But after a secret journey of transformation, he’s back—ready to take over leadership from his father at Ryker Arms—with an impressive new physique and a plan to prove them all wrong.

Especially her.

The one woman who hurt him the most.

Annalesa—sweet, smart, stunning.

And his stepsister.

The girl he could never have.

The girl who wouldn’t look twice at him anyway—especially in front of her stuck-up friends.

Now he’s going to make her want him.

Show her just what she was missing.

And hurt her, just like she hurt him.

He’s got the weapon and he’s taken aim—but he didn’t count on his own heart getting caught in the crossfire.

BIG

By Emme Rollins

Prologue

Annalesa had taken her family for granted, and now she was about to lose them. Maybe she already had. She looked at the photographs on the mantle over the big fireplace—every time she stood next to it, she felt small, child-like, no matter how much she’d grown—at the smiling faces of her mother, her stepfather, her stepbrother. She was there, too, in many of them, looking content, even happy.

Could she really lose them, all of them, at one time?

She turned away from the pictures, pacing the rug, wondering who else she could call. She’d contacted all the municipal airports in Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. She’d tried all of their cell phones, of course—and had left as calm a message she could on each. What else was there left to do but pace and wait?

The television was on in the corner, but she’d turned the sound down. Her cell phone was tucked into her pocket. Somehow she was sure the news of an emergency landing—or God forbid, a crashed one—of a Cessna Citation X with a Norwegian registration number on the tail was forthcoming, and she dreaded it with every cell in her body.

Annalesa vacillated between sitting woodenly on the sofa to pacing around the coffee table until she was dizzy and had to return to the couch again, all the while wondering who else she could possibly call.

She was alone. She’d been alone in the house plenty of times—although, there was always staff around somewhere—but this was different. She’d never felt so alone before, had never anticipated a loss so keenly as she was now. Her heart hammered in her chest and her vision blurred with tears as she paced round and round the table, her mind filled with images of them.

Please don’t let them die,
she pleaded, shoving away thoughts of twisted metal and flames. She couldn’t imagine their bodies among the wreckage. Didn’t want to. No God could be this cruel, to deprive her of the people closest to her. But Annalesa knew that was magical thinking. Accidents happened every day. Planes crashed. People died.

Not these people. Not
my
people.

Dizzy, she stopped in front of the fireplace again, looking at the photographs through prisms. She could only see their blurry faces now, the family she loved, the people she counted on, more than she ever would have admitted before this moment.

Not my Ric,
she thought, touching the edge of a frame that held her stepbrother’s high school graduation photograph. His shoulders were thick and broad in a dark grey suit, his dirty-blonde hair incorrigibly wavy. He had a rounded face—“baby-fat” his father called it, insisting he’d lose it eventually, as he grew into a man. But that hadn’t happened.

Ric was a man with insatiable appetites.

I can’t lose him. I can’t. I can’t.

It was all she could think. She couldn’t bear to dwell on memories of him, of the two of them on family vacations, skiing in Aspen, on the beaches in the South of France. Everything with Ric was an adventure. She’d never met another man like him, had judged every boy she’d gone out with against him as if he were her yardstick, and in fact, she realized, as she blinked back hot tears—he was. Always had been, since the first time they’d met—not too long after their parents had gotten together.

She wasn’t supposed to be thinking those things, but now, faced with the reality that she might lose him in such a painfully permanent way, those thoughts surfaced with a buoyancy that scared her. She couldn’t push them away, push them back down, where they belonged.

Resuming her pacing, Annalesa tried a new mantra, repeated over and over in time with her step.
They’re okay. They’re okay. They’re okay.

This new wave of magical thinking served to keep her calmer, until she was almost in a trance state, her breathing coming back to normal, her heartbeat slowing from a gallop to cantor. If she could just keep this up this marathon pacing session, she might just—

She gasped when someone caught her around the waist, lifting her right off her feet. At first, she thought she must be dreaming.

“Ric?”

He didn’t say a word. He just put his arms around her and held on while she struggled against him, demanding answers. He let her rail at him and beat on his chest until, finally, she burst into tears.

“Annalesa,” he murmured, speaking at last, pulling her head in so she could rest her wet cheek against his chest. “I didn’t go. I wasn’t on the flight.”

Which meant their parents were still missing. A shudder went through her and his arms tightened. She let herself lean against him, taking the comfort he offered.

His body was as soft as it was strong. At six-foot-five, he was a big man by any measure, but his nickname—“Big Dick”—was well-earned. He was easily eighty-pounds overweight for a man his size, although he carried it well. His best friend was his jiu-jitsu instructor, and Ric never had a problem keeping up. Her stepbrother just had very big appetite for everything life had to offer.

When he looked at her with those piercing, Norse, grey-green eyes of his, Ric missed nothing. Tonight they were full of tenderness and care. He knew she was afraid, he knew she’d been worrying herself sick, and now he was here, holding her, reassuring her.

