Score: A Stepbrother Sports Romance

by Aubrey Irons

  I have to stay and keep telling the same lie. I have to stay and keep tarnishing the memory of one perfect night over and over again, just to make myself smile on the outside.

  It certainly makes the last few weeks of high school more interesting, at least.

  Outer London streaks by the windows of the taxi like drab, grey paint. Okay, I guess I was expecting that to an extent, but not this. It’s like being in a charcoal drawing; everything running black and sooty and crummy looking.

  I make a face as I think of all my friends back home who were just so excited that I was moving to London for four months. Yeah, thrilling. I certainly don’t see any of them going to live with their surprise new stepfather and the boy they used to make out with; also now known as “new stepbrother”.

  Mom and Barney are grinning and talking animatedly together in the bench seat of the taxi, with Oliver and I sitting apart in the two backwards facing seats across from them, pointedly trying to avoid both talking to each other and looking at them.

  Barney’s got an accent straight out of central casting for a period piece movie; that thick, east-end bristle and dropped consonants. My mother’s filled me in on the plane ride over about the Beckett’s change in fortunes since Oliver visited us; about the inheritance from some great aunt or something that’s gotten Barney out of the butcher business and into the luxury hotel and restaurant business, with his wonder-chef son apparently right there with him.

  Oliver might be dressed in just jeans and black v-neck t-shirt, but his dad sure dresses like new money; all swagger and flashy rings and jewelry. Fancy, expensive clothes worn almost in distain as more of a statement than any sort of appreciation for finer style.

  Honestly, I could never picture mom with a guy like this, but I guess that just shows what I know.

  “So, you like, bake stuff now.” I turn from the window at the sound of Oliver’s voice. His dark eyes flash at me, and he’s smirking, as if the question is meant as some sort of barb.

  I frown. “Yes, I bake stuff now.”

  “So, what, like cupcakes and the such?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. He’s speaking pleasantly in that thick cockney accent, but I can tell there’s something there below the surface, like he’s trying to bait me They aren’t even paying attention to anything but each other right now, but it’s like he’s putting on a facade for our parents. Like it’s all fake and he’s secretly just as pissed to have me here as I am to be here.

  Jesus he’s gorgeous. I freeze, frowning at the sudden intrusion of my traitorous inner thoughts while I’m trying to scowl at this boy who’s still just smirking at me. Smirking with those absolutely perfect lips, and those dangerously alluring eyes glinting at me.

  The same lips, the same eyes, and the same, well, everything that hooked me before.

  Yeah, I’ve fallen for this whole look of his before, and it is certainly not happening a second time.

  “How are you with chocolate chip cookies? Cakes with cartoon characters drawn on top? I’ll have to double check to see if I know any five year olds with birthdays coming soon.”

  He such a prick.

  “Slightly more involved than that, actually, but I guess I’ll have to show you later, sometime in the kitchen.” I roll my eyes as I turn back to stare out at the grey London rain.

  I can hear him chuckle behind me. “You haven’t looked me up, have you?”

  I turn back, “Excuse me?”

  “Looked me up; googled me or the restaurant or whatever.”

  “Of course I have,” I say, “‘Jolie, home to London’s hottest young sous-chef’,” I say with air-quotes, rolling my eyes. “Yes, Oliver, I’ve looked you up.” I hate telling him that, as if this little shit could possibly need his ego stroked anymore.

  Oliver grins; leaning back in his seat with a smug look on his face as he laces his hands behind his head. “Oh, no-no-no, darling, that’s yesterday’s news.”

  I frown, “What are you talking about? Are you not at Jolie anymore?”

  He chuckles, just slowly shaking his head as he turns towards his father, “Oy, dad, you didn’t tell her?”

  Barney looks up from his whispered little conversation with my beaming mother and frowns.

  “What's that boy-o? Oh right, the switch.” He glances my way and shrugs apologetically; “Sorry my dear, guess I didn’t get the chance yet.” He jerks his head at my mom, “Far too occupied with this lovely bird here, you know!” My mother whoops and laughs as he turns to tickle her.

