PIERCED - A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

I’m sneaking.

I’m sneaking around with my phone.

This isn’t me. I don’t recognize this giddy, butterfly-filled girl prancing down the hallway with her phone in her clutches dying for the moment she can read the text her ex-boyfriend slash stepbrother just sent her.

GIVE ME A CHANCE.

My heart races, thrumming hard in my chest. I squint and read it again.

GIVE MIAMI A CHANCE.

Oh.
Miami
. It said
Miami
.

***

“I have to run into work real quick,” I whisper to James. It’s seven in the morning, and he’s passed out in my bed. His eyes flutter briefly and he makes a sound that leads me to believe he heard me. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

A half hour later I’m sitting across town in my boss’ office. She’s yammering on and on about some new Cuban-Thai fusion restaurant she tried the night before, and I’m trying to pretend like I’m interested.

“Don’t you just love Miami?” She rests her chin against her dainty wrist as she leans into me from her side of the desk. Her lashes are long. Extensions I think. And her sleek dark hair is cut into a harsh bob. Her forehead is smooth as glass, and her lips are full and coated in shiny gloss. “I could spend the rest of my life here and not have a single complaint.”

She glances out the window, toward Biscayne Bay.

“We should be down there today,” she sighs. Her shoulders rise and fall with dramatic flair. “Working on our tans. Anyway, have you had a chance to try this Arovag yet?” She tosses me a wink-wink.

“Connie.” Her name comes out as a naughty giggle. She knows we’re not supposed to dip into the company stash like that.

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me you haven’t been tempted to try it.” She leans back, flashing me a coy kind of grin that tells me she’s already sampled the product and loves it. “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s freaking amazing. Corporate is onto something. And it’s about damn time they made something for us women.” Connie pulls her shoulders back and her dark hair shines against the sunlight filtering in behind her. “Just because I’m almost fifty doesn’t mean I don’t still want to get busy sometimes.”

She leans across her desk and slides over a stack of brochures.

“I’ve studied all the material,” I say. “Know it like the back of my hand.”

“Good, good,” she says. She flips open to the middle of the brochure. “These are brand new, and I wanted to show you this.”

A small photo centered in the middle of the brochure shows a handsome doctor in blue scrubs and a white lab coat. His arms are crossed and there’s a clipboard clutched in his hands. A cocky smile fills his face, and his muscles are bulging and threatening to burst through his sleeves Hulk-style. He looks familiar. I squint and lift the brochure closer to my eyes.

And then I clamp my hand across my mouth. “Sutton.”

“Oh, you know Dr. Pierce?” Connie lifts a single, arched brow. “People around here call him Dr. McHottie. Apparently he works as a hospitalist because he had a few issues with female patients stalking him at his clinics.”

“Really?”

“That’s the rumor.” Connie slips the brochure out of my hand and stares at his picture, smiling as if her fifty-year-old brain is thinking naughty thoughts. He closes it and hands it back to me, licking her lips as if her mouth is watering. “Anyway, he’s going to help us launch this drug. He’ll be the face of the Arovag campaign.”

“Shouldn’t a woman be the face of the campaign?”

“Ha! You’re thinking too old school, Lauryn,” Connie shakes her head. “Corporate wants a masculine, sexy doctor to be the face of Arovag. You know how they are. They do their studies and their beta testing. Apparently using a hot doctor on all their marketing materials was the clear winner with this drug. Don’t ask me. It’s above my pay grade, honey.”

I flip the brochure open once again, taking a good, hard look at Sutton.

“You two will be working closely together over the next several weeks,” Connie adds. “He’ll accompany you to conventions and hospital luncheons. He’ll be there to answer any questions about the drug that people may have, and you’ll be there selling the hell out of it the way you always do. You’ll make a great pair. Two attractive young people selling a drug that makes women horny.”

She smiles and shakes her head, her hair moving in slow motion before settling back into its rightful place.

“God, looking at him makes me want a cigarette, if you know what I mean.” Her voices is a hushed whisper.

“Did you take Arovag last night?” I ask because it seems to still be in her system, and I know the half-life on it is 12 hours. That’s a long time to be horny.

“Perhaps.” Connie zips her lips with her finger. “Don’t you dare tell a soul.” She shrugs. “I had a date. So sue me. And I wanted to research the product.”

I throw my hands up. “I’m not judging you, Connie.”

“Anyway, let’s get back to business.” She swivels in her chair to face her computer and slips her glasses over her nose. “I’m emailing you a list of functions you two are to attend together. They’re all mandatory. I don’t want you missing a single thing unless you’re puking your guts out, and even then I’ll tell you to take a Zofran and tough it out. Okay, let’s see here. First event is Monday. I’m going to have my assistant put these into your iCal too so you don’t miss them.”

