My Stepbrother, the Billionaire, & the Ball: Forbidden Romance (The Step Contract, Book 2) Read online

We strolled through the gardens and admired the view from the main courtyard, all the way down to the tiny lake formed by the branch of the Pocantico River. It was one heck of a sanctuary, How many people actually could afford to live near such beauty?

  Blake snapped fewer pictures than me, but he actually had us pose together near one of the statues overlooking the water and asked another tourist to take the shot.

  The photo showed us leaning on a stone railing, smiling and leaning into each other. And if I looked a little more than happy, so what?

  “No matter what reason we end up giving for being here,” he said, “the point is that we were here together.”

  I wasn’t about to argue.

  * * * * *

  Beech Hill Farms had lessons for inexperienced riders, and trails for those who were more comfortable in the saddle. Whatever Blake said to the manager, it must have convinced him, because we were allowed to venture onto one of the longer trails. I vaulted myself onto my mare easily, and the thrill of adventure rushed back into my chest.

  “Just don’t let the horse canter or gallop,” Blake warned me. “Those waivers we had to sign were very clear.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Jenna, I’m serious. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that one time in the Badlands. That rancher was pissed.”

  My hand went up, palm out. “I hereby promise not to let or make the horse go faster than a trot.” I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breath, “Killjoy.”

  We rode on the winding trails in companionable silence for the better part of an hour. New York City was exciting, but when the weather was good, New York State was freeing. I breathed in the scent of the horses and the grass and the maples and oaks that dotted the countryside, lulling myself into almost a meditative state

  “Remember the trail ride in Yellowstone?” Blake asked.

  “Of course I do,” I replied. I remembered every second I’d ever spent with him. “Why?” I said, waggling my eyebrows. “Expecting to encounter more rogue bears?”

  He tried not to laugh. “I meant when you were talking about Colorado.”

  “Oh.”

  “It seemed like you had a lot of fun there,” he said.

  Where was this going? “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said. “More like I tried a lot of new things, and places we went to while we lived there were exciting, and I was an adolescent, so everything started out as another dumb family trip that took away from video games and ended up being an adventure. Everything except for the places with lots of bugs.” I made a face. “Those just sucked.”

  He grinned. “You’re not complaining about bugs now, and we’re in the middle of the woods.”

  I did my best TV informercial voice impression. “The magic of spray-on products never ends.”

  We had passed the halfway mark the guide had told us about. The forest was eerily quiet besides the occasional snorting of the horses, their hoof beats, and us. I kept thinking we ought to jump off the path before a Ringwraith got us. But headless horsemen? No problem. Their sense of direction only went one way.

  “Tell me your favorite memories from out West,” Blake said suddenly.

  “Okay. That won’t be too hard, since I didn’t have much of a social life at what, thirteen?”

  I wanted to smack myself. This was going well.

  “Hmm. I can think of two,” I said. “There was this New Years party. My friend had a bunch of people overnight for a party, and we watched Psycho and the Twilight Zone, and then we went up to the roof.”

  I continued, “Her house was far up into the foothills on a steep incline in the middle of the woods. When I say in the mountains, I mean I don’t know how they got their cars out of their driveway, it was so steep. Large sections of her roof were completely flat. There was a picnic table with red, white, and blue cake, and as her Mom was cutting me a slice, the first fireworks show started. We sat on the edge of the roof with our legs hanging off. It was easily a 50-foot drop, but I didn’t want my friends to think I was a wimp, so I sat with them.

  “Boulder’s show was the closest. Then Denver’s show started. Then Longmont. Then Fort Collins. We watched the lights come on in all the cities below, and then the streams of sparkles and the exploding stars, like they were cues to celebrate. Most of the cities began within minutes of each other. Because of that, we watch a good half an hour of about 17 different fireworks shows, spread across the entire center length of the state. It was like we were sitting on the edge of the world, the flat plains below us stretching forever, and someone was painting the sky with rainbows.”

  Blake was silent, and I thought I had babbled on too long and looked over at him. He was staring at me. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “You do wear your heart on your sleeve.”

  Something had changed. Something in his voice was different. “It was so much easier not to believe it. Not to believe you.”

  Was he talking about my past, or something else? “I don’t follow,” I said.

  Blake stopped his horse. “I refused to accept you were who I hoped you were. All of this time, I think I knew. I just didn’t want to admit that I had been that wrong and that stupid, because how do you apologize for accusing someone of faking their life to embarrass you and then getting it all wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” I said hoarsely, unable to look away. “Tell me how.”

  Remorse was written on his face, and I wanted to reach out, the stroke his cheek, to tell him I could forgive him.

  But I didn’t. He had to say it first. Even then, it wouldn’t make the way I felt less inappropriate. So I listened.

  “Well,” Blake cleared his throat. “First, I would tell her that I was sorry. Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it, but it needs to be said.”

  Shit. This was real. He was really apologizing to me, and it wasn’t a dream like all of the other times.

  I sat there, frozen on the saddle, willing myself not to wake up.

