STEPBROTHER Love 2 (5 page)

Chapter 7

I woke to the sun shining in my face.

Okay, that shouldn’t be happening.

I sleep with black out curtains pulled and a sleeping mask—It has Strawberry Shortcake, the doll, stenciled on both eyes, and smells lightly of that wonderful, totally synthetic Strawberry Shortcake smell.

I shielded my eyes and looked over the mound of muscle I was using as a pillow.

Oh, that was Joshua.  I leaned in and was about to lick his magnificent chest when I looked over at his alarm clock and saw it was eight thirteen in the A.M. 

Holy crap!

I had to be at work at nine a.m.

I surged out of bed, grabbing the sheet that was covering us both and wrapping it around myself.  I rocketed toward the bedroom door and grabbed for the knob.  But then I stopped, looking back over my shoulder at Joshua.

He was lying there, naked as the day he was born, looking so gorgeous, so sexy, so… well…
innocent
.  Well, if someone could look innocent and able to fuck you unconscious at the same time.

And somehow he had slept right through me jumping out of bed and pulling the sheet off him.

I wondered what else the man could sleep through.

I rushed out of his room and down the hall to my bedroom.

I took a hasty shower, dried off, threw my wet hair in a ponytail, threw on a bra and panties, a polo shirt and a pair of khaki slacks, slipped on some socks and my pair of Sketchers, grabbed my purse and my keys and ran down stairs and out the side door. 

My stomach started growling about the time McDonald’s appeared on my horizon. 

I careened into their parking lot, sliding into the blessedly short drive-through line and ordered a small iced coffee, two breakfast burritos, and a hash brown.  I was still eating when I rolled into the Centennial Park Convalescence Center’s parking lot at eight fifty-eight a.m.

Two minutes to spare.

I lucked out when Paul found me somewhere to get physical therapy experience hours that also would pay me.  A paid internship.  I was pretty sure such a thing was unheard of, but Edie, the head of the physical therapy department, was more than happy to pay me for walking patients, helping them learn to use walkers, to better control their wheel chairs, and how to dress themselves again—putting on shoes and tying shoelaces was a major obstacle for some.

I loved it.  Helping people regain at least part of their independence.

I breezed through the door of the PT department and found a small herd of sixty, seventy, and eighty year olds waiting for me.

I smiled and greeted them by name.

I’d only been working there for two weeks, and would only be there until the beginning of January, but these folks really grew on you fast.  Dezzie and her replaced hip.  Carl and his broken arm (he’d just got the cast off this week).  Leona and her arthritic knee.

They all made my heart melt.

Thank god Edie said I could come back during summer break.

“You’re almost late,” Edie said as I stowed my purse under the counter of the workstation.  She winked.  “Almost.”

I smiled and looked out at the lineup of patients.

I breathed in and out, and felt… well, except for a dull ache down between my legs, I was feeling pretty damn good.

No, I was feeling excellent.

“Hey, Daydreaming-Beauty,” Leona groused.  “I’ve got a wash and curl scheduled at ten.  Can we get this show on the road?”

I gave my head a little shake and turned to face Leona.  She was a wrinkled, iron gray haired woman in her early seventies, and she dressed neat as a pin.  She also had rheumatoid arthritis in both knees.

“I’m ready, Miss Leona.  Let’s warm up in the chair and then move to the table.”

Leona frowned.  “I hate the table.  All that clenching and unclenching.  It’s ridiculous.  Can’t I just warm up in the chair and then we can hit halls with my walker?”

“Leona,” I said, laughing.

“I bedazzled the hell out of that thing.” She pointed over to a walker originally painted black, but that now sported a glittery pink/gold finish embellished with faux gemstones of every color in the rainbow.  “We’ll blind those nosey busybodies over on A Wing.”

I gave her my best no nonsense look. 

She gave it right back to me in spades.

I sighed and shrugged.  “Fine, fine… it’s not like any of those exercises are going to help you walk better, or get stronger.” 

Leona looked up at me meekly.

“But,” I said, leaning in and scowling half-heartedly.  “I thought you wanted to go home at the end of the month?”

“I do,” she griped.

I nodded.  “Good. Then we’ll warm up in the chair and move to the table.  After that we’ll take your Bedazzle-mobile out for a spin.  Okay?”

I smiled and she reached up and pinched my cheeks.

“You have the cutest cheeks!  I just want to pinch them ‘til they…” 

She pursed her lips, searching for the right word.

“Until they bleed?” I asked.

Leona realized she was still pinching my cheeks and let go.

I broke out laughing.

It was all so ridiculous.

Was I going to get pinched by everyone?

First Joshua and his wicked teeth and crazy fingers.  And now Leona.

I felt heat blossom in my cheeks.

How wonderful it had been to have him sucking and licking and biting at my nipples.

Leona cleared her throat loudly, and with a lengthy annoyed tone.

I blinked the stepbrother dust from my eyes and was skewered on the point of Leona’s sharp stare.

“What gives?”

I blinked again.  “Huh?”

Leona rolled her eyes.  “You’re usually all peppy and focused, but today you’re a freaking zombie… a zombie with a wistful smile plastered on her face.  What’s wrong with you?”

I had sex…

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

And it was marvelous
! 

Her eyes squinted to slits and she bit her lip.

And then her eyes popped open like fireworks.

“Oh… my… God!” she chortled.  “You had sex, didn’t you?”

My mouth fell open and I tried to deny it… but I had, and I wasn’t used to lying.

That was going to be a problem when mom and dad came home from their honeymoon.

Dear god… let me be able to lie to my parents.

