Charged: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (With FREE Bonus Novel Heated!) Read online

“I’d be around.”

  “What about the rest of your family?” Leighton asked.

  Gracey blinked softly. “They’d make do, don’t you think? They’d have to.”

  “You don’t care about them so much?”

  “They don’t care about anyone but themselves. It might do them good to be out on their own for a while, fending for themselves.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll make do. I always do.”

  Her eyes locked with his again and she smiled sweetly when she saw the way he was looking at her, a grin that lit up her whole face. “It wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve kind of always hated that house anyway.”

  “It doesn’t suit you”, Leighton suggested.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What would suit me instead?”

  “Somewhere you can’t get lost.”

  “Getting lost is exactly what I want.”

  “Somewhere you can’t get lost in the past then”, Leighton said.

  Gracey drew away from the counter to take her breath. “That, for sure”, she said. “Isn’t that what we all want?”

  “Maybe”, Leighton said. “At least those of us who have shared the same experiences.”

  “Are you telling me there’s a soft centre under that hard exterior?”

  “A hard exterior has just been exposed to the elements for too long. It’s always soft underneath.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s a promise.”

  “Have you even met my mother?”

  Leighton couldn’t help but laugh. “Soft all the way to her core.”

  “She wants me to seduce you, you know that?”

  Leighton raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?”

  “She thinks that you’ll let us stay in the house if I do. She wanted Pandora to do it, but I guess she failed. She thinks I might have something over you.”

  “Something over me?”

  “Like you won’t be able to resist me.”

  “She’s a clever woman, your mother.”

  “She’s a lot of things, my mother.”

  “Well”, Leighton said. “Are you going to?”

  Gracey paused before she answered, letting the tension build up.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Leighton smiled. He knew exactly what that meant. Gracey held his gaze and smiled too. It was weird, but it was almost as if they’d communicated without the need for speaking. It was almost as if she’d finally said yes to a question that had been posed at the very beginning of time. It made her heart leap around in her chest like it was untethered. She could feel parts of her body that she didn’t know even existed. She was tingling all over with anticipation, desire, excitement. Was what she was going to do wrong? Taboo yes, but wrong? Whatever it was it felt urgent and necessary and absolutely unbelievable. The moment was cracked by the strains of a familiar voice.

  “Gracey. Are you going to stand there chatting all day, or are you going to do the work I pay you to do? Sorry guy, but this isn’t what I’m paying her to do, and you ain’t even got a drink in front of yer.”

  It was Gracey’s boss, Derek, a thin-skinned, oily-faced man with high blood pressure and a weak bladder.

  Leighton turned to him “How much are you paying her?” he said.

  “Come again, chief?”

  “How much do you pay her?”

  Derek eyeballed Leighton, cocking his head to the side like a spaniel, trying to work out meaning in the question he had been asked.

  “Don’t worry”, Gracey whispered to him. “That’s not necessary. Sorry, Derek, I’m coming. Leighton was just passing by.”

  “Yeah, well, pass by and drink, or pass by when she’s off the clock.” Derek mopped sweat from his neck with a dirty flannel. “Those restrooms ain’t going to clean themselves.”

  “What time do you finish?” Leighton asked.

  Gracey looked briefly at the clock, at Derek who was tutting and shaking his head and then back to Leighton.

  “If I do what my mother wants, are you going to go back home tomorrow?”

  “Come on”, Derek shouted.

  “That depends on how well you do it”, Leighton said with a smile.

  Gracey watched him spin around on his bar stool and walk towards the exit. “Bye Gracey”, he said.

  “Eight o’clock”, Gracey shouted, just before Leighton slipped through the doors.

  Derek mumbled. “What’s he got that I ain’t hey?” he said, the flannel going to the back of his neck again. “You’re lucky you’ve still got a job flirting with non-drinking customers such as you have been. Good looking ones as well. I can’t have it.”

  Gracey could feel her heart thumping away in her chest all afternoon. Had she agreed to something she had to now go through with? She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face if she tried.

  Chapter 14

  Pandora had kind of half melted into the sofa. She was busy glowering at Alexander who was doing as best a job as he could by glowering back.

  “I’m so bored”, Pandora complained after a while, breaking off the contest and letting the poor dog go back to trying to sleep.

  Alexis had taken to the seat near the window so she could spot cars coming up the drive. She was hoping for Leighton, but half expected the next to be another police car. If her daughters weren’t capable, she’d damn well try herself. She was well aware the injunction had been lifted, her lawyer had called her earlier in the day. She felt like she was on borrowed time.

  “Go out if you’re bored”, Alexis said, without looking at her daughter. She had concerns of her own without having to play mother to a grown up daughter.

  “And do what exactly?” Pandora huffed. “I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but we are broke.”

  “Then get a job like your sister”, Alexis snapped.

  “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

  Alexis made a sound that could have equally well come from Alexander. It was a kind of deep guttural huff that can only be made with an empty stomach and a voice box made hoarse from a twenty a day habit.

  “Did you do it, Mommy?” Pandora asked.

  “Did I do what?”

