Max: A Stepbrother Romance (7 page)

"I'm sorry, Martin. It's just been a bad day, that's all."

"It's been over two months. I can't wait any longer."

"Just give me until the end of the month", Sash pleads.

"The end of the month is twenty eight days away."

"The end of the week?"

"I've got to eat too, you know. I have people queuing up for this apartment. It's a good apartment. I'm a good landlord. Not everyone is like me. When you were late with the money I said, 'sure no problems, you take as long as you like', but enough is enough. Two months is too long. I've got a little girl to feed."

Sharing the proportions of her father, Sash would call her anything but little, but she knows what he means. She sighs again. She was in a fix and she knew it.

"Can you give me until the end of the week, please, Martin?"

"Are you going to get a job by the end of the week?"

Martin eyes her suspiciously.

"I sincerely hope so."

"Final deadline, no extensions. The end of the week or you've got to leave."

"Thank you, Martin. I won't let you down, I promise."

He's still stood there, looking suspicious, while Sash closes the door, kicks off her shoes and slumps down into the sofa.

That morning's interview had been a complete and utter waste of her time. She was sick of spending hours filling out application forms, weeks waiting to hear back from companies she had no interest in working for, and whole mornings trying to sell herself for roles she knew were beneath her. 

They hadn't told her either way, of course, but she knew from the moment she walked into the room, based on the atmosphere alone, that it was going to be a no. It was the same old story, day in day out.

Either she wasn't qualified, or she was too qualified, or she was qualified in the wrong way, or she was too pretty, or not pretty enough or pretty but just not in the way they were looking for right now. She went to one interview last week where they told her she was too young. Too young to work in a college library putting books back on shelves. She looked the interviewer in the eye, shook her head in disbelief, stood up and walked straight out.

Everything that Sash chose to do of late seemed to be a waste of time and money. University debts, bills stacking up, behind on rent and nothing but a jar of cents to her name was seriously beginning to bum her out. There wasn't even anything decent in the fridge to eat.

She knew what she had to do, but she just didn't want to admit to it. Seeing
him
was such a last resort, she'd have to be so desperate there was no other way.

The trouble was, she knew she'd already exhausted every other option.

"T
hat's a Siamese fighting fish", Alex says, "They tend to be rather aggressive. Your brother is quite keen on them."

"He's not my brother."

Sash straightens back up to face her. 

"Oh."

Alex raises her eyebrows and forms an O shape with her thick, perfectly painted lips. "My mistake. It's just in the appointment book it says 'little sister.'"

"Our parents are married, that's all. I think he thinks it's cute calling me it. We've never really been all that close."

Alex is a remarkable woman. She has wrinkle-free skin like recently pumped oil, and stands over six foot tall, towering above Sash when they find themselves side by side.

"I didn't even know he had a sister."

"Step", Sash says, reminding her of the distinction.

"Of course."

Alex curls her face up into a well practiced smile, while Sash breaks eye contact to look again at the fish tank. "Maybe there's a lot about your boss that you haven't realized yet."

Time passes agonizingly slowly.

Alex returns to her desk and Sash listens to her answering a telephone that seems to never stop ringing, her voice clipped, polite and expedient. There are huge paintings that fill the vast wall space around them, a floor to ceiling window of glass that frames the ever changing city below, carpets of oriental design and lampshades that look like they've been lifted from a movie set of the latest futuristic blockbuster.

Sash sinks into the hug of a gargantuan leather arm chair, the depth of the seat enough to lift her legs completely off the ground.

Like a child dominated by the size of the world they have only just realized they are inhabiting, she sits there in awe of her surroundings. She turns expensive fashion magazines over in her hands, unable to concentrate for long enough to read any of the articles, and then stands again to look at the city below, the workers running from place to place like ants in an industrial garden.

Back at the fish tank, she walks with them as they swim about in their world, one side of the tank to the other, trapped in a never ending circuit of unhappiness, broken only by the inability to remember it for more than fifteen seconds at a time.

Clown fish, butterfly betta, loaches and swordtails, every single one of them beautiful and unique.

After another thirty minutes has ambled by, at which point Sash is about to give up completely and leave, Alex finally tells her he's ready. 

Suddenly, after all that time waiting, Sash realizes that even though
he
might be, she's not ready at all. She wants to back out, but now, obviously, she can't.
He's
expecting her and
she's
here. The time to leave has already gone. The decision has already been made.

Approaching the huge wooden doors that stand in the way of her and her past, she feels her heart beating frenetically in her chest. Alex nods encouragingly. Sash swallows hard. Finally, with little other choice left, she pushes her way through, ready to face her destiny.

He's stood to greet her, arms out passively, the offer of an embrace. His tousled hair a little bit longer than she remembers it, his chest even more robust, his eyes magnetic and debilitating, a universe
and
more inside each one.

"Sash", he says.

The word familiar on his lips, but rusty, as though too much time has passed since he's had reason to say it out loud.

Sash lets herself be taken, pressing herself close to her stepbrother for as long as she feels is acceptable, long enough anyway to breath in his familiar scent.

"You've got bigger", she says coyly, pulling herself away from him to stand a foot away, her arms by her side now, but his still around her protectively.

"I've got older", he says modestly.

"It doesn't look like it."

Sash steals a look into his eyes that lasts longer than she knows it should.

Dante smiles his contagious smile, and Sash can't help but smile too. She looks to her feet and then back up to her gorgeous stepbrother. Three years and the feelings still haven't gone away. She knew it too. She knew they wouldn't.

'What?" he asks flirtatiously, knowing
exactly
what Sash will be thinking.

"Nothing."

