Trick - A Stepbrother Romance (9 page)

They’d knocked us all the way off the road. We rolled right over the edge, and I shielded my face in a reflex action as we plummeted. It all happened so fast I could barely register it.

Then everything went black.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PATRICK

The car finally stopped moving, and I opened my eyes and looked over at Lucy. She had a small cut on her head, and I leaned over to her to see if she was okay. As I did so, the car began to rock slightly, and a chill ran down my spine as I peered out the window and realized where we were. There was a ledge just off the edge of the road where we’d gone off, and below that was a plunging drop into a deep valley. We’d been lucky. We’d only fallen onto the ledge and rolled the car, but now we were in a dangerous situation. If we moved too much, the car could roll again and send us to our deaths. There was no way we’d survive the drop into the valley.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Lucy’s chest was slowly rising and falling, and I let out a sigh of relief as I realized she was still breathing. The shock had probably made her pass out. Or maybe her head injury was more serious than it looked. Fuck.

There was only one way out of this.

Maneuvering myself very carefully so as to not rock the car, I craned my neck and looked around. Lucy was on the side closest to the edge. If I could somehow grab her and quickly pull her out of the passenger side where I was, we might have a chance at surviving this.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I mumbled as I slowly opened my door. This better fucking work, or I’d never forgive myself.

I carefully undid Lucy’s seatbelt, and she groaned as I slowly wedged one arm under her arm. Her eyes were still closed.

“This might hurt a bit,” I said. “But it’ll only be for a sec.”

She moaned deliriously again, and I held on as tight as I could before leaping out of the passenger door, dragging her behind me. As I pulled her out of harm’s way and lay her down on a bed of moss and grass, the car did exactly as I suspected it would do. Our weight shift had caused it to rock violently, and it rolled over and plunged directly downwards into the ravine. I cringed at the sound of scraping and crashing metal, not even wanting to imagine what would have happened if we’d still been inside.

I crouched down next to Lucy.

“Lucy,” I said. “Wake up. Please.”

She stirred at my touch but didn’t open her eyes, and a deep voice called out to me from up on the road. I looked up to see that it was the motorcycle rider who’d veered into our lane. I assumed the paparazzi in the silver car had taken off, not even bothering to help us or take responsibility for what they’d caused.

“Hey, are you guys okay down there?” the man called out.

“I hope so,” I said, looking back down at Lucy’s chest. Her breathing seemed steadier now. “Can you call 911 for me?”

“Already did,” he replied. “Sorry man, a bug flew into my eye and I swerved into your lane. Then those fuckers who were tailgating you tried to swerve around you when you braked so they wouldn’t crash into you. Knocked you right off the road. If they hadn’t been so far up your ass it wouldn’t have happened.”

“I know,” I said, gritting my teeth. He was trying to help, but I was so fired up with adrenaline that I wanted to punch him in the face. I knew it wasn’t entirely his fault. He hadn’t meant to swerve into our lane, and if those paparazzi fuckwits hadn’t been right on our tail, we wouldn’t have gone off the edge…but still, I wanted to hit someone.

Anyone.

He began to clamber down the steep edge and slowly approached us.

“Your girlfriend all right?” he asked, seeing her lying on the ground next to me.

She’s not my girlfriend,
I almost said, but it seemed pointless to mention that. Not only that, I honestly didn’t mind people thinking she was my girl. Something about it just felt right.

“I think so,” I said, watching as her chest rose and fell in short breaths. “How long until the ambulance gets here?”

“Should be any minute, man,” he replied. “I’ll go back up to the edge of the road and wave ‘em down when I see ‘em. By the way, I got the license plate details for that other car. I’ll tell the police when they get here.”

I watched him walk away, and Lucy moaned softly. I knelt back down and stroked her face.

“Lucy,” I said as she slowly opened her eyes. “Help’s coming. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

She tried to raise her head and nodded weakly. “I know,” she replied. “I only hurt my head a little bit. I think the shock just made me pass out. I thought we were going to die.”

