Let's Do This: A Forbidden Taboo Stepbrother Billionaire Romance (Sexy as hell Book 3)

by Nicky Harmony

  “Well,” Liam leaned forward on the desk, “I have to say, you’ve made quite an impression among the board members here.”

  “I have?” Amy asked, surprised.

  “Sure.” He seemed to be holding back a smirk. “We all know who your father is,” he said quietly, as though he was telling her a badly kept secret.

  “Oh,” she said simply. “I didn’t realize that would be a factor?”

  “Oh, come on,” Liam brushed off her remark, “your father runs some of the shadiest deals this side of the Atlantic.”

  “I know that he’s done some dodgy things in the past,” Amy permitted. That was part of the reason she was at the interview. She knew what her father expected of her. She knew that he was expecting her to take a position within his company, but that wasn’t what she wanted.

  “What would happen if we were running against him?”

  “Then I’d do everything in my power to ensure that we won.” Amy met Liam’s eyes. “I don’t deny who my father is or what paid for my tuition,” she told him without blinking, “but I’m sitting in this office today, asking you for a job—not him. So, doesn’t that tell you where my loyalties are placed?”

  “You know, if you took this position, you’d be on quite a low starting salary,” Liam warned her. “We don’t pay what some of the big businesses do. We can’t afford to.”

  “I know that.” Amy nodded simply. “If I wanted money, I would have taken a job with my dad. He’s got plenty to spare.”

  Liam nodded. “Okay then.” He paused as he shuffled through some papers that were in front of him. “I can’t tell you anything now, other than we’ll be in touch.”

  “Do you know how long it’ll take to reach a decision?” Amy asked, standing up.

  “Sure, you should hear in the next few days,” Liam said, standing and walking over to the door so that he could open it for Amy. “I’d say the latest you’ll hear back from us is Friday.”

  *********

  Chapter 4

  John

  Stacy had gone to the beach for the day. He’d invited her so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Amy on his own, but she was starting to really get on his nerves. Somehow, the cute idiocy of her just wasn’t cute without the college surrounding them. Outside, in the real world, she was mind-bogglingly stupid and, if he were being honest with himself, it was a huge turnoff.

  He walked into the quiet kitchen with an ease that only came from knowing that Stacy wasn’t around. “Oh.” He took in Amy sitting at the breakfast bar. “Do you want me to go?” he asked, because he’d planned on making himself something to eat.

  “No.” She simply shook her head. “It’s cool,” she added, before taking a bite of the buttery toast, which she’d been holding close to her mouth since he’d walked in.

  “Okay.” He sucked in a breath and walked over to the refrigerator. “Do you want anything?” he asked, his arms filled with eggs, bacon, and pancake batter.

  “No,” she told him after chewing. “I’m good. Plus, it doesn’t look like you’ve left anything, anyway.” Her eyes rolled over the huge mountain of food he was moving over to the stove. “Have you been starving yourself or something?”

  He put the food down on the side and turned back to her. “I’m a growing guy; I need to eat.”

  “Well, you’ve definitely grown,” Amy agreed with him, before turning her eyes down to the empty plate in front of her.

  John could feel an awkward silence fall between them. He wanted to break it. He wanted to bring up some random thing that had happened to him, so they could fall back into a conversation that most closely resembled those he used to have with her. He couldn’t think of anything, though; everything his mind threw at him sounded weird when he said it in his head.

  He turned back and started to fix the eggs, so they’d be ready to go into a pan. “You know,” Amy said, breaking the silence, “I really wanted to see you after you left. I asked my mom and your dad every summer if we could go and see you, but they were always too busy traveling.”

  Why did she have to talk about that? There were hundreds of ways she could have broken the silence, so why had she picked that one? “Well, maybe you should have tried harder.” He tried to sound jokey, but the true resentment he felt could be felt and heard by both of them.

