BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (23 page)

“Yeah, this whole working-my-way-up crap isn’t really doing much for me. My immediate boss is a jerk, and whenever I try reporting him, I’m told I shouldn’t expect to be treated any differently from anyone else. Which I don’t, but there has to be some middle ground between nepotism and punish-the-boss’ kid. Belle and I want a whole new start. We can’t keep arguing over my hours while Yves is keeping us up all night.”

“How is your boss a jerk?”

“Unattainable goals, changing goals—all that stuff. Oh, and constantly sending me to Paris to deal with stuff that’s way out of my job spec, then telling me I screwed up because I didn’t have the information I needed to do the work.”

“What’s the job?”

“Paperwork on foreclosures, mainly.” He swigged his beer. “I really hate it. You go to work every day knowing someone’s going to blame you—loudly—for what happened to their home or business.”

Ryan looked genuinely down-trodden and worn out, and sure, nobody wanted to be yelled at all day, but Annalesa couldn’t help wondering how much he was contributing to his own problems. He’d always had a psychopathic lack of empathy. She could only imagine that came across when dealing with people whose lives appeared to be at an end.

“Is that personal, or is it one of those shitty jobs that’s inevitably handed to the rookie?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“Oh, it’s personal.” He gave a humorless grin and drained his beer, putting his hand up for a refill. He took his glass with a grim nod when it appeared, along with a little bowl of marinated olives. “And I’m struggling with having to put up with all this bullshit quietly, even though I’m not the bad-tempered guy I used to be.”

“Bad-tempered? Ryan. Come on. You were more than just ‘bad-tempered’.” She saw him flinch, but she’d also seen how quickly his smooth edges had fallen away after one strong beer.

While he was still being calm and civil, she gathered her nerve to talk about how he’d treated her.

“The day my brother broke your jaw, you grabbed me hard enough to leave bruises. And the way you screamed at me—the names you called me? I think the whole stadium heard you.”

“I didn’t... I didn’t realize I was holding you that hard. I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I said I was sorry. I said it then, and I’m saying it now.”

He was missing the point. As usual.

“Sometimes sorry isn’t enough.” She put her hands in her lap, trying to keep them from shaking. “I just want to know... now that you’re calmer... why you thought the world owed you everything?”

Ryan blinked. “I don’t remember thinking that the ‘world’ owed me.”

“No?” She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She began to tick off his faults on her fingers. “Let’s see... I had to do everything you told me. I had to agree with everything you said. God forbid I ever express my own opinion. I was supposed to somehow anticipate your every need, and if I didn’t, there was bloody hell to pay. And I wasn’t the only one you treated that way, Ryan.”

“Yeah. I know.” He stared down at the table. “There’s no excuse, really.”

Annalesa caught Ric’s eye and he gave her a huge smile. It appeared that the sight of Ryan looking crushed brought sun and angels into his heart. She switched her attention back to Ryan. “How about telling me the excuse you thought you had?”

“I can tell you this—whatever I said at the time, I’d never actually dated anyone as smart as you.”

“Is that supposed to be flattery?” She withheld a sarcastic laugh at his concept of dating.

“Jeez.” Ryan took a sip of his beer. “Shame they don’t have a shrink’s couch in here. What do you want me to say?”

“A little self-reflection never hurt anyone,” she reminded him.

“Fine. The Cliff’s Notes version? I was invisible to my parents—but my friends thought I was the shit, and they’d forgive me anything. Just so they could say they were hanging out with me.”

“You weren’t the shit.” She sipped her non-alcoholic beer. “Just a reality check.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. Eventually.” Ryan gave her a wry smile and took a long drink of beer. “But isn’t that why you dated me? So all your bitchy friends would think you were one of the cool kids?”

She reddened at that—the mirror had suddenly been turned her way—because it was true. That had been her mistake.

“I wanted to be one of the cool kids,” she agreed. “And I thought you were cute.”

“Ha. I thought you were cute, too.” He sighed. “But you were too damned smart. You saw through me. My friends never did. Or at least they weren’t willing to tell me, like you were.”

She remembered it differently—she remembered kowtowing to him, suppressing her needs and wishes, doing everything to make sure Ryan was happy, all the time.

“I wasn’t so different.”

“Yes, you were.” Ryan tilted his head, looking at her. “I didn’t know how good I had it with you, until I fucked it all up.”

“I’m glad you know now.” Annalesa pushed the olives toward Ryan to take the sting out of it.

