Mine - A Stepbrother Romance Read online

  It was just an unfortunate reality that part of getting to know him meant dealing with his heinous stepson. Dammit. Why did every single one of my thoughts lead back to Mason?

  “It’s fine, Tina. Really. It was just a mistake,” I finally said.

  “You know what your problem is, right?” she asked. “You’re in your late teens, you’ve got all these crazy hormones flying around, and you’re not doing anything about it. I know you want to wait for the perfect guy, and that’s fine…but you should stay well away from guys like Mason Crest in the meantime, because it can be tempting and you might end up doing something you’ll regret. That’s probably why you kissed him back.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “I feel so bad for telling you to hook up with him when you first met him. It’s like I put the idea into your subconscious or something, before we found out what a dick he is,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, it’s never going to happen again. I’m not even remotely interested in him,” I said, trying to convince myself more than I was trying to convince her.

  I was totally, absolutely, completely one-hundred percent lying to myself.

  ***

  A few hours later, I was well into my day at work when the elevator dinged. I looked up at the chrome doors out of habit to see who had arrived on the floor, and Victoria stepped out and approached me, stiletto heels clacking against the tiles as they always did. If she didn’t have a perpetually-snooty look fixed on her face, then she might have actually been nice to look at, but I couldn’t stand being around her.

  All she did was go out of her way to make bitchy comments about me, my job performance, my appearance, and anything else she could think of, all in a voice dripping with contempt. Unless Roy was around, of course. In that case, her voice would be sweet as cherry pie and she’d sing my praises until the cows came home. Two-faced bitch. She barely rated above Mason on my list of undesirables.

  At first, the other staff members in the office had been on the fence about the situation. They already didn’t seem to like Victoria very much, but they’d also initially been wary of me because the way they saw it, I was just the CEO’s daughter who’d been handed a job despite having zero qualifications. That was true, but they’d gradually warmed to me when they’d realized I was here to work and learn, not screw around all day.

  Once they’d realized that, the barriers all seemed to drop, and they were friendly as anything. I think that annoyed Victoria even more.

  “Arizona,” she said sharply, tapping my desk with a pen as if I hadn’t already noticed her presence. The way she said my name made it sound as if I were a convicted pedophile awaiting trial.

  “Uh-huh?” I said, pressing my lips into a semblance of a smile.

  “You haven’t forgotten about the media lunch, have you?”

  Oh crap. I had forgotten. Layla had organized for a bunch of reporters to do a story on our haphazard little family now that the news had spread about Roy finding me, and I’d been dreading it for the last week. I had no idea how it had slipped my mind, and I looked up at her.

  “Um, what time is it again?”

  She rolled her eyes. “In just under an hour. I came to get you and escort you to the hotel restaurant where it’s being held at. Roy and Layla are already there, and Mason is heading there straight from the airport. He just got back from L.A.”

  I stood and hastily gathered up my things. “I’m ready to go,” I said.

  She shot me another look of pure disdain. “That’s what you’re wearing? Really playing up the whole ‘I’m just a poor girl from the country’ angle, aren’t you?”

  I gazed down at my cream-colored silk blouse and black pencil skirt with my eyebrows furrowed. What was wrong with my outfit? I hadn’t even picked it; it was one of the work outfits the stylist had sent over. As usual, Victoria was just being a bitch for no reason. I was usually bad at standing up for myself, but I’d gone without my morning coffee earlier on, and I was not in the mood for this crap.

  She turned away, and I called out to her.

  “Wait. Can I ask you something?” I said. “I always seem to get the impression that you don’t really like me all that much. Can you tell me why? I mean, if I’ve done something to offend you, all you have to do is tell me instead of treating me like dirt.”

  She narrowed her eyes and sniffed before replying.

  “Fine. You really want to know?” she said. “Hmm, let’s see. You wander in here just a month ago to monopolize all of Roy’s time, and everything just gets handed to you on a silver platter. You get to live in that nice big mansion and drive his nice new cars, and meanwhile, I’ve been the one to work like a dog for him and take care of him all these years. Five years, Arizona. He’s practically been like family to me. And then you showed up.”