  I ignore the nauseating display and narrow my eyes as I turn back to Oliver, “Tell me what?”

  He lets out a contented sigh, cracking his knuckles loudly before slipping them back behind his head. He slouches down in his seat and kicks one foot up onto his knee, looking at me with this absolutely shit-eating grin. “Well, ‘the kitchen’ you were just referring to?”

  Oh God, now what?

  He grins widely, “It’s not home to London’s hottest young sous-chef anymore, luv.” He winks at me. “It is now officially home to London’s hottest young chef.” He winks at me again. “No ‘sous’, in case you missed that.”

  Please be kidding.

  A lump forms in my throat as what he’s saying starts to sink in. He leans forward, raising his eyebrows at me, “So, ‘the kitchen’ you were just referring to is actually my kitchen now.”

  He grins as leans back and throws me the world’s cockiest, smuggest smirk. “Looks like I’m your new boss, sweetheart.”

  4

  Chloe

  If I thought London was grey before, I suddenly have a whole new appreciation for that particular color as we enter Shoreditch, the old industrial-turned-hipster neighborhood in East London.

  Of course, it’s still not distraction enough to take my mind off Oliver’s little news, or that smirking grin he’s managed to flash me anytime I happen to turn that way the entire car ride here. By the time the taxi pulls up in front of Barney’s massive townhouse, I’ve been in England for all of one hour and eighteen minutes, and I have no idea how I’m possibly going to survive being around this little shit-bag at both work and home for four solid months.

  The house is honestly ridiculous, too. A huge four-story townhouse right on Hoxton Square Park. The place looks like the house from Mary Poppins, or the Darling’s house from Peter Pan, complete with wide stone steps and the huge wooden double door crossed with iron, like some sort of urban fairy-tale castle.

  Except this is quite the opposite of a fairytale, and the only thing “princely” about Oliver is that arrogance he seems to carry around with him in his back pocket.

  Welcome home.

  Inside, though, is anything but old-looking like the exterior. The whole place looks like one giant bachelor pad, which makes sense I guess, considering the father and son who live here. The decor matches Barney’s gaudy clothes in terms of price over style; all flash and glamor instead of anything with actual taste. Giant pop-art paintings of martini glasses, black and white photographs of lingerie models and a damn swing in the living room.

  I mean, honestly.

  Your new husband has a swing in his living room, mom. I mean, alarm bells much?

  Barney seems to follow my confused look and chuckles, “Oh, that!” He snorts out a laugh, “Well, you know we didn’t ‘ave much when Ollie was comin’ up; no money for a swing-set or nothin’ like that.” He shrugs at my mom, “First thing the little shit does when I buy the place is have that damn swing screwed right into the ceiling.” He glares at Oliver and shakes his head.

  Well, shit. Of course I feel like a completely callous bitch thinking it was some sort of weird sex swing after hearing that.

  “Never even uses the bloody thing, at least not while I’m around.”

  “Oh, but I use it all the time when you’re not, dad.” Oliver is nodding his head and grinning, but he suddenly looks my way when our parents look away and makes an exaggerated thrusting motion with his hips while grinning lewdly at me. He
mouths the words “sex swing” at me as I wrinkle my nose and look away.

  Gross.

  “Well then, let’s get you to your rooms so you can relax, eh, girls?” Barney claps his hands together before he grabs my suitcase and heads for the stairs. “Your mum and I are downstairs, where the master suite is, but I’ve got you,” he grunts as he hefts my suitcase up the stairs, “I’ve got you up here.”

  There are three doors at the top of the second staircase; one a bathroom, and the other two closed. Barney opens one to a plain, if not nice and well-lit, room painted all white with large windows. “This is you, my dear.”

  Well, this isn’t so ba-

  “And if you need anything, Ollie’s right next door.”

  What.

  Barney chuckles, oblivious to the look of horror on my face as he turns to my mother, “Keep the young folks together and away from us, eh, darling?”

