Forbidden Love: Stepbrother Romance Read online

  And, as crazy as it was, if she was going to ask the god damn captain of the football team to take her out, even with all the layers of social strata between the two of them, well, she'd need some war paint. That meant new hair dye, whether she liked it or not.

  Amy dug through bag. There really wasn't room in her budget for new hair dye, though. She wasn't a stranger to… 'finding' things that she had a desperate need for, when she took a trip to walk around a store. But even if it was mostly the same town, it wasn't the same neighborhood. Maybe this time she could actually avoid getting a reputation around here, if she tried.

  Which meant going through the backlog and seeing what she still had lying around. She still had a half-bottle of the pink, but that wasn't going to do it. Blue—what school spirit. Not enough, though. And she wasn't exactly sure that she liked the idea. Green? What, like she'd taken a swim too soon after a bleach job?

  White was interesting. Unique. But then, it gave off the wrong impression. She wasn't trying to fit in with old women, she was trying to impress a football player. Well, thinking about it, anyways.

  Lavender, though—she pulled the box out. She'd been avoiding it for a long time. Something in her mind just said that she was going to look like crap with her hair this color. Something about her skin tone or something, like it was going to pull the color out of it.

  She held the box next to her face and looked in the mirror. She'd really been tempted when she first saw it. Really tempted. And she'd been saving it, because she never could quite shake that temptation. What if she got a good dye job out of it?

  The whole idea was stupid in the first place. He wasn't going to go for her. There was a whole world of difference between being a little flirty during class with the only girl nearby, and agreeing to go out to a dance.

  On the other hand, if she didn't take a risk, then nobody was going to notice in the first place. She closed her eyes. This was a risk, and she wanted a risk. Her fingers stretched and flexed and she rapped her nails on the counter. It calmed her down enough.

  Amy took a deep breath. There would be a lot of work to get this ready by tomorrow. But, looking at the clock on the wall, she knew Dad was going to be out most of the night. She had plenty of time. Fishing around in the cabinet, she pulled out her bottle of hair bleach. If it was going to be risks, then it was going to be risks.

  But if she was going to do this then she was going to do it right, and that meant starting right now. It would be like practice, because in the morning she was going to take a much bigger risk, one that she had much less experience with.

  She just had to hope that this 'practice' would help her when she was staring Brett Page, and his certain rejection, right in the face.

  4

  Brett

  Present Day

  Brett looked down at his watch, looked back at the site. There really wasn't any other way to drag this out today, was there? At some point, he'd have to go home. At some point, he'd have to see Amy. But that didn't have to be soon, and he had really hoped it wouldn't be quite this soon.

  Which led to questions like, what else could he do to find time? He looked through his phone. He could give Rachel a call, at least. That would be something to do. Probably not go by. They'd had another in their long series of fights, ending in her reminding him that in spite of their occasional dalliances, they were not, had not been, and would not be an item in the future.

  The arrangement suited him well enough that even though she'd found a uniquely aggressive way to phrase her 'bug off' comments, he was essentially over it. If this were really goodbye, then it was goodbye, and that was fine. She wasn't wrong. They were both essentially in a holding pattern until something better came along.

  He slipped into the car and started driving. He ought to grab something to eat. Four hour ride home, an hour or so to eat, and maybe with a little luck he could crash on the couch and not have to see Amy until tomorrow. Putting it off like that would be the best way. The easiest. Then again, seeing her for the first time at the funeral wasn't an idea that he relished, either.

  When they'd seen each other last, Mom and Spencer hadn't been on the best terms. It shouldn't have affected him and Amy, especially since they had already been on… 'better terms than usual,' would probably have been accurate. After all, maybe he'd just imagined the spark between them.

  She'd been interested in him once, he knew. And she might have even held a candle for him for a while, but at some point that had broken down, and she'd left and she hadn't wanted to come back. The phone in his hand finally connected and started ringing.

  "Brett? What did I tell you—"

  "I'm just on my way home from a job. I needed to talk to someone, and you were first on my list."

  "Good to know I'm first on your list at something. What's your problem now, and why shouldn't you be seeing a therapist instead of calling your lover during dinner?"

  "Were you eating dinner now?"

  "No, but I could have been."

  There was a fine line with bitchiness, Brett thought to himself. He'd been surrounded by women with a chip on their shoulder his entire life, so it wasn't as if he was unused to the idea that ladies might stand up to him. He liked it. It was a charming quality, in a way.

  Rachel didn't know how to modulate it, when to turn it off. She was spoiling for a fight all the time, and would pick one over anything, as long as she could get her fight out of it. Whenever she got into one of these moods, the only answer was to pet her like a cat, or, if physical proximity wasn't a problem, holding her down and screwing it out of her. Well, there were several reasons he wasn't going to do that. If things didn't change fast, it wasn't going to happen again.

  "Yeah, I'm sorry if this is a bad time. I can call back, or I can talk to someone else."

  "Is this about your mother?"