I sat down on the exercise table, so I could talk easier to Leona in her wheelchair, and let my face fall into my hands.

“What am I going to do?”

“What do you mean ‘What am I going to do?’” Leona said sarcastically.  “You’re going to go track down this sexual god—I mean, I thought you were going to be one of those girls that either starts collecting stray cats, or gets a spiky haircut like my daughter Jennifer, and tells me she’s a lesbian on my birthday.”

I looked up and felt the laugh bubble float up from my belly and explode from my mouth.

“On your birthday?”

She nodded sagely.  “Would it have killed her to do that on her own birthday?  But no, she announces it over the freaking PA system, when she was supposed to say a toast to me, but instead she comes out of the closet.”

I sighed and patted her hand.  “Wow… that sucks.”

Leona shrugged.  “It’s okay. I’m going to tell everyone at their wedding—it’s next month at the Doubleday—about how I caught her and Mindy Hooch making out in the garage when she was sixteen.  They both had braces, and they’d got stuck trying to push away from each other so fast.  She thinks I bought her accidentally banging their teeth together during hopscotch.  Ha!”  Leona grinned wistfully.  “She’ll just die.”

I laughed nervously.  “I know I would.”  I couldn’t not think of how Joshua and I had almost been caught kissing two years ago.  What if mom or Paul had seen us?

What if they already know?  

That would be…
shiiit
… my world would end.

“So,” Leona said belligerently, “about you having sex, finally.  You were a virgin, right?”

I closed my eyes and grimaced.  “Yes, it was my first time.”  And my second and third… and fourth.  “And if you can tell, and we’ve only known each other for a couple weeks, my mom is going to know the second she lays eyes on me.”

Leona leaned over and pinched my cheek again, this time so hard I squealed like a mouse caught in a trap.

“Suck it up.  So you’re not a virgin anymore.  Unless you’re going to marry a prince or go into a convent, I don’t think it will matter.  Not to you
or
your mother.”

If you only knew. 

My first time was with my stepbrother.  

She leveled me with a glare.  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“I can’t tell you.”  I can’t tell anyone…ever.

Leona took a sharp breath in, her eyes bugging out.  “You didn’t sleep with a professor?”  She clucked her tongue and tapped her glitter dusted hot pink acrylic nails against her chin.  “Your basketball coach?”

“A world of no.  On both fronts.”  I had to change the subject.  “So are you taking a date to your daughter’s wedding?”

“Victor or Ned.  Whichever one is up and walking by then.” 

Victor had a new knee joint, and Ned had a double hip replacement. 

My money was on Ned.  He was a go-getter… plus it was easier to recover when you got both joints done at the same time.  Usually the “good” joint went bad overcompensating for the “bad” joint.  So by the time you got the “bad” one replaced, the “good” one needed replacing as well.

If they did both the first time around, the recovery was usually less than half the time of just replacing one joint.

And don’t get me started on pins to let the broken joint or bone heal.  Those never worked, and the patient always suffered through their convalescence instead of getting stronger and making a full recovery.

“So who is he?”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes.  “You’re incorrigible.”

“Does that mean you’re going to tell me?”

I looked at her and sighed.

“No.  But it does mean we can skip the table…
for today
.”

“Girly… that’s the best news I’ve had all month.” She cooed.  “Even better than when they shocked me back to life after my heart attack.  Now
that
was a hell of a thing!”

Chapter 8

Joshua

I woke up with the sun in my face—no better way to begin the day.

I stretched, scratched my chest, and then my balls.

There was no sheet… and I was naked…

Huh…

Why would I be naked?

Oh, Cali…

Cali…

Cali…

She was a cover-hog… who knew?

I rolled over to wrap my arms around a most assuredly naked Cali…

And found myself alone in my bed.

I opened my eyes and looked around, all the way around my bedroom.

She wasn’t anywhere.

Huh…

Okay, I was suddenly feeling like the girl here.

She’d left me.  After having all that great, fucking mind altering sex, she’d left me all alone. 

She didn’t wake me up or kiss me good-bye.

Huh…

I rolled over to my nightstand and found my cell.  I flicked through my contacts and clicked on “Princess.”

One ring.

Two rings.

She picked up on the third ring.  “So I see you finally woke up.”

“Someone, who will remain nameless—
princess
—rushed off without saying a word, or trying to take advantage of me in my sleep.”

She laughed.  Not her usually guarded laugh, but a throaty, sexy laugh.  “You poor baby.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at work, silly,” she said.  She had the sweetest voice.  “Some of us have to work, remember?”

“Is that the virgin killer?” a foggy female voice asked and then laughed.

“Leona… please.” There was a pause.  “He didn’t kill anyone.”

“Wrong, sweetie.  He killed the virgin you.  Now you’re the woman you.”

I shot up in bed and tried to rub the confusion out of my eyes.  “Cali, are you telling people about us?”

“Of course not!” she said contemptuously.

Another pause.

“She guessed.”

“She guessed?” I echoed in an increasingly irritated tone.

“Yeah, she guessed I lost my virginity.  But I have not told her anything else.”

I had an image flash through my head of Cali standing there in a girl scout’s uniform making the girl scouts’ sign, pledging that “I have not told her anything else.”

“Come on; give an old lady a thrill.  Tell me who this stud of yours is.  Do you have any pictures?  Any nudies?”

“Leona!”

“Don’t tell her ANYTHING!” I cried out. 

Jesus
fucking
Christ.  That’s all I needed was for a gaggle of old women gossiping about Cali and her stepbrother/lover.

FUCK!

It was too quiet.

“Cali?”

“I’m not stupid.”

And that’s all she said, because she hung up on me.