NEVER KISS A STRANGER (A Stepbrother Romance)

by Winter Renshaw

  “Stop doing what? I’m doing a lot of things right now, lovely. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “Stop making me fall for you.”

  Frozen by her plea, I obliged, letting my hands fall away from her soft skin.

  “I told you you could control my body.” Her words were broken and jagged, her crestfallen face laced with regret. “But I never said you could control my heart. I didn’t want to get to know you. I didn’t want to let you in. I didn’t want to give two shits about anything other than…”

  Her words trailed off, her eyes landing on the acid stained concrete floor.

  “I should go.” She pushed past me, stepping into her shoes and getting back on the elevator.

  With my hands in my pocket and words caught in my throat, I watched her go.

  “Coco, can I come over?” I asked as I stood outside Wilder’s apartment building. Glancing over my shoulder every two seconds, I just prayed he didn’t follow me outside. Then again, he didn’t talk me out of leaving. He didn’t stop the elevator. He let me go.

  “Addison, it’s late,” she said. “Aren’t you usually in bed by now?”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked. She usually got up around three to get ready for work.

  “Come on over,” she said.

  * * *

  “Hi, Harrison,” I said as I stepped into their loft. He glanced up from his weathered leather chair, his feet kicked up on the ottoman as he did a New York Times crossword.

  “Pleasure to see you, Addison.” His words were dry, and I watched as he glanced up at the clock above the mantle. I knew it was well past a proper visiting hour, but I needed my sister. Harrison always had a stick up his ass, anyway. I’d learned over the years to let him roll off my back. Most of the time, I’d razz him back and call him out when he was being a giant asshole, and we’d laugh and be fine. But I wasn’t in the mood that night.

  The fireplace glowed, bringing a warmth to their home that I’d come to love over the years. I’d found them their apartment years ago when they were just newlyweds. Before she’d landed the spot on the morning news show. Before they’d thrown in the towel on what seemed to be a perfect union.

  Coco’s fiercely guarded nature rivaled mine, though, and she never did tell me exactly why she’d divorced him. She never did tell me exactly why they were still living together two years later, either.

  Coco left Harrison, at least on paper, around the same time Kyle and I had crumbled to the ground. Too many times she’d set her own personal issues aside so she could deal with mine. She was amazing like that. Coco wasn’t just my big sister, she was my best friend. My protector. My person.

  “Come on in,” she said. “Ignore him.”

  “Not getting along today?” I whispered.

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s got a giant stick lodged up his ass right now.”

  “The one that’s been there for years?”

  “Yep. The one passed down from generation after generation of Bissetts before him.” Coco lead us down the hall to the master suite, the one she inhabited all by herself. Somehow she’d convinced Harrison to take up residence in the guest suite.

  I perched on the foot of her bed, the same place I’d spent curled up in an inconsolable ball the night I found out about Kyle and all of his indiscretions. The same place I laid when I swore off men and love and romance and anything else that could make me feel.

  I told her I was going to be independent and self-sufficient to a fault. I’d never let another man control my heart again. I’d never rely on another man to boost me up, either, professionally or socially. I could do it all on my own. My heart wrapped itself in barbed wire that night.

  “So, what’s going on?” Coco asked. She looked completely different without her camera-ready face on, though she was still gorgeous. We shared the same almond-shaped eyes and heart-shaped, swollen lips. With our high cheekbones and long necks, we looked like two aristocratic sisters born in the wrong century.

  Who’d have thought we were a couple of dirt-poor Kentucky girls who’d flown from the only nest we’d known in search of something better for ourselves?

  Tears stung my eyes. My attempts to blink them away were useless.

  “Uh-oh.” Coco scooted closer to me, rubbing her hand against my back. “What’d the bastard do to you?”

  A knock at her door pulled her away from me for a second.

  “What do you want?” she said as she pulled the door open. Harrison’s muffled voice on the other side seemed to be asking her a question. Or telling her to do something. Probably the latter. “No, I told you. No. I’m not. You’ll have to find someone else to do that interview.”

