Score - A Stepbrother Romance

by Daire, Caitlin

  “What are you doing?”

  “See those guys over there?” he said, pointing to a few men in the distance in high-vis work-wear. “They’re surveying the land to figure out exactly where and how we should build. We’re building a larger, proper summer camp for the kids on part of it, near where the original cabins are. And on the other side, we’re going to be putting in a bunch of houses. Nothing overly-fancy, just your average houses. We’re donating them to a charity, and they’re going to be used to shelter families that have been victims of domestic violence. Your Mom and I agreed that it’s an important cause, considering what you’ve both been through with your Dad in the past.”

  I was flabbergasted. “But that…it’ll cost millions to build all of that.”

  He grinned. “I know. It’s going to take every cent of my trust fund.”

  Mom stepped over to me and put her arm around me. “After I spoke to Kevin, Drew called me. We’ve been planning this for two days.”

  “Wait…you’ve known for that long?”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I wanted to tell you the good news as soon as I heard, but Drew wanted to keep this as a surprise,” she said, flashing me a puppy-dog expression. “Now, we’ll give you two a minute.”

  She walked away with Cerie and Lana, and I turned back to Drew. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to jump into his arms. Instead, I did the opposite. I smacked him right in the chest.

  “You…you prick! You should’ve told me you were helping us! I’ve been sitting around thinking you lied to me and betrayed me and my Mom, and this whole time you were actually a good person!”

  He chuckled and held my arms back before affecting a more serious expression. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d believe me if I tried to tell you I had nothing to do with Dad’s plan. I don’t exactly have the best track record with you.”

  “You should have told me. I would’ve believed you. We made that total honesty pact, remember? Seriously, Drew…you should have told me.”

  “Well, next time you catch me with a bagful of incriminating evidence, I’ll tell you, if you promise not to run away before I get a chance.”

  I stared into those unbelievably blue eyes of his and finally smiled for what felt like the first time in forever.

  “You did this for me. And my Mom.”

  “Yep. So do you like the development idea?”

  “I love it. It’s perfect.”

  “Well, I love you. And you’re perfect.”

  And just like that, he was wrapping his arms around me and sweeping me into an embrace that I wanted to last forever. His mouth pressed against mine, tongue sliding past my lips as goose bumps cropped up all over my arms, and my whole body buzzed with happiness.

  “I forgot. There’s one more thing,” he said, breaking away a second later.

  He walked over to his car and returned a moment later, holding two wine glasses filled with…mac and cheese? Holy hell.

  “I thought we should toast the occasion,” he said.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “C’mon, don’t you remember that night at the camp?”

  “I do,” I said, smiling as he handed me a glass. “Er…cheers?”

  He slid an arm around my shoulder and gestured towards the land.

  “You told me ages ago that you thought this land had more than financial worth. You were right. My Dad would have made a hundred million or so if he developed it all into vacation houses. What we’re doing instead…it might not make us anything, but it’s worth a lot more.”

  “Do you remember what else I said a while ago?”

  “What?”

  “That you act like a douche but you’re secretly a good person. I guess I was right about that all along.”

  He chuckled, and I took a deep breath and turned to him. “Drew…there’s something I need to tell you.”

  His forehead creased with concern at my tone. “What is it?”

  Slowly and haltingly, I told him what had happened earlier in the week with me discovering I was pregnant and then later finding out that I’d already lost it. His eyes widened, and he pulled me close to him in a bear hug.

  “Shit. Sophie…I’m so sorry. I wish I’d known. I wish I’d been there. I should’ve called you. I thought waiting was the best thing to do, but fuck…”

  “I should’ve called you too,” I said, my voice muffled by his hard chest. “It just all happened so fast.”

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. “We always do, babe.”

  He was right. In the space of just a couple of months, we’d been on a veritable rollercoaster of emotions, So many things had happened, and we’d experienced more craziness and heartache in the last few weeks than most people did in a lifetime.

  We’d get through this.

  Chapter 27

  Drew

  Three and a half years later

  “What do you think? Will the necklace look good with this dress?”

  Sophie did a twirl in her lilac silk dress before holding up the necklace I’d given her two years ago, and I grinned. “I hate to say something so crude in front of my mother’s necklace, but I think the only way to improve that dress is by having you take it off.”

  She pouted and smacked me on the arm. “You’re disgusting, Mr. Buckley.”

  “And you’re damned sexy, Ms. Ramirez. Get over here.”

  She shrieked as I swept her up in my arms and carried her over to the bed. “Careful! The necklace!”

  I put the delicate jewelry aside and then reached for the zipper of her dress, and she squirmed and playfully tried to fight me off.

  “Drew, for God’s sake, the wedding is in half an hour!”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m helping you out. The messy bed hair look is in this season.”

  She gave in with a giggle, throwing her head back and allowing me to pepper her neck with kisses.

  You’d never believe whose wedding we were about to go to, but Marie had found love again. Real love this time, when she’d least expected it. Three and a half years ago, when she’d hired Lana’s Dad, Kevin, as her divorce lawyer, they’d fallen for each other. And yes, Lana’s Dad was single at the time – Sophie told me he and Lana’s Mom had split up when she was only a child.