I squeezed her hand. I didn’t want to tell her how close we’d come to almost rolling right off that edge along with the car. Not yet. Unfortunately, she turned her head to the side and immediately noticed that the car wasn’t there.

“The car…” she murmured. “It’s gone. Holy shit. What happened? How did I get out?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I said, leaning right over her and scraping her hair out of the blood on her forehead.

Her eyes widened. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked. “You…you saved me. Again.”

“Again?”

“You helped me with Jimmy the other night, and now this…God, Patrick, I get it. You’re sorry about high school. You don’t need to drag me out of a car that’s about to roll off a cliff just to prove it.”

She gave me a cheesy smile, and I grinned. “Making jokes already? Guess you really are all right.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Really. You saved me.”

And then something incredible happened.

She kissed me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LUCY

Still dizzy from hitting my head earlier, my fingers found their way to Patrick’s hair, and I pulled him closer and pressed my lips up to his.

I’d officially lost my mind.

All I could think of was how he’d come to my rescue twice now, and having his muscled body so close to mine made every inch of me tremble. His mouth felt so perfect on my lips, and nothing in the world could change that. As his tongue slid into my mouth, his hands roamed all over my body, stroking, caressing and worshipping my curves. His touches were possessive, needy and voracious, and I felt wetness instantly soaking my silky panties.

If there was ever a more ridiculous time to be suddenly realizing my feelings for a man, it was now. I’d almost died.
We’d
almost died…and yet the thought of our close call made me crazy with lust. Perhaps it was all the adrenaline pumping through my system from the shock of the accident.

Or maybe I really had gone stark raving mad.

He broke away a second later and looked deep in my eyes. “Lucy…” he murmured.

He looked like he was about to say something else when a man called down from above us. “Hey, guys? Ambulance is here!”

I grinned sheepishly as Patrick helped me to my feet, and a few paramedics joined us on the ledge a moment later. We couldn’t say anything about our embrace in front of them, but the expression in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. Whatever I was feeling, he was feeling it too.

Patrick pulled out his phone in the ambulance and called my Dad, Julia and my Mom to let them know what had happened. We arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later, and my Dad came bursting through the doors as a doctor led me into an examination room to check my head.

“Dad!” I said, shocked to see him. “How’d you get here so fast? Patrick only called you a few minutes ago.”

“I…er…I was in the area. Thank God you’re okay, Princess. When he told me what happened…God, I had no idea what to think. You’ve really been in the wars lately. First Jimmy, and now this.”

He squeezed my shoulder, and I smiled. “I’m okay. Really. I just bumped my head a bit. There’s only a little cut.”

“Is Patrick okay? He sounded all right on the phone, but you never know.”

“I think so. He pulled me out of the car just before it went over the edge.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. “I heard the EMTs talking about it. I’m going to go find him. I’ll be back in a sec.”

He returned to the examination room ten minutes later, Patrick trailing behind him. All of a sudden, everything felt incredibly awkward. Dad considered Patrick to be family, and if he ever knew that we’d just passionately kissed on the edge of a road…well, crap, he’d probably kill us. That wasn’t exactly how family members behaved, to say the least.

“The doctors say he’s fine,” Dad announced, and I felt my cheeks turn pink. The thought of Patrick’s hot lips on mine was addictive, and the guilt only made it worse.

“That’s good,” I said.

I tried to avoid Patrick’s gaze, but I could feel his eyes burning into me from across the room.

The doctor who’d been checking me out came back over to me from her computer. “You’re fine too, Miss Martinez. You’ll have a nasty bump for a few days, but it should heal up just fine. Make sure you keep the area around the cut clean. We don’t want any infections.”

I nodded, and she handed me a piece of paper. “You’ll probably have a nasty headache for a while, so I’m prescribing you some strong painkillers. When did you last eat?”

“A few hours ago.”