  Blake looked down and fiddled with his reigns. When he finally raised his eyes, I knew. His thoughts were clear to me for the first time since I had met him, and I saw the raw pain there, the guilt. The self-hatred. “I would tell her it took a long time to separate my misplaced anger at her from the anger I felt towards my former so-called stepfathers and the hurt they caused to my mother, and even towards my mother if I looked hard enough. I’m used to knowing who my friends are and who they aren’t, and Mom’s relationships have caused me to question that for years. I’ve never had to fight myself so hard to categorize a single person’s role in my life as I have with this woman.”

  You and me both, I thought.

  “These are just excuses, of course. I should have said I regretted my actions the day after we met. There was always this fear stopping me, though, the fear that I, that we—” He seemed to choose his words carefully. “I was afraid that with that anger and mistrust gone, we would end up in the same situation as when we started. Soon to be family, while knowing it wasn’t enough.”

  He laughed sharply. “It is wrong to want to put your happiness ahead of your own parents? Or is it worse to pretend, and hurt everyone else in the process? It was hell, being so close and not being able to act on what I felt, so I simply felt something different.”

  Oh, no.

  “Nevertheless.” Blake searched my face. If I was as easy to read as he thought I was, I had given myself away. “I’d beg her for her forgiveness, complete with grovelling and years of servitude if necessary.”

  He was a fast leaner, this one.

  At some point during this confession, I started to feel light-headed. Was this a sort of sign? Was this what true love felt like when you finally acknowledged it, allowed yourself to hope again for the first time in years?

  …Nope! I was just fainting.

  I slid myself off of the saddle and dismounted hard onto my right heel, twirling around like a drunken ballerina. Still, I supposed it was better than flipping ass over teakettle onto a dirt road. />
  Seconds later, Blake was on his feet, tying off the horses to the fence parallel to the road and then rushing over to support me as I leaned against the nearest tree trunk. I was waiting for the shock to wear off and the daylight to stop fizzing around under my eyelids in yellow clouds so that I could enjoy the fact that Blake was touching me willingly for the first time in what felt like forever.

  “Are you all right?” He rubbed my back in soothing circles.

  I nearly lost it right then. Blake was comforting me. Not giving me the silent treatment, not pretending he didn’t care, not insulting me by questioning my every motive, but comforting me. Was it Opposite Day? Had global warming disrupted the space-time continuum? Did someone cross the streams?

  I inhaled, my breath shaky. “Not really,” I said, half-laughing, “but I’ll be fine.” Shoving my head between my knees, I thought about the clean spring air, the number of horses that had ridden the same trail as I had over hundreds of years, the dichotomy of a sprawling megalopolis and this quiet colonial town just a few dozen miles away. Anything but my gorgeous stepbrother’s admission that he didn’t hate me. That, in fact, he felt the same way I did.

  He waited for me to regain my balance and straighten up. I kept my eyes closed and just waited for the dizziness to subside, and we spent the next few minutes just leaning against that tree, the mare and gelding calmly waiting for us to get our act together on the other side of the path. “Why?” I finally asked softly. “Why now? What made you change your mind?”

  There was that shame in his eyes again, but I reminded myself that this was his mess and his choice. “I wasn’t sure you would accept my offer if you thought I would screw you over.”

  It was an honest answer, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted to hear. “You could have just told me, you know.”

  Blake shifted towards me and trained those brilliant green eyes on my face. “It would have been torture.”

  It was like staring into the sun. I couldn’t take the intensity of his gaze for more than a few seconds before I had to look away. “Now it always will be.” I was saying this more to myself than to him.

  He protested. “We can be careful. After the deal is over… there are ways, Jenna. Inviting friends to hang out with us so we’re never alone together. Bringing dates along.”

  I gave him The Stare.

  “Fine,” he said, amending quickly. “No dates.”

  Blake and I might be able to fool our family because it wouldn’t even occur to them to think about us like that, especially given the way we’d acted around each other, but the same couldn’t be said for our friends. “Sooner or later,” I said, “someone is going to figure it out, whether it’s one of our friends or a tabloid reporter.”

  As I said those words, I belatedly realized I had never thought through to the logical conclusion of what would happen if Blake ever did forgive me, if we really did like each other and there wasn’t a roomful of undealt with issues between us.

  When we had first met, my all-consuming thoughts centered around two dilemmas: how soon he could share my bed in Boston, and how to convince him to stay there.

  Our parents had married soon after, and we had more or less lived in a state of simmering discord ever since. They might forgive us someday for the sham marriage because it was going to be for the purpose of defeating the conditions of the trust. The sudden switch from enemies to chummy friends would be more suspicious. What if they found out the truth? What would I tell my Dad? How could I tell my Dad?

  “We can make this work,” Blake said. He was earnest; he thought we could do it.

  But do what? Pine away for each for the rest of our lives and die alone? Find other people and betray them in our hearts every time we saw each other, each Christmas, every reunion? Or avoid each other, starving our parents of affection in the process, and hurt for the longing of that contact? Carry on an illicit affair?

  The very thought of never seeing him again was like a dagger in my heart.

  I didn’t know that seeing him with someone else would be any better.

