Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (34 page)

“I paid Harrison a million dollars to videotape Wilde with his slutty new co-star.”

Hailey-in-the-flesh in front of me had gone scarlet red. “Where did you get that?” she hissed.

I shrugged. “I guess we each have more interaction with one another’s assistants than I ever thought possible.” Hailey opened her mouth to say something else but I held up a finger to shush her. “You’re going to miss the best part, Hailey.”

I made sure my eyes were on her face for the grand finale. On the video, one of her friends was shrieking and then whispering in a harsh voice. “
Harrison
? Wait…isn’t he the one who knocked you up?”

Hailey’s voice came through the laptop loud and clear. “God, I wish I hadn’t told you that. You’re the
worst
at keeping secrets.”

I snapped the laptop shut with a single finger, then turned to face her stunned-looking friends sitting on the couch.

“How’d you enjoy the entertainment, ladies?” I asked with a grand smile.

Two of them were clearly trying not to laugh.

The third one looked guilty. “That was me,” she whispered. “On the video.” Her eyes darted, panicked, to Hailey. “Oops.”

I started laughing loudly, then turned to Hailey. I said nothing. I wanted this moment to be as uncomfortable as possible for her. I wanted to see her squirming, panicking, clawing at the walls to try to escape this devious prison of her own making.

I’d never actually seen her speechless. But of course, she eventually found her words again.

“That couldn’t have been taped legally. I’m firing Robert, and suing both of you,” she spat.

I shrugged. “Go ahead. Robert obviously isn’t too worried. And as for the suing, do you really think that’s going to go well?”

Hailey’s mouth had formed a grim, straight line. I could tell she was running her mind as fast as it would go, trying to out-guess me.

“If you release that, I release the sex tape,” she snapped.

I nodded with a smile. “I’m not releasing this video.”

Hailey furrowed her eyebrows. “What?”

I shrugged. “I don’t need to. Just having it is enough. I know you’ll keep quiet.”

She looked like a woman trapped. I knew that she knew that I had her.

“What if I release the sex tape anyway? Who’s to say I won’t?” she asked quickly.

Full-on laughter broke through the dam of my walled-off emotions. “If you release your video. Then I will release mine. But I know you won’t.”

Hailey glared at me. “And how do you- “

“You’re always the victim, Hailey. That’s what makes your brand sell. This doesn’t look good for you. And you know I’ll release it out of retaliation. You
know
that I will. Your story with your fans is that
you
are always put-upon; the one cheated upon, the one who has her man stolen by other women. Your fans won’t take well to the shattering of your perfect, edgy-angel image when they find out you engaged in blackmail. Add onto that the fact that your baby’s father isn’t me – and he’s not even another famous person. He’s a lowly assistant. That’s not glamorous. You’d be
finished.”

Hailey opened her mouth and shut it several times. She looked like a frog trying to catch flies. Then she stopped. “I fucking hate you, Wilde,” she whispered.

I smiled at her. “I know.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

WILDER

“She’s not going to come, is she?” I whispered nervously to Josh.

We were standing in suits at the front of the courtroom chapel. My dad was talking to the Justice of the Peace who would be overseeing the simple ceremony.

“Can you blame her?” he responded quietly. “I could barely get Amy to come here after the shit you pulled the other night. Although your musical apology that she requested went a long way toward harmony.”

I laughed. I’d gone over first thing this morning to say how sorry I was for ruining dinner and just generally being a dick. Amy told me that if I really meant it, I would sing and dance to a scene from her favorite musical. I’d ended up doing the full Gene Kelley routine complete with umbrella stolen from their front hallway.

“Your wife is weird,” I replied.

Josh shrugged and smiled. “That’s why I love her.”

He turned over his shoulder and waved at Amy, who was sitting in the back row of wooden pews. She blew him a kiss, then looked at me and raised her middle finger. I returned the gesture. She laughed. The unknown-to-me old women sitting in the front row of the chapel looked scandalized.

“I still can’t believe that Robert saved the day. I mean, the
cat
guy?” Josh said. He had been as stunned as I was at the twisting turn of events.

“Just shows that you never know how shit’s going to fucking end up,” I replied with a smile.