Sash shakes the moment away in a playful push to gain distance, desperate to show her stepbrother the meaning of their relationship
now
, desperate to show
herself
really, how much she has matured over the last three years, and how capable she has become of controlling her own emotions, even if the opposite is true.

"So, this is it, the beating heart of the Dante Hix empire."

She brushes past her brother, their shoulders rubbing together slightly, enough to make her skin buzz, and her heart skip a significant beat.

Dante watches her glide around. He watches the careful way she moves her feet, and the sensual way she touches everything. She has her back to him intentionally, keen to have him observe her, and not the other way round.

Like this, she has the illusion of being in control. Dante knows his stepsister well, but more than that, he knows about control and how best to achieve it.

Sash turns to face him.

The measured spin of a seasoned professional. Several meters split them, but even from here Sash can feel herself being pulled back towards him.
Never underestimate how dangerous the game is you're playing
. The words an internal memo, Sash takes a moment to tell herself.

The silence is palpable, almost alive. Like gunslingers locked in a wild west duel at high noon, they face each other down, each one looking for a sign to pick up their weapon and shoot. Three years in the wilderness and suddenly back in the same room.

Nothing has changed.

"It's been a while, Sash."

"Has it been long enough?"

Sash is unsure who the question is really meant for, and immediately embarrassed, she looks away.

"You tell me", Dante begins. "You were the one that couldn't-."

He can't finish the sentence, partly because he knows he doesn't need to.

Sash shrugs her shoulders, the skin there exposed by the cut of her dress. Her bone structure light, poised, elegant.

"It could have been different." Lost in the memory, her voice is almost too lightly for Dante to hear. "If you'd-. It doesn't matter anyway, that's not why I came here." She brushes it off and looks at him again. "There isn't any point going back over-."

Now she's the one who can't finish her sentence. Lost in his beautiful, stormy blue eyes, that familiar look that turns somersaults in her stomach, her heart can't help but yearn.

"You look good", Dante says, quick to take advantage. "I've missed you."

"Don't Dante", she warns him, at the very edge of letting herself go. "I didn't come for that. You know I didn't."

She turns away, making for the leather sofas in the corner of the room. Climbing into the single armchair, she kicks off her shoes and folds her bare feet up to the side of her.

"Do I?"

Dante turns to watch her. He wants to reach for his stepsister again. He wants to go back to that earlier embrace, to that buried time, much further in the past, and pull her out of it. He will, even if she doesn't know it yet.

"Please. I came here to ask for your help."

Dante takes the half a dozen or so paces across the room to join her, and as Sash watches her stepbrother advance, unable to take her eyes off him, she can't help but find herself spellbound by the natural sexiness he effortlessly exudes, in an action so unquestionably simple. In the few seconds in takes him to get to his chair, he knows he's already won her over.

As he leans back into the sofa, it gathers him like an old friend. He stretches his legs, smooths down the pleat of his bespoke suit trousers and steals a brief but necessary moment to admire his beautiful stepsister.

He shifts his gaze across her face, lingering just long enough to remind himself of her huge, chocolate brown eyes, the cute button nose that she's always hated, and the plump, perfectly proportioned lips that bring repressed memories floating back to the surface of his mind.

He continues, across the petiteness of her frame, the awkward fragility of her collarbones, that stick out to make dimples across her upper torso in which he fought at one time to leave secret kisses, past an ample bosom she always complained was never enough, and onwards, deep into the crevices of a dress tucked neatly between her legs, that follows the shape of the perfect, athletic body she hides below it.

"I was surprised when you called me. I thought you didn't ever want to see me again."

Sash is about to contradict him, but she thinks better of it. Again she reminds herself that digging up the past and playing the blame game is not the reason she's come here.

"I'm in trouble." Sash levels her eyes at his. "I wouldn't have come at all if I wasn't desperate. You know I wouldn't. The last thing I want to do is open up the past."

Dante regards her, aware he'll need to select his words carefully.

"I'm done with that", she continues. "Done, completely. As far as I'm concerned it's over."

"How can I help?"

Dante reaches forwards to pour them both a glass of water from the jug that sits permanently on the hand crafted cherry wood coffee table. Sat forwards like this, their knees are almost touching.  Sash shifts in her seat, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

"I need money." She gathers up her glass and pausing to drink. "My rent. I've got no food. Then there's University. I've got bills, Dante. The fucking door won't open properly."

Dante sits back again. He sips his water and contemplates his stepsister, his mind turning over.

"Can you help me?"

"How much do you need?"

"A lot. I don't know how much, but a lot. I'm looking for work, but no one wants to hire me. This city fucking sucks."

Dante places his glass back on the coffee table, trying to match it as perfectly as possible to the semi-circular water mark that indicates where he lifted it from. Once satisfied, he turns it a quarter turn to the right and leans back into the sofa again.

"What kind of work?"

His hands come together to rest under his chin.

"Anything. It doesn't matter, they won't hire me anyway. I'm too young or too eager or too shy, or who knows? Just not what they're looking for. There are a million excuses and I feel like I've been given every single one of them. I'm sick of looking.

"I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment, Dante. If I don't find a way to pay my landlord he's going to get the police to evict me. I haven't got anywhere else to go. I kept turning it over and over in my mind and even this morning I wasn't going to come. Is there anything that you can do? I know we haven't seen each other for a long time, and I know-."

She pauses, the reality of what she is about to say almost too difficult for her to continue with it.

"-We both know what happened, but that's in the past now. I'm over it. I need you, Dante. I need your help."

A long moment passes while Dante lets the reality of the situation sink in. Her phone call in the first place was a pleasant surprise, her desperation now, unexpected.

She's come back to him finally and she needs his help. Not only that, she needs
him
too.

"I may have something that I can offer you", he says finally, his furtive mind already rich with possibilities. "Something that might suit us both perfectly."