She felt a great weight roll off her shoulders. For all Ric’s manipulative maneuvers, dropping this meeting on her like this, she was glad she’d met Ryan and told him what she thought. And she was glad she’d heard his side of things. He’d thought she was smart. And pretty. And he actually believed she’d called him on his crap. It was like a revelation.

And—double plus—he didn’t seem the kind of guy to try anything dumb with her anymore. He was staring miserably down at the table.

She nudged his hand. “Hey, tell me about your little man.”

“Yves...” The lines eased in Ryan’s face and he straightened, pulling a picture from his wallet. “He’s eighteen months—and should be the European croissant-throwing champion, if that’s even a thing...”

She laughed and sat back in her chair as he talked happily about his son. Ric met her eyes from the other side of the café, brows raised in inquiry. She waited for Ryan to use the men’s room before getting her iPhone out and texting Ric.

I’ll pay in ten minutes. Nothing more to be said here.

He looked down as her message popped up on his screen and a moment of rapid thumbing later, his reply made her phone buzz.

I’ll follow close. Don’t worry.

“Ah, Dominic’s taken the car. Cool.”

“Good to have a reliable PA.” She reached into her pocket for her car keys, a little nervous she couldn’t see Ric anywhere. If he was nearby, he was doing a damn good job being invisible.

Ryan put his hand to the small of her back as they walked and she moved half a step faster, shaking him off, giving him a subtle hint.

“Well, it was good to talk,” she said loudly, trying to put a friendly finality into her tone.

“Sure was.” Ryan slid an arm around her waist. “How about we get a taxi somewhere?”

“Don’t do that.” She stepped away quickly.

Ryan gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “What, you’re saying we haven’t been flirting all evening?”

“You’ve got a weird idea of flirting, Ryan. I thought we were putting our history behind us.”

“Yeah, and we did that, didn’t we? Dumped all our shit in the water and let it flow under the bridge?”

She felt her knees wobble with mutinous force. Jesus, she’d really thought Ryan had changed. Ric’s phrase came back to her—
you’d walk off with a terrorist if he put his gun away and smiled nice at you.
She felt sick at how true that was. Effectively, Ryan had spent the last hour or so smiling at her, his gun hidden.

“You’ve got pictures of your family in your wallet, Ryan. What do you think I am? Goodbye. Hope that move back to the States works out for you.”

Annalesa turned her back on him and marched towards her car, frantically scanning the streets for either Ric or his rented Mercedes. She felt hands at her hips as she reached the driver’s side door. Her gut knotted hard enough to make her queasy as Ryan turned her fast and pressed her up against the car.

“I don’t like being messed around, Annalesa.”

“I w-wasn’t messing around!” She couldn’t keep the lie out of her voice. Her pulse slammed at the hollow of her throat as Ryan gripped her shoulders. “Get off!”

“When a guy wants to catch up, he really wants to catch up. Wow, for such a smart girl, you’re fucking naïve!”

She slapped him as hard as she could, making him stagger back but not fall. She couldn’t get enough of a swing with his arms trapping her. He got his balance and glared pure venom at her, rubbing his once-broken jaw.

“You bitch!”

She had her fist clenched, ready to show him what one of her full-force hits felt like, when Ric burst out of the darkness and dropped Ryan with a sharp jab. As Ryan sagged down to hands and knees, Ric stepped in front of her, pushing her behind him while flipping Ryan onto his back with an easy jerk of one foot under the shoulder.

“What did you call her?”

“Wh-what?” Ryan’s eyes widened and he scrambled backwards, stupidly backing himself up against the wall. Fear was all over his face—fear he’d screwed up his chance of moving back to the States, fear of staying in the dead-end job he was in, fear of his fuck-up being reported to his girlfriend. “What the hell are you—”

“Probably thought I was in Norway, right?” Ric reached down and hauled Ryan up by his shirt. “You did a good job pretending you were all grown up, but I’m not taking chances with my sister. Hit the road, asshole.”

Ryan tried snatching himself out of Ric’s grip, his face darkening as he realized he wouldn’t be winning any fights. He pinned Annalesa to the spot with a glare.

“Kinda close to your brother, aren’t you? I wonder if people know how close?”

Before Annalesa could even register what he’d said, Ric tossed Ryan up against the wall. Ryan hit hard and dropped back down to his backside, clutching the back of his head, groaning.

Ric put his arm around her shoulders and sneered at the whining lawyer at his feet. “With shits like you around, good thing she
is
kinda close to her brother. You just cheated on your girl—if you want to stay in your son’s life, at the very least, I’d keep your speculations on our closeness to yourself, if I were you.”

