“Everything’s for sale. Find out who owns it and make an offer. It’s a big old Queen Anne and it looks like it’s ready to fall down.”
I heard keyboard tapping over the line and then Julio said, “Okay, I have it. Not for sale. Comparables….” He laughed. “About thirty grand. You gonna tear it down?”
“Nope. Start the offers at twenty-five and keep going up until you have a signed sales agreement. And Julio, I want this done fast. Whatever it takes. Cash on the barrel head. If you can close by the end of the week, I’ll pay a premium—to the owner and you.”
“Jesus, Mick, how bad do you want this place?”
“Bad. I will not take no for an answer. There is no ceiling on this deal.” I heard him whistle softly. I went on. “Who do you know who does property management, totally reliable?”
“I do it myself now. What do you need?”
“Fantastic, Julio. Okay, I want the entire building renovated. Top priority is safety for the tenants. The day of closing, I want a crew in there installing locks, top of the line, on each unit door and the exterior doors. If the doors aren’t secure, replace ‘em. Next up, mechanics, check the plumbing, wiring, roof—everything. Top of the line. Then pretty it up. But first, secure it. I don’t care if you have to put ten crews to work two shifts a day.”
“Okay, Mick, none of that is any problem. If you got the scratch, I can do it all. But I don’t get it. You’re not going to be able to sell it. It’s six units now—you’re not going to be able to charge enough rent to make any of this stuff pay. It’s Addison Hill. No one, I mean no one with money, will move into your building, no matter how safe you make it.”
“That’s not a problem. Just leave the tenants alone. And listen. Julio. This is the most important part. You’re my straw man on this. My name can be nowhere near any part of this deal. Not now, not ever.”
“All right. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
“No, I mean it. This can never get out.”
“Okay, I get it. Your name will not be on it. I swear.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d known Julio a long time, and I knew he could be trusted, no matter how curious he was. We caught up a bit, gossiped about an old classmate who’d been disbarred, and then said goodbye.
There were always a lot of real estate deals going on in this city. But there was no buyer going to bed happier than I was that night.
CHAPTER FOUR
Casey
So, he kissed me. I mean, we kissed. And then I was afraid I would not be able to stop if we kept kissing.
I shouldn’t have kissed him, I know! Mick is still my stepbrother, even though he doesn’t know it. I should be the one to put the brakes on, right? Because I know that if he knew, he wouldn’t be kissing me, that’s for sure. Of course, that’s the thing that makes it so hard to tell him the truth.
A long time ago, when I was still in high school, and he was in law school.... Well, I need to go back even further. When our parents married, I was fifteen, and he was in his first year of law school. He would come home for breaks, and he was like a visiting god to me. So good-looking, so smart, so confident. He was always saying he was about to set the world on fire, and he encouraged me to think the same way. He would say, think of all the things you want to do, and then pick the hardest one and do it. If I was scared to try something, he’d say, that’s how you know it’s worth doing. Can you see why I idolized him?
As I got older, I wanted more from him than just advice. I wanted him to kiss me. To touch me. To rip my clothes off, to force me to my knees.... To do things to me that I could only imagine in the haziest form.
But I was sure there was no way he could be interested in me. I wasn’t beautiful, I was just a chubby mouse who got no attention. When he was visiting his dad, he would talk to me, but when he left, I doubted he ever gave me a thought. He was so much older, so far out of my league. And then of course, I was his “little sister,” as he introduced me when his friends came over. What kind of guy, especially a guy with a bright career ahead of him, is interested in his little sister?
But then, during my senior year of high school, Mick came home for Christmas break. I remember he spent a lot of time with me over those three weeks. He gave me a lovely pair of earrings for Christmas, small but real pearls that I still have. On New Year’s Eve, our parents had a big party. I had a couple of glasses of champagne, but I didn’t really like it, so I stopped. But Mick drank a good bit that night. I was surprised because he rarely even drank a beer. He wasn’t sloppy drunk or anything, but he was feeling good, and he spent most of the party hanging out with me. It was probably because all the other guests were our parents’ boring friends, but I was flattered.