“These need to be taken with food, so go and grab something to eat after you’ve picked them up and take two. Then take one tomorrow morning, and another in the late afternoon if pain is still persisting. They might make you feel a little loopy, so I’d suggest you take the day off work tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

We were about to head out of the room when Dad held his hands up.

“I should warn you two. Someone already broke the story of what happened back there, so there’s probably a lot of press waiting outside.”

“
What
?” Patrick and I said in unison. I could tell what he was thinking. Had someone seen us kissing and taken a photo? Could it have been the biker?

Dad looked confused. “Yes, they broke the story of how you just saved your stepsister’s life, Patrick. You’re a hero.”

Oh, duh. Of course.
That
story had broken. Thank God. I felt my cheeks turn even hotter, and I avoided eye contact with Patrick again as we headed over to the dispensary to get my prescription.

“Princess, I have to go,” Dad said, checking his phone a second later. “The police are tracking down the paparazzi guys who were in that car, so I’m going to go deal with that. I’ll see you at home later. I got someone to bring a car for you, so you can take that. I had my guy park it by the two tall trees near the bus on the far end of the parking lot. Go and get something to eat like the doctor suggested. Patrick, you’ll go with her?”

“Sure,” Patrick replied as he grabbed the spare set of car keys from Dad. He brushed his fingers against my hand a second later, and I jumped away from him like a scalded cat.

As my Dad had predicted, the parking lot was filled with reporters and photographers. The flashing camera lights made my head ache even more, and I smiled weakly and rubbed my eyes as a reporter thrust a microphone in our faces.

“Patrick, how do you feel knowing that you saved your sister’s life today?”

“Stepsister,” Patrick corrected him.

“Sorry, stepsister. What did it feel like in those moments? Were you worried that you might die?”

“It feels like I did the right thing,” he replied, slinging an arm around my shoulder. “I’d do anything for Lucy. Family is very important to me. I think a lot of people in this day and age have forgotten how important it is. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to go and grab some dinner somewhere nice and quiet.”

He waved and smiled before cutting through the mob, and I trailed behind him as reporters continued to shout at us. I heard one of them speaking directly into a news camera, talking about how Patrick was a hero. She was right. He was a hero. Without him there to pull me out of that car, there was no telling what might’ve happened to me.

“The Six Angels producers are going to love that family speech you just gave,” I said as we reached the black car my Dad had organized for us.

“Yeah,” he replied. “And I guess now that we’re on the news, everyone will realize that you’re my stepsister, not my girlfriend like they thought earlier.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Was it so wrong that I
wanted
to be his girlfriend? I knew some people might think it was creepy or wrong given our family ties, but it wasn’t like we were actually blood related. He must have read my mind, because he leaned over to me and kissed me on the neck.

“It’s not that I don’t want you,” he murmured. “You know I do. Fuck, I want you more than anything. I just think we need to keep it on the down-low for a while, what with your Dad and my Mom being married. Your Dad’s done so much for me, and we all know you’re his little princess.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, sighing as goose bumps broke out all over my neck from where his lips had just been.

He was right. We had no idea how our parents might react to our newfound affection for each other, and on top of that, it was my job to fix his image, not tarnish it by allowing everyone to find out that he was into his stepsister. The media would have a field day with that information, and he’d be fired from his TV show faster than the speed of light. Whatever we had, we needed to keep it hidden for now.

Biting my lower lip, I tried to forget the heated sensation that had spread through me as his hard body pressed against mine earlier, but I couldn’t stop the memories from cascading through my mind.

I guess forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest.

“There’s a place not far from here that does ice cream sandwiches with macarons,” he said. “Wanna get one?”

“I’ve never wanted ice cream more in my life,” I replied with a smile.

The craziness from the accident had made me absolutely ravenous, and hopefully, the coldness of the ice cream would help to cool down my flaming-hot cheeks.

We bought two ice cream sandwiches and ate them in a back corner booth, hidden away from the general public, and I popped two of the painkillers before leaning back in my seat and patting my stomach.