  Oliver is leaning against the doorframe to my room, smirking at me and rubbing his jaw with his strong-looking hands. “Oy, you need anything, sis, you just knock, yeah?” His eyebrows arch. “Thin walls, you know,” he says with a knowing wink that only I seem to pick up on.

  Barney clears his throat and checks the ridiculous looking watch on his wrist, “Well, shall we decide on dinner? I’m starved.”

  “Oh that sounds lovely honey,” My mother says, smiling and taking Barney’s arm.

  Honey? I find myself glaring at their backs as they walk way. I mean, jeez, how has this whole relationship of theirs gotten to this point without me even knowing? Was I seriously that wrapped up in school and my own life not to see this? And lovely? When the heck did my mom start using decidedly British words like lovely?

  They’re halfway down the staircase when I turn back to a smug looking Oliver, “What?”

  “Oh, nothing, it’s just your face right now.”

  I frown. “What about it?”

  “It’s so...angry,” he says with a chuckle.

  “I’m fine, just jet-lag,” I mutter, stepping into my room.

  He follows, of course, and I turn to give him a look. “Okay, so you live here?”

  “In my house? Yes, Chloe; strange I know. It must be a European thing to live in your own home.”

  I roll my eyes, “No, I mean, it’s your dad’s house, and aren’t you like this big hot-shot chef now?”

  He grins, “Hot shot, huh?”

  “You know what I mean,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why don’t you have a place of your own?”

  Oliver makes a face, “You know what rent is like in this fuckin’ city? Forget it, sweetheart. Here, I got a whole floor to myse-” He smiles thinly at me. “Had a whole floor to myself, with two stories between dad and me.” He grins as I give him a quizzical look before he leans into me, “Plenty of space to keep the screamers from waking him, catch me?”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Screamers?”

  “Oh yes chef!” He starts to moan loudly in a high-pitched female falsetto voice, “Oh chef, you’re so naughty!”

  I blush bright crimson and shake my head “Okay, okay! Enough, I get it. Jesus Christ.”

  “Oh, they say that a lot too,” he says with a grin.

  Cocky little shit.

  “Don’t worry though, luv, I’ll try and pick you up some earplugs or something.”

  “Oy!” Barney calls from the first floor, “You kids mind eating in or did you want to eat out?”

  Oliver sticks his tongue out at me and curls it lewdly up and down as I make a face and look away.

  “Either one dad!” he yells, “I’m a really big fan of either.”

  Thirty minutes later, I’m still scowling, but now I’m at least scowling with delicious Chinese food sitting in front of me.

  I’m also realizing I need to wrap my head around this situation and deal with it. I mean, I’m here; this is happening. Whatever happens after this fall with grad school back home is something to think about, but for now, this is where I am.

  And hey, the bright side is that I’ve got a job that other up-and-coming cooks and bakers would literally kill for. I mean, I’m working in one of the hottest kitchens in London right now; that’s hardly bad luck.

  So what if the chef - my boss - also happens to be my new stepbrother?

  ...So what if I can’t get the feel of his hungry mouth on my lips or his powerful hands on my body out of my head? Totally normal, right? I can definitely get over this and just do it; no problem at all.

  I look up to see Oliver just staring at me, grinning as if he’s inside my head reading my very thoughts. The idea of him reading my mind bring an uncomfortable flush to my cheeks as I look down into my dumplings.

  “So, you bake now.”

  It’s really more of a statement than a question, and I swallow the bite of food in my mouth as I look up at him, fully ready to throw that dickish attitude right back in his face, when my mother answers for me.

  “Well, Chloe’s not a real baker, she just-”

  “Mom,” I say sharply, frowning at large glass of wine in her hand. It’s like we haven’t had this same conversation forty times before. “Mom, I bake, and it’s my job. I’m pretty sure that makes me a baker.”

  “Well, it isn’t your career or anything,” She says, shaking her head at Barney as she takes a big sip from her glass, as if I’m some silly little girl pretending to be a princess or something.

  “Um, yeah, mom. It might be.”

  I’m trying, at least.

  “A career working in kitchens?” My mother says disdainfully, as if looking at roadkill or something.