  “You know, it isn’t my fault that they sent you away,” Amy defended herself. “I didn’t want you to go. I didn’t want to spend eight years apart from you. You were my best friend.” Her voice sounded tense, like the words were hurting her throat as they came up. “I missed you,” she told him in barely a whisper.

  John half stepped towards her, before he stopped and pulled himself back. Sure, she looked sad. Sure, she was saying all of the right things. That didn’t make anything better, though. That didn’t take away the eight years that he’d missed. “Whatever.” John rolled his eyes. “It’s been eight years. I’m sure you’ve made new friends.” He turned back to his eggs and poured them into the pan, which he’d left to heat over the open flame of the stove.

  “Sure,” Amy told him. “I made new friends. It wasn’t the same, though. You were more than that to me and you know that.”

  John could feel the secret that they shared getting dangerously close to being let out into the open. “Look,” he said sharply, because he wasn’t willing to let the conversation get to that point, “I got sent away. It sucks, but it happened. Maybe it’s time that you moved on with your life?”

  “What, like you have?” Amy snapped at him. “What are you even doing back here?”

  “I came to see Dad.” John matched the sudden attitude in her tone. “Not that I don’t have every right to be here anyway.”

  “Why do you want to see Dad?” Amy pushed him. “You haven’t wanted to see him once in eight years, so why now?”

  “How do you know that I haven’t wanted to see him?” John asked. He was outraged. She was right, he’d turned down every visitation request that his dad had put to him, but that didn’t change the fact that Amy shouldn’t have known about it.

  “He told me.” Amy’s temper was starting to flare. John wanted to turn around. He wanted to see the deep, sexy anger that he was sure he’d find on her face, but he resisted. “He told me that he asked you a bunch of times to see him on campus, but you always told him that you were too busy.”

  John wasn’t sure what to say. The truth was that he’d only wanted to see Amy. If she had been with his father, then he would have happily agreed to meet up with them, but she wasn’t, so he didn’t. He couldn’t tell Amy that, though. He couldn’t admit that the only person he missed from his family home was Amy. “He sent me away,” he settled on finally. “It wasn’t like he really wanted to see me.”

  “I think you’d be surprised,” Amy told him quickly. “Your dad has missed you.”

  John tried to hold back the laughte but couldn’t. He could feel Amy’s glare burning into the back of his head, but he didn’t care. “He sent me away, Amy,” he told her firmly. “Perhaps you should start paying more attention to people’s actions and a little less to what their mouths are saying.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Well, I know I’m right.” John turned to her. “Can we drop this now?” he asked when their eyes met.

  ********

  Chapter 5

  Amy

  All Amy wanted was to sit by the pool and relax. It shouldn’t have been hard. The day was fair. The clouds were few and far between. The pool had been cleaned that morning and the water was a beautiful crystal blue that lapped up against the sides. Relaxing by the pool should have been easy, but Amy was finding it impossible instead.

  The sound of Stacy splashing water and squealing when John did the same back to her was impossible to ignore. Amy watched them with slow-building anger, which had started to simmer in the pit of her stomach. She rolled her eyes when Stacy leant over and kissed John. What was she doing? How needy did that girl want to be?

&n
bsp; “You should get in the water.” Stacy called over to her with a wave. “It feels so good in here.” She grinned in an overly bouncy way. Amy was kind of impressed. The girl could make her boobs bounce with just a smile—that wasn’t some easy feat.

  “No,” Amy called back to her quickly. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “You shouldn’t be worried about what you’ll look like with just your swimsuit on,” John called from the back of the pool to her.

  Amy looked down at the oversized, sheer blouse she was wearing over her bikini. Why had John just said that? Was he trying to tell her that she looked fat? She glanced back over to him. He’d turned his attention back to the water and had dipped his head below its surface. She waited until he’d come back up before she said anything. “I’m still good, thanks,” she said dryly.