“I won’t miss any of them.”

“No matter what.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

“Both.”

“I won’t miss a single event, no matter what.”

“Good girl.” Connie slinks back in her seat, though her body is visibly tense. “This is going to be the biggest launch in the history of Greenley Pharmaceuticals, and you and I, darling, are going to be at the helm of it all.”

“We’ve got this.” I stand, grabbing the stack of pamphlets and shoving them into my bag. My gaze lands on a box of Arovag swag sitting in the corner, so I hoist that up too.

“Your first event is Monday,” she says. “You’ll be meeting Dr. McHottie at Mercy West Hospital. Nine o’clock sharp.”

I offer her a reassuring smile and haul my stuff to the elevator. Looks like I’ll be spending an awful lot of time with Sutton.

Each step I take twists my stomach into knots. I feel sick. I could throw up, but I swallow over and over until the feeling subsides. I miss my simple life, before Miami. Before running into Sutton. I miss how easy it was to ignore him and forget that once upon a time I loved him more than I’d ever loved anything or anyone my entire life.

Monday, I’m going to work with Sutton. A tickle of something swirls in my middle. I force it away until I can no longer feel it, telling myself it was all in my imagination.

I pop my trunk and dump the box of swag with a heavy clunk that rattles my spare tire. And then I remember – James. James is at my apartment. I shake my head, loosening my thoughts about Sutton, and climb in to head home. I need to be in the arms of the man I love, and I need to stop thinking about all this petty nonsense.

So I go home, straight to the man who holds my future in the palm of his perfectly calm smile and faultlessly benign embrace.

“Hey, doc.” I slam my gym locker and find Stephanie Tate standing there in her neon orange sports bra and tiny black spandex shorts. Her dirty blonde hair is piled on top of her head, and lips are pulled wider than her big, green eyes. She’s happy to see me; then again, she’s always happy to see me. “Haven’t seen you in the gym for a while.”

“I’ve missed the last few work outs.” I turn and head to the water fountain, filling my bottle. She follows as if there’s some imaginary string connecting us. Where I go, she goes. I’ve been meaning to switch gyms.

“Busy with work?” she asks, though it’s not like she’d know what work was. She’s a Daddy’s Girl with a generous allowance who spends most of her free time in the gym. When she’s not here, she’s out with her girlfriends or cruising downtown in her red BMW convertible.

“Very.” I take a swig of water and head to a leg machine. She’s so close to me I catch overzealous whiffs of her vanilla-coconut body spray. We walk in tandem.

“You never called.” She rests her hands on her narrow hips and tilts her head to the side, as if she’s trying to be stern yet adorable. I deal with women every day. I know their tactics. I know their techniques. I know never to take them at face value. And I especially know that the ones who combine the sweet looks with the sharp questions are the most dangerous ones. “I thought we had a good time.”

I climb onto the machine and hook my legs beneath the weights, concentrating in the mirror up ahead and watching my form. “It wasn’t exactly a date, Steph-anie.”

I almost call her “Steph”, but I correct myself before it’s too late. The last thing I want is to create that personable bond between us that starts with a simple nickname.

“It wasn’t?” She bats her lashes as if she’s confused. She knows damn well it wasn’t a date. We were both out with our friends and happened to run into each other at the same bar. She recognized me from the gym and approached me with a cloud of desperation, heavily sedated with liquid confidence. I didn’t take her home. I kissed her though, against my better judgment, and I immediately regretted it the second I pulled away and caught that dreamy look in her eye. I tended to avoid girls like her – the ones who dreamt of growing up and being a doctor’s wife. Women need more ambition than that.

“We bumped into each other,” I lift the weight with my legs and lower it steadily, repeating and counting silently until I reach ten reps. I climb off and take a drink of water, giving myself a rest period. Stephanie is still staring at me, yammering on about something, but I’ve tuned her out.

“So anyway, Sut,” she leans into me, lifting her fingertips to the indentation of my triceps. “Nice tris.”

I climb back on the machine. I’m not trying to be a dick, but I know what happens with girls like Stephanie. You give them an inch, and they take a mile. If I give her so much as a sliver of hope, she’ll take it and run with it.

“What are you doing this weekend?” she asks.

“Working. I work every weekend.” I count out ten more reps and pull in a deep breath, biding my time until she scampers away and hits on the next muscled and tatted meathead who walks through the doors.

“You work too hard,” she giggles. “Live a little. Take a break. Have some fun.”

