HIM—A Stepbrother Romance: With BONUS NOVELLA: PERSONAL

by Stephanie Brother

  “Well…”Jackson began.

  “And nothing like a post-Christmas bonus. I’m sure your kids would love it. If you have kids.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  But Hitler was relentless. His hand was on the back of my head pushing me even though I could barely hop that fast. I was led back down a hallway I hadn’t visited in years, when I used to get in trouble with the law as a young adult.

  “Come on, man. It’s just a few books. I’m going to bring them back. I was going to pay for the damage.”

  “Poor kid, his father just died. Think you ought to let up on him a bit?” Jackson asked.

  I clenched my jaw and stopped as Watson stopped to reply to his partner.

  “Let up on him? Do you know what this family does? Hell, all of them should have been locked away decades ago. Scum of the earth dressed high and mightily with tailored suits, eating their fancy caviar. They’re nothing but baby killers, dream snatchers, drug traffickers, sex slave workers…”

  “What about my phone call. It’s my right!” I interrupted him. I hated hearing people say this shit about my family.

  “Phones are down.”

  “I have a right for some sort of communication! You just took me from my home, without any clothes.”

  “Fault is yours. I gave you a chance. You broke the law, you pathetic scum, now live with the consequences.”

  Anger surged through my veins as my fists balled up. I had nothing to do with any of these black file projects or secret funds. But no one knew of it. I couldn’t turn around and smack one on him because well, then I’d really go to prison prison.

  “Are you really going to jail me like this? Naked?” I lamented and hobbled from his hard push until cold rail sliced open my lip and I rolled to damp cement. The taste of blood filled my mouth and onto the floor; Hitler tripped me.

  “Oops. Better watch where you step.”

  “Aw, come on man. That’s not a way to treat a man,” Jackson quietly chimed in.

  “This man’s a criminal. He always has been trouble. This is where he belongs and I’m going to make it my mission in life to make sure he stays in this cell. Forever.”

  The slammer rang shut. The blood stung from my busted lip and my ankle hurt like hell.

  I shivered from the cold. It pierced my bone and I seriously was worried about my health with it being so cold like it was.

  I gritted through my teeth as I called out to him with a fierce, hoarse growl as my face still lay flat on the ground and my hands behind me still cuffed. “You’re going to hear from my lawyer, Watson. You better believe it.”

  His back was faced toward me and he stopped in his tracks. I saw Jackson and now another partner that arrived to the scene. His face was in shock, as well.

  “Don’t you touch him. Don’t you feed him. Don’t give him water. Don’t give him a damn blanket. This hallway is off limits for the reminder of your shift, which reminds me…”

  His feet were heavy and I swore they had spurs from a barbaric man in the Wild West. A bucket. A bucket was coming my way and the look on his face was dark and menacing.

  Ice cold water slapped my shivering body, the salt burning in the cut of my lip. It stung like hell and all I could think about was the warmth of her as I forbade myself to look weak.

  Oh yes, he’d hear from my lawyer about this inhumane treatment. If I didn’t freeze to death.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kate

  His lips were on my ear again, biting on my earlobe, teasing me relentlessly as he filled me in every delicious way possible. I was coming from his sexy drives and persistent and passionate control as he thrust his hips and filled me deeper.

  “Yes, Bradley! Yes! Yes!”

  I awoke to find my hands in a ball, the sheets tightly clenched. I was breathing hard and could feel the sweat beads along my hairline.

  And it was a dream.

  God, what sweet torture. My core flinched and butterflies traveled up and down my system like it was an open border joining countries.

  I will be in you.

  Where the heck was Bradley? I threw off my covers, determined to find him, wherever he was, and pull him into whatever closet we were near. Heck, pull him behind whatever couch was nearby. So we could finally be together. Body and soul.

  My need for him was so damn hot, I couldn’t take it.

  I reached for my phone to see what time it was. 7 PM.

  What! That was impossible.

  Had I managed to sleep a full twelve hours? Was all that had transpired: one crazy, teasing dream?

  I sat in a daze as I stared at the wall in lust and wonder. It all came flashing back to me. Everything.

  No, it wasn’t a dream. It happened. It all happened and I needed Bradley. Now.

  I practically ran into his room, busting open the door. But it was empty.

  I quickly made my way into the sitting room, the man cave, everywhere he normally would hang out. I even peeked outside.

  He was nowhere. Was he hiding from me? Had he changed his mind?

  I finally found Mr. Fox in the kitchen inspecting the silverware. He held it high before polishing a knife and I suddenly felt super shy. Had he seen us last night? Or heard?

  “Hello, Miss Meadows,” he greeted me without looking up from his task

  “Um, hi. Hi, Mr. Fox.” I muttered sheepishly and looked down at my bare feet.

  “I’m looking for Bradley. Have you seen him?” I tucked a loose tendril of hair behind my ear, my heart pounded wildly in my chest with apprehension and feeling embarrassed.

  “Mr. Rainshaw’s privacy is my number one concern. I can assure you.”

  There was something strange in the way he addressed the situation. Either he was uncomfortable because he knew of what happened in the hot tub or it was something else.

