Stepbrother Claims (His Twisted Game, Book Four) (4 page)

We stepped onto the elevator, and Cole
pushed the button for the top floor.
 

“What is the photo shoot for?” I asked.

“An ad for my app,” he said shortly.
 
He was leaning as far away from me as
he could get, his shoulder against the other side of the elevator.
 
I was relieved he was speaking to me,
but at the same time, I was upset he was still obviously mad.

His phone rang, and he pulled it out of
his pocket.

“Buchanan,” he barked into the
phone.
 
He listened intently to the
person on the other end of the line.
 
“Did they get anything?
 
Okay… Okay.
 
Thanks.”
 
He ended the call and slid his phone
back into the inside pocket of his suit.
 

“Was that about my phone?”

“Yes.”
 
He didn’t offer anything else.
 
I was thinking about whether or not I should press him on it
when the elevator doors swung open and we stepped out into
Slipp
Studios.

The studio took up the entire top floor of
the building and was a completely open space.
 
It was bright and airy, with light hardwood floors and beams
of sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
 
There were backdrops and lighting
equipment set up in each corner of the room, and against the far windows was a
long white table filled with a spread of catered food – fruit and veggie
platters, smoked salmon with bagels and flavored cream cheese, and
fancy-looking pastries.
 
Little bottles
of orange juice and sparkling water peeked out of a bucket of ice.

There was a group of women huddled around
a sliding rack full of clothes.
 
One of them had curly red hair and a camera slung around her neck.
 
One of them was tall and lithe, with
dark chestnut brown hair, flawless skin, and rosebud lips.
 
The other one was Kalia.

When she saw us, she came running over.

“Where have you been?” she demanded when
she saw me.
 
“We were supposed to
get here early to help them set up and approve Cole’s wardrobe!”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but
Cole talked before I could.

“She was with me,” he said, his tone
making it clear that Kalia should drop it, that no further explanation would be
given.

“Fine,” she said, her eyes darkening. “Well,
I’ve gone through the wardrobe and approved it myself.
 
I narrowed it down to two options.
 
They’re waiting for you in the back.”

“Thank you,” Cole said.
 
As he walked by Kalia, he squeezed the
top of her arm gently, in a gesture of thanks.
 
Jealousy once again burned through my body, bitter and
searing.
 
But underneath that was a
tiny bit of shame.

Kalia had been here, helping with Cole’s
photo shoot, and I’d been running around behind his back, attempting to dig up information
on him.
 
I felt awful.

Kalia turned to look at me.
 
“You might be Cole’s sister, and you
might not be taking this job seriously, but I’ve worked hard to get where I am,
and I’m not going to let you screw it up.”

“Stepsister,” I corrected her.

She narrowed her eyes at me.
 
“Why do you keep saying that?
 
Do you have a thing for him or
something?”

“What?” I asked, a little too
loudly.
 
Panic rose in my
throat.
 
The last thing I needed
was for Kalia to find out I’d been hooking up with Cole.
  
Not after Gordon had called the
police, acting like Cole was some kind of brainwasher who was holding me
against my will.

Kalia shook her head.
 
“Never mind,” she said, obviously
dismissing the idea that Cole could ever be interested in someone like me.
 
“Just make yourself scarce until the photo
shoot starts, all right?
 
Don’t
talk to anyone, don’t touch anything, and don’t act all wide-eyed around the
model, okay?”

I opened my mouth to fire back a retort, but
I decided to keep quiet instead.
 
Nothing
good could come from fighting with Kalia, and I didn’t want to cause Cole any
more problems.

So instead I just said, “Is there a
bathroom around here?”

Kalia pointed wordlessly to a door in the
corner, and I walked over and slipped inside.
 
The bathroom had three stalls, but the doors went all the
way from the floor to the ceiling, making it impossible to see if anyone was
inside.

Instead, there were tiny little lights
near the handle of each stall.

One of them was blinking red with the
words “occupied” flashing next to it.

I didn’t even have to go to the bathroom,
so instead I turned on the sink and ran my hands under the water.
 
The faucet was brushed chrome, the sink
a rusty marble adorned with tiny turquoise stones arranged in a wavy pattern at
the bottom.
 

I grabbed a paper towel from the neat
stack that was sitting in a metal basket.
 
 
I wet it and then dabbed it
against my skin. My hair was frizzy, my skin blotchy and slightly greasy.
 
