Once, when I was about nine or ten, he tried to hit her. He liked to beat on her as all asshole deadbeats liked to do to their wives. He was drunker than usual that night. Burst into the house after one of his all-nighters, stinking real strong of booze and piss. She told him to get the fuck out of the house and clean himself up before embarrassing himself in front of his kid.
He got angry, shouted at her that she couldn’t tell him what to do in his own goddamn house. And as a matter fact, how she was a miserable cunt who had ruined his life the day he had married her fucking ass. He’d only gotten hitched because she was pregnant with a kid which he never believed was his, anyway.
Same old, same old. He had shouted those things at her before. But that night was different. That night, the more he went on, the angrier he got. Then he charged and made a swing at her.
She ducked out of the way—it’s pretty easy to dodge a drunk—and he crashed into his trophy case. Shards of glass and his various awards from his failed career as a football star tumbled around him. His face and hands were cut up pretty bad, but that didn’t stop him.
He got up and saw me. I would always remember that look. Blood and bits of glass all over his face and that wild, angry stare like a man at the absolute last end of his tether, ready to commit a desperate act to save himself.
He lunged at me. I cried out and raised my hands to cover my head like an idiot instead of getting the fuck out of his way. I heard his laboured breathing as his big, meaty hands came sailing down at me and I heard my mother screaming too.
The blow never came. My mother hooked an umbrella handle around the bastard’s neck and yanked him to the floor. My father was a huge guy. That took some real strength. She grabbed up one of his heftier trophies and whacked him over the head with it. She whacked him again. Don’t you ever fucking touch my kid. Each word emphasized by a whack. Then a few times more even after he’d passed out. Later, she told the police she did it all in self-defence.
My mother was a fierce woman who had beaten her first husband’s face in with a trophy. My mother had worked multiple jobs without complaint to make sure I never lacked for anything important. My mother was a beautiful woman who’d turned heads with her thick, dark hair, healthy figure, and glowing smile.
My mother was not the bald, emaciated creature I’d seen lying in the hospital bed a few moments ago.
A month. She had a month left to live thanks to the lung cancer ravaging her body. And where the fuck had I been? Lima. Bangkok. Seoul. Tokyo. Beirut. All over the damn place except the place I was meant to be: at home by my mother’s side, taking care of her just as she’d taken care of me. Being with her so she wouldn’t go through this on her own.
Well, she wasn’t on her own. She had Harry who loved her with every breath in his body. And she had Mackenzie.
Mac.
God, she hadn’t changed a bit. Still the same with her soft chestnut curls and dark brown eyes. Still beautiful and even more so now that she’d become a woman.
I tightened my fists in my lap as I glared out the window at the passing scenery. Fall had come to Seattle, evidenced by the rain, the yellowing leaves on the trees, and the chilly nip of the breeze. Rainwater squeezed through the gaps in the car’s windows. Mackenzie’s perfume, flowery and light, wafted over to further antagonize me.
Agreeing to stay with her and Harry was a bad idea. I figured all these years away I’d finally grown past what I felt for her. Yet the instant I was back the old temptations I’d fought for years had resurfaced like they never left. I should have taken Mac’s cue when she’d screwed up her face at the hospital. She hadn’t wanted me to come home with them. That much was obvious. But how could I have turned down Harry when the man practically begged me to stay?
I’ll book a hotel as soon as I get back to the house.
And give them what excuse? Harry would be broken up about it, as much as that idea shocked me. Needless to say, we’d never been the best of friends since the day we first met. I’d like to think we’d grown to a grudging acceptance of each other because of my mother, but the way he’d looked at me as though I was his last hope of good news was almost a bit disturbing. I guess an impending death in the family can change a person that much.
It changed me too, because, no, I wasn’t going to run away like I always did. I was older. Far more capable of controlling whatever shit went on inside my head. Especially when it came to Mac. I had my mother to focus on right now. Whatever stupid ideas that popped up about wanting Mac would be squashed into non-existence.
I could handle this. I had conquered bigger tasks than this at work. Overcoming my inappropriate feelings for my stepsister would be a piece of cake.
CHAPTER FOUR
Reid
“Are you hungry?”
I looked up from my phone, midway through texting my assistant. He was new to the gig and while I didn’t trust him yet with field work, I’d assigned him paper trails to follow while I was absent. I had yet to unpack my suitcase. This was my life. All work and no time for relaxation.
Gripped: A Stepbrother Romance (Bonus Story: Stepbrother Forbidden) Page 1
