She probably thinks she looks like a pig. But Angela’s different from someone like Samantha. It takes a lot of exercise for Sam to keep her body flawless, but she’s anything but glamorous with her makeup off and workout clothes on. Samantha is meant to primp. Properly fixed up, she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Angela, by contrast, is meant to be real. It doesn’t matter whether Angela tries to dress up or if she tosses on jeans and pulls her hair into a ponytail. As long as she’s authentically herself, she’s breathtaking.
Not that I should be thinking any of this. Angela is my stepsister and has been for thirteen years. When I saw the birthday card, I was thinking nostalgically about helping a good girl who deserved my assistance by virtue of taking care of a shitheel dad I wanted nothing to do with. When I was having sex with two women earlier, I got distracted by Angie’s (not Angela’s) name and nothing else. I’d never think of Angela that way. Not now that I’m a responsible adult, free of the confused, troubled thoughts that plagued my traumatic youth.
“Would you like a drink?”
She answers without looking.
“No thanks.”
“Do you drink?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s your drink?”
“Chardonnay.”
“I have chardonnay.”
“I doubt you have the kind I like.”
Doubtful. The limo is well stocked. I have the best stuff in the world, in wine and in everything else.
“What kind do you like?”
“The cheap kind.”
I almost laugh, but I realize that would be a bad idea. “I have some stuff I know you’ll like.”
“Is it cheap?”
She looks over, finally. I can see anger and resentment in her eyes. She wears those emotions well. Any man who wasn’t her stepbrother would probably find the look lustful and exciting.
I shake my head.
“Then I doubt I’ll like it.” Again she looks forward.
I wonder if I should press. The point of this ride was to talk, yet Angela won’t meet my eyes. I’ve tried a few times to start, but she cuts me off with the shortest possible answers. I’m left outwitted, clutching a conversational bag that holds nothing inside.
If she were Samantha, I’d barrel ahead and say what needed saying.
But Angela isn’t Samantha.
Buildings grow taller, and Angela finally speaks. She turns fully, knees together, face uncompromising. It would be easy for someone watching us to believe she owns the limo and I’m the stray.
“Where are we going?”
“My apartment.”
“Why?”
“To talk. I wanted to talk.”
“I thought we were going for a ride?”
“We can do either.”
She sighs. “What do you want from me, Parker?”
And that’s when I realize something. She’d seemed hard, almost dominant. But really Angela’s furious. And tired, as if she’s been angry forever and it’s been difficult to hold. I see a chink in her armor, her eyes for once less steely than they’ve been.
I wonder if this is how it’s always been. Her anger today looks like her pretentious air all those years ago. She looked bulletproof back then because she seemed to think she was perfect. Today, her Kevlar is pride. She just looks worn-out, and I wonder if it’s been an act all along. My shrink said something once about me dressing the world so I could play the character I desperately wanted to be. The thought recurs now, and I think of Angela’s plays, her singing, her performing, her always being on.
“Just to … ” But I can only repeat myself. “To talk.”
“We could have talked at my place. Or even better, on the phone.”
I’m not sure of my motives. After I’d finished with Samantha and Angie-not-Angela, I’d expelled them from the penthouse and stalked my commons for an hour. I’d taken a few pills to calm an agitation I couldn’t fully explain. When those hadn’t worked, I’d taken a few more, along with a few belts of scotch. My normal way of hushing the demons hadn’t worked. Before I knew it, I was in the car, heading toward yesterday.
I don’t know what to say, so I say the truth.
“I didn’t really want to talk to my dad, or let him know.” I meet her eyes and give her a little, vaguely apologetic shrug. “Or your mom.”
“Just me.”
“Just you.”
“Why?”
It’s a good question. It’s almost as good a question as why she came with me at all.
“I can’t explain it.”
“So now what?” She looks out the windows again.
“We could talk, I guess.”
“Okay,” Angela says then falls silent.
