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  ESCAPE

  A Stepbrother Romance

  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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  DESCRIPTION

  The last person I expected to see in a police interview room was my estranged stepbrother...

  Samantha

  When I’m called to represent a mysterious client, I had no idea it would put me face to face with the one guy I could never forget.

  But memories are like shadows, following you around no matter how hard you try to break free from their chains.

  He was my best friend and my stepbrother, but now he’s a stranger.

  Then our eyes meet across the interview room and I know I’m not going to be able to stay away, no matter how many times he warns me it’s too dangerous to become mixed up in his life.

  Brandon

  On the outside I’ve crafted an image to help me fit in: tattoos and muscles, street clothes and a scowl.

  I’ve modeled myself on the man I despise most, the man who took me from a happy home only to neglect me as a kid and use me as an adult.

  I’m stuck in a world I don’t want to be in because there’s nothing for me outside of this. But then Sammie walks back into my life and nothing feels the same.

  She’s beautiful, and I know I shouldn’t want her that way but I do. Just one touch and I can’t get her out of my mind.

  I want to escape but how can I when I know I’ve lived a life that’s put me beyond the point of return. Saving myself now would risk the only girl I ever loved.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Samantha

  My day starts off great. Maybe that’s why I have this little niggling feeling that something’s going to happen. Something big and maybe bad. Call it women’s intuition or maybe it’s attorney’s suspicion. I have a gut instinct that doesn’t like too much positive karma for fear that it’ll all swing back the other way.

  When you wake up five minutes before your alarm, style your hair in record time, make it to the subway early enough to grab your favorite coffee and receive chocolates from your boss for hard work all in one morning, it’s hard not to be watching where you step for fear you’ll break your ankle to even the score. Add to it that a very sexy man engages me in conversation at the deli counter and then slips me his card, and I’m positively dreading the downward slip of bad luck that’s heading my way.

  Then the phone rings and I know this is what my day has been building up to, as ridiculous as that sounds.

  “Samantha Corrigan?” The voice on the line is deep and husky in a way that reeks of danger.

  “Yes, speaking,” I say, with no idea who’s on the other end of the line. I shift forward on to the edge of my seat and grab a pen, ready to jot down anything useful.

  “A friend of mine has been arrested today. I want you to represent him. Can you get down to the Spring Street Police Station now?”

  “I can be there in an hour,” I say, writing Spring Street on my legal pad. “What’s the name?”

  “Ask for Connor,” he says. “He’ll be in the waiting room.” Then he hangs up.

  “Connor,” I mumble, jotting it down too. I check my phone for a record of the last call received but it’s unknown.

  When you’re an attorney specializing in defense cases you get used to calls that come out of nowhere, but it’s usually the defendant or his family that make the arrangements and I usually have a few more details provided before I arrive at the police station. The mystery caller didn’t even tell me what his friend’s been arrested for.

  Strange.

  I make a few phone calls and send three emails for other cases that just can’t wait. Then I’m out the door with my briefcase, hopping into a cab outside the office and heading to Spring Street.

  It’s a beautiful day, the perfect mix of sunshine and breeze, without too much humidity. Outside the station I catch a scent on the air, floral and damp as though someone has been watering hanging baskets, and it reminds me of days spent in the backyard, dancing under sprinklers with Brandon. I think about him every so often. He’s a part of my past that seems so distant that it takes a song, a scent or another person with the same name for me to recall my long-ago stepbrother. It’s been fifteen years since he left, promising he would keep in touch. Shit. I swallow down a lump in my throat as I recall the day his dad came to collect him. He sat in the backseat of his father’s truck with his head hanging forward, not wanting me to see how upset he was about leaving. By that point I’d become used to holding in my tears.

  I make my way through the automatic doors and into the cool waiting area, pushing those memories aside. It smells musty, like old magazines and unwashed bodies, the nose-wrinkling odor of crime. I scan left and right looking for someone who resembles a ‘Connor’ and a huge, hulking man stands up and makes his way over. He has that way of walking that is part stalking animal and part aggressive human male. Shorn hair and all black clothes make him menacing, but I’m used to dealing with individuals like him. I draw myself up to my full height, 5’8” plus my skyscraper heels. Even so, I only reach his chin when he comes to stand way too close. “Samantha,” he says surprisingly quietly.

  “Connor?” I ask.

  He nods and draws a brown envelope from inside his bomber jacket. “This is for you. There’s payment inside. When you need more, there’s a number inside the envelope for you to contact. The man you’re representing is being held on assault charges. It’s important that he gets released without charge.”