  “You know, sneak in here, tip it into his drink, pretend nothing happened. I won’t tell if you did.” Pandora had a huge grin on her face.

  “Don’t be preposterous”, Alexis said. “I’d at least make sure the money was coming to us beforehand. I was ready to wait it out. The rate Philip was going, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few years. No, whoever did it, did it because they hated him. This wasn’t about the money at all.”

  “I reckon Gracey did it”, Pandora said, for no other reason than to prolong the conversation.

  “All three of you could have done it for all I know. You weren’t exactly quiet about your dislike of the man.”

  “She’s the only one who’s clever enough to know where to get the poison”, Pandora went on without considering what her mother had said. “I’ve seen the books she’s got in her room, all that stuff about herbs and nutrition and botany and chemistry and stuff. She’s a proper know-it-all. I reckon she was planning it for a long time and just waited for the right moment to make it look like he’d had a heart attack.”

  “He did have a heart attack”, Alexis corrected her.

  “Yeah but only because of the poison. Don’t you remember when she went schitzo when she was eight and tried to stab him with a pair of scissors? What if she does it to the rest of us as well?” Pandora said, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the sofa, the idea just coming to her. “I mean she could poison any of us, couldn’t she?”

  Alexis gave her daughter a dismissive look. “That was Isabella, and it wasn’t a pair of scissors, it was a letter opener.”

  “It’s the same thing. What if she’s knocking us off, one by one?”

  “I thought your sister was the one with the vivid imagination.”

  “It doesn’t take a genius t
o work out what could happen”, Pandora said, scaring herself now. “I mean if she’s already done it once, she’ll have got a taste for it. What if she does it again? We should call the police, none of us are safe.”

  “You’d call the police on your own sister?” Pandora didn’t notice it, but there was a hint of curiosity in the way Alexis asked the question.

  “I would if she was going to kill us.”

  “Your sister might be the only person who can save us from getting chucked out of this place”, Alexis commented.

  “Yeah right. Even if Gracey lets Leighton get into her panties, there’s no way he’s going to stick around. We’re finished whatever happens. As soon as Leighton decides to kick us out, he will. It doesn’t matter how long you sit there waiting for him to come back, the next time he does it’ll be to tell us to leave.”

  Alexis didn’t even humour her daughter with a response.

  “It’ll need more than just some tight, frigid virgin to keep us here”, Pandora said, the words trickling off her lip-glossed lips with ease.

  “Then what do you suggest, smart-ass? I’m not the type to beg like a scolded dog.”

  “I don’t know”, Pandora complained. “Maybe if they did it together.”

  “Did what together?”

  “You know, bumped off Philip. If they both did it together then he wouldn’t be able to inherit the house. You know, if he was in prison for the rest of his life. Duh.”

  Alexis turned to her, a cloud of smoke streaming from pursed up lips that looked like a pair of prunes squashed together.

  “They’d have to give it to us”, Pandora went on.

  “He wasn’t here. None of us even knew him before Philip was in the hospital.”

  “What if we said that we did though?”

  Alexis shifted her weight towards her daughter and narrowed her eyes into perfect slits.

  “Go on”, she said.

  “It would be our word against his. It’s what the police are looking for, isn’t it? Motive.”

  Alexis made a noise like a growling dog again.

  “Did you poison him?” Alexis asked. “I swear to God I’ll kill you if you did.”

  “Mommy”, Pandora protested. “I’m telling you it was Gracey. She did it with that sexy businessman Leighton. Do you want to know how I know?”

  “How do you know?” Alexis asked suspiciously.

  “I saw her do it”, Pandora said.

  “You did, did you?” Alexis said, her eyes so narrowed they were almost closed completely.

  “I saw more than that”, Pandora confessed.

  “What more did you see?”

  “I saw Leighton here, a week before Philip died.”

  “Leighton?” Alexis said flatly.

  “That’s right”, Pandora said, her heart racing with the lie. “He was here at the house, and he was there at the bar. Isabella saw him too. I’m surprised you didn’t. Perhaps you did and you didn’t even realise it.”

  Alexis stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Pandora.”

  “It’s not a game Mom, It’s the truth. Just ask Isabella.”

  Alexis shook another cigarette out of her pack. It was the very last one.

  “They’re going to get into trouble aren’t they?” Pandora asked, her eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings. “I think we even have the death penalty in this state, don’t we? I mean, stabbing someone with scissors is one thing, but murder-” Pandora paused to put on her best theatrical voice “-I mean murder, that’s serious isn’t it? People hang for that.”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV”, Alexis said. “They abolished the death penalty two years ago.”

  “Oh”, Pandora said, “Well, they didn’t abolish prison, did they?”

  Alexis didn’t need to turn around to know a car was pulling up the drive, she could hear the sound of the tires on the gravel.

  ***

  At three am, at Philip’s memorial, wind rushing through the trees above them, and no other sound but the distant hoot of an owl, a hooded figure with a baseball bat entered the correct combination code to access the inner section of the tomb and pushed their way confidently through the gate.