I did my best to try and clean myself
up, but soon I realized I was just making it worse.

“Damn,” I said as I studied myself in the
mirror. The water I’d used to wash my face had made my mascara run.

I dabbed the towel under my eyes, but it
didn’t help much.
 
And it wasn’t
like I had a bag full of makeup I could use to try and fix it.
 

The sound of the toilet flushing came
from the occupied stall, and the brown-haired girl who’d been standing by the
rack of clothes earlier came walking out.
 

She gave me a smile as she turned on the
faucet next to mine.
 
I smiled back
and then averted my eyes, remembering what Kalia had said about not talking to
anyone.
 
After the morning I’d had,
the last thing I wanted to do was bring attention to myself.

But the girl said, “Rough morning?”

“What?”

“I said
,
are you
having a rough morning?”
 
She was
rummaging through her bag, a Hermes oversized tote. Her fingers were perfectly
manicured, her nails painted fire engine red.

“Umm… I don’t… “
 
I wasn’t sure how to answer her.
 
I didn’t want to tell her any of my
personal business, but on the other hand, I couldn’t just ignore her, either.

“You don’t have to tell me,
hon
,” she said, pulling out a red lipstick and lining her
lips.
 
She shook her head and
stared at her reflection in the mirror.
 
“The makeup people at these things never know what they’re doing.
 
I hate all that natural crap, you
know?
 
I say go for dramatic.”
 

She pursed her lips in the mirror,
admiring their new dark color.

I couldn’t stop staring at her.
 
She was so beautiful
,
it almost didn’t seem real
. It was like she’d been
airbrushed to life.
 
Her hair hung
in soft curls around her shoulders, and her skin was
flawless,
with no blemishes or lines or visible pores
.
 
Her eyes were done in a smoky shadow, her lashes long and
lush.
 
Everything about her was
dramatic, but not in an over-the-top, trashy way.
 
It was more that she was just a presence.
 
Her tight black
minidress
and high black boots made her taller than she already was, and her cheekbones
were high and prominent. Her voice was soft, with just a hint of an accent that
I couldn’t place, like maybe she’d lived several different places and this was
the result.

She reached into her bag and handed me a tube
of mascara without even asking if I needed it. I hesitated, and she looked over
at me, her big blue eyes blinking with innocence and surprise, like she
couldn’t believe someone was hesitating before taking something from her.

I thought about what Kalia had said about
not bothering the model, but then I figured it would be rude not to.

“Thanks,” I said, breaking it open and
fixing my eyes.

When I was done, I handed it back to her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Avery Buchanan,” I said.

She turned and raised her perfectly
shaped eyebrows at my last name.
 
“Are you related to Cole?”

“I’m his stepsister.”

“Oh, my God!
 
Of course.
You’re Avery!”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I always wanted to meet you, but
Cole…” she trailed off, like she was trying to tread lightly.
 
“Well, he said things with his family
were complicated.”

“You know Cole?” I asked.

She nodded and rearranged the makeup in
her bag before zipping it back up.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
She paused
and looked at herself in the mirror.
 
“I’m Lucy by the way,” she said.
 
“Lucy Caro.”

Lucy Caro.
 
The name reverberated through the room, almost as if it were
echoing.
 
Lucy Caro, Lucy Caro,
Lucy Caro.
 
It was the name Jeffrey
had mentioned to me back at the restaurant, the girl he’d asked me if Cole ever
talked about.

“Nice to meet you,” I managed.

“Nice to meet you, too.”
 
She rearranged her hair around her
shoulders,
then
turned away from the mirror to look at
me.
 
“Did Cole…has he ever
mentioned me?”

“No.” I shook my head.
 
“Why?
 
How do you know him?”

I held my breath, hoping she was going to
tell me something useful, something that might give me some idea of what Cole
was hiding.

But she didn’t.

In fact, she said the last thing I would
have ever expected.

 
“He was my fiancé,” she said, her voice soft and wistful.
 
“But we broke up.”

The floor shifted under my feet, and my
legs felt wobbly. I grabbed the edge of the counter for balance.
 
“You were engaged?” I managed.

“Yes.”
 
She took a deep breath and raised her chin in the air, her
eyes hardening into steely determination.
 
“But I’m going to get him back.
 
No matter what it takes.
”

And then she walked out of the bathroom,
the door swinging shut behind her.

End of Book Four

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