Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) (5 page)

SIX YEARS, ELEVEN MONTHS AGO

"What do you think?"  Grace dangles her feet over the edge of the pool, kicking her toes lazily in the water.  She leans back and arches her chest up, her boobs basically falling out of her bikini top, but she doesn't care.  My older sister is gorgeous, and she knows it.  She's always known it.  Why I wound up being the famous one is something I'll never know.  Grace was always the pretty one, with her emerald-colored eyes and dark hair and legs that are at least a foot longer than mine.  Not to mention her boobs.  I think she basically got the boob gene, because my A-cups do nothing to fill out my swimsuit.

"What do I think about what?"

"Come on," she says.  "You know
what
.  Or
who
, really.  Our new stepbrother."

I wrinkle my nose.  "I have no opinion whatsoever."

Grace grins.  "Don't be such a goody-goody," she says.  "You totally have an opinion.  You just don't want to say it out loud because it's not nice and you're the nice girl."

I exhale heavily.  Everyone has pegged me as the "nice girl" since I was a kid, including Grace. 
Especially
Grace.  I'm the good girl and she's the bad girl. Grace says it jokingly, but there's always an edge to it.  Our mother, never able to see anyone except in black-and-white categories, labeled us that way when we were young.  She hated Grace's father, and Grace took the brunt of it.  It doesn't help that Grace and I look like total opposites.  Or that Grace has completely embraced the bad girl role, rebelling against everything possible and coming home with tattoos and piercings and basically whatever she can do to get my mother's attention.  What Grace doesn't realize is that being the good girl is just as annoying.  It's not as much fun for me as she thinks it is.  "I'm not the nice girl," I say.

Grace looks at me over the top of her sunglasses and laughs.  "Sure you're not, Adds," she says.  "What have you done lately -- or ever -- that makes you a bad girl?"

"I -- " I pause, trying to come up with something.  I'm only fifteen.  It's not like there have been a million opportunities to be a bad girl, even when I was on tour last summer.  "I drank beer with Sam Crawford in his room while we were on tour."

Grace gives me a long look.  "You were hanging out in Sam Crawford's room?" she asks.  "And he gave you beer?"

My heart catches in my throat. 
Crap.
  I don't want to get him in trouble or anything.  Sam is a few years older than me – nineteen -- and he's totally cute.  I thought he was going to try to kiss me, but he didn't, and honestly, I was disappointed.  "Yeah.  It was no big deal."

Grace laughs.  "No big deal because you drink beer all the time, you lush?"

I can feel the heat of embarrassment on my face.  Sometimes I totally hate Grace.  I can't tell when she's teasing me for being too much of a goody-goody or lecturing me for doing something wrong.  "I've had beer before, you know."

"Sam Crawford shouldn't be giving you beer," she says, her tone clipped.  "Did he try anything with you?"

"No," I say.

"Good."

"But I totally would have if he did," I spit out.  "He's cute and he's nice and I thought he was going to, but he didn't."

"Sam Crawford shouldn't be making a move on you," she says.  "He's too old for you.  And he's a dick, anyway."

"How do you know?"  I ask.  "And he's not too old.  He's nineteen.  That's four years older."

"That's a big difference," she says.  It's barely more than the difference between our ages.  And
she's
sitting here hanging out with me.  I don't push my luck with her by pointing those things out, because Grace hanging out with me doesn't happen very often enough anymore.  She's busy running around with her friends and boyfriends.  She used to bring her friends back home to meet me, back when her friends cared who I was.  It used to annoy me when she'd show me off to her friends like some kind of trophy, but now she's hanging out with a new group that doesn't think I'm cool enough.  And now I kind of miss it.

"Well, nothing happened, anyway," I tell her.

"Good," she says.  "Keep it that way.  You haven't --
you know
-- with anyone, have you?"

"Yeah, right," I say, catching the meaning of her words.  "I've barely been on a date.  Who would I –
you know
-- with?"

"That's good," she says.  "It's not all it's cracked up to be anyway."

I don't believe her.  Sex is obviously all it's cracked up to be, since she's doing it with lots of different guys.  I don't say that, even though I want to.  It would hurt her feelings, and I don't want to hurt her.  Still, I've wondered about sex. 
A lot.
  And I want her to tell me about it, but I don't dare ask.  She'd totally blow me off as being too young, and I hate that.  "Anyway," I say.  "Have you even talked to Hendrix?"

I've wondered about Hendrix too.  Hendrix makes me think about sex, a lot more than I care to admit, ever since I saw him standing in the foyer the day his father brought him here.  He was tattooed and pierced and he looked at his father with anger in his eyes, the kind of anger that sent a secret thrill through me.