Annalesa let herself be led to Ric’s Mercedes but was too numb to speak as they made their way to his hotel.

Annalesa lay with her eyes open for what seemed like hours, but a glance at the clock by the bed showed it had just turned midnight. Ric was spooned behind her. She tried drawing from his heat, the security of his arms around her shoulders and waist, but couldn’t.

She’d done everything he’d asked, so she could prove to him that he could trust her, but she couldn’t stop feeling like she’d compromised something of herself. Going along with Ric felt a little like she had way back when with Ryan—doing everything to please him. She’d been a people-pleaser then, and she was still a people-pleaser now. Nothing had changed.

Is this what being with Ric was always going be like?

She loved him, but she didn’t know if she could live like that.

Annalesa thought he was sleeping and jumped at the warm feel of his hand in her hair. He stroked it, raking it back behind her ear.

“You all right?”

“No, not really.” She felt her eyes burning and swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry.”

“For which part? For putting me in a situation where Ryan could attack me—or for making me feel pressured into meeting him in the first place?”

“Both.”

Well, that was something.

She nuzzled her cheek along his bicep. It seemed pathetic, needing reassurance from the very man putting her through all this stress. What did that make her? Weak—or devoted?

“I don’t know how much longer I can go on with these games.” She tried keeping her voice level.

“It won’t be much longer.”

It wasn’t the answer she was hoping for.

Annalesa pulled away and stumbled out of bed towards the window. The Eiffel Tower soared up into the night, making the huge trees around it look like Lego toys. It was strong and stark. She felt anything but strong.

Tears welled and she brushed them away, relying on the darkness to hide her feelings from Ric until she had herself under some kind of control. Enough control to be assertive, at least.

“Come back to bed,” he said softly.

“Not just yet.”

“Too upset?”

No matter how soft his voice, it didn’t help with what hurt most.

She couldn’t believe she’d thought Ryan had changed. She’d
wanted
to believe he’d become a better man, and for a little while, despite all the evidence of his past, despite what Ric had told her about the communications he’d had with Ryan over the internet, she’d been taken in.

What did that say about her?

What if she had Ric totally wrong, too, and all this was some elaborate set-up to get her back for the way she’d abandoned him?

No, don’t go there. You know he loves you. That’s fear talking.

Was it?

She turned to find that he’d soundlessly risen from bed and was standing right behind her. Her heart lurched in her chest, barely settling as he put his hands to her face, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. She looked up at him, fighting the urge to melt at the sight of his hard body and the gorgeous jaw and cheekbones picked out in shades of pale blue under the dark wave of his shoulder-length hair.

Tell him you’re done with games. Tell him his need for reassurance is making you feel like you can’t trust anyone—even him! Tell him this is the end of it. Tell him it’s over unless this stops—now. If he loves you, he won’t let it go on anymore. If he doesn’t really love you, and this is all some crazy set-up to pay you back a million times over in hurt...

What then? Oh God.

Before she could gather the words to say, he dipped his lips down to hers, kissing her lightly.

“Leesa, I promise. It won’t be much longer. And no more blasts from the past. We’re done with that.”

“What’s next?” She sniffed. “The rack? Do I have to carry a cross and be nailed to it at the end?”

“Oh Leesa.” There was real pain in his voice as he wrapped his big arms around her. It really was like cocooning and she loved it. But at the moment, she kind of hated him. “I’m sorry. I’ve been... stubborn. I just... needed to know—
really know
—that I could trust you.”

“Do you trust me yet?”

“Yes.” He nodded in the darkness.

“Then can’t it be over?” Her voice was choked. “No more. Okay? Just... let’s just be you and me, with no more of this... drama.”

“Just a little longer.” He took a deep breath. “This next part... it’s a totally different kind of test. More like, can
you
trust
me
?”

“You think I haven’t had to trust you, this whole time?” She snorted, pulling free from his grasp. “I just put myself at Ryan’s mercy to ‘prove’ my love to you—
and I had to trust you would be there just in case.
How much more trust do you want?”

“Leesa...”

“No!” She choked out the word, holding up her hand against his chest to keep him from taking her in his arms again. “It’s like you’re questioning my love—all the fucking time. You’re
constantly
questioning my feelings for you. I can’t take it anymore!”

“It’s not the love I’m questioning.”

“Really?”

“
Really
not the love I’m questioning.”

