My Stepbrother, the Billionaire, & the Bargain: Forbidden Romance (The Step Contract, Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

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  2

  3

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  More from Stephanie Brother

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  More from Stephanie Brother

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  Copyright © 2015 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.

  1

  He was probably the most stunning man I had seen, hands down. Normally, I wouldn’t have stared so much, but he happened to be sitting on the only bench that had any space left, and my new shoes were killing me.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “Is someone sitting there?” I indicated the space next to him.

  The man looked up at me, green eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun. He smiled, and I could feel the warmth of it from several feet away. “It is now.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled. In as graceful a manner as possible, I sat onto the wooden seat next to him, setting down my purse and sliding my toes out of the points of my heels before decorum could stop me. It felt so good to not have all of my weight on my feet, but I was sure the gorgeous specimen beside me had no desire to examine what I was sure were growing blisters under my nylons, so I tucked my feet immediately underneath the bench and tried not to study his profile as I enjoyed the Mid-Atlantic spring.

  It was really unlike me to drool over guys I didn’t know. Besides, I was there to meet up with my father and his fiancée. Dad wanted to introduce me to Lana before the wedding, and I thought it would be better to actually meet her before she was walking down the aisle with him, dressed in white and all. He and Mom had broken up during my college years, but they both managed to make it to my graduation. I tried not to be angry at them. Much. I just wanted them to be happy. Hopefully Lana would make him happy. If she didn’t, she could answer to me and my ten-pound purse.

  “New heels?”

  Startled, I looked over at Mr. Hotness. He gestured to my shoes.

  “Yeah,” I said sheepishly. “Dressing to impress is a painful endeavor.”

  “That’s why I never wear a tie to work,” he said, winking.

  Good grief, even his facial expressions were perfect! This was very distracting.

  “Lucky you,” I said. “You can’t possibly be a politician then, unless you’re campaigning.”

  “Ooh, I like this game,” the handsome stranger said, turning fully towards me. “Don’t let the fact that I’m wearing a tie today throw you. What do you want if you guess correctly?”

  “I rarely turn down a challenge,” I said, grinning. Why was I so at ease with this man after only talking to him for a few seconds? It was if our internal cues played off each other. “Your name would be nice.”

  Dad wasn’t going to be there for another 20 minutes, at least. I had time to flirt.

  He nodded. The wager was on. “Not a politician,” he said. “Guess again.”

  “Hmm,” I said, making sure to stroke my chin and cast a mock-critical eye at his attire. Light green shirt, grey pants and blazer, dark grey tie, black dress shoes. “Your clothes look new and fit you well but aren’t necessarily custom made or super expensive, because let’s face it — this is New York, land of clothing variety. So that’s not going to tell me much.”

  He chuckled and scratched his chin, which slid his cuffs down enough for me to see his watch. “But that wrist bling does. Unless it’s fake Cartier, that’s a pretty big giveaway.”

  “Of what?” the man asked, and I swear I could see the ocean in his eyes with the rapt attention he paid to me.

  “That you don’t work for the government,” I replied. Then I paused. “At least not ours.”

  He really laughed then, the sound full of warmth, and I felt myself coming undone. What the hell was wrong with me? He could be a criminal. A predator. Or worse, a professional golfer.

  “That’s true,” he said. “I’m not in government.”

  “Wall Street.”

  “No.”

  “Sports management.” He was at least as hot as Tom Cruise, if not hotter, and probably not half as weird, so why not?

  “Nope.”

  “I give up,” I said, secretly hoping he would tell me his name anyway. “So what are you in?” I want you to be in me. Inside of me.

  “Tech. I run a start-up. We’re doing well.”

  “Very well?” I said.

  “Not by my standards, but probably by outsiders, yes. We’re turning a profit after two years, so, yeah. Pretty well.”

  “Wow.” He was definitely understating his success. It was obvious. I did a double-take. He couldn’t be more than five years older than I was, and I had just graduated from college. That he had managed to make a start-up run in the black after only two years was insanely good, if it was true.

  “I’m very lucky that what I like to do and that I can make a living from it. Now it’s my turn.”

  I blushed. “What? No, I’ll just tell you what I do.”

  “No, that’s not fair. You had your turn,” he said. “It’s only right that I have mine.”

  He had a point. “All right, fine. I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

  Now his eyes ran over me, and I couldn’t help shivering under his gaze. He studied me for a lot longer than I had studied him. Finally, when the pause was about to stretch into minutes, he spoke.

  “It’s a relatively expensive look you’ve got going there.” I kept my satisfaction to myself as he spoke. “I’m no fashion expert, but the type of …neck on your shirt and the sleeved shawl thing seem to be in right now from what I’ve seen, although everything looks more unique that the standard stuff from the box stores. The skirt adds the sexy-but-sophisticated edge to the whole outfit.”