“So do you think that Harrison knows about the baby being his?” Josh asked me in a low voice.

“I really don’t know. There’s a small chance she might have paid him to keep quiet about that too. We’ll never know for –“ I stopped mid-sentence.

Olivia and her mom walked into the chapel. I felt my stomach flip over six times. She was wearing a royal blue dress that wrapped and crisscrossed over her breasts and around her stomach, the bottom fabric flowing freely until it was interrupted by the floor. It was strapless, and her gorgeous, sexy shoulders were bare. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a twisted knot.

And she was actually smiling.

At me.

“You going to finish your sentence, man?” Josh asked before turning around and seeing where I was staring. “Oh.” He said quietly.

Amy was waving her hand excitedly, pointing at Olivia as if I couldn’t see her walking toward me.

I felt frozen on the spot. Olivia started biting her lip as if she were holding back a smile that was growing by the second.

Suddenly I put two and two together. Robert hadn’t come back to the room last night. Olivia was probably staying in the same hotel that Hailey and I were. Had he gone to see Olivia? Would he do that?

I didn’t want to get my hopes up. It turned out I didn’t have a moment to. The Justice of the Peace was calling everyone to order as my dad nearly skipped over to Penelope, meeting her halfway down the aisle and kissing her fully.

They were both glowing. Penelope was radiant in a tie-dyed dress, her long blonde and grey hair loose around her shoulders.

But all I could see was Olivia. The best part was that it seemed like all she could see was me.

I heard nothing that the Justice of the Peace said during the ceremony. Josh had to nudge me to hand the rings over. Olivia didn’t take her eyes off of me the entire time.

I mouthed a quick
Hi
near the beginning of the ceremony, but all she did was smile back at me with no other response. I felt like I was going to explode. I started bouncing on the balls of my feet. This fucking ceremony was taking forever.

Finally, after an eternity, my dad was kissing Penelope. Everyone assembled in the small chapel cheered, and my new mom and dad walked triumphantly down the aisle. Josh followed them.

It was only me and my new sister standing at the altar.

“Hi,” I said out loud this time.

“Hi yourself,” she replied, wiggling slightly as if she were trying to contain her excitement.

It was the sexiest wiggle I’d ever witnessed. She took a single step toward me.

“So I guess Robert showed you the video?” I asked her, taking a step forward of my own.

She nodded again. “Yes.” One step closer.

We were so close to touching. I could feel the air pulsating between us.

“So I guess you’re fine with everything?” I asked. Another step.

I didn’t need a response.

She jumped up and kissed me, her mouth open, her hands flying up to my hair. I lifted her off the ground, pressing her body against mine as hard as I could. We didn’t pull apart until I heard Amy yelling from the back.

“Get a room!” she yelled. Everybody laughed.

Olivia hung onto me, her feet still off the ground, beaming.

“So. What now?” she asked me.

“Whatever the fuck we want,” I replied. She giggled.

“DINNER!” Josh yelled. “Let’s go!”

I laughed and looked at Olivia, who was struggling to put her feet back on the ground. I held her tightly, not allowing her feet touch the ground.

“Where do you think you’re going, your highness?” I asked her.

“To walk to dinner,” she replied slowly.

I reached under her legs and lifted her up full into my arms. She shrieked with joy.

“I’m not risking you getting away from me again,” I muttered, kissing her hair.

“Don’t you mean you’re not risking
you
putting me down and walking away?” she asked pointedly.

“You will never stop busting my ass, will you?” I said to her.

She laughed and shook her head. “Never. And you know you love it.”

“I do,” I replied.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

OLIVIA

THREE YEARS LATER

“I HATE YOU!” I screamed, picking up the sofa pillow and throwing it at Wilder’s head.

He was bleeding from the bottle I’d just smashed over his skull. He was shirtless, in black boxers, his muscles rippling as he held up tattoo-covered arms.

“Get. HER. OUT OF HERE!” I shrieked.

I could feel a vein popping across my forehead. I was raging.

“It’s not – it’s not what it looks like hon, I swear to God,” Wilder gasped.