  “Okay,” I say, taking hold of the envelope cautiously. Cash handed over in envelopes is highly irregular, and the envelope is fat enough for me to suppose it contains a large quantity. I want to tell Connor this but I can tell he’s just carrying out someone else’s instructions, probably someone he wouldn’t want to ignore. “What’s my client’s name?”

  “Brandon Ford,” he says, and I blink at him in shock.

  “Brandon Ford?” It’s not a particularly unusual name but it’s weird that I was just thinking about my ex-stepbrother and now here’s Connor mentioning his name.

  “Yeah,” Connor says, stepping back and looking towards the door. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ve been sitting here for hours and I got shit to do. You got it from here?”

  “Yes,” I say, although inside I’m not sure I have.

  Connor nods and makes for the exit and I turn to the desk in a haze of memories tinged with a little bit of fear. It can’t be my Brandon being held in those cells. He was a good kid. Clever and quiet. I tell myself that it’ll be some other Brandon Ford I’m representing and everything will be fine.

  The desk officer ushers me though and I talk to the officer working on the case. The Brandon Ford being held in the cells got into a bar fight and beat a man. The officer says it was quite brutal. He also says that Mr. F
ord is suspected of being a member of a local crime organization, known for their involvement in illegal gambling, drug running and other nefarious activities.

  I ask if he has an existing record and the office mentions a couple of other charges that were dropped. Then, when I’ve finished jotting down my notes, I’m taken towards the interview room where I will meet my new client. My navy patent heels click on the tiled floor and I adjust my purse on my shoulder, feeling ridiculously nervous. Half of me is desperate to open that door and find that Brandon Ford the criminal is a stranger to me, but the other half is so damn desperate to see my stepbrother again. Hearing his name has brought up a swell of old feelings inside me that has left me feeling shaky.

  Just as the officer opens the door, I remember how good my day has been so far. Whoever is behind that door is about to change all that. I can feel it in my bones.

  Chapter 2

  Samantha

  When I was eight my father married again. My mom had died not long after I was born of an asthma attack. She had the condition severely and on the day it happened, she was standing at a bus stop on a busy road, surrounded by pollution and other irritants, and she’d left her inhaler in another purse. By the time the ambulance reached her she was already gone.

  Thinking about her makes my chest feel tight, partly because I spent so much time as a child imagining what it would be like to die that way, gasping for a breath that was impossible to force into your damaged lungs.

  My stepmom was a lovely woman who took me under her wing immediately. She had a son who was two years older than me and we hit it off straight away.

  I was a sporty kid, so Brandon and I spent hours in our yard with bats and balls, challenging each other to races across the field behind our home. Brandon was always faster but he never gloated when he beat me. Instead, he’d look down at his watch and compliment me on my timing, or nod his head and tell me my technique was improving.

  At night we’d camp out in our tent and eat marshmallows and his mom’s chewy home-made cookies, never running out of things to talk about. He loved nature and would tell me all about the obscure animals he’d been reading about. To this day I think I know more about native Australian mammals than anyone else I’ve ever met, barring Brandon. A couple of years ago I travelled to Sydney and spent a whole day at the zoo there, marveling at the wombats, koalas and bilbies, wishing he was with me to see them.

  He’d wanted to be a zoo keeper when he grew up so he could work with animals. He wanted to research their native environments and find better ways to house them that were closer to the places they came from. Brandon had a love of people and animals, a soft-heartedness that his mother nurtured with a stream of pets. He looked after each one as though it was the most precious thing in his life, but it was Wombat, his brown mongrel puppy, that he loved the best. Wombat would sleep between us in the tent, guarding his precious owner as he slipped into his dreams.

  Even as a nine year old I thought Brandon was beautiful. Not in a perfect-looks way but because he had so much light inside him which seemed to flow through his face. His eyes were a soft blue-green with gold flecks around the center, the color of the lake we used so swim in on hot days when our parents would take us for rambling picnics. He had long, light-brown eyelashes that were fairer at the roots and darker at the tips. They made him look angelic when he was sleeping. In the summer freckles would appear on this cheeks as though the warm weather sprinkled him with glitter.

  I loved him deeply; my best friend, my brother and so much a part of my home that I couldn’t recall what it had been like before he arrived with his mom.

  We had two blissful years together, full of innocent fun, before tragedy struck our family and blew it all apart.

  I have the memory of the ten year old Brandon sleeping curled around Wombat in my mind when I walk through the door to the interview room. The man sitting at the table is big and broad, sitting with his body slumped down in chair, legs spread wide and arms folded across his chest. Time seems to stand still as his eyes scan over me, starting at my feet and rising slowly, seductively, as though he wants to turn me into something he is in control of rather than the other way around. When he finally looks me in the eye I see the flash of recognition. It’s like a spark of electricity between us. This rugged, shorn-haired, thuggish man is my Brandon Ford and I can’t take it in. I rest my hand on the back of the chair that I’m supposed to be sitting on, suddenly feeling like I might teeter in my heels. His eyes close, just for a second, but it’s enough for me to see that he knows and is trying to pull himself together.