  Did he just call me sexy? Holy crap, I think he did.

  “But something tells me it’s not you, or not entirely you,” he added. “The skirt practically has the tags still on.”

  “What?” I jumped up and searched the hem.

  “I said practically.” He was laughing again.

  My face hit my palms as soon as I realized I had confirmed what he’d said.

  The man pointed to my handbag. “Anyone who carries around that much stuff in that size purse either isn’t local or doesn’t care about form over function. Or both.”

  “Hmph,” I said. He was pretty much spot-on.

  “If I had to guess by the fact that you have both an e-reader and a paperback book taking up half of your purse space,” he said, “I’d say your job or your hobbies involve research, or you’d be bored. Then there’s the devil-may-care attitude you’ve got going on with those red heels and funky art earrings…” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. You’re
an art historian. You work at a museum.”

  It was a really good guess. It just happened to be wrong. “Is that your final answer?” I asked, the corners of my mouth turning up.

  He stared at me, my lips, and for a moment I thought I saw his eyes dart to my breasts before coming back up. “Yes.”

  “Sorry. You were close. You should have gone more literal. I run a bookshop.”

  “Oh!” He rolled his eyes. “Man, I was really, really close.”

  I suddenly wished I didn’t have to meet Dad and Lana. “Closer than I was, anyway.” Slipping my shoes back on my feet, I looked up at him shyly. “So are we going to tell each other our names?”

  He shrugged and gave me a playful smile. “We both lost. Maybe we should keep those a secret for now.”

  “I’m meeting someone, though,” I said. “I would like to know who you are before I have to go.”

  “A boyfriend? I’m wounded,” he said, grasping his shirt over his heart in mock agony. Still, he looked the tiniest bit crestfallen, and at that, my heart skipped a beat.

  “Not a boyfriend.” Had that come out too quickly?

  He looked as relieved as I felt.

  My phone vibrated in my purse. “Just a minute, please,” I said to the hot guy.

  Dad had chosen to text me almost at that exact moment.

  Running late. We were stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel, and we still have to find a place to park.

  I quickly texted him back:

  That’s fine. I’ll be walking around the park. Just call me when you get here.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “They’re late.” I paused and bit my lip to keep from smiling too hard. “So everything is perfect.”

  * * * * *

  Dad turned out to be well over forty minutes late, and I was already early, so the mysterious sexy stranger guy and I walked most of High Line Park, an old elevated freight line on the Lower West Side that architects had converted into a park by strategically exposing certain sections of track and overgrowth and putting down wooden planks to form walkways around the greenery. There were saplings that would turn into trees, weeds tumbling over the sides onto buildings below, and even a mini-tunnel through a hollowed-out industrial building that still housed offices above our heads. Not to mention the view of the city was fantastic.

  It would have been a wonderful enough start to any evening, yet all I could really think about was the amazing chance meeting I had had with the man walking beside me. He asked me tons of questions about my interest, my hobbies, my favorite foods, stupid things that came up in random stories that spilled out of our mouths like we were old friends catching up. Was I partial to tea or coffee? What was my favorite U2 song, or least hated one? Did I watch romantic comedies, action thrillers, or both? Did I put the toilet roll in with the paper emerging over or under?

  I agreed to answer that last one on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise,” I told him, “My slightly obsessive-compulsive roommate will find out she’s not crazy, that I’ve been gaslighting her with the bathroom tissue, and I will end up as an unsolved homicide in the back pages of the Boston Herald.”

  “Too skeevy a crime scene for the Boston Globe, huh?” he said, deadpanning.

  “Way too skeevy.”

  I replied to his questions as often as I could with ones of my own, trying to fill in parts of his past while keeping my drool mostly contained to my mouth. Setting aside the fact that he was amazingly sexy in an only-in-your wildest-dreams way — and I was an expert in dreaming, as former roommates could attest — he was also fascinating. He liked to tease me a lot, which would have been annoying coming from family but seemed endearing coming from him. He had played tennis and swam in high school until a knee injury forced him to abandon competitive sports and focus on personal training instead. He had majored in computer science at MIT and had thus forever broken the longstanding cliché that a CS major was a social outcast hacker who spent his days trolling message boards from his mom’s basement.

  The longer we talked, the more it felt like coming home. I don’t have words to describe it, except to say it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  We stopped to look at a segmented billboard display. It wouldn’t have been visible from the ground, but walking along the High Line, the signs on each rooftop formed a mural that made it look like a woman was climbing pieces of a mountain. The ad was for an airline, promising “new horizons.”

  I leaned my back against the railing, soaking in the last rays of the sun in a glowing city, suspended between sky and earth. “Let people say what they will about city parks. The view from here is perfect.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  The stranger was next to me, but when I turned to him, he wasn’t admiring the scenery. He was admiring me.