  Harrison said something else that I couldn’t make out.

  “Never in a million, billion years. I’m not doing that interview,” Coco said, stomping her foot into the carpet. “I’m with my sister. I don’t know why you’re picking right now to discuss this.”

  She slammed the door, looking flustered and red-faced as she returned to her spot next to me.

  “I’ll never understand why you two still live together,” I sighed, almost grateful to not be talking about my issue.

  “It just works.” She shrugged. “And you know why? It’s because I don’t care. Once you care, you’re fucked. But if you don’t care, you find you can really put up with a lot. If Harrison walked out tomorrow and found his own place, I’d be thrilled. It’s because I don’t care.”

  I didn’t believe it for one second, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with her on that fact. We’d gone rounds on it before, and I’d lost every time. Coco was quick on her feet whenever she had to defend her life choices.

  “What if you wanted to date someone new?” I asked. “You can’t bring him to the house you share with your ex-husband.”

  She pursed her lips, looking at me funny. “You know I don’t have time to date.”

  It was true. When she wasn’t anchoring the weekend news, she was being flown around the world to anchor the Olympics or various royal weddings.

  “Anyway, enough about me. What’s going on with you? You never come over this late.”

  “I had dinner with Wilder today,” I said.

  “Oh, so he does have a name.”

  “We were supposed to hook up one time, Coco. One time. I let him talk me into another. And another. And then he stayed the night. And then we had dinner.” My shoulders fell, as if the weight of the issue was too heavy for them to bear a second longer. “He invited me over tonight.”

  “Sounds like he might actually be a nice guy.”

  “That’s the problem. I’m starting to like him. I didn’t want it to get this far. I’ve completely fucked myself over.”

  “How so?”

  “If I walk away from him,” I said, “I’m going to miss him like crazy. I’ll always wonder what might have been. And if I stay, try to make this work with him, whatever it is, I know myself—I can’t juggle my career and a relationship with someone like him. I already have too much on my plate. And I don’t want to get hurt again—”

  “Addison, stop.” Coco placed her hand on mine. “Slow down. You’re getting all worked up over this. You need to let go of this notion that you can control everything.”

  I huffed. Coco Bissett was telling the world’s biggest control freak she couldn’t control a damn thing anymore.

  “You can’t control the way you feel about this guy,” she said. “You can’t force yourself not to like him. And you can’t control whether or not you get hurt again.”

  “You’re right.” I sucked in a deep breath. Coco’s room smelled like lavender and vanilla, a far cry from the second-hand smoke scented trailer bedroom we’d once shared. I ran my hand over the soft fabric of her duvet, the one we’d picked out together when I’d helped her with her wedding registry at Neiman Marcus years ago. I bet when we were picking it out, she never thought she’d be sleeping on it alone just a few short years later. “Do you ever regret marrying
Harrison?”

  “Never.” She didn’t miss a beat. “I loved him, Addison. We had some amazing years together. We might fight like cats and dogs, but I wouldn’t trade our history for the world.”

  I brought my fingers across my lips, remembering the way Wilder felt when he’d kissed me in the cab. He liked me. He really liked me. All I ever did was be myself around him, and he liked me anyway.

  “So if you’re asking if I think you should be with this guy,” Coco said, “my answer is yes. If you like him, be with him. Don’t worry about everything else. It’ll all fall into place.”

  “I need time to think about all this.” I tucked a wisp of hair behind my right ear. “This just happened so fast.”

  “All right. Give yourself a deadline. Give yourself until the end of the week to decide what you want to do.”

  An intense fatigue washed over my body from head to toe, though I suspected some of it was emotional and not physical. “I should get going. It’s late.”

  “You feel better?” Coco asked. “Get everything off your chest like you wanted?”

  We stood and I wrapped my arms around my sister, breathing in her fabric softener and Jo Malone fragrance before she walked me to the door.