  He let out a breath. He'd avoided telling Rachel anything about Mom's death. She found out by reading his mail, which by itself ought to have been a red flag, but he would have let it slide. It was the constant worrying, worrying that never led to anything but mothering him, that really set him off.

  "No, Rachel, it's not. Well, not really."

  "What's 'not really?'"

  "I've got someone staying at my place. Here on account of the funeral."

  "Wait, wait—'someone'? Or 'my sister I have a thing for'?"

  Rachel was doing what she did best. Getting on his nerves. And he was, in spite of himself, falling for it. "She's not my sister, Rachel."

  "Sure she isn't."

  "And I don't have a thing for her. We almost dated, for like a minute, back in high school, before our parents even told us they were dating, for Christ's sake."

  "Sure. Tell yourself what you have to tell yourself, but I saw the look in your eyes talking about her. So what, you invite her up to your sex dungeon to talk about your feelings, or—"

  He wanted to snap at her. He could feel the annoyance rise like bile in his throat. He let it off by rapping his thumb on the rim of his steering wheel. "I just. I haven't seen her in ten years, right? And our split wasn't exactly on good terms."

  "No, they usually aren't."

  "Oh, Rachel, I didn't know you cared."

  "I'm a woman of mysterious depth," she said. She liked to be cryptic when she was feeling playful, and she 'played' like a bobcat with its food.

  "So I'm just avoiding going home, taking a bit of a scenic route back from Big Rapids."

  "Well, you know, you could always stop in Grand Rapids, get yourself an apartment, change your name…"

  "Sure. Thanks, you're a real peach, you know that?"

  He could almost hear Rachel smiling through the phone. "Yeah, I thought you might like that."

  "I've got to go. If I don't grab something to eat now, I'll be stuck with 24-hour joints."

  "Don't do that," she cautioned. "You know how bad that stuff is for you. It's going to give you a heart attack."

  "Yeah, I know. You keep telling me that."
>
  "And I'm right, and you know I'm right."

  He grimaced. Did he know that? "Yeah, I got it. Later."

  He tossed the phone off to the side, and had to immediately resist the notion that he ought to go to a burger joint just to spite her. He'd had one yesterday, and he didn't even want one. He wanted Italian, but where in the hell was he going to stop to get that?

  Brett's jobs took him through Grand Rapids more than occasionally, but it didn't translate into knowing the restaurants in the area. Mostly, he knew I-96. That wasn't quite as useful when it came to dining. He pulled off and onto city streets. The first place he came to was a gas station, and he took the chance to pull into the parking lot and do a search.

  Anything was good, really, as long as it meant thirty or forty minutes' delay in getting home. Once he got home, that was when things really began to get uncomfortable.

  2003

  Brett settled into his seat in the library, sixth period. It wasn't so much his, as that he always ended up sitting here, if he didn't feel like using the computer. He rarely did, to be honest; it wasn't that important to him. Being able to lay his head back and rest in these seats, with cushions at least as large as he was, though? That was something else entirely.

  He liked the arrangement, and he hadn't had any problems with it up to this point. Which was why it was a surprise when he heard someone clearing their throat—clearing her throat, he noted—above him. Like they thought he ought to have gotten out of their seat. Nobody had left anything there to mark it, though.

  He'd have moved that stuff, of course. If they had marked it, then he'd just take the spot, and most of the time people didn't care enough to fight him for it. Not that he'd get physical over something as petty as a seat in the library, but they'd be in for a hassle of an argument, and most people weren't prepared to put in that kind of effort. Neither was he, for that matter.

  Which was why, when someone apparently had eyes on getting him up, he slid his eyes open slowly. The hair color was different today. He'd noticed it earlier, but the minute he saw that shockingly purple hair, like the color of alfalfa, he knew who it was. It was a change from the pink, but he had to admit, he liked it.

  "What's the problem?" He settled forward. "Amy? I thought you had class."

  "I got a pass."

  She was lying, and she wasn't particularly trying to hide it. He tried to phrase the question in his head in a way that it wouldn't sound like he was picking a fight. Maybe he was picking a fight, though. Brett hadn't really considered the idea. He didn't mean to pick a fight, but if a fight got picked, and he did it… well, whatever.

  "Why are you over here? You decided you need this seat, or you'll die?"

  She settled into a chair beside him. It was just as good as the one he was in, but he liked this one. He had a special attachment that comes with long-time habit. He liked these chairs because all the others were too small. On Amy, though, with her long, thin limbs, she looked like she was settling into a chair built for a giant.

  "Do you like my hair?"

  He smiled in spite of himself. "Yeah, it looks good."

  "Better than before?"

  "You looked fine before, too."

  Praise came easy. For girls, it came easier still. Amy, on the other hand, was in a league of her own. He practically had to hold himself back from telling her how good she looked, at the risk that she might think it was going to turn into something. At the risk that it very well might.

  "Yeah?"

  "Sure."

  "So, what's all this about homecoming?"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "What's the story?"

  "You mean to tell me they didn't have homecoming at R.U.?"

  She shrugged and made a face, one that said she wasn't going to answer him.

  "It's a dance. I don't know what to tell you."