  Unsurprisingly, Marie had been very wary of entering into any new relationships after the shit her ex-husband had done, not to mention the hell my Dad had put her through, and she had made Kevin wait for it. They’d been dating for something like three years and four months before she finally agreed to marry him, and when she’d said yes, Sophie, Lana and Cerie had helped throw together a wedding in just a few weeks.

  I was honestly shocked that Sophie had the time to pull that off. College was crazy for her at the moment, and it seemed like she was always buried under a ton of essays and exams. She was doing great, though, and she was very near the top of her class. We were living together at her Mom’s house in Redmond, but I hoped to change that soon. I’d pulled in several good modeling contracts, and I was making a decent amount of money from that. Not enough to match the amount I’d become accustomed to when I was living with my Dad, but it was still a very comfortable living.

  Speaking of my Dad…well, he was in a federal prison courtesy of the fraud charges Kevin had successfully brought against him. The reins of his company had been handed over to his second-in-charge, a guy named Ron Abra, and Ron had actually offered me a highly-paid position there, despite the fact that it was my testimony that got the original CEO sent to jail. Apparently Ron valued integrity a lot more than my father did. I’d turned the position down, though. I didn’t want anything to do with my Dad’s company, even if he was no longer in charge.

  Fuck that. All I wanted and needed was what I had right here beneath me – Sophie.

  Pulling back, I yanked off her dress, and she no longer seemed to care about me possibly messing her hair or the fabric up. I slid her panties down over her legs, and I couldn’t resist lashing her pussy with
my tongue as I did so, drawing out a long moan from her. Her taste instantly made me rock hard, and I couldn’t wait to be inside her, feeling her perfect pussy massaging me to perfection.

  “Hurry up,” she said, watching me strip out of my clothes a second later.

  Her mouth parted when she saw my cock, as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it, and that look on her face made me want to cum straight away. Jesus, after so long, she still had this effect on me. She reached over and began pumping her hand up and down along my shaft, and when I climbed back on top of her, she guided it to her slit. I teased her, rubbing it up and down until she arched her back and begged me to fuck her, and only then did I let the tip slide in.

  “More!” she moaned, and I grinned.

  “I dunno…we really should get to this wedding.”

  “Screw you. No, screw me,” she said.

  As I pushed in one more inch, she squeezed her muscles around my cock, and that was it. I was gone. She’d asked for it, and she was going to get it. I thrust my cock all the way in, nice and hard, and she cried out and dug her nails into my back as her pussy stretched to fit me. She threw her head back again, her silky dark hair splaying out around her head on the pillowcase, and I reached under her and pulled her closer to me as I fucked her, slowly but surely.

  “Mmm…oh god…Drew.”

  She urged me on, her voice barely more than a moaning whisper, and I picked up the pace, making her scream as I slammed into her harder and faster. Sophie jerked her head up, and her lips met mine in a crushingly-hard kiss. I could tell she was already on the verge of coming, and I reached down and slid a hand in between our writhing bodies, making sure her clit was stimulated to the max.

  “Oh, fuck,” she gasped out.

  She wrapped her legs around my back, pinning me inside her as she rode out the first waves of her climax.

  The best part for me was always when she came. Her muscles began to spasm around my cock, squeezing and milking it for everything I had, and I groaned and let go, flooding her with my hot seed. I kept driving into her as she moaned, making her take every last drop I had, and she arched up to meet my lips again. My kiss muted her moans, and finally we both went still, our ragged breaths the only sound in the room as we recovered from our orgasms.

  “God, I love a quickie,” she said.

  “You saying I don’t last long?” I said with a grin, pinching her nipple.

  “Like I said a long time ago, you’re about a three out of ten,” she teased. “But I might get so drunk at the reception later that you have a chance at being a five.”

  “A five? Shit, it’s my lucky day.”

  We hurriedly dressed so we could make it to the wedding in time. It was being held at a quaint little bed and breakfast that looked like something straight out of the Gilmore Girls, a show that Sophie had forced me to watch with her about a hundred times. An arrangement of white chairs and a carpeted aisle had been set up in a pretty garden, and the groom stood at the end of the aisle under an ivy-covered arch.

  I found a seat near the front, and I turned and watched the bridesmaids and flower girl slowly walking down the aisle. Sophie was the last to walk, and she winked at me as she caught my eye. Her hair was still a little mussed up from our earlier romp, but it didn’t look bad. It somehow looked effortlessly stylish, and I practically salivated as I watched her swaying steps, hypnotized by her body in that dress. Most people thought bridesmaid’s dresses were purposefully ugly to make the bride look better, but Sophie looked like an angel no matter what she was wearing.

  As the marriage celebrant took us through the ceremony, I barely heard a word. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Marie’s wedding; of course I did. I just couldn’t concentrate, because my eyes were glued to Sophie. There were plenty of other women here, but they all paled in comparison to her, and for a minute, I genuinely couldn’t remember what my life had been like before her. Ah, that’s right – it had been bullshit. Having her come back into my life was the best thing that could have happened to me, and as the celebrant continued to drone on and on, I knew exactly what I wanted.