The later it got, the closer he got to me. He started standing so we were always touching a little bit. It was almost like he was flirting, always touching my arms or brushing my hair off my face. When the music got loud, he would pull me close to him and talk right into my ear, holding my head or my shoulder to bring me nearer. The heat of his breath, the occasional brush of his lips against my ear—I was trembling with a growing desire for him all night.
I was so happy that night. It was like, now that I was eighteen, all my dreams were finally coming true. Mick was seeing the real me, and the real me was someone he wanted to be close to. I could almost forget that he was my stepbrother.
When midnight came, all the old people throughout the rooms of our house started blowing on noisemakers, and then a lot of them kissed.
Mick pulled me into his dad’s little office, where all the coats were. He pressed my back up against the wall, and put his arms on either side of my head, leaning on his forearms.
“Now I have you,” he said with a devilish smile.
I remember I couldn’t say anything, but my heart was beating so fast that I was sure he could hear it.
And then he kissed me. Gently at first and then hard. He pressed the full length of his body against me and kissed me like he wanted to devour me. He took his arms off the wall and stroked my sides for a minute, then grabbed my ass with both hands. He pulled his mouth away from mine to say, “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”
What did he mean, though? So long, like for years, like I had wanted him? Or just for hours, just that night? At the time, I didn’t think to ask myself that question, but I’ve wondered ever since.
I wasn’t thinking at all. I could feel his hard-on pressing my belly. It set me on fire. I ground against him. We kissed like thirsty people who finally found water. He clutched my ass, kneaded it and held me tight to him so he could thrust against my belly.
Mick broke the kiss, only to move to my earlobe, which he sucked into his mouth, and then to kiss his way down my neck to the first button of my shirt. He looked up at me, and probably saw that I would let him do anything. He unbuttoned my blouse, kissing along the trail of each button, until he’d exposed my bra. All the while, we were grinding against one another. I could feel my center softening, swelling, becoming sensitive to the friction of my clothes, the seam of my jeans that was rubbing me. The room, the party, all the people, the sounds--everything disappeared and my stepbrother and I were the only ones on earth.
For a minute, he nuzzled my breasts through the fabric of my bra, but this was not enough for him. He opened the front latch of the bra, and pushed the cups back, exposing my bare breasts to the cool air. This was the first time that any man had ever seen my naked breasts, and of course I was self conscious about them. But Mick murmured, “Oh, beautiful,” and kissed one. The left one, right above the nipple. Then he pulled the nipple into his mouth and sucked, making a sound deep in his throat that made me almost desperate with need.
My hands went first to his hair, but I kept feeling his cock rubbing against me and.... I had never seen a cock before. I could feel it, a long ridge, so hard that I understood why they call a hard cock “wood.” But just feeling it rubbing against my belly wasn’t enough. I drew my hands down his back and then, aft
er a pause to gather my courage, brought one around to his front. I pulled my hips back, and with my fingertips only, I stroked him through his pants. This pulled a groan from his throat, and he raised his head from my breast and looked into my eyes. He looked amazed. I became bolder and used more of my hand to rub his cock up and down as he gazed at me. I wanted to see it though, and I reached for his zipper.
He frowned and grabbed my wrist. “Wait,” he whispered. He lowered his head, frowning—he was listening.
My stepdad was calling from somewhere, calling,”Mick!” and then, sounding annoyed, “No, I don’t know where they are, Linda. Mick!”
Mick drew in a quick breath and then seemed to wake up, as if he’d been in a dream. He pulled the two sides of my shirt together. “Damn it,” he said. “Go in the bathroom and clean up. Your lipstick.... I’ll go out there and keep anybody away.” He kissed my forehead and was gone.