  “Brandon?” I say, my voice filled with emotion, and when he opens his eyes it’s as though he’s dropped the shutters over the feelings I had seen a glimpse of.

  He turns to the officer and says, “I want another attorney.”

  “No,” I blurt out. “Why?”

  Brandon shakes his head and leans forward, resting his strong forearms on the table, telling me with his body language to back down and do as he wishes. My stepbrother wasn’t anything like this man, with his brutish mannerisms and aggressive posturing, but we have too much history for me to walk out of here without finding out more. I want to talk to him so badly.

  “Because this isn’t any place for you, Sammie.”

  His use of the nickname he gave me throws me off guard for a second, taking me back to those sweet times when he would whisper through the crack in my door to see if I was awake. The nights when he’d sneak into my bed so we could read comics feel an eon away.

  “I’m a defense attorney,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm and unaffected. I hold eye contact with him and he doesn’t look away, but I do when I see him clenching and unclenching his bloodied fist. “You need to get that seen to,” I say and look over to the officer. “My client requires medical treatment for the injuries to his hands. Please can you arrange for a nurse to attend to them?”

  The officer raises his eyebrows and so do I. If he thinks I’m a pushover he’s got another think coming.

  I pull the chair out from under the table and lower myself to sit in it, putting my purse on the table and finding my notepad and pen.

  “I said I don’t want you,” Brandon hisses, leaning even further across the table.

  The officer is hanging around behind me, as if he doesn’t know what to do. I need to get Brandon to back down, otherwise I’m out of here.

  “Brandon, your friend has paid me a retainer to act on your behalf. Can I ask that you let me do my job for now, and once we have dealt with the current matter, then you talk to your friend and decide whether or not you want to seek alternative representation?”

  Brandon stares at me with his blue-green lake eyes, framed by long soft-brown lashes that are just the same in a way that is unnerving. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me after all these years. I know it must be disconcerting for him too.

  “Please,” I say, wanting so desperately to spend time with him and learn who he is now and what his life has been like. He’s changed so much but he’s still beautiful to me, so much so that I feel my heart skip a little as I take in the size of him, the sheer masculinity.

  “No,” he says in such a firm voice I know I’m not going to get anywhere. I feel wounded; I can’t understand why he doesn’t want me to represent him. Does he think I won’t do a good job? Does he think I’m incompetent? My face feels hot, as my battered pride boils to the surface. Brandon must see my reaction because he leans back and crosses his arms again, his eyes softening. “I don’t want you involved in this, Sammie. Trust me.”

  Maybe it’s crazy but I do trust him, even after all these years and despite the fact I can see the evidence of violence marring his hands. I look towards the officer who is lurking behind me in front of the closed door, and then back at Brandon. “I’ll send someone else from my firm,” I say, and he shakes his head.

  “Take this number down.” He nods towards my pad and pen and I do as he says, jotting the number and the name ‘A
dam’ as instructed. When I’ve finished, I look up and catch an expression on Brandon’s face that sends a tingle all the way up my spine. It’s the same look he used to give me when we would lie next to each other in our tent and whisper secrets, filled with intensity and warmth. For seconds we just study each other, Sammie and Bran-bran, best friends again. And then, like a fog has passed between us, it’s gone. “You should go,” he says, looking towards the door and the officer.

  I pull a card out of the front pocket of my purse and slide it across the table to him. “Call me when you get out,” I say but he doesn’t reach to take the card.

  “You take care, Sammie,” he says, and that’s it.

  Conversation over.

  Reunion terminated.

  I stand and pack my things, my throat burning with a rush of emotion that feels too much for the situation. With so many years between us I shouldn’t want to cry at what feels like rejection, but I do. I’m back in the body of my younger self, watching my favorite person in the world leave me behind.

  “Bye, Brandon,” I say, the words catching in my tight throat, and I know I should turn to leave but I just can’t stand the idea that this might be it. I might never see him again. I rack my memory trying to find something to say that might remind him of how things used to be between us, and that might make me feel less of a stranger to him. “I went to Australia,” I say. “I held a real wombat.”

  The police officer clears his throat behind me but I don’t care if he thinks I’m a freak because Brandon is looking at me like he remembers.

  “I’ll speak to you soon then?” I say with a half-smile that is all I can manage, and then I turn quickly before I lose all composure, and am led back out of the station by the officer.