“Thanks for the advice.” I hammer out ten more reps and move on to the next machine. Stephanie follows. “Not working out today?”

“Oh, I am,” she says. “My pli-yo class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes. I’m early.”

I adjust the weights and knock out fifteen reps on this machine. I’m about ready to forgo my weight workout for thirty minutes on a cardio machine where I can tune her out with a pair of headphones and my music, when I catch her face falling a bit.

She’s losing hope, which is good, because as far as I’m concerned I set my standards years ago with Lauryn Hudson, and no one since has ever come close.

“I’m back,” I call, shutting my apartment door. James is drinking coffee and watching golf. He turns and smiles. “Want to go get lunch? I know it’s still kind of early, but there’s this great place around the corner that fills up fast, so-”

“Sure.” James stands. He’s showered and dressed. He brushes past me, stopping to kiss my forehead, and then slips his shoes on.

We stroll hand in hand down the sidewalk, and I pull in lungful after lungful of thick, humid, Miami air. James doesn’t seem to mind it. He’s never complained since I moved here. Not once. He doesn’t mind much of anything though. I glance up at him as we walk. I can’t see his eyes through his dark sunglasses, but his forehead seems dry. He’s not even breaking a sweat. It’s as if he’s used to the heat, which is interesting given the fact that he’s a born-and-bred New Englander.

“Here we are,” I announce, pulling him toward an open door where an ice-cold café awaits us. The hostess seats us in the back by the restrooms, but James doesn’t complain. Then again, he never complains about anything.

“This place has amazing hibiscus tea,” I rave, flipping open the menu.

“How was work this morning?” James asks. “Putting out anymore Connie fires?”

“She’s a little worked up over this new drug launch,” I say with a mini eye roll. “She’ll get over it like she always does. I guess for this campaign, corporate hired some local doctor to be the face of the new drug. He’ll go with me to events and luncheons and help answer questions. His face is in all the brochures too. I’d have thought they’d have used a middle-aged woman for this but-”

“It’s corporate. Who knows?” James shakes his head and flips the page of his menu.

“I’ll be spending a lot of time with him,” I mention casually. He has a right to know. I’d want to know if he were going to be spending his weeks with an attractive woman. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust James - I did. I trusted him with my life. I just feel like couples need to share that sort of information. James doesn’t flinch. He lifts his eyes across the table, meeting mine with kindness and understanding. Once, just once, I’d like to see him get a little jealous. I’d like to see him get fired up over me, if only to confirm that deep down, under his polite veneer, there’s a man dying to do anything to keep me.

James shrugs and returns his gaze to his menu. “Such is life, eh?”

“How are things in New York?”

“Same old,” he says unhurriedly. His words are so dull they couldn’t even slice butter.

I yawn. This lunch is boring. James is boring. But it’s better than the flipside: drama and tension and chaos. I’ve learned to appreciate boring. I need more boring in my life. I welcome boring with open arms.

The lunch crowd begins to shuffle in, and the café grows noticeably louder as tables fill. Guests brush past our table one by one, some heading toward the bathroom. I scan the perimeter for a server. No one has said two words to us since we sat down, as if we were invisible.

“Calm down, babe,” James says. Even from across the table, he can sense my growing frustration. “Someone’ll be here soon to take our orders.”

“I’m starving,” I groan. I peer around once more for a hint that someone might possibly headed our way, but my glance freezes when I see
him
coming.

He’s not in scrubs or a lab coat. He’s in a gray t-shirt and cobalt blue gym shorts with a stream of white ribbon down the legs.

Sutton
.

He’s making a beeline for the restroom area, but he stops short when he sees me. His eyes shine, and his mouth curls just enough for me to see the white of his straight smile.

I cup my hand over my eyes and duck down, as if I could possibly make myself invisible by not making eye contact with him.

“Lauryn,” he calls out.

“Hey,” I smile and fight the burn in my cheeks. My mouth goes dry and my heart strums hard. “Sutton, you remember I told you about James, right?”

James twists in his seat, his normally calm expression hardening in an instant.

“James this is Sutton – Dr. Pierce – I’ll be working closely with him during the launch of Arovag.” I expect them to shake hands, and I wait, only they stand there like two bulls locking horns and flaring their nostrils. I’ve never seen this side of James before.

The clinking of dishes and cutlery and the drone of hundreds of lunchtime conversations are all I hear. I want someone to say something. Anything.

“James,” Sutton says through gritted teeth.

“Sutton.” James sits up straight, pulling his shoulders back as he stares down his nose from his perch on the high-rise chair.

“You two know each other or something?” I laugh. I laugh because it’s the most insane assumption in the entire world.