  “Call me if you need anything, okay?” she said as she watched me leave. And I could’ve sworn I heard her whisper, “Don’t be scared, little sister.”

  Though it might have been a childhood memory playing in my ear. She’d always been my voice of reason, and the one person I turned to when I didn’t know where else to turn. Her answer for everything was always a simple, “Don’t be scared, little sister.”

  * * *

  I’d left Wilder a voicemail that night, telling him I needed some space. I didn’t elaborate or go on. I didn’t give him false hope or twist the knife I’d just stabbed him with. I simply told him I needed space.

  And space he gave me.

  I searched for him everywhere I went, wondering if I’d run into him as I dined with clients or as I rounded the street corner by my apartment. I searched for him as I hosted open houses, wondering if he’d stop in. I’d glance into Kyle’s office when I passed, wondering if they happened to be meeting. But worst of all, my hands searched for him in the early morning hours, remembering that morning he’d stayed with me all night.

  I lost myself in my work. Closings. Offers. Showings. Tours. Leads. Meetings. Market analyses. Listings. Rental and purchase agreements. If I stayed busy enough, I was fully convinced I’d forget about him for a bit. I needed my palette cleansed. Wilder was looping through my brain like an earworm, and I’d already memorized his taste, his touch, the way he felt inside me. The way his voice reverberated low and against my eardrum, sending my body into hysteria.

  I never ran into him. And I never stopped thinking about him. Especially at the end of the day, when I had no work to do. When the T.V. was off and the phone was quiet. When the pitch black of my room swallowed me whole and the cool sheets wrapped around my body made me long for someone warm to curl up with. Those were the moments Wilder invaded my thoughts with a vengeance.

  * * *

  “You’re unusually late today.” The second I entered the office the next morning I found Brenda Bliss standing at Skylar’s desk. I was only twenty-seven minutes late, if she wanted to get technical.

  Ever since I started working for her, I’d arrived at a quarter ‘til eight on the dot each weekday. My routine was always the same. Check in at work. Contact leads from the night before and follow up with clients. Look for any new listings that may have popped up overnight. Check my schedule and spend the rest of the day meeting clients and buzzing around the city showing properties. I’d check back in at the end of the day unless I had a client dinner, then I’d go home. Rinse. Repeat. Brenda kept a close watch on all of us, memorizing our schedules because she had nothing better to do in that giant office of hers.

  “I had a showing this morning,” I lied. The truth was that I’d caught a wild hair on my walk to work that morning. Halfway up my street, I decided to take a detour and head to Wilder’s block. I stood in his lobby and buzzed his penthouse, only he didn’t answer. I called him once, but he didn’t answer his phone, either.

  After leaving his building, I took a detour to a coffee shop and got the biggest mocha cappuccino on the menu and tacked on a giant banana chocolate chip muffin. I stopped on a park bench and enjoyed the hell out of my breakfast.

  I just wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t need my routines to be okay. That no matter what happened with Wilder, I was going to be fine. Giving up control of my routine, the one thing that made me feel so safe and powerful, was the most liberating thing I’d ever done.

  “I need to see you in my office,” she said, nodding toward her open door. “Now.”

  My heart pounded, rising into my throat as I followed her. The muffin from earlier suddenly felt heavy as it sloshed around in my stomach like thick sludge. Private meetings with Brenda always gave me mini panic attacks.

  “Have a seat, Addison,” she said, her voice quiet as she shut the door behind us. She took a seat in her ultra-luxe leather chair and scooted in. “I wanted to speak with you regarding our newest client, Mr. Van Cleef.”

  My throat tightened as I felt the color drain from my face.

  “This comes as a complete surprise to me,” she said, “but Mr. Van Cleef is entirely disappointed with Kyle.”

  I clenched my lips together, fighting off the smile that so badly wanted to emerge. It took everything I had not to tell her, “I told you so.”

