Stepbrother Bestie (A Stepbrother Romance Novel) (26 page)

But all I ever cared about was giving
myself a challenge, since I made sure that I was better than my competition
before the day to prove it even arrived. So when others didn’t try to beat me,
I almost felt like a failure, and that was unacceptable. I needed a challenge
to beat, for I was really only competing with myself anyway.

Therefore, I had known for a long time
that I needed a fresh competition, to breathe new life into my advancements. I
figured with this area, and all of its allure to natural beauty and the need to
achieve perfection, there had to be some kind of competition around here.

After all, this was a beach town, so while
I didn’t bother to look up the extent to which the area had any competitions, I
also didn’t anticipate any problems.

Once I reached one hundred, without having
even broken a sweat, I pulled myself up easily and thought about running
downstairs. After all, I needed to find something or someone to occupy my time
with.

I was never in one place too long and I
got bored quite easily; therefore, I was always looking for things and people
with which to occupy my mind.

However, before I had a chance to turn
around and head out of the room, I saw a car pull into the driveway of the
beach house. I was certainly intrigued. I didn’t know who that car belonged to,
but there was something about the way the car looked that told me there was a
hot female inside of it.

What
the fuck is this?
I stopped to stare out the window with
intrigue, careful not to be observed if she was looking up at the house. She
sat there for a long time.

I was fascinated by the stranger and I
wondered why she had decided not to get out of the car.
Did she have the wrong address?
I wondered, even though I didn’t
really care, beyond my own self-interests.

There was minimal movement within the car,
but every once and a while, I would get a glimpse of a carefully crafted
waistline or a flash of hair, which kept me interested to find out why this
woman was here.

Finally, my persistence and aversion to
losing interest paid off as I watched a beautiful blond woman emerge from the
driver’s side of the car.

I was right about her slender form and her
luscious hair. However, her hair and her slim physique wasn’t the part of her
that caught my attention. She was wearing cutoff shorts, which showcased her
long, athletic legs, and a tank-top that helped pronounce her large, inviting
breasts as she stood up straight and turned around to open the back car door.
That revealed a perfectly firm, taut buttocks that caused my lips to slip into
an appreciative smile.

It took quite a lot for me to feel that a
woman, or anyone, was on the same level of physical attraction as myself,
especially since I worked so hard to ensure I maintained my own standards. But
I had to admit that this woman was pretty close.

“Damn…the wonders that I could show you…”
I said to myself as I admired her from the window.
With any luck, she is here to stay.

I had the thought that perhaps she was a
neighbor or something, but I couldn’t help but notice that even from the
distance, she looked vaguely familiar. However, I wasn’t here to see if I knew
her before this. My only goal at the moment was to make a good impression in
order to satisfy the needs that were awakening inside me.

In order not to waste any time, I turned
and began my descent downstairs, hoping that I would be able to catch her
sooner rather than later, and start laying on the charm right away.

However, as I made it down the creaking
old stairs, I noticed that the woman was already making her way into the beach
house….
My beach house?
I thought,
trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

When the girl walked in the door, I spied
my mother, finally detached from my stepfather for the moment. I moved over to
stand by her. After all, a man standing by a woman, especially his mother, was
supposed to be a sign that he was a good guy. I didn’t know about all of that,
considering what I’d been told by people, women especially, who weren’t worthy
of being or staying in contact with me, but it never hurt to give off that
impression.

Quickly, my mother was joined by my
stepfather.

That
didn’t take long,
I thought, but tried my best not to roll
my eyes.

“Hi, Dad!” the woman said as she saw my
stepfather.

Dad?
I thought, looking at the girl, who now looked even more familiar than she did
when she first made her way out of the car.

My stepfather moved toward her quickly and
gave her a hug. “Hello, Ashley! How was the ride up here?”

Ashley?
I thought, frantically trying to run back into my memory bank to figure out
exactly what was going on. A haze of different proportioned women flashed to
the front of my brain.
Ashley is such a
common name…So many whores…
I thought, but when I came to the mental image
of a woman dressed in one of the ugliest bridesmaid dresses I had ever seen,
thanks to my mother, with her hair pulled back easily in an updo, I knew
exactly where I remembered her from.

Wearing clothing that did not make her
look like a Christmas tree had helped hide her appearance, since I was not
aware there was such a glorious body underneath my mother’s horrible taste.

Part of me thought then and was even more
convinced now, that she had done that on purpose. That way, none of the
bridesmaids, nor the maid of honor, would have even had a chance at looking
better than her in her decadent wedding dress. However, the thought that it was
an insurance policy was pushed aside in my mind, because of my mother’s
naturally gaudy taste and insufficiency to think that far ahead about anything.
But now, looking at Ashley, I might not have given my mother the credit she
deserved.

I looked over and glanced up and down
quickly, testing my theory and thought,
well,
if it was my wedding and I had that body, against that bridesmaid, I would
sabotage her looks; without question.
Then, I sneered as I narrowed my eyes
at my mother, feeling a sense of seething aggravation run through my veins
before I shrugged and thought,
you keep
on insisting I am so much like my father.
I tried my very best not to
laugh, before I turned my attention back toward the scene unfolding in front of
me.

When they broke apart, Ashley shrugged.
“It was fine. How are you?”