  He met her response with a shrug. She waited for him to push her into getting in, but he didn’t. He was just messing around in the pool. It was like he didn’t even realize that she was still there. Stacy walked back over to him and threw her arms around his neck. The simmering anger in Amy’s stomach intensified almost to the boiling point.

  She took a deep breath and tried to shake off the feeling. The feeling wasn’t actually anger, though; that had been painfully clear when it had seared through her. She tried to avoid the truth. She tried to avoid what the feeling churning away in her stomach really was, but she couldn’t. Every time that Stacy touched John, she felt it again. It was impossible to ignore. She was jealous.

  She got up and walked off from the pool without saying another word. Of course it was impossible to ignore, she consoled herself. Stacy and John had been right in front of her face. She just needed to put some space between them. She reached the stairs and almost ran up them, so she could put the almost-soundproof door between herself and them.

  The door closed and the sound of Stacy’s voice cut off midsentence. It was satisfying. Not as satisfying as slapping her mouth shut, but almost. Amy headed over to the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast bar. Had she really just been feeling jealous over Stacy and John? No, that couldn’t be right. It was probably just what they had together, she told herself. It was probably just the fact that she’d never actually had a boyfriend, but John had clearly had a long string of girlfriends.

  “How come you just disappeared?” John’s voice followed his footsteps into the kitchen.

  Amy turned to the door, surprised by the sudden interruption to her thoughts. “I just wanted to come in.” She shrugged. She couldn’t tell John the truth. She couldn’t tell him that seeing Stacy with him was bothering her. He’d get the wrong idea from that. He’d think that it was because of her feelings towards him. What was she thinking, her feelings towards him? Her cheeks blushed at the idea that John might be able to read her thoughts.

  “Oh, it’s just, you just sort of stood up and walked off. I thought maybe I’d annoyed you or something?”

  “Why would you have annoyed me?” Amy asked, instead of asking him about the weight remark he’d made or how he could possibly think that bringing a girlfriend home would be a good idea.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It just kind of felt like that, I guess.”

  “Well, everything’s cool,” Amy lied with a tight smile pulling her lips up.

  “Are you sure?” John’s eyes lingered on hers. “You know, if something is bothering you, you can tell me.” He sounded genuine. He sounded so earnest that Amy found herself looking at the guy she’d once known for a second, instead of the guy that had come home.

  She shook her head. “I think we’re a little past sharing secrets with each other.”

  “I guess you might be right,” he agreed without even trying to argue. “Seems kind of sad, though, that we were once so close and now we’re like, I don’t know, strangers.”

  What was happening? Amy felt like she was getting whiplash with the way his moods were swinging from left to right. “Well, I guess that’s what happens when you spend eight years apart.” It was her turn to shrug. “You become strangers.”

  The sound of the back door opening told Amy that their conversation was coming to a swift end. “The offer stands,” John told her before turning to Stacy, who was just walking up behind him. “I thought I told you I’d come back to the pool?” he asked her quietly as Amy watched them.

  “I know, baby, but there was this really big bug and it kept flying around me, and…I don’t know, I just freaked, I guess.”

  “You came in over a really big bug?” Amy could hear the mockery in John’s tone. “Well, I better go out and make sure you’re protected from it.” He tickled her ribs and she giggled.

  “You two have fun then,” Amy called after them, because neither had turned to say goodbye. She waited for them to leave before she thought over what had just happened.

  ********

  Chapter 6

  John

  The awkward exchange in the kitchen had been the last interaction he’d had with Amy. It had been over twenty-four hours and he hadn’t even heard her footsteps in the house. She was avoiding him. That was obvious. Sure, the house was big, but it would be impossible to not run into anybody unless you were trying to.

  John couldn’t worry about it, though. His dad was due home that day. He hadn’t spoken to his dad in over a year. He hadn’t seen his dad in nearly eight years. He wasn’t even sure what to expect. He wasn’t sure whether the memory he had of his dad was right, or if it had been manipulated through the time they’d spent apart.

