HIM—A Stepbrother Romance: With BONUS NOVELLA: PERSONAL

HIM

By Stephanie Brother

© 2016 Stephanie Brother

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author's imagination.

Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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Chapter One

Kate

The rain pummeled against the windowpane. It wasn’t uncommon on the edge of winter in Capetown, South Africa for such a natural act to occur. But today, well, today I wish I lived on a remote island off of Tahiti or the Maldives. I needed the sun. I needed the warmth of an element beyond my control to tell me everything would be alright. And furthermore, I needed space. Miles and miles of quiet space. But there was no hiding now. I couldn’t hide from this.

The smell of strong coffee teased my despair, yet I would not lift my head off my arm. Not even for a French press made by someone other than me for once.

“Awe, come on sweetie. You’ve got this,” my best friend and roommate sang like the sweetest songbird as the sound of a tea saucer gently landed near my head. Emily was British and didn’t own a single coffee mug. She owned the pretty dainty china that made me want to lift my pinkie and say
dah-ling
.

God bless her for blind optimism. Because after the report I’d just received…there would be no focusing on the most important paper of my graduate school studies. At all.

I rolled my forehead around on my arm as if attempting to burrow a hole in my own flesh. Writer’s block sucked. I moaned into my arm a pitiful cry that would make dogs run for the hills or underneath the nearest bed.

“I…could write your paper for you?” Her peppy voice ricocheted through my mind. I could see the outcome of such an offer. Such a suggestion finally warranted the lifting of my heavy head as I looked with hazy eyes at the blonde, real-life-living Barbie.

Her dimples danced across her sunbeam face.

“You’re cute, you know that?” I said.

Translation? There’s no way in hell I would let Emily near one of my papers. Well, let’s scratch that. Unless the paper involved the latest celebrity gossip or a breakdown of the ancient speculation of why Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up, there would be no sparkle dust from little miss living-breathing-pixie fairy, who was a full-time lingerie model. She probably didn’t even know who or what Thoreau was.

My head went back to its home on my numb arm. My first smile of the day actually made its debut appearance as I entertained the thought of Emily discussing the naturalist poets, Thoreau and his mentor Emerson. She probably would come up with nature’s best mask remedies or something like that. Cute, but definitely not what would be required for the much-needed grade of an A and the lasting respect I needed in this third year graduate school piece. With this being my last semester before I graduated with my masters, I couldn’t mess this paper up. It determined the professor who would maybe shadow my dissertation with independent private study, which would ensure I could land an assistant professorship anywhere around the globe while I wrote my dissertation to gain my PHD.

There would be no bullshitting my way with this one; my professors practically knew my blood type, social security number, and fingerprints. I sighed again.

I would just have to work on this paper the whole time while in the Hamptons. I cringed.

The one place I did not want to be in. Ever.

I swore to myself I would never, ever step foot there again. Hell no. Not even the town
before
the H-E-L-L town in the Hamptons! I just couldn’t bear to travel the Rainshaw road ever again and pass the entrance into the gated manor. The very place caused me to instantly have a full-fledged panic attack, remembering the night that forever changed my life and altered my easy breezy personality.

And it wasn’t the gorgeous town itself, per se. Poor pretty town. It was the devil himself who lived there.

Oh no.

I felt it coming on.

The familiar chest closing in and tightening. The restricted breathing. A panic attack was coming: a feeling I never, ever encountered until
he
came into my life and made it a living hell after what he did.

But my mother needed me. And there’s no way I would let her down.

No matter how much of an ass Bradley and his friends had been to me after that scandalous night that robbed me of my privacy forever, leaving me untrusting of men, and even untrusting of my own body. No matter how much therapy I had to endure because of him, I’d go. I’d be there for my mom.

I would just have to pop Xanax like tic-tacs and Skype my therapist to get through it all. It had been eight years since the incident, but sometimes there are moments in your life that forever scar you, like branding an owner to a cattle. My new identity after that night became one I never knew I’d become—uptight, closed, paranoid, distrusting. And
he
was the culprit behind it all. And now I had to see him again after nearly a decade of dodging holidays, rotating them with my father’s side of the family.

But there was no rotating or getting out of this meeting. My stepfather was now dead.

God help me.

Everything about the Rainshaw family I hated. Except for a few perks, such as flying first class and sometimes privately, like now, when need be, when I had to fly half way around the world to be somewhere at a certain time, and an black Amex credit card to shop freely. Now, I wasn’t a shopaholic, but in cases like these when I would be seen with
the family
, the credit card was used to ensure I looked photo ready at all times. I had to Skype my mother's stylist and show her everything I was considering to wear.

I had to shop smartly because the funeral would be high profile and would be photographed, and not just by friends and family. No, by strangers, by eager privacy thieves also known as the paparazzi. These photographs would be in the vault forever, as in forever cast into the depths of the World Wide Web, and collateral for the lifestyles of the rich and famous and “E! true Hollywood Story.” Every outfit was chosen carefully for me to wear as if I were a lead actress in a hundred-million-dollar budget film, all so very carefully orchestrated because that’s the empire and audience the Rainshaws had created. They were practically royalty, and every move their children made, and the moves made by the new Mrs. Rainshaw (my mom), made the Daily News, UsWeekly or E!.

It was a strange life. One that never gelled with me.