  I swallowed down the lump in my throat. My nerves were going crazy.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Good God, he knows.

  “Please don’t go to the press.” It was all I could manage to say.

  “Of course I wouldn’t. How indecent, exposing such a thing.”

  Oh fuck.

  “Well, he’s seen the police more than he should have in a lifetime. Between you and me, those country cops have it out for him.”

  “Wait, what police? What are you talking about? Please tell me.”

  “They were at the door this morning and wanted to question him.”

  “Oh my god. At what time?”

  “Right before 8AM.”

  “And we haven’t heard from him or anything?”

  “Well, the phone lines are down. I just figured they had a few questions about that situation from last month.”

  “What happened last month?”

  “Something frivolous about him drinking and leaving the wine bottle in the sand.”

  I shook my head feeling worried. “Oh no…”

  “No one got hurt. It should just be a simple fee. I just figured he went back into the city with your mom.”

  “My mom went back to the city?”

  “She said she told you. She wanted to hunker down with a few of her cast mate friends. She said it was too depressing to do that here. There’s some party she’s attending.”

  I nodded in a daze. She had mentioned something to me this morning but honestly I was so tired, I didn’t hear her say that part.

  “In all honesty, I just work here and do my best to make everyone happy.”

  I just stared at him with a blank look across my face.

  “Is there something that happened?” he asked me.

  “He broke into the library to bring back books for me. Which means he broke into the library. He hasn’t come back.”

  “Let’s go.” He nodded quickly, the worried look plastered across his face indicating that the message was understood loud and clearly.

  It was cold and quiet. I couldn’t believe the law was still working but that’s the thing about government work
ers: we needed them rain or shine. We drove slowly but we finally made it to Suffolk County Sheriff’s office.

  “We’re here to see Bradley Rainshaw,” I quickly said to a creepy man with a mustache so long and ratty that it belonged on a pirate ship.

  “He’s locked up.”

  “Locked up?”

  “I’m afraid you will have to come back tomorrow. Unless you have an emergency to report.”

  “Emergency? The emergency is that it’s freezing in here and he doesn’t deserve to be locked up like a criminal.”

  “There’s nothing that can be done here, miss.” His words were as sharp as a knife. “And he is a criminal.”

  “He doesn’t deserve to be locked away like that.”

  He stood up and looked at me square in the eyes. He made me tremble, he was so creepy. His dirty fingernails twirled that disgusting mustache as he used his tongue to clean across his teeth, making the grossest sound ever. Ugh, creep!

  “Listen very carefully, ma’am. There’s nothing to be done. Now I believe it’s best you be on your way.

  “No! You can’t just leave him in here overnight. Has he even eaten? Does he have a blanket? It’s freezing in here.” I wrapped my own jacket around me tighter. Mr. Fox lightly tapped my shoulder as if to say to calm down. He cleared his throat to emphasize the point.

  “You are disrupting my establishment.” He stood up with his hands flat across the desk.

  “Your establishment? This isn’t your establishment.”

  “Do you question an officer of law?”

  “Well, yes I do. You have no right to—”

  “When you enter this line you enter the law. And I’m the law.”

  I looked quickly around to see if there was any other officer I could speak with. It was eerily empty and I wondered if he was the only officer on duty. “I’d like to speak to someone else! I’d like to—”

  The cold metal against my wrists caused a shiver to run down my spine. I was handcuffed. By this creepy man who probably belonged to be locked up himself, with anger like this.

  “You can’t cuff me. I didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t do this! I didn’t do anything wrong! Mr. Fox, please call my mother! Or get ahold of her somehow! You can’t just keep me in here for no reason.” My voice was high and I was screaming. If anyone else was in the county jail office, they heard me. I’m sure of it.

  “You’re interfering with the law. That’s obstruction of the law.” He forcefully pushed me down a hallway and Mr. Fox was now left behind. “Get my mom!” Everything was happening so fast, I couldn’t believe my own eyes that I was being led down a dimly lit hallway past creepy, small cells.

  “You people think you can get away with anything and get whatever you want. Well, I’ll tell you what.” The iron bars slid open before me as he pushed me in. “You wanted to see him. Now you see him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate

  I spun around to see the iron door slid shut. And there across the hallway laying on the ground, curled up in a ball, was Bradley. Naked. His eyes were shut and he looked oddly pale.

  “Bradley! Oh my god. You animal! You have him locked up without a blanket like that! He could die! He could die!”

  “You two are perfect for each other.”

  “What the fuck! Look at him! Look at what you’re doing! He’s freezing to death!”

  “Yeah, well, not my problem! Not so tough are you now, huh, tough guy?”

  “Hey! Hey!” I called out after him, screaming at the top of my lungs. “There’s a very hot place in hell for people like you!”

  My hands grabbed the iron bars and I could just stare at him. He looked so freezing and his lips looked blue. There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t stand to see him like that.

  “Bradley! Bradley! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? It’s Kate! Don’t think you’re getting away with this, you asshole! You just messed with a Rainshaw.”