Sutton’s eyes drift into mine and then back to James’. “We do. We went to college together. Undergrad. Dartmouth.”

“Wait…what?” I’m confused.

“Roommates actually,” Sutton said. “Until James dropped out of the pre-med program and had to move to another building.”

“I never knew you were pre-med,” I say directly to James. “You told me you were always Marketing.”

“Does it matter?” James spits his words at me. He’s never done that before. Something about Sutton has tripped his trigger. He turns back to Sutton. “How do you know Lauryn?”

“She’s my stepsister,” he says. “
Family
.” He emphasizes the word
family
, as if it carries more weight than it does. “But we go back a long time. I’ve known her long before she was a metal-mouth, pimple-faced teenager with string-bean legs.”

“Thanks, Sutton.” I shake my head and my eyes dart down. They’re still squaring off like a couple of stags competing for a doe. The whole thing is ridiculous.

Are they fighting over me?

“Aren’t you supposed to be working this weekend?” I ask. I sense James’ stare, and I’m sure he’s wondering how I know Sut’s work schedule.

“Just finished at the gym. Grabbing lunch now and going to hit the showers. Catch a nap and then I’m heading in tonight for a 24 hour shift.”

“If you don’t mind, Sutton, I’m trying to enjoy lunch with my girlfriend,” James says. His voice is just a hair deeper than normal. For whatever reason, he wants Sutton gone from our space now.

“See you Monday, Lauryn,” Sutton says, shooting me a wink and a smile and heading off.

“You never told me your stepbrother was Sutton Pierce.”

“I never told you my stepbrother’s name.” My brows scrunch. “I didn’t think I needed to. I told you, we weren’t in each other’s lives.”

James’ shoulders are tight. I’ve never seen him so tense before.

“If you’re threatened by
that
, you’re being absolutely ridiculous. He’s my
stepbrother
.”

He lightens a bit, his shoulders falling as he adjusts in his seat.

Seeing James become jealous gives me an odd satisfaction. At least, I think he was jealous. “Did you two have a falling out back in college?”

“Something like that.”

My balloon is burst by three little words. It was never about me. It was about their history. James, once again, didn’t act threatened to lose me. The passion in his eyes was timeworn and not directed at me. “What happened?”

“It’s in the past, Laur.”

Our server appears out of thin air with a cheery smile on her face and a swift apology. We order. We eat. We pay. We don’t speak another word.

We walk home in silence, left alone with our own thoughts. My time with James is gray scale: black and white and every color in between. It seems as if every time Sutton comes into the picture, he injects bursts of Technicolor.

I slip my hand into James’, needing to know we’re still okay. He gives it a nice, simple, solitary squeeze that tells me his quietude is not because of me. “You okay with me working with Sutton?”

“It’s not like I have a say in the matter,” he says, shuffling along. “I’m just surprised you’re okay with it.”

Yeah, you and me both.

“Just doing my job. Trying to stay professional,” I say, matching my stride with his. “It’s just work, and it’s just temporary. Once this drug is launched, I can focus on moving back to New York.”

“Can’t wait, babe.” His words land unconvincingly, perhaps thanks to their monotone delivery. It’s as if his mind is somewhere else.

I nudge into his arm to break his train of thought. “Want me to take one of those pills tonight?”

He glances down at me as if he’s shocked. I arch an eyebrow and bite my lip. Maybe if I pretend hard enough that his jealousy was because he was afraid to lose me, it might serve as a bit of fuel for the dying fire in my core.

“It’s alright, Laur,” he says. “Not tonight.”

“Y-you never turn me down.” I’m always the one who does the turning-down of sex. It’s how it’s always been.

“Don’t read into it.” He squeezes my hand and offers a smile before facing ahead. My apartment is a block away, and now I have to walk home holding the hand of my boyfriend who doesn’t feel like fucking me tonight.

I’m on some alien planet in some alternate universe where up is down and left is right. That’s the only explanation. That or this is all some weird, freaky dream where nothing makes sense and no one is who he says he is.

I search his face for a hint of something I can read, but all I see is his RCF – resting calm face. I can’t read him at all, but I know something’s up. He saw Sutton and now he’s so preoccupied with something from his past that he doesn’t even feel like having sex with me. How can his face be so deceiving?

A chill runs through me, as if the bond we’ve had has just been partially severed. I’m beginning to realize I don’t know James the way I thought I did. And maybe all those times I thought he was so calm, he was hiding how he really felt?

I loosen my fingers from his and slip them into my purse, pretending to search for my cherry Chapstick. I need a reason to let go of James’ hand. It suddenly doesn’t feel the way it used to.