Then he turned and looked at me, dark and brooding, his eyes traveling down the length of my body...  Something about that look made me shiver.  It stayed with me, and I thought about it later that night, when I slid my finger inside my panties.

Grace shrugs.  "He doesn't run in the same circles I do," she says.  Which is weird because I'd think they'd hang out with similar people, since she's into tattoos and piercings and all that.  I don't know.  Sometimes I don't understand Grace at all.

I understand my new stepbrother even less.

I don't understand why I smell bacon.  The smell wakes me up, and I open my eyes, expecting sunlight streaming through the windows, but it's dark.

And I'm still wearing my clothes.

I sit up, groggy, and blink my eyes a few times, trying to register what the hell time it is.  The clock reads 5:45.  In the freaking morning?

Then I realize I must have laid down on the bed and passed out when Hendrix brought me back yesterday from the diner.  Holy shit.

Hendrix.

Pulling open the bedroom door, I pad into the kitchen, where I see Hendrix, his back toward me. Hendrix is shirtless in my kitchen, wearing a pair of olive green sweatpants, slung low on his hips.  A sleeve of tattoos runs up the length of his arm, covering his shoulder and side, but I can't tell what the tattoos are from where I stand.

He turns and looks at me over his shoulder, then glances back to the stove, where he's turning pieces of bacon over.  "Morning, sweet-cheeks."

"What are you doing here?"  The words come out of my mouth before I think.  I'm still groggy, even though I've apparently just slept longer than I have since I was a toddler.  But seriously, what the hell is Hendrix still doing in my apartment?

"That's a shitty way to greet someone who's making you breakfast," he says.  He reaches up into one of the cabinets and hands me a coffee mug.  "Coffee's over there.  Get some."

"Obviously you've familiarized yourself with my kitchen," I say.  "I don't know if I should be disturbed or impressed."  I'm miffed at the way he just orders me around, telling me to "get some" coffee in my own damn house.  I'm also annoyed with how comfortable he seems here, cooking and going through my cabinets and my refrigerator and making himself right at home.  I'm about to make a smart comment about it, but the aroma of coffee is distracting and I wind up just pouring myself a cup instead.

"I had to buy you some groceries," he says.  "I don't know what you've been eating -- yogurt and salad, by the looks of it."

"I eat out a lot," I say, my voice defensive.  My stomach rumbles loudly at the aroma of the bacon, though.  Still, I don't need another lecture from Hendrix, of all people, about taking care of myself. 
Although it does look like he knows how to take care of himself.
  The thought pops into my head, and I find myself stealing another glance at him.

Hendrix looks over at me, and I know he just caught me staring at him.  My cheeks burn, and I try to cover my embarrassment by taking a sip of coffee.  And I nearly choke.  Hendrix laughs.  "Yeah, I make it strong."

"I guess so," I say.  "Did you learn that in the Marines?"

Hendrix shrugs.  "That's self-taught.  What can I say?  Coffee is my vice," he says.  He turns around and looks at me, his gaze running down my body.  "Not my only vice."

I swallow hard, forcing my eyes upward and definitely not focusing on his chest.  His bare, muscular, tattooed, damn-it-stop-looking-focus-your-eyes-up chest.  And his abs.  He doesn't have an ounce of fat on his body, which is especially impressive after I watched him eat enough food to feed a small army yesterday.

But then I remind myself that Hendrix is not just another hot guy.  He's an asshole.  Leopards don't change their spots, and assholes definitely don't change their...assholiness or something.  Not to mention the fact that he's my stepbrother.

I definitely don't need to be thinking about him like this.  Or feeling the heat rush through my body as he looks at me.

"I'm sure that's the least of your vices," I say, hinting at Hendrix's past as a total manwhore.  "You haven't changed at all."

The look that crosses over his face makes me think I might have hurt him, and I feel badly for a moment.  But then it passes.  "You've definitely changed, sweet cheeks."

I flush warm again under his gaze, and I instinctively reach up to touch my hair, the hot mess that it is, pulled up into a haphazard ponytail.  Damn it, why did I come out here without even glancing in the mirror first?  And in my clothes from yesterday.  I just know I look like total crap right now, and meanwhile, Hendrix is standing half-naked in my damn kitchen, not even a foot away from me, looking like sex-on-a-stick.

Hendrix's laugh breaks through my thoughts.  "It's fine," he says, nodding at my attempt to pat my hair back into place.  "Like I haven't seen you after you've just rolled out of bed before."

My heart races at the intimacy of his words, and I nearly choke on my sip of coffee again.  "What?  You've never seen me just out of bed."

Not that I haven't thought about it, though.  How many times have I thought about Hendrix seeing me in bed?

Too many to count, that's the answer. The very inappropriate freaking answer.