  Oliver snorts and makes a coughing sound, and she looks up at him with a whole new expression. “Oh, no offense meant Oliver, but you’re a professional. This is just a hobby for her.”

  “Mom! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean you do what you love, right?” Oliver says loudly, suddenly, interrupting the exchange. “And you happen to love cupcakes and biscuits and all that, yeah?”

  I frown, not sure I like his opinion of what I do any more than my mother’s based on that tone, but I nod my head anyway.

  Oliver shrugs, “Well, it’s not like you’re working at Jolie for free, right?” He looks at his dad, “Wait, you are paying her, right?”

  Barney nods. “Oh, of course.”

  “Well good!” Oliver reaches down and snags one of my dumplings off my plate with his chopsticks, “So, you’re doing what you love, and being paid for it.” He shrugs. “Seems like that might make you a professional.”

  He shoots me a quick wink before turning back to my mother.

  The conversation changes to movies after that.

  Mercifully, Oliver ducks out right after dinner to go do something at the restaurant even though it’s closed on Mondays.

  “He’s such a hard worker, that one!” My mother says, smiling at Barney as we clean the takeout boxes from the dining room table.

  “Yeah, well, he better be,” Barney says wryly. “The Army whipped a little sense into him.”

  I frown. Oliver was in the army?

  Barney continues with a shake of his head. “Still though, that boy needs to get more into work and less into trouble if you ask me.”

  I excuse myself to go upstairs, and with every step, the only thought running through my head is that if Oliver

  Trouble? I can feel the flush in my cheeks as I quickly exit the dining room. With every step, all I can think is that the only “trouble” I can see is Oliver himself.

  He’s trouble with a cocky, troublingly-attractive smile. Trouble with inked tattoos running down his muscled arms. Arms that I’m intimately familiar with; especially how they feel wrapped around my body.

  He’s trouble with a dirty, devious, and panty-dropping mouth; one that I happen to know firsthand what it feels like to kiss.

  Oliver? In trouble? I bite my lip as I close the door to my new room behind me and lean against it and shake my head. It’s when I look up that I s
ee that there’s a note on my pillow:

  “8 am sharp. DO NOT BE LATE.”

  Great. I haven’t even started yet and I’m already getting yelled at by my boss.

  My very bossy, very distractingly attractive boss.

  My new stepbrother.

  Yeah, no, Oliver’s not in trouble.

  I am, and with that man sleeping right next door all night and being my boss all day at work?

  Yeah, I’m in big, big trouble.

  5

  Oliver

  I’m leaning against the outside wall back behind the kitchen, frowning at the cobblestone streets of London’s south bank and sipping espresso. I close my eyes as I take a sip, breathing it all in and just loving it.

  I love the smell, the sounds and the taste of restaurants opening in the morning. This life is not for everyone, that’s for damn sure. Late nights, super early mornings, and all manner of drink, drugs, and sex in between. Honestly, those who cook your food might be the final great rock stars in the world, like the Stones back in the ‘70s or something.

  We might be the world’s last pirates, and I fuckin’ love it.

  I love the chaos, the threat of danger, the pressure, the burns, the cuts, the screaming maelstrom of fuckin’ chaos that somehow births something beautiful. I love that, somehow, through the utter chaos of a commercial kitchen during service, the madness can still give birth to something pure and something perfect: a meal that transcends food and becomes a fucking experience.

  And that’s what I want. I want people to walk away from a meal I’ve cooked them changed on a visceral, fundamental level. I want to rock their world; I want that first bite of food to be a fuckin orgasm for them. That’s what I love about all this. I love ending the night and looking out over my field of battle in that kitchen, and knowing that I bled for the cause and won. The cause of a perfect meal.

  I take another sip of the espresso and frown. What I don’t love is lateness. Lateness like how Chloe is already ten fucking minutes late to her first day on the job. The job I’d never have given her, truth be told. I run a fucking machine back there on that line, and I do not have time to babysit fucking hobbyists trying to “rough it” with the big boys in the kitchen. Fuck that. And her being late is just pissing me off even more.