Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance

by Irons, Aubrey

  He’s ignoring me and my brake-screeching driveway entrance, his back still to me as he turns his head just a bit to bring a pack of cigarettes up to his mouth and draw one out with his lips. His very perfect, very sexy lips there on his very perfect, very defined jaw.

  Um, wow.

  I’m taking a step forward when two things happen. At the top of the curving stone steps, the front door to the house opens and my dad steps out with a blonde woman on his arm.

  And then the mysterious and sexy biker in my driveway turns around, looks right at me, and suddenly starts grinning.

  Oh you have got to be kidding me.

  Stranger? Well, yes, but not really. Because I know him. Well, I’ve at least had the displeasure of meeting him

  He’s the boy from the open mic songwriters show the night before last at the Music Hall. The show I most certainly wasn’t supposed to be at, and the show my father thinks I was at Megan’s house studying during. The open mic show where I don’t play the Mozart and the Tchaikovsky from my lessons, I play and sing my own songs.

  Oh my God, what is HE doing here?!

  He’s the boy who loudly shushed his buddies when they started to cat-call me on stage. The boy who met me right off the stage with a grin and a look that promised all sorts of bad decisions and offered to buy me a drink. A drink I, of course, declined seeing as I’m underage. The boy who leaned close and asked when I was playing next as he ran his finger through a stray lock of my wild red hair and tucked it behind me ear. The boy who had me absolutely tongue-tied and hanging off of his words until…well, until he got quite crude with them and I marched away, wishing I’d slapped him.

  And of course, the boy who’s been in my thoughts ever since then, in ways he definitely shouldn’t be, because he’s so obviously trouble.

  And here he is grinning at me and lighting a cigarette next to his motorcycle in my father’s driveway.

  Seriously, what is happening here?

  My dad beams at me as he walks down the stairs with the woman I now recognize as Amanda, my dad’s girlfriend. Somewhere in my head, an alarm bell starts to go off quietly.

  “Ah, good! You’re both here!”

  The alarm bell is joined by a second, and they start to get louder.

  “Paige,” He smiles widely at me; “You remember Amanda. Well, we were going to wait, but we’ve got some very exciting news for you.” He looks towards Mr. Trouble; “Both of you!”

  The wailing of the alarm bells starts to crescendo inside my head.

  “Paige, this is Knox, Amanda’s son.”

  The driveway starts to spin under my feet as the warning bells reach a cacophony, and my dad and Amanda are just standing there smiling.

  “Knox already heard, but Paige, we wanted to be here together to tell you that Amanda and I have decided-”

  Oh please no, please God don’t say it-

  “We’ve decided to get married this fall!”

  The world goes silent, and it’s in slow motion as my jaw drops and I turn to stare in horror at the dangerous, tattooed, muscled bad-boy standing there grinning at me.

  “So Paige, meet Knox, your new stepbrother.”

  My tongue turns to lead in my mouth and I just stand there staring at him in shock as the takes the cigarette out of his mouth, crosses those lean muscle arms over his chest and just grins at me. His eyes roam quite freely over my body as he opens those perfectly devilish lips; “Well, well, well.”

  Oh this is not good.

  There’s a beat, and then a moment of clarity as I suddenly recognize the fiery-haired, angry chick standing in front of me. And then my jaw about drops to the ground.

  Holy shit.

  There’s no way this is the girl from that night. She’s got glasses on now, and she’s wearing her hair up in this old-lady librarian bun, with this ridiculous collared shirt tucked into pleated mom-khakis - fucking khakis. Like, who the hell even wears khakis anymore?

  My brain says there’s no way this can be the same girl, but the longer I just stare at her, not saying anything like some kind of weirdo, it all comes together. She had her hair down then, her red hair wild and streaming out from under a cowboy hat. This was the girl in the knee-high boots, with that slinky shirt that you could kind of see her bra through.

  The girl who sang her fuckin’ heart out on that stage, so much so that even the assholes like me who were only at that bar to begin with because of their loose carding policy shut the fuck up and listened.

  The girl who was all sass and vinegar when I tried to buy her a drink after, and the girl who took off the second I tried to make a move on her. OK, scratch that; the girl that looked at me like I had three heads when I suggested that we go get to know each other better in the men’s room.

  Yeah, OK, so not exactly my finest moment.

  She looks like a deer caught in headlights right now as her dad just fucking spills the news like that. And honestly, my face would probably look a just like it if I was hearing it for the first time on the steps of my house with - surprise! - my new family right there. As it stands, it’s exactly how my face looked yesterday when my mom broke the news to me. I mean, shit, I’m still nursing the hangover from processing that little nugget of news.