Talk about an inviting lead-up. She’s staring right at me, now seeming more hurt than mad.
“How are you? How have you been?”
“Tired. Beat. Overworked. Stressed out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“How about you?”
“Busy.”
“Must be hard, doing all you do.”
I nod. But it’s a trap. I scramble on, trying to sit up taller. “There’s a lot of people to manage. And too many deadlines.”
I already feel myself wanting to apologize for my money. What’s better — to pretend I do nothing all day or to feign an impossible schedule? My work must be nothing compared to hers, so that choice might be insulting. But implying I lie around and eat peeled grapes is so much worse.
Angela came on this errand, so some part of her must want to be here.
“So,” she says, “things have really changed for you, haven’t they?”
I sniff the comment for double meaning, wonder if I’m being baited. She seems to be genuine. “I guess so.”
“Rolling Stone said you’re worth well over a billion dollars.”
I cringe. “On paper, maybe, but — ”
She smiles a little. Just a little. Then she holds up a hand to cut me off.
“I understand why you did what you did, Parker. I’m trying not to be mad.”
“But you are.”
“I’m trying,” she repeats. I supposed it has to be good enough. After a minute, she adds, “I don’t like him either.”
“Who?”
“Bill.”
“It’s not that — ”
“It is. It’s okay. But he is who he is. He’s been with Mom forever now, though, and he doesn’t hit her, so I guess I have to be okay with it. It was my choice to stay with them.”
I don’t want to say that she could have left them too. I don’t want to say that there were times, during the turbulent period after I first left, when I told her that exact thing, in those exact words. But she knows, and doesn’t want to hear it. I’m wired to be callous. Angela is wired to be responsible. Just one of many ways we were mismatched from the start.
“I don’t want to talk about them,” she says.
“Okay.”
“But you don’t want to talk about money.”
It’s true; I don’t. There’s no good way to discuss it. Looking at Angela now, a thousand money-related thoughts run through my mind. I want to tell her that I’ll pay her bills. I want to tell her that I’ll buy her a house — not the one she’s living in with Bill and her mom, but a new one. I want to invite her to live in one of my building’s posh, available units. I want to offer her a job.
But those thoughts are all conflicted. Any money I give Angela filters to my father, seeing as he and Maria would tag along to any house I buy her unless I bought them one as well. And any offer I make — from cash to employment, would be seen as charity.
It’s ironic. I’m always looking for new charities to take my money, and there’s one right across from me that I want to endow with millions for a reason I barely understand. But she’d never accept it. She’d never consider herself a charity, and be enraged the second I suggested she was. Because Angela’s always been that proud little drama gi
rl who sang in plays, demanding the spotlight she was so sure she’d earned.
“So what should we do?”
I have an idea. I whisper to Brian, who then raises the partition to make a call.
Angela gives me the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her in a decade. It’s curious and devilish. It makes me feel, finally, like heading into the old neighborhood might have been a good idea after all.
ANGELA
THE DAY AFTER PARKER BEAT Carter Grimm nearly to death, I remember finding him in the bathroom, smearing antibiotic cream on his knuckles. Water was still running in the sink. The mirror was fogged from his shower, so he didn’t see me as I approached from the hallway.
He’d wrapped himself in a faded maroon towel then opened the hallway door to vent the steam. His brown hair was a mess, blackened with water. His gaze was down, and the faucet’s sounds drowned my footsteps. His door was open to the world, but still I felt like a voyeur, peeping on an intimate moment I wasn’t meant to see.
I hadn’t realized how rough Parker looked — not just today, but always. He normally had a shirt on, of course, and I hadn’t paid attention when he’d run between his room and the bathroom for showers. Today, my eyes went to him almost automatically, and I noticed that he had several long-healed scratches down one side and a mothership of a scar near one shoulder. He must have taken some bruises when Carter knocked him to the floor, because I could also see fresh black-and-blues and a few small red abrasions. He was lean like an animal, striations in muscle shifting as he worked.