  She practically spat those last few words, and I wrinkled my nose, trying and failing to see her point. “Okay, well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but he is my father. I can’t help that. I didn’t ask for any of this. I had no idea he even existed until a month ago.”

  She put her hands on her slim hips. “Exactly. You didn’t even know he existed. I did. I’ve helped him. I’ve worked eighty hour weeks for that man for this long, and it should be me getting rewarded, not some little hick from the middle of nowhere who’s done nothing to deserve it.”

  I clutched my handbag in a death-grip, resisting the urge to smack her in the face with it. “It’s your job to work for him and help him out. Your sense of entitlement is insane. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t know he existed until recently. If you want to blame someone for that, blame the man who kidnapped me. I would’ve loved to have been in Roy’s life before now.”

  I knew I was right, but her words still stung. I’d barely been able to spend a cent on the credit cards I’d received since I arrived here, purely because I didn’t feel like I’d done anything to deserve it. It was Roy’s money, not mine. He was always lavishing me with gifts of expensive clothes, dinners and entertainment stuff, not to mention my room in his Newport mansion…but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t earned any of it, even while working at his office.

  Victoria was still an entitled bitch, though. Seriously, was she on crack or something? I couldn’t think of another reason why she was being so delusional. Just because she saw Roy as some sort of father figure didn’t mean he had to treat her like a daughter and give her all the things he’d given to me.

  She stared at me silently for a minute and then held her hands up. “Fine. Let’s just go to this lunch and we’ll forget I said anything. All right?”

  “Sure,” I said, stalking ahead of her to the elevator. “Let’s go.”

  I wasn’t actually going to forget what she’d said anytime soon, but the last thing I needed was for her to be up my ass even more than usual over a petty little spat. Not when I was about to go face public enemy number one, otherwise known as Mason, at this lunch thing.

  Ugh. How was I going to pretend for all the journalists that we were all one big happy family? On top of that, how was I going to pretend I hadn’t had my tongue down my stepbrother’s throat just a couple of weeks ago?

  It was so crazy that I could be so attracted to someone and yet despise them so much. Surely there had to be some sort of scientific explanation for it. Maybe Mason just had really powerful pheromones that made all my lady-parts flip out.

  Yup, that had to be it. Pheromones.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MASON

  I picked up a salmon puff and shoved it in my mouth before glancing across the table as my mother hissed at me like a cat on angel dust.

  “Mason!” she said. “You’re not meant to be eating the appetizers just yet. We’re still waiting on Arizona.”

  Of course. Arizona, the hot little thorn in my side. I’d barely seen her for the last couple of weeks, but that hadn’t stopped me from thinking about her every five fucking seconds. After the kiss we’d shared, she’d made it pretty clear that nothing el
se was ever going to happen between us, and I’d respected her wishes and left her alone. For now. I’d even volunteered to go to a bunch of charity events in California that my mother couldn’t be bothered attending just so I could get away from her for a while.

  I wasn’t going to leave her alone forever, though. Oh no. I couldn’t hold out that long, so now that we were being forced to play happy families over lunch, I was going to have a bit of fun. How else would I liven things up around here? It wasn’t like I was getting laid. My dick still seemed to go limp every time I so much as thought about another chick.

  “Sorry I’m a little late. I decided to get changed.”

  A breathless feminine voice sounded from beside me, and I looked over, trying not to do a double take. Jesus. Arizona had just appeared at the table, and it took all the self-restraint I had to not stand up, throw her over my shoulder and walk out of the hotel restaurant right in front of Roy, my mother and all the reporters and photographers.

  She was wearing a dark purple silken wrap dress, and my cock stiffened as I took in the slight hint of cleavage and the way it ever-so-slightly skimmed her curves, accentuating that perfect hourglass figure of hers. She had dark stilettos on to match, and as she walked around to the other side of the table, her hips and ass swayed with her every movement, almost drawing a tortured groan from my mouth until I jammed another salmon puff inside it instead.

