Stepbrother HOT! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #3)

STEPBROTHER
HOT!

The
Stepbrother Romance Series Book #3

BAD
BOY FRAT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

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Chapter
One

For a long moment, it felt as though my heart had
stopped in my chest—my mom was frozen in place, I was frozen, and Jaxon was
frozen. It was as if everything had just completely stopped. This had to be an
awful dream; I had to still be asleep. I’d wake up in a second and it would
just be me in bed with Jaxon, with plenty of time for him to run back to his
room.

But before I could say anything, before I could wake
up from the nightmare, Mom closed her half-open mouth and blinked twice,
slowly, before closing the door. I heard her steps moving away quickly. Next to
me, Jaxon sat up, wide-awake. I was still in shock as I watched him snatch his
boxers up off of the floor and pull them on, hurrying to my door. He opened it
and then it closed behind him before I could even get myself enough out of
shock to say something—anything. It seemed as if it had all taken place in a
matter of maybe two seconds; one moment my mom was there, and Jaxon was there,
the next instant I was all alone, naked in my bed.

I sat in my bed, staring at nothing at all, numb all
over. My heart was pounding, instead of being stopped in my chest. My brain
started to slowly unfreeze.
Shit.
My
mom had just walked into my room and seen
me and my new
step-brother
in bed together naked. There was absolutely no way that she
wouldn’t know what we had done. After days of trying to hide that we knew each
other, that we were attracted to each other, it had all come tumbling down
around my head. Mom had seen me naked with her step-son. “Shit. Shit
shit
shit
shit
.”
I launched myself out of the bed and searched all over the floor, scrambling to
find the pajamas I’d been wearing the night before when Jaxon came into my
room. It was still early—crazy early, the time of morning when only my mom and
I woke up. I could get to the kitchen; get her to understand what had happened.

I managed to get my clothes on, not even bothering
to try and find my panties—I didn’t have time to figure out where they were. I
didn’t even look in the mirror. I just got out of my room as quickly as I could
and made a beeline for the kitchen. I didn’t even know for sure that my mom was
there; she might have gone back to Bob, to tell him what she had seen. She had
to be in the kitchen. She had to be willing to listen to me.

I turned the corner and stepped through the open
doorway and there she was, still in her robe, loading up the coffee maker to
brew a pot.
“Mom!”
I tried to keep my voice low but I
was so relieved that she was actually there and that I’d get a chance to talk
to her. Mom looked up and glanced at
me, her cheeks red and
the skin
around her eyes tense. She went back to setting up the coffee
pot as if she hadn’t even heard me.

“Good morning, Mia,” she said. “Want some coffee?” I
walked around the kitchen island.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. My heart was still pounding in
my chest. There was no way that my mom could have possibly missed the
significance of me being naked in a bed with Jaxon; she was not naïve. She had
to know what we had been doing. She couldn’t just pretend
like
she hadn’t been at my door just a few minutes before. “Mom, we need to talk.”

Mom turned away from me, turning on the coffee
grinder and shaking it. “I think we’re going to need a lot of coffee,” she
said, still not looking in my direction, speaking over the buzzing, shattering
sounds of the grinder. “Bob isn’t really and early riser and today’s going to
be a long day with Thanksgiving and all.”

When she finally finished grinding the coffee I
tried again. “We need to talk, Mom. Look at me. Please.” Instead, Mom turned
away from me again, going into the fridge. She rummaged around, as if she was
searching—in spite of the fact that the milk was front and center. I took a
deep breath and exhaled.
“Mom.”

“What do you want for breakfast?” I groaned and
leaned against the counter.

“Mom, we have to talk about what just happened.”
Finally, Mom turned and looked at me, for just a second—before beginning to
pull things out of the fridge—eggs, bacon, fruit.

“No, we do not have to talk about what just
happened,” she said, still not looking at me.

“We do! Mom, I—I shouldn’t have lied to you, I know
that, but I knew Jaxon from school, and—and I was attracted to him before we
even knew you and Bob were dating—I wouldn’t just…” I tried to explain, tried
to come up with the words to tell her what had happened between Jaxon and
me—but they tumbled out in pieces, all over the place, making no sense. Mom
kept moving, kept her back turned to me. “Are you even listening to me Mom?” I
wanted to grab her—I wanted to scream at her until she couldn’t help but hear
me, but I was frozen in place.

Mom turned around and took a deep breath. “Mia,
we’re not going to talk about it at all.” She pressed her lips together and I
could see how upset she was—how overwhelmed by it all. “I am going to pretend
like I didn’t see anything, and we are going to get through the rest of this
vacation as if it never happened.” I sighed. At least for now, it was easy to
tell that there was absolutely no getting through to her.

“Fine,” I said. “Okay.” Mom twisted her lips into
something like a smile, took another deep breath, and turned back to what she
was doing on the stove.

“Scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and a big
Thanksgiving feast later. I’m going to need your help pulling it all together.”
I closed my eyes.

“I’m definitely going to need some coffee then.”

***

With Thanksgiving dinner to get on the table, and
the crushing amounts of guilt I felt from Mom having stumbled on
me and Jaxon
together, there was nothing else for me to do
but help. It was weird; Mom and I had a tradition of putting together
Thanksgiving dinner by ourselves, splitting up the chores, getting everything
done. It had just been the two of us for so long. We didn’t want the pity-party
of having to go to someone else’s house for the big day, being the charity
invites to someone else’s family meal, so we just started our own traditions.
It had never been weird or awkward or strained until that morning.

But Mom was obviously determined to pretend
like
nothing had changed. In spite of the fact that Bob had
plenty of people around the house that could have made Thanksgiving dinner all
on their own, she insisted that our tradition of managing it ourselves should
continue. I didn’t see the point in it, especially since things had gotten so
complicated; but I didn’t really have a choice but to go along with it. I ate
my breakfast even though my stomach was churning, sitting at the breakfast bar
in the kitchen instead of going to the dining room. Mom took eggs and bacon and
toast out to Bob and Jaxon; I couldn’t face either of them anyway, not with my
mom knowing what was going on with
me and Jaxon
.

After breakfast, I washed dishes while Mom started
all of the prep work. She was planning on an enormous feast; even when it had
been just the two of us, she had always made way more food than
we
could eat for a week. As she pulled things out of the
pantry, the fridge, the freezer, it was obvious to me that she was planning on
the same level of extravagance—but on an even bigger scale, just because there
were two more people eating the meal.

So while Jaxon and Bob were off doing something—I
had no idea what—I was stuck in the kitchen with Mom; I peeled potatoes, I
shucked corn, I trimmed green beans and cut them up for casserole. I chopped
and scraped and scrubbed and washed. Mom played music like she always did—but
it wasn’t
like
it always had been. She didn’t talk to
me, didn’t sing or dance the way she normally did, or twirl me around the
kitchen. We were just working together, barely exchanging any words all morning
while we put together the feast. Mom worked as if she was possessed, stirring
the cranberry sauce, mixing the stuffing with way too much enthusiasm, mashing
the potatoes as if she wanted to pound them into glue. She sent me to the
dining room to work on the decorations she had assembled before I got there and
I found myself gluing, tying, wishing I could talk to her about what had
happened, wishing I knew where Jaxon was or what he was doing, that I could
talk to
him
about what had happened.
Instead I just focused on whatever task Mom gave me, hoping that I would manage
to get through it with some kind of dignity intact.

I kept seeing her face when she opened the door to
my bedroom: the blank shock, the way she had gone pale and just stared, her
mouth half-open for a few seconds.
The way she had blinked
twice and then turned away and closed the door, the sound of her running away.
I saw Jaxon in my mind, pulling his boxers on, barely even looking at me,
rushing through the room and out of the door in a matter of seconds. It had
been so fast that when it happened I hadn’t even been able to process it, but
the monotonous decorations-making and prep-work gave my stupid brain way too
much time to run through it over and over and over again until I wasn’t sure
I’d actually be able to eat any of the feast I was working so hard to help
prepare. What I really wanted to do was get in my car and go back to campus, to
bury myself in my bed in the dorms and not leave until classes started again.
I’d starve; no one stayed around on holidays. But the thought of spending the
rest of the week with Mom, with Bob, with Jaxon, was more mortifying than
anything else I had ever been through—even worse than when I’d sprained my
ankle botching a stupidly easy trick on the slopes when I was 15.

I kept wanting to make Mom stop, to make her take a
minute and talk to me about the situation. I thought that if she would just
listen, if she would just give me the simple consideration of hearing my side
of the story, it might be different. It might fix things. But then I thought
that it had to be horrific for her: seeing her daughter in bed with her
step-son, after being so intent on a big happy family. She had been so happy
about finally giving me a brother—she hadn’t known anything. I had totally
ruined her idea of having a big, family Thanksgiving, everyone getting to know
each other, everything perfect the way she had always wanted it to be for me. I
had to just accept the fact that I’d ruined it for her, that she was going to
have a miserable Thanksgiving dwelling on the fact that her daughter was a
freak who’d screwed her step-brother.

Chapter
Two

In spite of the fact that I’d spent all morning
wondering where Jaxon and Bob where and what they were doing, by the time
Thanksgiving dinner was actually on the table and I went to change into
“appropriate clothes,” as my mom put it, the last thing I wanted was to have to
spend an hour pretending that Jaxon and I barely knew each other, that we
hadn’t seen each other naked twice now. It would have been bad enough if Mom
didn’t know the truth—it was worse feeling her eyes on me constantly, hearing
the strain in her voice while she tried to keep up the conversation with Bob.
It might have been remotely okay if Bob wasn’t totally oblivious to everything.