Protector: A Billionaire Step-Brother Romance

Then there was Mackenzie. Interacting with someone you already know so much about and care so much for is hard, and so much more so when the thing you’re protecting her against is right across the table from you both. She kept twirling a lock of her hair around her finger, her legs crossed and her foot bobbing under the table, every so often brushing against my leg while she pretended to be avoiding eye contact with me. She mouthed “sorry” the first time it happened, but kept doing it several times afterwards, and whenever I’d glance up at her, she’d give a silent laugh while we listened to Julie and Todd talk about wedding arrangements.

I wouldn’t give her an inch, though. I couldn’t let her feel comfortable with all this, not for a second. Each time she bumped me, I gave her a look like it was some kind of genuine offense, and eventually she stopped, cowed. Whenever she tried to meet my gaze, I made a point of looking somewhere else in the restaurant, off to zone out on the waiting staff or at some of the decorations on the walls around us. Whatever sick feelings she had for her step-brother must have clearly been still going, because after the first half hour into the dinner, she was downcast by my avoiding her.

Part of me wanted to use this chance to pull the dirt I had on her. I could borrow a pen from the waiter and write the blackmail note on a napkin in the bathroom. Between the rush of the dinner and the pressure of impressing her new dad and step-brother, I could picture her tearing up, flustered. Hell, she might even try to make the rest of the dinner go badly so that she could start acting the victim sooner rather than later. Part of me liked that idea, but I knew I had to be patient.

Drinks came. Champagne for three of us, sparkling water for Mackenzie. As the waiter passed out the drinks, I saw my dad straightening his collar, and I knew he was about to say something. I had a bad feeling in my gut from the moment he accepted his drink and started to raise his glass.

“Well, I for one am glad to have you all here,” he started, getting all of our attention as he held his glass up in an awkward toasting position, “it’s been a hell of a few weeks getting you here, but things are finally all coming together. I appreciate you like I’ve never appreciated anyone else in my life.” He was looking pointedly at Julie and Mackenzie. I felt my neck tensing at the words. Was he really going to do this, right now? Just trash my mom and my sister’s memories in front of the replacements? I wasn’t the only one picking up on that, either. Julie was starting to look a little uncomfortable and kept glancing my way.

“I’ve done an awful lot in my life,” he went on, “but the two of you are truly the proudest accomplishments on my track record.” His smile was insufferable. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that though we’ve had a hard time through some of it and made a lot of mistakes, I—”

“MISTAKES?”

I slammed my hands on the table. This was too far.

“We were always just mistakes to you after one of us walked out and the other fucking died, weren’t we, Todd?!” The restaurant had gone quiet, I noticed, but that was all the better. Everyone needed to hear this. “So what’s your plan with Round 2, just use them like you used Mom and Chelsea until the same thing happens? Are you just gonna ride this wave until you get too wrinkled to pick up a new piece of ass?”

I could hear soft sobbing coming from Julie, and Mackenzie looked shattered. Dad was a violent shade of purple.

“Well I’m done taking these shovelfuls of bullshit, Dad.”

Mackenzie held out a hand to grab my arm, but I stood up out of my chair, tossing my wine glass to the floor as I stared down my father’s furious glare. I shot Mackenzie a warning look as I pushed my way out of the corner booth and strode out of the restaurant, past the silent diners that gaped at the scene, leaving the three of them thunderstruck behind me as I threw open the doors to the outside.

MacKenzie

It had been a few days since that awful scene at the French bistro, and I was still nursing the wound of seeing my future stepbrother reduce my mother to tears in public. I was always protective of my mom, and I had witnessed this kind of drama a million times before in various scenarios. Paparazzi and reporters hounded her off and on over the years, and despite her professionally-designed “smile-and-shrug” approach, they had snapped hundreds of photos of Julie Mason wiping the mascara streaks from her face. The dinner had ended pretty badly after Cole stormed out, and naturally the usual breed of slack-jawed, unshaven, baseball-cap-wearing vultures had been skulking around just outside the restaurant doors, eager to snag a memento of our terrible evening for posterity.

They succeeded. Only this time, it wasn’t my mom’s picture slathered all over the tabloids with coal-black tear stains down her cheeks—it was mine.