“Good…Good…” My stepfather answered
casually.

I could tell there was a significant
amount of strain between the two of them. I knew there was something that I
didn’t understand and perhaps, it was something that I would never know, but as
my stepfather eliminated any doubt about who this woman was,
I
found that I wasn’t as deterred as perhaps I should have been. Instead, as we
shook hands and I smiled in a charming fashion, feeling like I had just won the
lottery and telling her that I remembered her well, I had a sense that instead
of being a challenge, this beautiful new notch in my bedpost was going to be
extremely easy prey.

Chapter
3

Ashley

Tyler’s smile was sickening, just like the
first time I saw it when we were introduced at the wedding.

Just as I remembered, he was nice to look
at. But the way he stared at me, with his eyes piercing into me and his teeth
stretching out around the corners of his smile, as though he had too many, he
resembled a shark more than a man.

I was very turned off by his slick,
slippery demeanor. Even though his body looked healthy and he was the epitome
of what most would consider handsome, with a sharp chin and a bronze
complexion, I was immediately turned off.

As I shook his hand, which was a strange
thing to do,
I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the way he was
glaring at me. His hand lingered, grasping mine possessively, almost as though
he felt that I was only there for his own enjoyment.

However, I thought that I shouldn’t be too
harsh on him, even though I was rarely wrong about my judge of character.
I
was just having such a hard time keeping it all together. I quickly noted that
no matter what he did or how he acted, just his presence annoyed me and,
therefore, I couldn’t completely trust myself.

You
felt the same way at the wedding, though…
I thought, before
I quickly reminded myself that was a very emotional day as well. Much like
being in this house, I hadn’t wanted my father to get married. He had only met
the woman a few months before, and it never sat right with me that the first time
she even bothered to meet me, was when she was already a part of the family,
whether I liked it or not.

There was something suspicious about the
pair of them, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“I’m looking forward to the chance to get
to know you,” I heard Tyler’s voice say, in a manner that was smooth as glass
and likely loaded with crap.

However, I didn’t want to come across as
rude. Once I realized what he said, over the sound of my own thoughts, I smiled
at him and answered, “Yes, thank you…” in the most gracious, interested voice
that I could muster. But hearing it ring aloud in my ears, I knew that there
was not as much smoothness behind the crap that I was peddling.

I didn’t care to get to know either of
them. I was uninterested in having any kind of civilized relationship with the
people who, in my opinion, had stolen my father away from me during his time of
weakness. But I reminded myself that I was doing this for my father and so, I
kept in time with my charade, no matter how awful it came across.

When Tyler finally let my hand go, his
mother picked up my attention right behind him. “Hi, Ashley…”

I turned towards the woman who was much
younger than my father, but actually saw genuine kindness in her eyes, or at
least that was how I perceived it. My stepmother’s expression was not the same
as that of her son’s. She seemed to realize, to some degree, the level of my
discomfort that not even my father was picking up on. The woman pressed her
hand against my arm and moved closer to me, as though asking if it would be
alright if she hugged me.

I made the motion to hug her back, just to
ensure the room did not grow to be any more awkward, and she seemed thankful.

When we broke away, I caught a glimpse of
my dad smiling, as though he was proud of what was going on. I wondered if he
was ignoring the obvious strain, or if he was just oblivious to it, like he
seemed to be oblivious to most things since he had met Theresa.

I wondered how long he was going to keep
up this sense of careful ignorance. After all, I didn’t want to be responsible
for creating a problem; but being back in this house, in such a drastically
different situation, after all of this time, no matter how I tried to convince
myself that I needed to remain under control for my father, I wasn’t sure if I
could keep my opinions to myself for an entire summer.

While my father was welcoming and glad I
was there, and his new wife was kind, but cautious around me, there was still
something that didn’t quite sit right about them and their relationship. There
were a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me, and more was wrong than
right with my opinion of my stepbrother, but even my dad’s relationship was a
little strange. I couldn’t quite figure it out, what I didn’t trust, but I
figured throughout the entirety of the summer, there was sure to be some dirty
laundry aired. Maybe through that, I would be able to pick out what was going
on.

For the moment, though, I decided the
greatest threat to myself personally, was my own mind and my stepbrother.
Although he was just as attractive as I remembered from our brief exchange at
the wedding, I quickly became partial to the impression that Tyler likely spent
more time prepping himself in the morning than I did. And that is not the kind
of man that I am interested in…

I didn’t even try to expand upon the
thought that regardless of how I felt about him,
we
were family now. But despite trying to shut my brain off before it could
actually make that connection, I had a solid thought about it anyway, which
caused a shudder to run down my spine.

Ewww!
I
thought, keeping in mind that even if I hadn’t pictured the two of us getting
together, even in the loosest terms, I would still have thought the idea of
them being part of the family creepy.

There was just something about the whole
dynamic between everyone that now resided in the household that just wasn’t
right, and I had no idea what to do to make it any better.

I was simply lost, for words as well as
for a sense of understanding, that all I could possibly do was just sit there
and stare, while my mind reeled in an effort to gain some answers.

It took a moment for me to even realize
that I had plastered a smile on my face and had resorted to making more noises
than I had actual words. Thankfully, no one was really talking to me, but
rather about me.