  Paige is staring at the two of them, slowly shaking her head. Jesus, she looks like she was even less ready for this than I was. And here I was thinking that it was Amanda who was the world’s most secretive parent, what with this whole surprise relationship. At least Paige looks just as fucking confused as I did last night, which I know is a weird sort of comfort, but at least I’m not the only one walking blind into this. I mean I guess I’d know my mom had a boyfriend, but hearing the “fiancé” bomb was a slap in the fucking face. Oh, and we’re moving in with him? Fantastic.

  And now here I am just meeting him for the first time right here in the driveway of his crazy-ass mansion on the day we move into it. No, let me take that back, I’m meeting him for the first time as my new stepfather. I’ve met Joe before, but it was three years ago as “Mr. McCauley, dad’s boss who’s here to offer his condolences and support.”

  Way to comfort the grieving widow, you prick.

  So here we are, about eighteen hours after my mom dropped the bomb. “P.S. I’m marrying you your dead dad’s boss; good luck with therapy for the rest of your life” is a pretty fucked up way to start dinner conversation with your son.

  OK, so it may have been slightly more tactful than that, but still; what the actual fuck? I mean don’t get me wrong, I hardly knew my dad anyways since he was always out on some job site drilling somewhere.

  But he was drilling for Joseph McCauley. Billionaire crude oil-tycoon Joseph McCauley. The very same Joseph McCauley, in fact, who’s standing there with my mom’s hand in his and looking at me like he’s sizing me up; like he’s worried about letting this son of a roughneck - this kid with tattoos and a leather jacket and a motorcycle - into his home and anywhere near his daughter.

  He should be.

  Because as my eyes dart back to her, standing there with her arms crossed tight over her chest and a wild, accusatory look in her eyes as she stares at me, I get a certain notion inside my head. Yeah, I’ve know girls just like this; the uptight, wound-up type. But I also know the wild side that’s trapped behind girls just like Paige McCauley. There’s a fierceness and yearning to run free that I can see behind her eyes, and as I stand there grinning right in her stuck-up scowling face, I know I’m gonna find that wildness.

  And I’m gonna unchain it.

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  “Are you shitting me?!”

  “Language, Chloe!” My mother frowns at me, and part of my brain is trying to process what she’s just said, but I’m still staring at the tablet she’s plopped down on kitchen table between us.

  The tablet with the news webpage on it, and right there on the cover, a picture of him.

  The boy from the exchange program five years ago when we were seniors in high scho
ol.

  “Boy”: yeah, right. Because the man smirking at the photographer in the picture on the website is anything but a boy. He’s bigger than he was then, even as cut and muscled as he was back then. Bigger shoulders and a broader chest stretching the tight v-neck t-shirt he’s wearing in the picture. That cocky, arrogant, and lopsided grin, and what I know are heart-stoppingly gorgeous dark brown eyes behind those sunglasses. He’s got more tattoos now too, more than he even had back then, when they were all part of his bad-boy image.

  The bad boy; the hot, dangerous, and gritty British hooligan covered with tattoos and the mouthwatering accent that drew me in like a moth to flame.

  And there he is, on the front page of some British news article.

  “Chloe-”

  I jerk my eyes back up to my mom, and suddenly my thoughts jump tracks entirely, back to the bomb she’s just dropped on me. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head before I open them back up and stare at her; “Wait, you’re not serious are you?”

  “Chloe,” She rolls her eyes; “Of course I’m serious.”

  “Mom, you’re getting married? How the hell have I never known about this?!”

  “Oh, lower your voice, Chloe!”

  Mom shakes her head as she walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of sauvignon blanc.

  “Jesus, mom,” I make a face, glancing at the clock on the wall. It’s noon.

  “Oh, relax, we’re celebrating.”

  My brain is still shocked by the news, but my eyes also keep darting down to the picture on the webpage. The article headline is something about a new restaurant. That’s right, he cooked or something. I glance back at my mom sharply; “Mom, how am I just hearing about this?”

  My mother takes a big gulp of her wine before she glares at me; “Well it’s not my fault that you managed to get kicked out of law school after two weeks.”

  I roll my eyes; “Mom, I dropped out; there’s a slight difference.”

  “And does that distinction put you any closer to being a lawyer?”

  I groan, pinching the arch of my nose between my fingers; “No, mother. Which is exactly the reason I left.”

  Seriously, we’ve been through his three hundred times.

  “Well maybe if you’d spent as much time in undergraduate thinking about your career as you did working in those restaurants, you’d have been more prepared.”

  I groan loudly and my mom shrugs and takes another sip of her wine.

  “But hey, what do I know?”

  “Mom!” I snap; “Can we back it up here? Who is this guy?”

  “I’m not sure I like being interrogated like this, honey,” she says frostily, taking another quick sip from her glass. “And you’re ‘just hearing about it now’ because I just got off the phone with him ten minutes ago when he asked me.”