  "I mean, is it popular? Or, like…"

  "You want to know if I'm going, is that it?"

  "I mean—"

  "Are you asking me out?"

  He fought to keep the grin off his face. Really—her? There were plenty of girls he assumed were interested. It came naturally from playing football, he ended up being known around the school. Anyone would want to be seen with even a minor celebrity like him, if they were looking to get climbing the social ladder.

  Amy didn't seem interested in that one bit. It would come with the territory whether she liked it or not. It wasn't that she wasn't tough enough; she certainly was, he had no doubts about that. But was she really interested in getting caught up in that mess?

  The look on her face was like she'd been shot. Her eyes were wide, her face practically white with embarrassment, even through her thick makeup. And her expression held itself perfectly still, as if he wouldn't notice if she didn't move.

  "I shouldn't have—"

  She tried to move, and his hand shot out automatically and grasped gently at her wrist. She pulled at it, and he let it slip.

  "It's not that I wouldn't, Amy."

  She blinked slow and he could see that she was fighting off embarrassment on a whole different level. No doubt, all she wanted was to get this over with, but he had to make sure she understood.

  "I don't go to those kind of dances. Not my scene. I don't dance, I don't like music that much, and I definitely don't like sitting around in a dimly-lit room sipping on pop off in the corner."

  "No, I get it, you can just—"

  "If I was going to go, and I was going to take a date, then you'd be at the top of my list. But I don't plan on it, and I wasn't going to, so—"

  "Right. No, I get it. Just. Can I go? I want to go."

  He frowned. "Yeah, you can go."

  He watched her leave, moving stiffly and about as fast as she could. He laid his head back again and let out a breath real slow. She'd be upset, but it was better than any of the alternatives. He wasn't going to take her out and then turn her down after that. Once he had started something, Brett didn't bail.

  He wasn't going to date her a little, then move on. Maybe some people thought that high school was good for casual dating, but Brett Page wasn't one of them. It led to casual fucking, and casual fucking led to casual children, and at the first sign of inconvenience, it led to casually running off.

  He didn't know his father's name, and he didn't want to know it. Because at his core, Brett knew who his old man was, and he didn't need to know anyone like that. He knew enough people who were better, people who didn't just run off at the first sign of trouble.

  He didn't need some kind of 'role model' who would run off at the first sign of trouble. And Amy didn't need someone in her life who was already planning to run off before they'd even gone on their first date.

  5

  Amy

  Present Day

  She could feel his eyes on her. It wasn't the look that he'd given her back in high school. Maybe there was too much to explain, since then. That was what she'd figured, that the baggage was going to get in the way. Apparently it had, in spite of whatever hopes she might have had. No, she corrected herself. She'd had some silly fantasies and she knew that was all they were.

  There never was a hope that they'd just pick up their weird thing from a thousand years ago. He had moved on, probably had a girlfriend—she'd have guessed wife, but there wasn't anyone living at that big god damn house of his, and there was no ring on his finger.

  She hadn't let herself be fooled by those fantasies, because if she did, then she was a dupe, and she wasn't going to let herself be duped. Especially by her own stupid imagination. She was too smart for any of that.

  He looked over at her for a minute. What was he even look at her for?

  "Eyes on the road," she said automatically. She sounded like a bitch to her own ears, but she didn't know what she was supposed to sound like.

  His eyes moved back to the road. Then he hung his arm out the window and relaxed a little, and she tried to do the same. It didn't work. What was with him? He was suppo
sed to be the one who was freaking out. She was the one who was supposed to be cool and distant.

  That was the difference between her now and her in high school. In school, she'd been moving a thousand different ways, and chasing some idea of what 'cool' was supposed to be, and she wanted nothing more than to be liked. Not by everyone, but by the people who were important.

  She wouldn't have admitted it at the time, of course. That would have been a thousand steps too far. But that was the reality, admit it or not. She'd learned a lot since then. And she'd gotten used to her own skin. She didn't need to change it to be pretty, didn't need to 'fix' herself to be comfortable. Because she'd gotten comfortable with who she really was.

  But now she was the one on-edge, the one who was nervous, the one who didn't know what to do with herself. He should have been the one who needed comforting, but he was completely at rest as he drove. Like he was all by himself on a relaxing Sunday drive. It drove her nuts.

  "So, you decided not to leave town?"

  His eyes flicked over to her, and then back to the road before she could think about correcting him on it.

  "It wasn't the right time after all."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "More or less," he said. Like he was bored by the line of questioning. Her teeth clicked in her mouth. She was going to get him to pay attention to her if it killed her.

  "How's the old town?"

  "Same as before, I guess. Your friend had a kid with some meth-head."

  "Shannon, you mean?"

  "Yeah. I guess that's her name."

  "She was supposed to be my host."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "But she bailed."

  "Yeah, I guess that's about right. Meth head boyfriend and all. So what happened with you? Cello? Really? I always figured you for a guitar kinda girl."

  She shrugged. It was ancient history at this point. She'd been playing it six hours a day as long as she could recall, at this point. "I knew how to play in high school," she said.