  It didn’t take them long to smash the urn of ashes to the ground, nor crack the piece of contemporary art into several large pieces. When they were done, they spat on the spilled mess that was once Philip Mandrake De Vries, and stamped what was left of him into the ground, the baseball bat almost broken in two, and sweat soaking into the hoodie they wore to cover their face.

  Chapter 15

  Gracey had spent the rest of the afternoon in anticipation. As soon as Leighton had left, she’d regretted what she’d said to him, and then wondered whether they both understood what had been agreed, and then decided finally that nothing had been agreed other than a post work meeting, however formal that sounded.

  Whatever it was that they’d decided upon, it was enough to keep her from concentrating on her work. Derek could see it straight away. It was a common illness in the young people he regularly recruited to staff the bar. It was an occupational hazard he hadn’t as yet found a way of avoiding. Despite this, nothing made him angrier. Gracey was a good worker, but on this particular afternoon, the afternoon that had the potential to determine the course of the rest of her life, she was slapdash and accident prone. At the end of her shift she had broken three glasses, dropped a full bottle of vodka, that thankfully hadn’t broken, but had spent enough time on the floor to spill a large amount of its contents, and was fifty eight dollars short on the till, despite there only being a handful of customers. When Leighton arrived at eight o’clock on the dot, ready to whisk Gracey away, Derek was halfway through her first verbal warning.

  Leighton took a seat and waited patiently for Gracey to emerge from the staff area at the back of the bar. He could hear Derek shouting, but the sound was muffled as it carried through the corridor and into the front of house. Eventually, at 8:15, when Derek was red faced and out of insults, he finally let Gracey go. Once again the room seemed to bend towards her when she looked into his eyes.

  “Hi-” Leighton began, a warm smile parting perfect lips.

  “You again?” Derek complained, emerging from the shadows behind his recently reprimanded worker to cut Leighton off. He approached the table in front of her, mostly just to piss Gracey off. “You drinking this time buddy or are you leaving?”

  Leighton stood up. He was well built, athletic and a foot taller than Derek. Derek gulped as he looked up to the man that was clearly better in every respect than he could ever even imagine himself being.

  “Gracey”, Leighton said, ignoring Derek and taking her by the hand. “Shall we?”

  Gracey smiled. When she took Leighton’s hand her whole body felt like it was on fire, like she’d just stuck her fingers in an electrical socket and the current was coursing around her veins.

  “Ok”, Gracey managed.

  “Ok, ok”, Derek mimicked, his hand going into the air mockingly. “You kids. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Don’t be late tomorrow, Gracey. Your pay will be docked if you are.”

  “I know”, Gracey called back to him, Leighton already pulling her to the door.

  Outside, the wind had picked up enough to bite against her lips. Even before she asked him, Leighton pulled her towards him protectively, hugging her against his warmth.

  Is this real? Gracey asked herself, and then wondered if she’d said it out aloud.

  “Your boss seems lovely”, Leighton commented.

  Gracey laughed and pulled herself closer to him, burying her head up into his neck. “He’s better than the customers”, she said.

  While they were waiting to cross the road, the wind picking up and getting stronger by the minute, Leighton took the opportunity to kiss Gracey on the top of the head. As soon as he’d done it, he felt like he’d overstepped the mark. Head kissing was firmly in the reserve of boyfriend/girlfriend territory, something Leight
on had never ever considered himself, at least not for a long time. It shocked him as much as it shocked Gracey. It shocked them both so much they almost missed the green man cycle to cross the road.

  “Sorry”, Leighton mumbled as they crossed the road to beeping cars, and hurried towards his own. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  Gracey looked up to him, pausing to let him sweat for a moment. “I thought it was my job to seduce you.” she said finally.

  Inside the car they were both much warmer.

  “It gets cold here at night time”, Leighton said.

  “Where is home?” Gracey purred, folding into him as though such a position were as natural as swinging on a swing or sliding down a slide. She knew she was being provocative, but it didn’t matter. Despite having zero experience, she was ready to play the game. Her only experience of love or lust or whatever it was she was feeling had come from books, and although what she felt seemed much more alive than anything she’d read, she felt that it couldn’t be anything else. She felt that anything this good had to be worth pursuing. It wasn’t the fact that her mother had ordered her to, or that Leighton himself had demanded it, it was that Gracey, through fear or just plain acceptance, knew there was nothing else she could do. It was going to happen sooner or later, and she wanted to make sure than if it wasn’t sooner, she didn’t run the risk of losing the opportunity altogether. So what if they were stepbrother and stepsister. Philip was dead, that was the only connection they really shared, and Leighton had grown up not even knowing who he was. It felt weird thinking that the man next to her had come from her stepfather, but it wasn’t enough to turn her off him. No-one else but her family knew. Her family and the several million other people that had read the newspaper headlines the day after the will reading, but that didn’t matter. If they kept it secret, if they kept it just between them, it wouldn’t matter at all that they were related, even if it wasn’t by blood.

  “New York”, Leighton said. “At least that’s where I have the business.”

  His hand found the back of Gracey’s neck to massage the skin gently and dance his fingers through her hair.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to New York”, Gracey said, her eyes closing to the wonderful sensation of finally having him touch her.