  “He says he wants the blonde,” Brenda said with a shrug. “He wants you. Matter of fact, he’s waiting for you right now. In your office.”

  I left Brenda’s office and headed to mine, where my stomach did somersaults the moment my eyes landed on the back of his chocolate brown head of hair.

  “Good morning, Mr. Van Cleef,” I said in my most professional tone. He turned around slowly, his face lighting up the second our eyes met. I closed the door behind me and headed to my chair. “I’m sorry to hear Mr. Maxwell didn’t work out for you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I made sure to tell Brenda how deeply disappointed I was in working with Mr. Maxwell, and how unprofessional he has been on the job.”

  I swallowed, almost certain my gulp was quite audible. Did he know about Kyle and me?

  “I mentioned to her how having a team member like Mr. Maxwell was basically committing real estate agency suicide,” he continued. “It could be very bad for business to have an agent with such poor ethics on your team. She seemed to agree.”

  “Did you tell her to fire him?” I squinted at him from across my desk.

  “In not so many words.”

  “But why?”

  “I have my reasons,” he said. “Besides, I’d much rather work with you, and now that we’re not fooling around, I’d like to hire you on.”

  “I didn’t know we were officially no longer fooling around.” I crossed my arms.

  “You made your intentions very clear that night I brought you home with me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “When you ran out of my penthouse and then told me to give you space after I’d just declared my feelings for you, I assumed that meant you wanted space from both of us.” His eyes landed on his bulge of his cock for just a moment. “We’re sort of a package deal.”

  Wilder stood up, walking around the desk and coming to my side. He pulled me up and wrapped me in a strong embrace.

  “I can’t do the no-strings thing anymore,” he said. “Not with you. Any other girl, sure. Not you.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, but it returned in an instant.

  “I can’t keep fucking you and looking into those empty eyes,” he said. His hand cupped my chin, lifting my mouth to his yet holding himself just far enough away to prevent our lips from actually meeting.

  “My eyes may have been empty,” I admitted, my tone meek, “but my heart never was. You just couldn�
�t see it.”

  And with those words, I’d erased the line I’d drawn in the sand the night I met him; the line that had been crossed over and over again.

  “So it’s settled,” he said. “You’ll be my agent and my girlfriend.”

  “I ordered your usual,” my aunt said as she dipped a slice of bread into a saucer of olive oil. “I’m sorry, Wilder. I was starving. And you’re late.” She rolled her eyes, though I knew she couldn’t stay mad at me for long.

  “Aunt Laura,” I said as I met her for our weekly dinner. I kissed her cheek and sat down across from her, still wearing the smile Addison had given me earlier that day.

  “Well, you’re awfully chipper tonight,” she said. She leaned back in her seat, giving me a once over as she chewed. “What’s all this about?”

  “Just had a pretty amazing day,” I said. I turned the tables on her. “How about you?”

  “Oh, same old.” She rolled her eyes as she proceeded to vent again about her work arch nemesis, Kathy. “You know, I talked to Vince today.”

  She always had to bring up my dad, though I supposed he was the common thread between us.

  “He said he’s coming to the city with his new fiancée,” she said, one eyebrow raised. “Were you aware he was coming to town?”

  “Yeah, he called me the other day and said something about it,” I said. “I wasn’t really listening.”

  It was the night Addison ran out of my apartment. My mind was elsewhere, so I only picked up bits and pieces of what he was saying. He always tended to call late at night, too, neglecting to consider the time difference between us.

  “He said something about doing dinner with her and her two daughters,” I said. “That’s about all I picked up from the conversation. I was a little preoccupied when he called.”

  “I mean, how well can he really know this woman?” Aunt Laura scoffed. She’d been single most of her life after a failed marriage in her early twenties. Brash and opinionated, she was more than most men could handle, and yet she still believed she just hadn’t met the right one yet. For all her hard edges and straight lines, she really was a hopeless romantic. “It can’t possibly be true love.”