  He drank me in with his eyes.

  I drew in a sharp breath as desire pooled in my stomach. We stared at each other, and suddenly there was no distance between him and me, no air, and his mouth covered mine in a searing kiss. His arms wrapped around me tightly, and I chose to hold on. The truth was he was taking me either way, and I willingly went with him.

  He tasted like cinnamon, and I yielded my mouth to him willingly as our bodies pressed together, joined from arms to hips. His fingers skirted underneath my shawl and traced the side of my shirt just under my bra line as I kneaded my hands through his hair. The sounds of the city faded away under the pounding noise of my pulse in my ears.

  After he had thoroughly conquered my mouth with his tongue, his first hand dipped lower and grabbed my ass, squeezing it even as his other massaged my breast, thumbing my nipple through the bra until I gasped. He kissed his way down my neck and I tilted it to the side to allow him access and ground my hips against his without even realizing I had done it, because apparently New York Me was out for a really good time, and she didn’t care how she got it.

  That provoked a swift reaction from him, judging by the increasing hardness pressed against my stomach and the way he swiftly hoisted one thigh up on his arm, sliding the other hand underneath my shirt entirely. That skin-to-skin contact was exquisite, and his fingers traced the edges of my bra cup before dipping inside.

  At that moment, the killjoy in me chose to make an appearance. I remembered that we were in a public place. Even though other people probably kissed in public here all of the time, I was unused to heavy petting with an audience.

  He must have sensed my tension, because let let go of me immediately, although I could tell he was reluctant to. “Sorry,” he said, and it was the first time he looked sheepish.

  “It’s fine. Wow.” I had to get my pulse under control, or I was going to jump his bones again.

  I had never felt this kind of physical chemistry before with anyone. Ever. Not someone who wanted me as much as I wanted him, not someone my intellectual equal or smarter, not someone who I felt so at ease with I could have told him anything. He wasn’t going anywhere. I would leave with his name and number or die trying.

  However, as much as the thrill of his tearing my clothes off and having his way with me right here in the grass secretly sent a thrill down my spine, I already had plans for the evening, and they did not involve spending a night in an NYPD drunk tank for indecent exposure.

  “I made a commitment to myself,” I said, smoothing my hair back into place. “Don’t do anything in public you wouldn’t want to end up on some stranger’s news feed.”

  “Good call,” he said, smoothing down his shirt, although he looked like what he really wanted to do was bend me over a stationary object somewhere close by…

  Distraction, Jenna. Think of a distraction!

  Fear of embarrassment. Public photos… Gabblrr! Perfect. Lana had mentioned her son ran Gabblrr, a popular new social blogging and photo platform for phones. Maybe they knew each other, being tech kings and all.

  “Hey,” I interrupted him, “Do you know the app Gabblrr?”

  He paused befo
re giving me a strange look. “I do, actually.”

  Bingo. “I know someone who works there! Well, I will eventually. It’s a shame he isn’t coming tonight to meet me, but I heard he was busy. You two would probably get along great.”

  The guy was giving me a funny look. “I work there. That’s my company.”

  “Are you kidding?” That was a weird coincidence, I thought. “Really? I thought Lana said Blake didn’t have any partners with ownership stakes in Gabblrr.”

  His whole body stiffened. His eyes were immediately wide, intense. “Blake Forsythe?” You’re going to meet him?”

  “Eventually,” I said, still not getting it. “I don’t understand. How can you both own Gabblrr if Blake doesn’t have any partners…”

  My words trailed off as I stared at him. “Blake,” I whispered. “You’re Blake Forsythe.”

  He nodded. Barely. “Tell me your name.” His words were hoarse, desperate.

  “Jenna,” I said, feeling queasy. “My name is Jenna —”

  “—Hill,” he finished, the blood draining from his face. “Fuck.”

  This was not happening. This was not happening.

  “But… but… you weren’t even going to show up today,” I finished weakly.

  My mind was whirling at a thousand miles an hour, my thoughts misfiring in a jumbled mass of both recognition and immense loss. He couldn’t be my future sibling, because he was never supposed to be here, damn it. I would never have flirted with him and fallen so hard, so fast.

  At least that was what I told myself.

  “My meeting was canceled.” Blake ran a hand through his hair distractedly, looking around, up in the air, at the wall. Anywhere but at me.

  “I don’t accept that answer.”

  He let out a sharp laugh. “I haven’t heard that one before.” Blake walked over to the nearest bench and sat down, burying his face in his hands. “My sister. You’re going to be my sister.”

  “Stepsister,” I corrected quietly.

  “What?”

  “Stepsister, not sister. And our parents aren’t even married yet.”