“Urgh…maybe so much creamy goodness wasn’t a good idea.”

Patrick smiled. “Maybe not. But it’s good, huh?”

“Yep.”

“If you eat something a little more substantial, you’ll feel better. Let’s go get dinner. You need a nice meal, a stiff drink and a good night’s rest after the day you’ve had.”

“I can’t drink anything while I’m on these drugs,” I said, reading the prescription again.

“Oh, right. I’ll drink for the two of us?” he asked, mischievous grin lighting his handsome features.

“No you won’t, mister.”

“As you wish,
mistress
.”

“Very funny. Where should we get dinner?”

“I know a place you’ll like. You like steak, right?” he asked.

“You bet,” I replied, standing up.

“Thank fuck for that. The last few girls I’ve been on dates with only ate rabbit food.”

“So this is a date, huh?” I teased.

I reached for my bag and then remembered I’d left it in the car - the car that was now likely mangled beyond repair and half-buried under fallen rocks. Shit. It was still crazy to think how close we’d come to death only hours before.

Patrick saw the look on my face. “Don’t worry, we’ll buy you a new handbag and phone later. I’ll pay for dinner tonight. But only because you don’t have your purse!” he said.

I stuck my tongue out at him, and he laughed. “You know I’m kidding.”

I followed him out of the café, and we drove up to a small restaurant in a quiet neighborhood, where Patrick ordered us New York strip-style steaks with buttery mashed potatoes and vegetables.

“Now
this
is real food,” he said. “Not like that crap you made me drink this morning.”

“Oh, come on, the smoothies were nice.”

He grinned, and then his face took on a more serious expression. “Hey, weird question, but do you think Penelope might have a thing for me?”

“Penelope as in our housekeeper?”

“Yeah.”

“I think everyone has a little bit of a thing for you, honestly. Why?”

His eyebrows knitted together as he replied. “I’ve just been trying to figure this thing out for ages. Someone keeps messaging me all this weird shit, and her initials are P.G.”

“I can’t remember Penelope’s last name, but I doubt it’s her. What are they saying?”

“Just weird stuff like, ‘you should be with me’. It’s not a huge deal, but I want to know who it is just so I know it isn’t some crazed stalker fan who wants to kidnap me and keep me in a dungeon. I don’t really think it’s Penelope either, but I can only think of a few other women I know whose names start with P, and it’s not them.”

“Have you tried messaging them back and asking who it is?”

“Yeah, tried that the other day. No response other than, ‘You know who this is. Deep down you want me,’ as if I’m supposed to know what that means.”

“Maybe you should contact the police,” I said.

He shrugged. “I dunno if they can really help. It’s not like she’s said anything particularly threatening.”

“I guess.”

My head was beginning to feel a little woozy, and I rubbed my eyes before leaning against the table. Patrick raised his eyebrows.

“Gonna take a nap right there, huh?”

“I’m not napping. I just feel kinda drunk all of a sudden, and I haven’t even had anything to drink,” I replied. My head was really spinning now.

“It’s those painkillers,” he said. “I’ll pay the bill and get you home.”

I was practically stumbling as we left the restaurant, and he slid an arm under one of mine and helped me walk in a straight line.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Mm-hm.”

All of a sudden, I began to giggle; a little at first, and then it became uncontrollable laughter. By the time Patrick got me into the passenger seat of the car, I had tears streaming down my face from giggling so hard.

“Wow. Remind me to never give you painkillers ever again,” he remarked, grinning as he looked over at me.

“I’m just so happy right now,” I said, looking out at the night sky in a daze. “Hey, look! I think I can see an alien ship!”

“Yeah, that’s a satellite. You are really messed up,” he said, shaking his head and laughing too. “You’re going straight to bed when we get home, Missy.”

I must have dozed off for a while, because it felt like we arrived home only two minutes later, and my head spun even more as Patrick carried me into the guesthouse.

“There you go,” he said, gently placing me down on the bed. “Get under the sheets.”