It was a complete night and day contrast to the simple life I had made for myself here in South Africa. I enjoyed the very pleasant anonymity here. Once I stepped on the plane and headed back to New York City, every single move would be documented as long as I was near my mother and near the family.

My chest tightened thinking about the circus that awaited me.

Hours later and on the private plane, these thoughts surfaced again and I shook my head and my selfish thoughts away. This wasn't about me right now. It was about being there for my mother.

My iPad whistled a cattle call to me.
Pay attention to me! I’ll help all your problems go away, sweetheart!

I sighed and swiped at it while swirling in the cozy oversized leather chair.
It’s gonna be a smoking hot twenty hour flight. Just you and me, baby. 

A complete nerd I had become, hiding my life away in academia and books. It was a controlled environment. In this world no one could hurt me. In this world I was safe. In this world deeply hidden, I actually felt seen by an unknown force, maybe destiny. With dreams of being a top professor with scores of books enlightening the path of naturalists published, perhaps it was so.

Such a life led little for me in the dating scene, and so my boyfriends became Thoreau and Emerson.

My notes on my iPad were carefully organized and I swiped at them, trying to rid my mind off of the whole scenario. As I scrolled through the tabs, choosing which topic of my paper to tackle next, as there was a whopping sixty percent that I needed to finish, Emily’s text popped up on my screen.

OMG. Check TMZ. RIGHT NOW. You have to see Chris Hemsworth’s shirtless pic at the beach. His swimming trunks are like nearly off, if you know what I mean. Promise it will be worth the peek and will lift your spirits. I mean, you almost see everything.

Oh hell. What the heck. He was my favorite actor and his body was to die for. I wouldn’t mind closing my eyes for a bit and fantasizing about being taken by that Greek God! That would be a pleasant diversion, indeed.

I clicked the link to see the sexy deity himself on the beach when lo and behold, blinking to the right as the breaking news alert in red block font you couldn’t miss if you were blind:
Bradley Rainshaw. Spotted.

My heart caught in my throat as I saw him.
Him
. Oh my word. Mary, Joseph, help me. Hell, let all the saints help me!

There he was, the teenager now turned man I tried with every fiber in my being to not only avoid in physical proximity but virtual proximity. But I did not live in 1950. I lived in the glory age of digital technology and paparazzi vigilantism. Moving to a completely different continent did not do the trick for the very man I was trying to forget wasn't your average Joe. And he wasn't from your average family. He did not have average looks. Bradley Rainshaw was a living, breathing embodiment of sex dreams on legs.

A sexy one with a seven figure modeling contract he’d had since he was seventeen,
because
he was that damn sexy.

But living with your nose in a book and eyes glued to a computer with wifi shut off, living as a practical hermit ensured me the freedom of living life without a reminder of my past or of his existence.

But today I was reminded. And reminded greatly.

I wanted to swipe the article off but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. He looked really good. Holy fuck, as in
really
. This whole businessman-grown-up thing really suited him.

He was dressed in a tailored grey suit that hugged his fit body, which rivaled Chris’s bulging muscles and tight physique. He had his hand running through his perfect brown locks, with his head down, but his eyes were barely lifted, revealing a sadness in him that panged my heart and nearly touched my soul. His free hand held his shades he no doubt was about to throw on fast for privacy from the media. This saddened me. No one should have to have every ounce of their life photographed. Especially not the day you find out your father died.

No.
I exhaled and said out loud. “No, no, no, no…” I wouldn’t let this soften my hardened feelings. I wouldn’t let the crush I had on him years before I even became his family rule the endorphins crashing my logic. I wouldn’t let his sea foam eyes make me silly.

Oh his legendary model eyes? Against his olive skin, his sea foam eyes stop strangers in their tracks to take a good look. I’ve only seen such color on a solid gray cat. Glowing green eyes. Heck, he was known as “the eyes.” Such striking features landed him the Georgio Armani campaign and Times Square housed stories-tall photos of him dozens of times.

It was as if God saved up a handsome account and poured it right into his genes. Sea foam. Those were the same eyes I saw in my dreams and in my fantasy world. Those were the eyes I stared at every night before I went to bed as a teenager on my ceiling shrine. Oh, don’t act like you didn’t have one of JTT, Mark Paul Gooselaar, Johnny Depp, Mario Lopez, or Freddie Prinze Jr. There was some heartthrob no doubt somewhere in your room, or if not physically, in your dreams. Mine just happened to be of someone who became too close to home. He was the guy I pretended actually liked me and wanted to take me to prom. Being fifteen, I was silly and star-struck, just like all my friends. He was a celebrity! Someone I was never supposed to meet or personally know.

As soon as I received the sudden announcement, not only was I shocked about the ending of my parents’ marriage, but I didn’t know how to process the whole thing; major crush on a celebrity never-in-a-million-years-was-I-supposed-to-meet to okay, now you’re my stepbrother. Well, as of today,
former
stepbrother.

Heat mixed with nervousness, lust, and anger flooded through me all at once. A dichotomy indeed.

Playboy Bradley Rainshaw spotted at town square hours after the reports of his father’s death. TMZ is the first to report this.

Holy hell he looked good. “Miss? Is there anything I can do to make your take-off comfortable?”

“Bloody Mary, please. And uh…can you make that a double? And it may just end up the whole bottle. Just saying. We do have twenty hours.”