The cuts on Parker’s knuckles seemed to have healed, but they looked nasty. He’d left quickly the day before, after I’d urged him out and told him I’d find a way to shut Carter up. Based on the slip I found in the trash, Parker seemed to have gone to a clinic and, possibly by pulling out Bill’s city-supported insurance, had an X-ray. I assume his hand wasn’t broken because he wasn’t wearing a cast, but still it was a mess of red, raw skin.
I stood behind him for maybe thirty seconds, increasingly sure that I should announce myself rather than leering unseen like a vulture. But I found myself newly captivated — perhaps inappropriately so. I’d always understood, intellectually, that Parker had a fine jawline and strong arms. I’d known that other girls thought he was hot, but I sure didn’t see it. Not until now. Once I noticed, I didn’t want to stop. I’d never seen his scars. Or the round tattoo on the back of his left arm. These were things he kept private, and here I was seeing it all.
I knocked on the open door.
Parker turned, his look almost dismissive. It wasn’t rude, just sort of there. He’d acknowledged my presence, without a word.
“Is it okay?” I said.
“Is what okay?”
I took a step closer, now leaning on the doorframe. Parker had always scared me a little. It felt dangerous to be so close to a predator licking his wounds.
“Your hand.”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s fine.”
“I can’t believe you did that.”
He glanced at me then back at his hand. His smooth skin moved over his lean frame, muscles rippling. “Sorry.”
“No, no. Not like that. I just mean … ”
“What?” He’d turned to meet my eyes again. His were the same color as mine, but a thousand years older.
“Nothing.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have got involved.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. He really shouldn’t have. It was none of his business. He overreacted, beating Carter badly enough to send him to the emergency room. He’d chosen violence before diplomacy, like a cave man. He’d butted into something private, and I felt a tad violated with him seeing me vulnerable. I didn’t like that I’d cried in front of Parker Altman. He was the kind of person who’d use weakness as a weapon.
But somehow, despite knowing I should have been angry at Parker for what he’d done, I couldn’t be. I didn’t understand what had set him off.
“And I guess I’ll get a visit from a cop, huh?”
I looked at his sweat-slicked skin, still perspiring from his hot shower. I wanted to touch it. The thought made me feel wrong, dirty. Reprehensible. If I understood my confused feelings correctly, I might have been having inappropriate pangs for the boy who lived in the next room — who was, on paper, as far as everyone was concerned, part of my family.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said.
Parker looked back again. This time, he turned fully. He had another tattoo on his chest, near his left shoulder. I’d noticed that one before, just as I’d noticed the effortless, no-gym-required cut of his six-pack.
“Why?”
“Because Carter didn’t turn you in.”
He laughed. “So he says.”
I shook my head. “I was there. They asked him what happened, and he said he fell down onto a bike rack while trying to leap it.”
His eyes on me: “Why did he do that?”
“I told him to.”
“Why did he listen to you?”
The truth was that I’d given him a hand job and promised more. I don’t know why it shamed me, but it did. I was sixteen fucking years old, and my friends had done far more than getting sticky hands, but drama club was like being wrapped in naiveté. Half the guys were gay, and most of the other half were even more socially retarded than I sometimes felt. Carter wasn’t going to get hand or head from anyone outside the club. He huffed and puffed plenty, but really I was his only shot. Our fight had been half about my prudishness to begin with, but I’d decided to break my palm’s cherry, like two or three years after the other non-drama girls. It was no big deal, but somehow I felt bought.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but he did.”
Parker looked at me for a long moment. I wondered if he believed me, or if he suspected there was more to the story. If he suspected, though, I was sure he wouldn’t suspect the truth. I’d hidden my time with Carter and had never broadcast the tiny, mostly-kissing dalliances I’d had before him. Parker was a player, and I was a nerd. He’d never think I’d be capable of making a guy cum. He probably thought I wore a chastity belt and still thought fairies brought babies.