  “Babe, what are you thinking about the party tomorrow?” Stacy asked him over breakfast. “Do you think we’ll be able to make it?” she asked, looking down at her phone. “I’ve had, like, a thousand messages asking whether or not I’m going to be there. I don’t know what to tell them all.”

  John frowned at Stacy. “What party?”

  “You know,” she sighed, putting her phone down on the table. “The one that’s on campus; I told you about it the other day.”

  “Oh.” John nodded. “Right, yeah, I think I remember.”

  “So?” She leaned forward. “Are we going?”

  “I don’t know.” John shrugged. “I told you, I need to talk to my dad.”

  “Yeah, but he’s coming home today,” Stacy reminded him. He didn’t need reminding. He hadn’t forgotten. It had been on his mind since the moment he’d woken up that morning. “So, you can talk to him when he gets back and then we can set off tonight, right?”

  “Maybe.” John nodded. “It depends on how long my talk takes.”

  “John,” Stacy said sharply. John looked at her with surprise. She wasn’t the kind of girl who dove straight into direct confrontation. She was more the type of girl who would send an angry text message. “I want to go to this party. I don’t see why I should miss it just because you need to talk to your dad.”

  She was right. It was unfair to ask her to miss out. It wasn’t even like they’d been dating for that long. “Well, why don’t you go on your own?” he suggested.

  “I don’t want to go on my own,” she pouted quickly. “I want to go with my boyfriend.”

  Was that what she thought they were? Did she think they were serious? John thought back over every conversation they’d ever had. He’d given her no signs to suggest that they were serious. Well, no signs other than inviting her back to his dad’s house. That wasn’t about her, though; he’d just wanted to avoid Amy. “Stacy,” John started, but then he stopped. Did he really want to have that kind of talk, when his dad was due home?

  “What?” she asked when he’d left her name hanging in the air for too long.

  “I’ll do my best,” he sighed. “I can’t promise anything, though.”

  “You’re leaving tonight?” Amy walked into the kitchen. It was clear that she’d heard most of the conversation and she didn’t look happy. “Why did you even bother coming back?”

  John wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t been expecting Amy to be upset over the news. �
�I told you, I need to speak to Dad.” He met her eyes from across the room.

  “You could have called him.”

  “It’s not really an over-the-phone kind of conversation.” John shrugged.

  Amy laughed. “You know, when dad called and said you were coming back, I was actually excited.” She was wearing hurt and disbelief in her eyes with a surprising familiarity. “I thought, wow, I’m going to see him. Finally, I’m going to get to see the guy who used to be my best friend. I thought that we could catch up, get to know each other again. I thought you were coming back to see us all. I thought that maybe, just maybe, you still cared.”

  “I do care,” John cut in, before she had a chance to say anything else. Her eyes had started to sparkle with tears, which she was holding tightly onto. He could hear the way her words were cutting up her chest, because she wasn’t taking any breaths as she spoke.

  “Don’t you dare.” Amy shook her head. “You came back here and treated me like a stranger. You’re going to leave as soon as Dad comes back. How can you stand there and lie like that? How can you stand there and say that you care? You have no idea what’s happened to me over these last eight years. You have no idea how unhappy I’ve been or how lonely I’ve been. You just automatically think that you’ve got it worse, but guess what, John?”

  “What?” he asked weakly, because he had no defense for what she was saying.

  “You didn’t. You didn’t have it worse. In fact, you probably had a lucky escape. So, why don’t you take your self-pity and shove off.”

  John stood perfectly still. He was afraid any sudden movement might start Amy on another tangent again. He couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t deal with listening to all the reasons as to why she hated him. He couldn’t deal with knowing that she was right about all of them too. He’d spent years resenting her because he’d been sent away, then he’d come back and he hadn’t even asked her how she was. He was a jerk. He was probably the biggest jerk there was. He didn’t blame her for hating him, even if he couldn’t stand to hear about all the reasons why.