Stoned: A Billionaire Stepbrother With Benefits Romance (My Brother's Keeper Book 1) (3 page)

He’d relished the life of a dominant, the
power he wielded over the women who fell at his feet.

But he’d never truly had that experience of
love that could last forever, or so the songs and all the sappy
movies his younger sister loved always said. Frankly, he wasn’t
sure he believed it even existed, and he wasn’t even ready quite
yet to try and hunt for it.

And yet, some of them looked happy, didn’t
they?

Sighing to himself, Robert stood and poured
himself a tumbler of Scotch and took a long draught. The amber
liquid burned its way down his throat, and he was glad for at least
a bit of sensation boiling through him. It was then that a shrill
ring caught his attention. Pulling his cellphone from his pocket,
he smiled when he saw the caller I.D.

“Hey, Mom, so tell me how your vacation is
going?”

His mom giggled on the other end and he
blinked down at the cell. He must have misheard. His mother wasn’t
a giggly type. Hell, she’d always been too serious, the complete
embodiment of the workhorse on an animal farm.

After his father had left her high and dry to
move with his secretary to California, his mom had worked two maid
jobs at the Plaza and at the Waldorf-Astoria to support him and his
sister, Kara.

He’d always found her so serious, and one of
the reasons he paid for her summers abroad was to get her to relax,
to enjoy herself. Last year had been a cruise and excursion in
Alaska. This year, he’d sent her to France and the
Mediterranean.

Still, no matter how luxurious the
accommodations he gave her, no matter how kind and effusive she was
about it, his mom never seemed to relax. She’d make an excuse to
come back earlier to see him or Kara. Or she’d switch rooms from
the presidential suite to the regular, run-of-the-mill room.

Mary Stone was a dedicated worker through and
through, and she always seemed to feel self-conscious with luxury
thrust upon her. Hell, he’d had some of the concierge staff report
back to him that they’d found her remaking the beds or taking her
own trash down the front desk in order to find the dumpster
herself.

Vacation had never been in her damn
vocabulary.

Or at least it hadn’t been since he was
fifteen.

So to hear her so carefree heartened him.
Maybe she’d finally learned to let go and enjoy the largesse. After
all, he’d be nothing without her.

“Mom?”

“It’s going wonderfully! I’ve met the most
debonair man.”

Robert smirked to himself. Leave it to his
mother to liken a man she’d just met to James Bond or Fred Astaire
or someone else as legendarily suave. “That’s wonderful.” He
blanched as he considered what he’d just said. “Wait, when did you
meet him? Where?”

“Down at the casino. He asked me to blow on
his dice, hit a lucky streak, and now he’s taking me out to dinner.
He’s the most amusing fellow.”

“That’s great, Mom.”

“And handsome. You get lean pickings when the
men hit sixty, but he’s very handsome. Far better looking that your
father on his best day.”

Robert shook his head. Okay, maybe he and his
mother and sister were a bit too close, but years of hardship and
living cheek by jowl would do that to anyone. “I don’t know about
that, Mom. I manage to drive all the girls wild.”

“That’s because you take after me, dear.
Admit it, your father as quite the hooked nose.”

“Maybe, I’m just surprised. It’s not like
you.”

“To have a nice drink with a sweet man?”

“Well I guess at least we know he can afford
his own stay at the Luxor and that he’s not bad at gambling to
boot.”

“You should have seen the roll I ended up on.
I made twice what he did.”

“Then I stand corrected, and you should help
me plot out my next acquisition if you’re on such a hot
streak.”

“Definitely, anyway, I have to hurry to make
to back to the hotel lobby and meet him. I just wanted to say hi.
You’ll be coming upstate next month for Kara’s shower, won’t
you?”

“Yes, Mom, I wouldn’t forget.”

“Perfect, now, oh he’s knocking! I guess I
shouldn’t have kept him waiting. Bye baby, love you!”