  “You look lovely, darling,” my mother cooed. “That color is so slimming on you.”

  Ha. Just ten minutes ago I’d overheard her on the phone to Emile saying that Arizona needed to lose ten pounds and get a better haircut if she was going to be making public media appearances, even though this whole bullshit media lunch thing had been all her idea. Telling Arizona that the dress was ‘slimming’ on her was a thinly-veiled insult anyway. How did no one else see through her?

  “You do look perfect. Very mature and stylish,” Roy declared, smiling from the head of the table as Arizona took her place. Was he kidding? She didn’t look ‘mature’. She looked like a sultry sex goddess, not some middle-aged accountant.

  Her seat at the table was directly across from me, and I noticed she made a concerted effort to avert her eyes from mine. C’mon, Arizona, I willed her. Look at me. She leaned forward to take a sip of water from her glass, and just as I noticed that I could almost see straight down the front of her dress, that was when she finally decided to look at me.

  Shit, now she thought I was even more of a pervy sleaze than she had before, if that was even possible.

  “Well, let’s get started,” my mother said, snapping her fingers. “Dig in, everyone.”

  Arizona poked some food around her plate, obviously uncomfortable with the whole setup.

  “Mr. Vierra,” a brunette reporter said, thrusting a recorder in Roy’s face. I think her name was Megan something-rather. “What’s it been like for the last month with Arizona finally back in your life?”

  Roy wiped around his mouth with a napkin and smiled. “It’s been like a dream come true,” he replied. “My daughter and I have been taking lots of time to get to know each other properly, and I have to say that I’m honored to be blessed with such a wonderful girl. All these years apart haven’t changed a thing. I still love her just as much now as I did when I first held her, and I’m extremely proud of the young woman she has become. I only wish her mother could be here today as well.”

  “And Layla, how about you?” Megan said, turning her attention to my mother. “How did you feel when you found out your husband had a nineteen year old daughter?”

  My mother threw her a dazzling smile. “Well, of course I already knew he had a daughter. We’ve prayed for all these years that she was still out there, safe and happy, and I’m just so pleased that I can be part of the effort to make her feel loved and welcome now that she’s come back to us.”

  Bullshit. I knew my mother better than anyone. If she had her way, Arizona would be on a bus back to Wisconsin without a penny of Roy’s fortune. The way she saw it, it was her money, simply because she was married to the guy. But of course no one else could know that. Oh no, she had an image to uphold.

  “Oh, of course. It really is fantastic, isn’t it? And so surreal,” Megan said. “Now, the lady of the moment…Arizona, what’s it been like for you to adjust to this new life? I understand you used to live in Leyton, Wisconsin. What did you do there?”

  Arizona looked up from her plate. “I was a waitress at a hotel restaurant.”

  “So you go from being a small-town waitress to being an heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune. It’s like a Cinderella story, isn’t it?”

  “Well, not really,” Arizona said with an innocent smile. “I’m still waiting on my handsome prince to arrive. So far he’s nowhere to be seen.”

  She looked right at me when she said that last sentence, and I narrowed my eyes. That was a subtle dig at me, but a dig no less. Everyone laughed at her quip, and she fielded a bevy of questions from around the table until Megan turned her attention to me.

  “So Mason, you’ve grown up as an only child, and although you’re an adult now, it still must be difficult to adjust to having a new stepsibling. How would you say your relationship with your stepsister has developed so far?”

  “Well, we’ve only had a month to get to know each other, but we’ve already shared a couple of intimate moments,” I replied, sliding my foot up over Arizona’s bare leg under the table.

  She choked on her soda as I finished my sentence, prompting quizzical looks from everyone at the table.

  “Sorry,” she gasped out. “My drink went down the wrong pipe.”

