Stepbrother's Secret

Phone pressed to my ear, I use my shoulder to push through the conference room door. “How is she do…” My question trails off when I hear a plane flying overhead on the other end of the line. People shouting. Bike bells dinging. And my breath turns to a block of ice in my throat. “Have you brought her outside?”

“I haven’t brought her anywhere! She refuses to listen!” the harried tutor, a former university professor named Justine, complains in my ear. “She got bored with the material, so we took a break. Next thing I know, she’s running into the park barefoot, chasing a rabbit!”

Panic ripples through me. I want her indoors, goddammit. Contained and safe. She is too pure, to magical to be just running around among normal people. They could hurt her. They could try and take her from me. She hasn’t lived with the threats of normal society and doesn’t know how to recognize them. “Get her back in the building. Now.”

“I beg your pardon, Governor. I have not been paid to drag my student around by the hair! Oh Jesus, now she’s climbing a tree. Cate! Get down from there!”

“Christ.” I drag a hand down my face. “You’re in the park behind the building?”

“Yes.”

“Try and keep her in one place. I’m on my way.”

I don’t bother returning to the meeting to let my staff know where I’m going. The less people who know about Cate, the better, until she is ready to be formally introduced as a member of the Garner family. A group of interns watch me curiously as I cut through the carpeted hallways of the governor’s offices and push through the double doors out into the sunshine. My weekday driver is leaned up against the side of his SUV reading the paper, but one look at my face and he’s diving into the vehicle to start the engine.

“Colt Park.” I slam the back door. “Quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

God, what is this possessiveness burrowed so deeply underneath my skin? I don’t like her running around outside, strangers witnessing her beauty, the way she flits around like a fairy from a story book. How selfish of me wanting Cate for my eyes alone, but I can’t seem to help it. She became mine the moment I saw her in the glen, laughing beneath the stars.

My chest tightens at the memory. So tight that I’m almost winded by the time we pull into the lane beside the park and I jump out, scanning the acres of green fields, past the baseball fields to the thicket of trees…

There.

She’s on the top of a hill surrounded by laughing children, showing them how to harness the wind and properly fly their kite. Bystanders are clustered at the base of the hill, watching the scene play out. Watching my stepsister as if enthralled—and I know the feeling too well. Well enough that I don’t want anyone else to have it, especially the men whose notice she’s drawing. More and more by the second.

The tutor is nowhere to be seen.

Teeth clenched, I rip my wallet out of my back pocket and buy a baseball cap from a vendor, securing it on my head and jogging in Cate’s direction. The crowd has grown since I arrived and it’s no wonder, since Cate looks like something from another time and place. In a flimsy, faded pink dress and no shoes, hair wind-tangled and flying in every direction, she’s too beautiful to be believed. Quite literally stopping people in their tracks. Men.

Of course they’re staring. She’s incredible. Laughing the world’s most honest, enthralling laugh. She’s wild, like no one and nothing else. Most pressing, though, is the fact that she’s wearing no bra and her tits are ready to pop out of her dress, her long, lithe legs flexing with the effort to battle the wind. A breeze lifts the hem of her dress and I see the sun-kissed, bottom curve of her buns, my cock thickening painfully at the sight. And I’m not the only one she’s arousing, just by being herself. I hear the soft groans, notice the male onlookers drawing their overcoats tighter around their bodies, hands vanishing out of sight.

“Cate,” I grit out, trying to keep my face averted as I climb the hill. “Give the kite back. We’re going home.”

“Tristan,” she whispers, looking up at me with sparkling eyes—and my breath is robbed straight out of my lungs. My God, she’s an angel. “You’re here.”

I swallow around the object in my throat. “Yes, I’m here. Now, do as you’re told, please. I’m bringing you back to the apartment.”

She hands the kite over to a child and her shoulders slump, making me feel like a bastard. “But it’s so beautiful outside.”

“Yes, but today was the start of your lessons. They’re meant to be taken seriously.” I take Cate’s arm, keeping my head down and guiding her down the hill. I don’t even risk a look to see if I’ve been recognized. “You ran off on your instructor.”