“Bye, Mom, and---”

He didn’t even get to tell her to be careful.
The Luxor was a great hotel but he had no way of knowing if the man
she’d met was above board or a con artist preying on older women
or…maybe next time he should send a bodyguard with her, just in
case.

Who knew what trouble she was bound to get
into?

Allison cursed as she raced through the lobby
of the hotel. Her whole day had been a fucking mess. She’d been so
stressed over the future of her firm and her demotion, that she’d
missed her morning alarm ringing in her ear.

If Tom hadn’t come back out of the shower and
realized she was still asleep in bed and physically shaken her
awake, she would have missed her flight completely. As it was, she
barely made it through security in time to get on the plane.

Even getting into Nevada had been a
nightmare. Southwest lost her luggage, and she’d given up waiting
for it when she realized she was about to miss the start of the
keynote.

Throwing herself into cab and hoping against
hope she’d catch the right lights, Allison had clenched the armrest
and stared hard at the time ticking down on the clock.

So now she was here, racing on her high
heels, and pulling out her paperwork for the people gathered at the
door. “I need a badge and stuff but I’m here from Vision Marketing,
Inc.”

An officious little man with beady eyes and
thick, Coke-bottle glasses just glared at her. “Ms. Sheeperd.”

“It’s Shepard,” she corrected, holding her
driver’s license closer so he could see it. “I’ve got to get into
the keynote.”

“It’s already started.”

She glared back at him. Maybe it was wrong to
be so aggressive, but this guy was one of the few out there
actually shorter than she was so at least she had an advantage
there. Besides, she was to report everything in exacting detail
back to McDonough, and she couldn’t let him know she’d let her own
anxiety and airline fuckery throw her off her game.

“No, that’s not good enough. I just flew
almost two thousand miles from New York, and I am not letting some
twerp like you ruin my day.”

“Ma’am.”

“No, don’t ‘ma’am’ me. It’s only been five
minutes since it started.”

“I had express orders.”

“I don’t care,” she said, pulling out her
cell.

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling up Yelp. I am about to give your
conference center and you, Franklin, a one star review.”

He started adjusting his glasses on his nose.
“Fine, I don’t make enough an hour for this,” he said, stalking
over to the double doors. “But I never did this.”

She kissed his cheek. “Never even heard of
you,” Allison whispered over her shoulder as she rushed through the
doors.

She instantly regretted that decision.
Allison was hurrying too fast and ran directly into the refreshment
table. The collision sent mugs and glasses falling everywhere, even
a few crashed to the ground and shattered on impact. She froze then
and turned to see the eyes of everyone in the room on her, but the
person whose gaze was most concentrated on her was Robert “Arrow”
Stone, and the fucking bastard was the keynote speaker.

“So,” he said, coughing a bit and sipping
water at the podium. “They told me I had a full hour to speak, and
I promised them only to run over by twenty minutes,” Robert said
even as the crowd offered a polite chuckle.

He was no stranger to public speaking. He’d
been asked often over the last seven years as his company grew and
became a dominant force in marketing to speak at a myriad of
dinners and fundraisers. Robert dug that. There was nothing more
intoxicating than commanding the attention of the room, than
knowing everyone there was here to listen to him. It was
electrifying.

Robert continued into his address. “I’m
really touched to be able to speak to a gathering of my peers. I’ve
spoken for Red Cross benefits and at political galas, but this is
what I love, talking about what we do. People dismiss Madison
Avenue as being shallow and promoting images that people can’t
afford. I say that’s just bitterness. We promote a dream, let
people see how it could be, and that there’s a better way.”

Another applause and he couldn’t help but
grin, feeling everything roar through him as he gathered on
point.

“The thing is that the market changes. We
have social media now and people who love their phones more than
their televisions. Newspapers and magazines were once upon a time
the cornerstone of the industry. Now we have to be better,
faster…”

There was a loud noise and every head,
including his own, swiveled to spy the short blonde crashing into
the refreshment table. Crullers, bagels and glasses rained
everywhere. She stopped, still as a rabbit in car headlights,
before she looked up directly at the podium. At least she had the
decency to go pale when she saw him.