I did as he said, and rejoined the party, looking for Mick. When I saw him, he caught my eye and shook his head no. I knew he meant “stay away,” and wondered if anyone had said anything to him about me. Did the parents suspect? I didn’t know. He was surrounded by people for the rest of the party, and then I heard him tell my mother he was going to bed.
The next morning, he was gone. My mom said he’d decided to go back to school early and get some work done. That was the last I saw of him for seven years, until the night of our blind date. He didn’t come home for breaks any more until I went to college, and then he only visited his dad when I was away.
I was crushed. All I had meant to him was an evening of fun, an evening that was interrupted before he got what he wanted from me. After a while, I taught myself to be relieved, even glad that we’d been interrupted and it hadn’t gone further.
But I was still changed. None of the college boys I dated could compare to my mental image of Mick. He would always be the ideal I matched every man against, and of course, every man came up short because my image of Mick wasn’t real. It contained none of his flaws, and none of the pain he’d caused me. I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone about him because he was my stepbrother. Even Shannon, who was as close as a sister, would have freaked out and said I was a pervert.
And now here we were. Dating. Okay, he didn’t know it was me, but our connection was real. Sometimes I wondered if the real Mick was measuring up to the image I still had enshrined in my heart.
Of course the big problem for me was that I was lying, and lying to someone I cared about more and more all the time. I didn’t want to be that kind of person. We’d met for lunch several times, for a drink after work once or twice, and always I had some reason that kept me from being alone with him. Work, or the fact that they were doing major renovations to my building, anything. Because a kiss in public was okay, though our public kisses were getting bolder all the time. A kiss in public could be seen as a sisterly kiss. In a way.
If we were alone together again, I didn’t trust myself not to let things go much farther than a kiss. And then what? I couldn’t keep this secret forever. Part of me was on edge every time we were together, waiting for him to slap his forehead and realize the true identity of the woman beside him. Soon I would slip up. Or someday, if this kept going so great, he’d want to meet my family. It just seemed like it was still harmless if we didn’t have sex. Once we crossed that line, then my lie would become huge. A much bigger deal than if all he’d done was just kiss his “little sister.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mick
Casey and I were headed out for a big night, and I was in my monkey suit, driving the damn Prius to her office to pick her up. I kept thinking about lying, about the lie I told every minute that we were together, basically. I still hadn’t come clean about my real career and my true net worth. I had just wanted to find a girl who could look past that and see the real me, but what sounded like a good plan had backfired big-time.
When I got to the address she’d given me, I was pretty impressed. I’d expected a little hole in the wall, but this was a nicely-restored old building right on the river. I could see her through the panes of the glass door to her office, peering at a computer screen, tapping away. She was still hard at work, well past five. Good girl.
She stood up when I walked in, big smile on her face. “You look amazing in a tuxedo!” she said, and came around her desk to give me a hug.
Ah, that was relaxing, to feel her arms around me and her body pressed against me. Well, relaxing for a minute anyway, and then it turned into the opposite of relaxing. I wanted to kiss her, but she pulled away.
“I have to finish this grant proposal. I think it will only take another few minutes. Can you hang out for a bit? Soon I’ll get changed and we can go.”
I looked at all the bulletin boards on the walls. There were lots of pictures of happy kids involved in various activities. Lots of smiling handicapped kids. Her work was getting services, like medical care and therapy and educational help, for kids in the foster care system. One whole bulletin board was labeled “Want.”
“Case, what does this mean, ‘Want’?”
“Those are all the programs I wish we could afford for the kids.” She gave a dry laugh. “Or I should say, that’s maybe ten percent of what I want to offer. Those are the most possible, though.”
I kept looking. They didn’t seem like frills. Educational testing, coordinating health insurance for disabled kids. Jesus.
“That’s why I want to get this grant proposal done before we go. If we get the grant, I can offer more.”
“How much is the grant for?”
“Ten thousand. I know it won’t pay for much, but it’s better than nothing.”