  “Well, Rainshaw or no Rainshaw, enjoy the blizzard. See you when the city opens back up. Might be a few days.”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Wait, what! You can’t do this! You can’t do this!”

  After yelling until my throat ran dry, hearing my voice echo off the walls of this cold and sterile cell, all I could do was cry and visualize warmth around him as I called out to him.

  “Bradley! Bradley!”

  He’d moan occasionally and say odd things.

  “I’m soo….soo….” His head rested against the wall. I shivered as I called out to him, which worried the hell out of me because he wasn’t covered up, himself. “It’s going to be okay! It’s going to be okay,” I called out a thousand times but deep down inside, I didn’t have a clue if he was going to be okay.

  I don’t know how much time passed. Every torturous minute felt like an hour when finally the door at the end of the hallway swung open and I wondered if I were seeing a ghost.

  “That bastard really thinks he’s something,” the officer muttered until he finally opened my cell. “Oh, thank God!” I ran immediately to Bradley’s cell to get a better look at him. He didn’t look good at all.

  “Would you look at him?

  “He looks awful.” He opened the door and I ran to Bradley and covered him in my jacket. He was cold as ice. I felt his pulse. It was slow, but still there. He moaned and I tried to get him to open his eyes. They rolled to the back of his head.

  “We need to get you two to a hospital, stat. Let me help you get him.”

  The big officer picked Bradley up as best as he could. “Follow me. Hurry. I’m not about to let a blizzard take two innocent people’s lives. It’s bad out there. Real bad. All of New York City is shut down. It’s like a ghost town. And I heard you screaming about Bradley, too. He had a bucket of water thrown on him. It wasn’t right. I had this nagging feeling all day. When I left to go home, I knew with the temperature dropping in the low 20s, no blankets, well, I may have barely graduated high school, but I do watch a lot of shows on The Discovery Channel. Hypothermia doesn’t just happen to people lost in the forest. I wouldn’t be a real American, a real officer, if I didn’t think of his life in danger. Which it is.”

  We finally made it to his police car and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling and the panic from flooding my chest.

  I rubbed my hands up and down his cold limbs but he just lay against me, barely moving. “Come on, Bradley. Come on.” I kissed his ice-cold skin over and over again.

  “The thermal conductivity of water is thirty-two times greater than air. The fact that he was slapped with that icy bucket water wasn’t right. It wasn’t just hazing. It was a death sentence. If I would have left you two over night, he could have died. Not to mention that excessive alcohol raises your risk of hypothermia. Did you know you could even get hypothermia in summer from your wet clothes? If you body heat drops too drastically and it’s windy. It happens.”

  My mind was racing as he droved slowly through the blizzard. I was listening, but it sounded like background music. I was scared to death I was losing Bradley. Just when I finally had him.

  “Maybe you should go into the medical field.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I will with the hefty sum of ransom money. I mean, award money from Mr. Rainshaw once he comes to.”

  We finally pulled into Southampton Hospital.

  “He hasn’t eaten all day either, or all night. His body doesn’t have any nutrients to help him stay warm.”

  “Thank you for saving our lives. I’ll spare you in the upcoming media firestorm that you know is coming.”

  “Yeah, well, about that compensation.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  “Promise he’ll remember me? He’s not coherent right now.”

  “I promise. Thank you.”

  As soon as we made our way through the doors with the help of Officer Jackson, we were assisted.

  With the blizzard and the special circumstances of practically the entire island being shut dow
n, it was an eerie sight with the hospital being like a ghost town.

  Once Bradley and I were seen, Officer Jackson tapped his hat to us and I promised we would remember him and compensate him. I no doubt would have Bradley do so; he saved his life.

  The nurses and doctors immediately administered humidified oxygen via an air mask as they removed my jacket from him and he instantly shivered, naked. He was so weak. So tired. So incoherent. They immediately wrapped him in a special blanket before laying him down to administer an IV.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He came at the right time.”

  “We need to check your vitals, as well. You don’t look so great.”

  I wasn’t even aware that I was shaking all over until a nurse began to check my vitals.

  “Will he need stitches on his lip? He’s so bloody and swollen. I gave him my jacket. I wasn’t there for long, though.”

  “There?”

  “Jail. But uh, it’s not like you think.”

  “DWI?”

  “No, God, no. I, well, some asshole I guess decided to administer me into custody because I kept asking questions about, my, uh…uh… boyfriend.”

  Just saying that term of endearment caused color to rush to my cheeks.

  “And you were left how long? I feel like I should bring our officer in here. It’s not every day you see a man naked and barefoot.”

  “For hours. In the dark. Cold. They left him like that!” I began shivering thinking about it all.

  “Okay, I’m going to administer a sedative and get fluids and nutrition in you as well. You should get some rest, as well. I’m sure that was quite traumatic.”

  “I…I’m not cold like he is. I don’t think I have hypothermia.”

  “Sweetie, you’re in shock. It’s written all over your body.”

  “Well, it was quite…stupid…stupid…crazy! I didn’t think you could just be put into jail like that. I didn’t do anything.”