  God, I’d missed making Arizona squirm. I’d rather she was squirming underneath me as I drove my cock into her, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon unless she got a lobotomy and completely changed personalities, so this is what I was stuck with. I could barely hold back my grin, and the journalist turned her attention back to me.

  “Intimate?”

  “Sorry, that probably wasn’t the right word. Close, I meant. We’ve hung out, been to a party together, had movie nights…all that kinda stuff.”

  Arizona’s nostrils flared slightly, and I reached across and patted her hand before continuing. “It’s like we’ve known each other our whole lives, isn’t it, sis?”

  “Mm-hmm. It sure is, bro,” she said, plastering a saccharin sweet smile on her face and aiming her foot at my shin under the table.

  It was like a fly attacking a bulldog. I barely even felt her kick, and to be honest, it made me horny as hell. I loved it when she got angry. That wild, fiery look in her eyes drove me absolutely crazy, and once again I resisted the urge to grab her, bend her over my knee and spank her for being such a grumpy little tease.

  As the journalists asked my mother and Roy more questions, I pulled out my phone and sent Arizona a text. Her phone vibrated a second later, and she set it down on her lap before looking at what I’d sent.

  I can see down your dress when you lean forward. Is that for my benefit?

  She threw me a dirty look and typed furiously, pulling the front of her dress up at the same time, and my phone buzzed a second later.

  You’re a dirty pervert. Leave me alone.

  “You know, I’m really surprised to see how well your family has come together like this,” Megan said to Roy at the head of the table. “This kind of drama could really affect other people, but it looks like Arizona has blended rather seamlessly into the family.”

  I covertly sent Arizona another text: I want to blend seamlessly into you.

  She tapped out a reply immediately. That doesn’t even make sense, moron, she wrote, but I could see her sexy pout quirking up in a little smile. Aha. Gotcha, tease. A surefire way into any chick’s pants was to make her laugh, so maybe I was in with a chance after all.

  My phone buzzed again a second later. No, was all it said. Jesus, she was a mind reader now? That girl was too smart for her own good.

  As the l
unch ended an hour later and the reporters and photographers packed up their cameras and other gear, I caught her off guard and pulled her aside.

  “I was thinking we should go grab coffee, sis,” I said. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Really?” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “I thought we were the best of friends, hanging out all the time and having movie nights. At least that’s what you told the press.”

  “I told them what they wanted to hear,” I said. “And so did you, hypocrite. Now come on, let’s go.”

  “I’m busy. I have to get back to work. Something you probably have no concept of.”

  “Oh come on, there must be the teensiest window of time for you to fit me into your incredibly busy schedule,” I said, my lips curling up in the famous Crest smirk.

  “Believe me, if there was a window, it’d be a really high one and I’d throw you right out of it,” she replied.

  With that, she turned and sashayed away, and I stood and watched her go, hypnotized by her perky ass as it swayed from side to side with each step she took.

  A small part of my brain was telling me to just give up, let her go. If I cultivated this feeling of mutual dislike, maybe I could do that. Maybe it’d be okay. My dick seemed to have other plans, though. Plans I didn’t like one bit. I hated feeling out of control. It freaked me the fuck out. And Arizona seemed to make lose all sense of control.

  I was screwed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ARIZONA

  Another day, another dollar, or so the old saying goes. It was early afternoon in the office, and I was replying to a bunch of emails and trying my hardest to keep Mason off my mind. Story of my life. Now that he was home from L.A., he’d gone straight back to trying to piss me off as much as possible. He was just trying to get under my skin, and it was working.

  I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how many girls he’d hooked up with while he was over there. L.A. was filled with models and starlets, and with his looks, it wouldn’t be hard for him to have a veritable revolving door of them coming in and out of his hotel room. I hated how it made me feel. I had no idea why, but I wanted to be the one he kissed. I wanted to be the one he pressed up against the wall just like he had at that party, and I could barely look at myself in the mirror for wanting those things. It was so wrong. He was such a jerk, and also my stepbrother on top of that.