Todd had attempted to shield our faces with a big black coat and hat, but it was to no avail. Just as I was getting into the streetcar to head home, a hyper-aggressive photog bolted up to me and shoved his lens within a few inches of my face. One blinding flash later, and he had the ultimate money shot—a brand new, glossy, high-resolution image of Julie Mason’s virtually-unknown teenage daughter with tears spilling out of her big blue eyes. The media devoured that picture with glee, and since then I had been doggedly avoiding the outside world. I’d spent the past few days alternating between pretending it never happened and obsessively typing my own name into online search engines to determine what the public was saying about me.

It was excruciating. I mean, to be fair, it wasn’t the worst photo ever taken of me, but it certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to be seen. I wasn’t ready to go outside yet, so I wasted time perusing my personal social media account, waiting for the hubbub to cool down. Today, I had been on this particular site for an embarrassing two hours straight. I clicked on status update after mundane status update, wondering how long I would be trapped in this media prison. Suddenly, a notification lit up in red at the top of my screen: a message from someone outside my friends list. Groaning, hoping it wasn’t some weird stalker of my mom’s, I clicked on it and immediately my blood ran cold.

The picture was just of a typical beach scene, blue sky, turquoise waves, and white sand. But the name below it was Cole, with no last name. Still, I knew it was him instinctively. The message was short.

“Hi Mackenzie. I know you probably hate me, and I don’t blame you. I’m sorry about the tabloids, those guys are assholes. If it makes you feel any better, it’s actually a pretty good picture of you. I mean, it sucks that you’re crying, but you still look really beautiful. Anyway, I want to apologize to you in person if that’s okay. I could tell you a thousand times over the Internet that I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t feel like enough. Please meet me at the White Lantern Coffeehouse this afternoon, whatever time you want to show up. It’s the little café right around the corner from my dad’s house. I’ll be here all day, as long as it takes.”

I blinked at the screen in disbelief. A million conflicting thoughts ran through my mind. First of all, who the hell did he think he was? Second, did he really think I was beautiful? Third, how was I ever going to get to that café without being discovered by the paparazzi? And fourth, why was I even considering this after what he put my mom through?

And fifth: I really, really wanted to go.

So, against my better judgment, I got up and began assembling an outfit suited for a venture out into the wide, wild world. After

poring through my closet, I picked out tight black jeans, an unobtrusive white tank top, and a grey hoodie. I fashioned my hair into a scraggly braid over my shoulder and laced up my black boots. Never mind the fact that it was summer in Los Angeles and that I looked more or less like a fugitive. I had to be as undetectable as possible, and this ensemble clearly said “Hello. I am extremely normal and boring and not at all famous. Nothing to see here, folks.”

I slinked quietly down the hall and out into the bright California sunshine. Slipping the hood over my head and my hands into my pockets, I took off at a brisk pace toward the café. I moved deftly through the crowds, keeping my head down so as not to attract attention. There were a few close calls, as I bumped into people and had to mutter my apologies, but before long I reached my destination unscathed. I hesitated momentarily at the door, taking a deep breath before pushing through and stepping into the building. It was pretty desolate in there, actually, with only a few tables taken up by studious-looking young people with laptops and paunchy businessmen hunched over their bagels and lattes. For a few seconds, I worried that maybe Cole had stood me up, until I happened to catch his gaze from where he sat at a tiny booth in the back corner. He waved me over discretely and after grabbing a passion fruit lemonade from the barista, I took my seat in front of him.

Cole looked fantastic, even in his slouchy clothes and unkempt hair. Clearly he had taken the same precautionary measures as I, but he pulled it with a lot more finesse. Then again, I figured, he had a lot more experience, too.

“Thank you for meeting with me. I know it’s kind of a risk with all the media swarming right now,” he said coolly. I toyed with my straw and nodded.

“It’s okay,” I muttered.

He leaned in and covered my hands with one of his. Startled, I looked up to meet his eyes, green and emphatic. “I’m sorry it had to go down that way, but if you only knew what I know, you’d understand why I did it.”

I frowned in confusion. “What do you know? About what?”

Cole shook his head, sighed, and sat back against the wall. He peered down at me with an almost predatory stare. “If you do what I tell you, then you’ll never have to find out.”