She couldn’t help melting against him, afraid to admit the truth to herself, let alone speak it out loud. The thought of losing her family terrified her—but the moment she realized Ric hadn’t been on that plane, the truth had unfurled in her, undeniable. The relief that flooded in was like a heat, warm honey, sticky and sweet.

“I thought you were dead,” she choked out, safe in his arms, so grateful for his strong, patient silence. “If you died... Ric...”

She’d been so tightly wound, everything she’d been holding in finally let go. She wet his shirt with her tears until her breath hitched and her voice was almost gone. He held her, and they rocked together in the middle of the living room, both of them so very glad to see each other alive, and afraid they might never see their parents that way again.

Finally, she looked up at him.

Emotion flooded in like hot lava at the core of her universe. The moment she turned her face up to his, all her feeling for him reached its peak in that one, singular breath-holding moment.

And she kissed him.

Her lips found his without any thought at all. Her chin lifted and her mouth brushed against his as if it had a mind all its own. Like a flood, like the bursting forth of ripe fruit, there was no stopping her body, her arms sliding around his thick neck, tasting him for the first time.

Ric froze. He pulled his head back, looking at her for one long, aching, hesitant moment, both of them breathing hard.

Then he quickly inclined his head and returned her kiss with interest, stroking every little nook in her mouth, spidering his fingers across her back, pressing her hard against him.

Annalesa flushed in the heat of the moment, carried away by a tidal wave. A dam had burst between them now, and she couldn’t withstand the force of it, even if she’d wanted to try. She wanted him, here, now. Had always wanted him, if she was being honest with herself, and had never felt it so keenly as she did now, after being so afraid she’d lost him forever.

Ric gave a little groan against her lips when she climbed him like a tree, wrapping her legs round his waist, pulling up to meet the pressure of his kiss and losing herself in his warm, clean taste, the way the outside world fell away while he was holding her.

For that one moment, she forgot that her mother was lost somewhere out there with his father—that in just a couple of weeks, Ric would be going back to Norway for the third year of his degree, separating them by a continent.

But there were other things she forgot in that moment—things she didn’t like to think about in the first place. She forgot their rocky history, the push and pull of their sibling relationship. She forgot how her friends had always treated him. How she had a tendency to make excuses, because there wasn’t much in the world Annalesa feared more than conflict.

But in her heart of hearts, the truth had always been there. It burned in her, and it surfaced now.

She didn’t understand how anyone couldn’t love this man—Annalesa found herself so bursting with feeling for him, it made her ache all over. She put everything she felt for him into that kiss, and more. She gave herself over completely, let him know without a word that she was his for the taking, if he wanted her.

But Ric pushed her off.

Annalesa gave a little cry when he let her go, dumping her to the floor like she was some frenemy he’d forgotten he hated, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if she might have poisoned him while he wasn’t paying attention.

“Ric,” she pleaded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Don’t.” He held up a hand, the look on his face was enough to stop her. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“I—” She shook her head, bewildered. He looked at her like she was a snake that had bitten him, and Annalesa felt tears choking her throat, unable to voice any apology or explanation.

“No, Annalesa.” He shook his head slowly, the look on his face telling her the pain of being ridiculed, reviled and sneered at hadn’t melted away for him. “I’m not yours to make fun of. I won’t give you anything else to take back to the bitch-brigade. ‘Big Dick’ has finally had enough.”

With that, he turned and left, leaving her crying, ashamed, on the floor.

She didn’t blame him. She couldn’t, not after the way her “friends” had treated him. Why wouldn’t he think the same of her? Her shock and confusion left her limp, sobbing, unable to defend herself.

She didn’t go after him. Instead, she crawled up onto the couch to die. At least, that’s how it felt. She cried herself to sleep and woke when the phone rang. The house phone. She stumbled to pick up the receiver, finding Ric on the other line.

The U.S. Embassy at Curacao. The man on the line confirmed that their parents were safe and on their way back to Maine under escort.

“Ric?” she whispered, when the man had hung up. She could hear her stepbrother breathing. Listening. “Ric, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please...”

“Sometimes sorry just isn’t enough.”

Then there was silence.

Annalesa hugged her mother and stepfather tight when they came home. At breakfast the next morning, she looked at Ric across the table, pleading with her eyes, but he didn’t say a word to her.

Their parents, though, had an announcement.

They were separating.

Annalesa’s stepfather, Bradley, told them he was going to the Ryker Arms plant in Trondheim, and would be taking Ric with him. Annalesa’s mother said she wanted to return to England, and she wanted Annalesa to come with her.

“But I have a place at the University of Pennsylvania,” Annalesa reminded her.

“You can major in art history at Bristol,” her mother countered. She glanced at her husband, and then back at her daughter. “I need some time away.”

“What is this about?” Annalesa looked desperately between Brad and her mother, trying to decipher the communication passing between them. “I don’t understand.”

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