She should have.

“Well,” he said, his voice tight and his
teeth clenched just a bit. “If everyone’s finally here, then maybe
we can talk more about social media.”

Robert went back to his speech, eyeing the
newcomer the entire time, out of both a mix of fury and something
else. There was something intriguing about those bright green eyes
of hers, about the flush to her cheeks due to her
embarrassment.

He’d have to remember that.

That night at the cocktail reception, Allison
was working hard to keep herself sipping one more club soda instead
of asking for a Chardonnay. She’d already suffered through a
hangover in the desert this morning, and there were two more days
of info sessions and notes to take. After all, McDonough expected a
thorough report and she’d have to give him one. However, she’d be
leaving out the part where she’d become the unexpected star of the
opening address.

Ugh, at least I missed part of Robert Stone
congratulating himself.

“Miss?” the waiter asked her. “Would you like
anything else?”

“A hammer to the face?” she asked, only half
joking.

“Oh, I wouldn’t ask for that,” a low,
rumbling voice practically purred out behind her. “You have a very
pretty face, it would be a shame to mar it.”

Allison stilled and steadied herself. She
knew that voice, had heard it not seven hours ago from the podium
and had heard it on CNN and other places in interviews. Know the
competition and all that. It was Robert Stone.

Perfect as if him taking potshots at me
wasn’t bad enough.

She turned to him and narrowed her eyes.
“Robert Stone, the pleasure is not mine.”

“Oh call me, ‘Arrow,’ most of my friends do,”
he said, grinning, and she wondered if he really thought she was so
stupid as to fall for his megawatt smile. Of course, there were
probably a ton of women who fell for it routinely. That and a flash
of a certain black credit card.

She shook his proffered hand, adding a bit of
pressure to her squeeze, letting her nails dig into the back of his
hand. Allison was a kitten with claws. “I’ll stick with Robert,
since we’re definitely not friends.”

He arched an eyebrow at her and she felt her
cheeks flush. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen him before on
television, but he was so much more attractive in person. He was
taller than even Tom, easily 6’4 with a lean, swimmer’s physique.
His hair was blond with a bit of frosted tips at the top, something
that was a retro throwback but that he somehow made work. His brown
eyes were a deep chocolate brown and would almost lull someone into
thinking that an earnest soul lay behind them.

Still, she wasn’t falling for it.

He was the ultimate frat boy unleashed, the
reason she was in the damn doghouse with her boss. He could pretend
he cared about the future of marketing or was some inspiration for
their business, but his answer still boiled down to tighter skirts
and more revealing bikinis on the actresses.

He laughed as if what she said were amusing.
“You don’t have to be like that. I won’t hold it against you for
your entrance. It was certainly memorable. Besides,” he said,
taking a moment to order himself a Scotch. “You gave everyone a
good laugh and we needed one that early in the morning. Sort of
like you set it up, and I knocked it down.”

“That’s not how I felt about it,” she
replied, sipping her drink. “Look, Robert, I get it if you want to
lord over me that I messed up your big, public back-patting
session. I know you like to have your ego…among other things
stroked.”

He grinned and she had to admit that the
lopsided smirk was attractive, would have looked great on someone
who wasn’t a complete rat. “Then you do know me.”

“Everyone knows you. Your reputation precedes
you.”

“So you hate me for being good enough to make
over a billion in this game.”

“No,” she said, “I hate you because you have
made everything in advertising about a race to the damn bottom.
Look at what you sold Schmidt’s Lager on.”

He shook his head and sipped his drink. “They
were dying with that stupid beach theme. They’re a damn lager, not
even a summer beer. Besides, I know my target audience. You think
they care about anything more than getting off?”

“Women drink beer too,” she countered as she
started to walk away. He grabbed her arm and she could have forced
it, broken away, but there probably wasn’t going to be another
chance for her to say her mind. She spun around and glared up at
him, only then realizing how close she was to him, how she could
feel his breath on her cheeks. “I don’t have anything else to say
to you.”