  I wanted to see Sophie up at the end of that aisle again. Not as a bridesmaid.

  As my wife.

  Chapter 28

  Sophie

  Eight months later

  “This is paradise. Literally.”

  I dangled my feet in the cool lake water off the edge of the large raft we were on. The raft had a thatched roof to keep the sun out of my eyes as I lay back, but I closed them anyway, listening to the quiet sound of the wind and the barely-moving water.

  We were in Loei. It was a province in north-eastern Thailand, and it was much different from what most vacationers would expect upon going to Thailand. It was a quiet, secluded area up in the mountains, and there was none of the buzz most tourists looked for in much bigger places like Bangkok or any of the holiday islands. It was the peace that was the main draw – I hadn’t slept so well in months. The weather was nice too. Unlike a lot of the more southern regions, there wasn’t much humidity, only cool mountain air and the occasional cloud.

  Right now Drew and I were on Huai Krathing, a massive lake up in the mountains. For a relatively cheap price, you could rent a huge raft like the one we were on. The owners would attach it to a silver motorboat and drag the raft out to the middle of the lake, and then you could slowly drift around all day, or just for as long as you wanted. If you wanted to order and food or drinks, or if you simply wanted to announce that you were ready to come back in to shore, you put a flag up and waited for a motorboat to arrive.

  We’d come on vacation to Thailand to celebrate two major things. Firstly, I’d just graduated from college. I’d been working on a book all the way through, and I’d been offered a publishing deal practically as soon as they handed me my degree. Secondly, Drew had just scored a massive new modeling contract for a major fashion house. What Drew didn’t know was that I was planning on announcing a third major thing to celebrate…

  “Let’s order some food,” Drew said, launching himself out of the water and back onto the floating raft.

  After this long with him, I was still enraptured with his face and body. A lot of people got too comfortable with relationships after a long time and didn’t seem to notice their partner as much as they used to, but holy hell…I doubted that would ever happen with me and Drew. How could I not notice him? He still had the perfectly-chiseled face, the bright blue eyes, the contoured muscles and the cheeky smirk. Yep, he was perfect.

  And he was all mine.

  When the silver motorboat pulled up with someone to take our food and drink order, Drew conversed with the person in broken Thai. Not a lot of people up in this region spoke English, so we’d experienced a crash course in learning the language.

  “Err…khao niao,” Drew said, referring to the sticky rice that had become my favorite thing to munch on. It was served with most meals, and it was incredible.

  He also ordered some som tam, bamboo shoot salad, some sort of chicken dish, and something called kueng ten, otherwise known as ‘dancing shrimp salad’. It was named as such because the shrimp were added to the spicy salad while still alive, so they were still moving around in the bowl before being eaten.

  When it arrived, Drew looked shocked. “Shit. I thought I ordered the sleeping shrimp salad, where they aren’t jumping around.”

  “Oh well, you still have to eat it,” I said, flicking a tiny bit of rice at him.

  “So do you,” he replied, picking up a spoonful and thrusting it in my face.

  “Er, no thanks,” I said, pulling away.

  “What’s up with you?” he asked after swallowing the mouthful himself. “You usually love seafood, but you haven’t touched it the whole time we’ve been here. You’re missing out! Raw shrimp is actually not bad.”

  “I’m just trying to be careful,” I said before clapping my hand over my mouth. Oops. I’d said too much.

  “What do you mean? Trying to be…oh
. Wait. You’re not…”

  I smiled and nodded, watching as his expression changed from confusion to realization in an instant.

  “You’re serious. You’re pregnant?”

  I nodded again, and he reached over and swept me into his arms, squeezing me in a bear hug. “Fuck yeah!”

  “I gather that you’re excited, then?”

  “Course I am,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I wanted to wait until the perfect moment,” I said.

  He smiled and gestured all around us - at the still water, the trees surrounding the lake, the birds drinking on the edge of the lake.

  “This is the perfect moment,” he said. “But you just made it even more perfect. I love you. You know that, right?”

  “Of course I do. You’re not so bad yourself.”

  I didn’t know everything that there was to know in the world, but one thing I was definitely certain of was his love for me and any future children of ours.

  Since I’d had the miscarriage a few years back, Drew and I had realized how much we wanted kids at some point, and when I’d graduated and sold my book to the publisher, I’d gone off the pill. We hadn’t realized it would only take such a short period of time to get me pregnant…it must have only been three or four weeks. I couldn’t wait to be a mom to his baby, and I knew Drew couldn’t wait to be a dad.

  “You know, now that you’re pregnant, it’s lucky that I have this.”

  “Huh?”

  I looked over as Drew foraged in his camera bag, and I gasped as he pulled out a massive diamond ring. Tears of joy sprung to my eyes as I immediately realized what it was, and he rearranged himself so that he was crouching down on one knee.

  “Sophie Anne Ramirez…” he began. The tears were running down my face in earnest now, and I didn’t even let him finish before nodding.