“Hmm,” he said then turned back to the sink and the slowly defogging mirror. He didn’t seem remotely bothered that we were conducting our entire conversation with him in a towel. It wasn’t the same as him being shirtless at the pool, or going from his room to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I wondered if I’d be as comfortable talking to him while wearing a towel after my shower. I’d be more covered than in a swimsuit, but a shifting of fabric would be all it’d take to expose myself to him. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that at all — and yet for some reason, I was plenty uncomfortable now, despite being fully dressed.
I wanted to thank him again, but that wasn’t what I felt. In the moment, “thank you” had felt like the best thing to say. But my true feelings were somehow deeper, and something I didn’t entirely understand.
After another minute or so, Parker turned to gaze at me again, an are-you-still-here look on his face.
“What?”
What indeed. It was too tangled. I only knew that I wanted to keep standing by that door. I wanted to help him apply ointment to his knuckles then wrap them in gauze. I felt the need to be there but had no idea why. I found I liked looking over his shoulders — at his shoulders. I wanted him to turn again and look at me fully. I couldn’t help thinking that a few minutes ago, he’d been in the shower rather than standing outside it. I couldn’t help imagining myself later that night, in that same tub. It was all a bunch of random nothing, but deep down I knew it wasn’t.
I felt somehow weak, standing beside him.
I felt gratitude for the brutish thing he’d done — not because I’d been in danger but because he’d done it for me. For my honor, maybe, as corny as that sounded.
I was sixteen years old. I wasn’t totally oblivious. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what was happening. I’d felt most of this before
and knew exactly what was happening.
I wanted him. I wanted the boy in the next room — the son of the man my mother had married.
It was wrong and twisted enough to ache.
I walked away, back to my room, trying to convince myself I was confused and maybe traumatized by the violence. In truth, I felt nothing.
PARKER
ANGELA SITS ACROSS FROM ME again, but this time we’re thirteen thousand feet in the air rather than riding along in the limo, looking out on familiar streets. Now we’re above them, and I tell the pilot to fly over our old neighborhood so we can see the same streets from the air.
“You ever see helicopters overhead at home?” I ask Angela over the comm. Normally, people on a helicopter will have to yell. My luxury model has headsets. It was all absurdly expensive, but I have the money. And once you have a company copter, you’ve tossed “frugal” out the window. Besides, it’s barely the company’s. The WinFinity logo’s on the side, so I could pay for it out of corporate, tax-advantaged income then depreciate it. The loopholes available for people like me versus people like Angela are absurd. She needs the money, yet the government shovels it toward me.
She looks over at me and nods, smiling broadly. Her anger departed the minute we lifted off. I could tell she was trying to remain stoic and unimpressed, probably trying to hang onto her pride rather than getting swept away, but that all flew out the window once up in the air. I don’t know that Angela’s ever been on a plane, but she’s certainly never been on a helicopter. There’s a bar in here, like in the limo. The only difference is the way the bottles are sealed and the fact that nothing is carbonated.
I realize, somewhat uncomfortably, that I’m trying to impress her. That hadn’t been my intention. I’d merely wanted to talk — to see if it was possible to let someone back into my life after being shut out. But even that feels ridiculous; how exactly had I imagined this working? Were we going to establish a weekly ritual, meeting for coffee? Were we going to start attending Friday night movies in tandem? I’d opened a birthday card, become obsessed, and acted without thinking. I only knew that I desperately wanted to see her again. But was it for a novelty, or something else? I had a business to run; I had a ludicrously expensive penthouse; I had a girlfriend who could bend herself into a pretzel and couldn’t keep her social-climbing hands out of my pants — a girlfriend, I now remembered, I’d forgotten to break up with.
My Billionaire Stepbrother (Lexi's Sexy Billionaire Romance #1) Page 7