“What does your program need most?”
“Well. I’m the only full-timer,” she said. “I have another social worker who is only half time because that’s all I can afford. And our assistant is only at ten hours a week. If I could hire them both full time, that would help a lot.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m dreaming. Most grants are for specific programs, not for salaries. Okay, I’m done. Let me put this dress on and powder my nose and we’ll go.” She got up and came to me again, and I put my hands on her waist. “You seem...worried or something,” she said.
“No, not really. Work stress.” Really I was thinking about how I was lying to this good person, who worked all day helping poor kids. I guess it showed on my face.
“Well, stress is bad.” A smile softened her face. “Mick, do you really want to go to a fancy restaurant and then the symphony tonight?”
“Well, sure. I thought you loved classical music.”
“I do! But maybe it’s not what we need right now. I’m kind of stressed out too, and the idea of wearing heels all night....”
I laughed. “What did you have in mind?”
“How about you let me surprise you. Do you have your gym bag in your car?”
“Yes.”
“As much as I hate the idea of not getting to look at you in a tux all night.... Change into your gym clothes. Where we’re going, you’ll want to be comfortable.”
“O-kayyy,” I said. “What are you going to wear? I was kind of looking forward to seeing those legs in heels.” I gave her a fake leer, and she laughed.
“I have my gym bag too. The men’s room is down that little hallway. Meet me back here in ten minutes.”
I changed into workout clothes, and when I was done, Casey was already waiting for me. I’ve never known a woman who could get ready as fast as she can.
You should have seen her. Heels and dresses are one thing, but you should see Casey in her gym clothes. She had on a pink tank top that showed off her pretty shoulders, but the shorts were the show-stoppers. Black stretchy shiny material that clung to her ass and legs like it was painted on. They came down almost to her knees, so they didn’t show a lot of skin or look cheap. But holy mo.
So we got in the damn Prius and she gave me directions to a little African restaur
ant near her work. It was the tiniest restaurant ever--three tables. She ordered for us in a language I didn’t understand, a spicy Ethiopian stew and thin bread like pita bread. Casey showed me how to eat it with my fingers, scooping up the stew with pieces of the bread. It was delicious, and you wouldn’t believe how cheap it was. You could serve it in a much nicer restaurant, give people forks, and charge a lot more, I bet.
We got back in the car, and she still wouldn’t tell me where we were going. Turn by turn, she led me to a big strip mall, and told me where to park.
“Jump City,” the sign said, and I still didn’t know where we were. It wasn’t a bar, because some little kids and a few teens were headed towards the door. We got inside, and there were padded rooms with wall-to-wall trampolines built right into the floors, and people were jumping on them.
“Are you nuts,” I said, laughing. “I thought you were taking me to a bar to unwind.”
“Nope. We took some kids here a few weeks ago, kids with sensory problems. I thought it would make a great place for a date. Come on!”
We took our shoes off, and she led me by the hand to one of the rooms full of trampolines. We got on one of the bigger trampolines together and she started to jump. I felt like an idiot at first. I wondered how many people here were top litigators. None, I would bet. So what was I doing here? It wasn’t like the gym, where you got sweaty for a reason.
“Come on, it’s fun!” Casey yelled, and then she jumped high, landed on her butt and then bounced back up onto her feet. “Try it!”
The place had loud music with a driving beat, like a bar, but of course there was no alcohol. I did what Casey had done. She was next to me, jumping her heart out, laughing...and I thought, what the hell. I never just let myself go and do something fun without a goal. So I jumped and goofed around like a maniac. The music was old disco and funk from the 70s, way before our time, but it was fun.
Casey kept grabbing my hands, putting her arms around my shoulders. Not that I’m complaining! It was almost like we were dancing to the loud music, but with a lot more freedom. I was loving watching her. I don’t have to tell you how much fun it is to watch a pretty girl jump up and down, right?
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