“What else am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to feel?” she cried. “Ric, don’t you understand what this is doing to me? I can never relax around you because I never know when my next trial by fire is coming!”

“Listen to me. Leesa, listen...” Ric put his hands on her shoulders and looked right into her eyes. “I will never ask you to do anything like tonight again. I promise. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I really didn’t... think...”

She looked up at him, hearing the crack in his voice.

He cleared his throat. “I’m done with our old enemies. There are no more demons here to exorcise, Leesa.”

“Oh Ric...” She felt tears of relief welling up and didn’t care that he saw her brush them away this time. “Thank God.”

Then, suddenly, she was angry. “Because if you ever ask me to do anything like that again, Ricard Ryker—you don’t even know. I’ve already been asking myself if you really want to be with me or not.”

“You know I do!”

“Then stop!” she cried. “It’s like you want to drag me down to this level of distrust... you remind me of Anders when you do this. Do you know what Ryan said to me tonight? He said I was fucking naïve—and he was right.”

“No, he’s not.”

“But I am naïve, Ric. I am.” Annalesa folded her arms so he couldn’t try to cuddle his way back in before she was done saying what she needed to say. “I’m not suspicious of people, even when I am. I don’t listen to that part of me. It’s broken. And do you know why?”

Ric was quiet, waiting for her to go on.

“Because I don’t want to hurt people.” She took a deep breath. “And I don’t want to live with a wall between myself and the rest of the world. If that makes me naïve? Oh-fucking-well. I’d rather think the best of people than walk around behind some kind of wall of paranoia like your buddy Anders does.”

“That’s one of the reasons I love you so much. One of so damned many.” Ric turned her to face the window, wrapping his arms around her shoulders from behind. “It’s an unforgiving world out there, Leesa. They’re not going to forget that you were once my stepsister.”

She stiffened at his words, remembering her mother’s disgust when she talked about the “perverted” marrying cousins.

“But if we’re going to do this—we have to be able to commit. We’re going to be under a lot of scrutiny. So much judgment—you don’t even know. I’ve been pushing you hard, but... I needed to know if you could handle it. Us. This. Because if you can’t, we could lose everything.”

They’d been living in their cocoon so far, and Annalesa liked it there. Very much. The thought of taking their relationship public made her blood run cold. As much as she wanted to share their happiness with everyone else—she knew that not everyone would be happy for them.

“Why would you assume
I
couldn’t handle it?” The question snapped out of her like a whiplash. She was being defensive, and she knew it. “What about you? You’re the one who has to be out in the world, schmoozing and making deals. What if you decide that it’s not worth it? That
we’re
not worth it?”

He froze behind her and for a long moment, she thought he might release her and walk away. She held her breath, concentrating on the feel of his heartbeat against her back.

“I know, because I would risk anything for you.” He squeezed her arms, kissing the top of her head. “Nobody gets this close to me, Leesa. No one. Ever.”

His words made her feel proud—and a little scared.

“I know I can seem cold and harsh.” He sighed. “But you see through it every time. With you, I don’t have to explain myself. And... you make me feel...”

She waited, breath held.

“You make me feel like I don’t want to be cold or hard anywhere near you.”

Tentatively, she raised her hands and stroked the corded forearms folded across her front. She felt him taking a deep breath and kept quiet, letting him go on.

“I’ve never lived life on my own terms until now. I was always too worried about what other people thought about me. I think I was afraid of everyone—except you.”

She bowed her head, reminded with a drowning wave that she’d been his rock for a long time, and then allowed herself to get swept away. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. You’ve said it—you’ve proved it. You’ve shown me how you really feel. I’m just... explaining.” He kissed her bare shoulder. “Leesa, I’m just now starting to realize—not everyone in the world is out to knock me down on my ass.”

Gently, he turned her to face him. “I’m beginning to believe I can really live a life without fear. And you are the only woman in the world I want to live it with.”

His words made her heart swell.

“I don’t care what people think about me anymore.” His palms moved over her shoulders, down her arms, so he could take her hands. “But that doesn’t mean they’re going to stop judging. And we’re going to have to deal with that—out there, in that big, unforgiving world... somehow.”

“I know.” Annalesa reached up and brushed away the hair hanging down into his face. The idea of facing the world as a couple, two people once brought up as siblings, was daunting, to say the least. She wasn’t even convinced her own mother would come around to the idea, let alone the rest of the general population. “It scares me. I admit it. But Ric... the thought of living a life without you... that scares me so much more.”