  I scrunch up my brow. “He asked you over the phone? Who the hell is this guy?”

  She sips her wine, and then drops her eyes to the tablet sitting in front of us.

  “Well, you remember that nice boy Oliver Beckett don’t you? The one we had stay at the house for that exchange program during your senior year?”

  Yes, mom, the boy who nearly took my virginity in the back seat of your mid-sized sedan.

  “Yes,” I snap.

  My mom tsks and shakes her head; “You two don’t talk, do you? Oh he was such a nice boy, Chloe.”

  No, he wasn’t.

  “No, mom, we haven’t talked since back then.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame.”

  Mom’s being cagey. After ten years alone together, even having been away most of the last four I can tell she’s avoiding the subject at hand, “Mom?”

  “You know, his father is quite nice, too.”

  I frown.

  “Quite nice, actually. And maybe you two haven’t kept up, but Barney and I have stayed in touch since Oliver left.”

  “Um, Okay?”

  “A lot, honey,” She says quietly.

  I can start to feel a horrible sensation creeping up inside of me. Oh c’mon, there’s no way-

  “Mom where is this goi-”

  “You might say we’ve been doing the long distance thing,” Mom bites her lip and looks at me, “You know, dating.”

  The horrible sensation starts to turn into a roar inside of me, and suddenly, my eyes are darting back to the table, and the cocky, smirking, arrogant, panty-melting grin of Oliver fucking Beckett.

  “Mom-”

  “It’s Barney, honey!” My mom squeals excitedly; “He’s asked me to marry him, and he wants me - he wants us to move to London!”

  The bottom drops out then. And I’m just in free-fall as I stare at the boy from those nights five years ago. The boy whose kisses I can still remember, the boy whose hands I can still feel. And I’m putting the horrible little pieces together as the floor starts to sway beneath my feet.

  The boy who nearly took my v-card, and then told everyone at school that he did.

  The boy who’s about to be my new stepbrother.

  Oh. My. God.

  It’s grey, it’s fuckin’ raining, and it’s miserable outside as I scowl and trail my dad through the arrivals terminal at Heathrow. Fuckin, of course it’s raining; it’s England, land of eternal non-sunshine.

  Dad looks at his watch and frowns before glaring up at the arrivals screens, as if it’s obviously someone’s fault that their plane is all of ten minutes late.

  Not that I’m much better; that’s ten more minutes of me being here as a participant in this whole fucking train wreck instead of elsewhere. Elsewhere like the restaurant.

  “Pop, I need to get back.”

  “They’ll be here in a minute, Ollie.”

  “Dad, I’ve got stocks to prep, mis to set up-”

  Shit to cut, cook, sear, broil, sous vis; you name it. If it’s food and it requires some sort of preparation, it’s probably on my to-do list.

  “Cool it, boy.”

  “Shit doesn’t cook itself, dad.”

  He shoots me a look; “This is important, Oliver.”

  Yeah, to you.

  I’m still trying to process this shit, even now when “this shit” is about to land in England and walk right into our lives. The “shit” I’m somehow just learning about within the last week, I might add.

  “You were busy with taking over at the restaurant, Oliver, I didn’t want to distract you with that.”

  Give me a fuckin’ break. There’s what, like twenty million eligible women his age in Great Britain, and dad goes for one from America. And not just any woman, of course.

  Nope, he goes for Chloe fucking Caulfield’s mom.

  Surprise, your old pop is getting married again, and guess who your new stepsister is? I mean it was a long time ago, but it’s still too fucking weird.

  Okay, so it’s also a teeny bit interesting, if I’m being honest.

  Chloe Caulfield. I haven't seen her since that senior year exchange trip. Rigid, bookish, uptight, and one might even say bitch if one were being crude. And yet, things sure got interesting back then. Interesting like three days of sleepless nights, three days of sneaking around to make out late into the night. Three days of pressing myself against her, seeing how far she’d let my hands go before pushing them away. Three days and nights of wanting so much more that an uptight virgin like her was going to give, even if I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  Well, until it almost did.

  “Ever been properly kissed?”

  She darts her eyes to the floor, her cheeks going this flushed red color. “Of course I have.”

  “Naw, sweetheart, I mean real proper kissed.”

  She wrinkles her nose, “What, like frenching?”

  I have to grin. “If it’s 1985, sure.”

  But whatever, she’s here, even if it’s apparently only for a few months until she goes back to school. “Taking a break” I think is how my dad phrased it. Yeah, right; heard that one before.

  She was a pain i
n the ass back then, and I can’t imagine that’s done more than grow in the five years since.

  She was also temptation on a fuckin’ stick.