“Oh really? Because what it looks like is that you’re with another woman.
Again.
”

I laughed manically, feeling like I was about to rip the hair out of my head.

“The only thing that’s different is that
this one
is a brunette,” I screamed, pointing at the skinny, topless co-ed who was cowering with the covers up around her in bed. I picked up a ceramic vase.

“Hon, seriously. Just put down the vase. Don’t throw that. Please,” Wilder said, his eyes pleading. “Just talk to me. We can work this out. I know we can.”

I held the heavy vase in my hand, jiggling it slightly as if feeling the weight fully. I was calculating how much this would hurt him if my aim was good. I set it back down, tears springing into my eyes.

“I’m taking the baby. You won’t see her again. Ever. I will
destroy
you in court.”

Wilder howled like a wounded animal. “You can’t fucking
do that!
” he screamed.

“Watch me,” I spat, picking the vase up again and throwing it at his head.

He wasn’t ready and only barely ducked out of the way. It exploded into a million pieces against the wall.

I marched out of the bedroom and ran smack into black metal lighting rigging. It crashed to the ground with a shatter.

“CUT!” Fox yelled. Everyone on set started laughing.

“Sorry!” I yelled out. “Forgot that was there.”

“It was a great take other than that ending,” Fox said. “We still might be able to use it. But to be safe, let’s review it and go ahead and get this mess cleaned up in case we need to shoot it again.”

A key grip ran over to pull the rigging up. A second later, I felt Wilder’s bare arms around me.

“You okay, Liv?” he whispered into my ear.

I shivered at his touch.

“I might be bleeding a little, actually,” I said, looking down at my arm. A red trickle was running down it.

“Do you need me to get the medic?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’ll just go clean up…in my trailer,” I replied. I bit my lip and stared at him knowingly.

He grinned. “You nearly brained me with that vase this time.”

I looked at him devilishly. “Just trying to keep you in check.”

I walked off the set and through the soundstage door into the blazing Los Angeles sun. People were zooming by on golf carts and wandering the sidewalks. My trailer wasn’t far. I pulled the door open and was relieved to see nobody was in there.

I pulled down a paper towel and held it to my arm. The cut was superficial. A moment later the door to my trailer burst open. Wilder stood there in a black bathrobe.

“Gee, you could have at least counted to ten before running after me,” I said to him. “Way to make it obvious that we came back here for sex.”

Wilder grinned and dropped the bathrobe to the floor, still only wearing black boxer-briefs. He stepped across the trailer and wrapped his hands around my waist, squeezing his hands as he did so.

“I think everyone realizes that shooting a movie about infidelity isn’t the ideal way for newlyweds to spend their honeymoon.” He kissed me slowly, lifting me up onto the countertop.

I felt the tight black pencil skirt start to pull apart as he did so.

“Wait!” I screamed. “I need to get out of costume. Lydia will kill me if I tear this.”

Wilder groaned. “I’ll buy another one.” He kissed my neck.

I had to push him away. “Because that worked out so well last time?”

Wilder blanched at the reminder of a movie shoot in Finland where, during a between-takes tryst Wilder had torn off my ten-thousand-dollar vintage Galliano gown. Lydia had actually cried. I pushed him off me.

“This isn’t like the dress incident, but we’ll still have to re-shoot like three other scenes if I end up changing clothes in this one,” I insisted.

Wilder stepped away from me and let me get off the counter. I started to unzip my clothes but he stopped my hands.

“Let me do it,” he whispered.

I nodded. He started at my blouse, unbuttoning each of the dozen buttons slowly and deftly. I watched the tattoos on his forearms move and dance in the sunlight. Wilder had just been cast as the lead role in the next big superhero blockbuster. He was spending six hours a day in the gym now and looked like a marble sculpture.

I certainly wasn’t complaining.

I took a deep breath as he slid the silk shirt down over my arms, grazing my breastbone with his lips. He set the blouse on the countertop and made his way to the side zipper of my skirt.

The fabric fell to the floor and he took my hands to help me step out of it carefully. Then he unclasped my lacy bra, licking his lips and putting his palms over my nipples. He ran his hands down my stomach and down to my panty line, pulling the red lacy bottoms down over my thighs.