  “When you say ‘this,’ what are you talking about, exactly?” Blake looked confused. “I mean,” I said, “what do you expect to happen? Because I’m not going to stop spending time with my Dad just to not run into you.”

  “That’s not what I wanted,” Blake said, but he seemed unable to elaborate. Maybe he didn’t know what to do, either.

  If that was the case, I would have to lay it out for him.

  “I like you, Blake. A lot. That much should be crystal clear to you if it wasn’t already. But if I can’t act on the way I feel, then I have to move on. Even though it will kill me inside to see you with anyone—” I pushed the thought away. “I deserve to be happy. So do you. I don’t know exactly what I want my future to be yet, but I do want kids, and I don’t want to be by myself forever.”

  That was a lie. I knew exactly what I wanted. What scared me more was that each time I thought about it, it became harder and harder to see myself settling for anything less.

  Blake must have thought differently that I did. “Maybe we can still be together,” he said, protesting. “People do it all of the time — marry out of necessity and not for love. I could find people for both of us… I get that it’s not ideal, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be done.”

  Two seconds of thinking about that, and my heart kiboshed the idea. I stepped away. It was hard enough to think logically where he was concerned. “I don’t want a fake husband. I don’t want to hide and plot and spend my life worrying about being caught. I want some semblance of a real relationship.” A pause. “Even if it’s with someone else.”

  Suddenly, his eyes blazed with the emotion that he had previously saved for his words. “I don’t want to share you with anyone else.”

  My heart soared. “So don’t,” I breathed.

  In two strides, he crossed the distance between us and crushed his lips to mine.

  It was both coming home and saying hello for the first time. Blake enveloped me in his arms and trapped me flush against his body. His lips tasted me, drinking from me like I was ambrosia, and I allowed him to open my mouth and seize it with his tongue. My hands latched onto the front of his shirt, but I would have fallen if he hadn’t held me upright. I was falling into him as surely as I had ever denied this could happen. A rush of heat surged within me, spreading across my skin as he pressed one palm against my back and cradled my chin with the other. My hope grasped and found purchase, and I clung to him, even as I felt him pause, then pull away.

  No, no, no no no!

  I knew the words before they left his lips.

  “We can’t, Jenna. I want to, but we can’t.” He didn’t throw me away from him like I was cursed or anything, but Blake was definitely the one backing away now, trying to cool himself off, his chest rising and falling quickly as we stared at each other.

  What happened to his refusal to even share me a moment earlier?

  “What the hell was I thinking?” he mumbled to himself, pacing like he wanted to punch something.

  Maybe it was the fleeting thought that I had seen this movie before, but I acted without waiting for him to shut his emotions off or run away. “Hey. Hey! Blake,” I said. “It’s okay.” I rushed into his arms and hugged him, putting my head on his shoulder. It was easy to forget how tall or built he was when I was either keeping my distance or kissing him; the top of my head only came up to his cheekbones, and I was slightly above the average height for a woman.

  Eventually, I felt Blake’s arms encircle me tentatively, as if he didn’t want to risk prolonged close contact for fear of what he might do. I tried not to cringe at the thought. It was not going to be like this forever.

  “You were thinking that it would be as hard to watch me be in love with another man as it would be for me to watch you be in love with another woman.” I rested my head on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “You were thinking we met without knowing who the other was, and t
his is completely unfair and fucked up.”

  “The thought of strangling your future boyfriends did cross my mind.”

  I giggled.

  “Speaking of which,” Blake said, pulling away enough to make eye contact, “You don’t have one, do you? I really wasn’t trying to make things awkward.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I broke up with him about a week before I left Boston.”

  Blake didn’t try to look sorry, but his hand on my shoulder was comforting nonetheless. “So the great Jenna Hill remains un-compromised.”

  I laughed. “Blake, I was compromised from the moment we met.”

  3

  The car ride back to the hotel filled me with excitement, and I refused to let go of Blake’s hand so he would have a physical reminder of what it was like to touch me, even if it was just a friendly gesture. He didn’t pull away.

  We actually had planned on revisiting the Twisted Oak again, the food was so delicious, but it was booked solid and we didn’t have reservations. Blake was going to press the point and see if we could eat at an outside table, but I insisted I didn’t want any special treatment.

  “Let’s go have pizza,” I said. “I feel like Italian tonight.”

  “All right,” Blake agreed, and though he grumbled good-naturedly about being jealous of my beef dish the night before, once we were withing smelling distance of Fleetwood Pizzeria, all doubts were forgotten.

  There was a line. I asked the guy in front of us if it was worth the wait.

  “You’re kidding, right?” He scoffed. “I came from Yonkers to eat here. I order out every week. If I could afford to move, I would, just to eat their pies every day. My arteries wouldn’t like it much, but hey, it’s pizza.”

  “And there’s your answer,” Blake intoned solemnly.

  “I think we’ll wait it out,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  The man nodded, as if he had imparted some great secret knowledge upon us and we should be grateful.

  We ordered takeout of several different things to try them. Then we stopped in a bakery and bought some chocolate fudge cake, because what other excuse do you need besides chocolate fudge cake?