Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) (7 page)

I shrug. "Yeah, so? It's what I was hired as."

Brady grabs his truck from Addison's hand and bounces off the couch to "zoom" it along her coffee table, and she turns around to face me. "So, you know that's not exactly how it is. You made it sound like I chose to hire you out of the goodness of my heart."

"And?"

"So why did you say that?"

I shrug. "It seemed like the thing to say at the time."

She looks at me for a long time before speaking. "Did you really get fired?"

"I quit, but they were going to fire me, so it's the same thing."

"Why did they fire you?"

"Hell, you're nosy."

"You're my employee, aren't you?  I'm supposed to know these kinds of things," she says. But the corners of her mouth turn up and I know she's joking.

"Am I?" I ask. "I thought I was your bodyguard."

"That means you work for me," she says.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to guard your body."

Addison narrows her eyes at me.  "Very funny," she says.  "Not in the way you apparently mean."

"How do you know what I mean, Addy-girl?" I ask.  "You have a dirty mind."

Brady runs for Addy, crashing into her leg with all the force of an almost-three-year-old boy, and she looks down at him and laughs. "What do you want to do, Brade-man? You want to go to the park?"

"Yes!  The park! The park!" Brady shouts.

Addison looks up at me and grins.  "Well, since you're my employee, you can be in charge of the diaper bag."

I should be annoyed, carrying the diaper bag and tagging along with Addison and Brady down the sidewalk to the park.  But I'm not.  We take turns pushing Brady in the swing and following him as he runs through the grass, and we don't talk about much of anything.

Except I watch Addison's face beam as she plays with him, and the way she tucks her hair behind her ear as she glances over her shoulder at me when she's chasing Brady through the grass, and I feel...lighter somehow, not edgy the way I usually feel.  I find myself laughing as Brady tries to catch the rubber ball I toss at him.

On the way back to the apartment, when we stop for ice cream, I nudge Addison.  "You're a bad aunt, you know," I say as Brady shovels a spoonful into his mouth.  "Grace is going to kill you."

She grins at me.  "I'm a great aunt," she says.  "And besides, he'll run it off before we give him back to Grace anyway.  Or swim it off.  There's a pool in the apartment building."

The image of Addison in a swimsuit flashes in my head, and my cock stirs, right here in the fucking ice cream shop.  I force my thoughts the hell away from Addison.

"Brady loves swimming," she says.  "Want to go swimming, Brady?"

"Let's go swimming!" Ice cream drips down his cheeks and he pounds the table with his fist.

"Swimming," I say. 
Damn it.
  The last thing I want to do is see Addison in a swimsuit at the pool.

Of course, I'm lying to myself.  It's the only thing I want.

SIX YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS AGO

I'm slicing through the water, the repetitiveness of the strokes doing what they always do, lulling me into a near-hypnotic trance.  Before I was discovered on the reality show, we couldn't afford a pool or swim lessons or anything like that.  I barely knew how to float.  That changed when I was on the show.  Hell, everything has changed since I was discovered.  Now I have a heated pool, in its own glass enclosure outside.  That's freaking fancy.

Most people swim in the mornings, but I like to swim at night.  After the sun goes down, the lights on the sides of the pool turn the water an iridescent teal color.  The water muffles the sounds from outside and I turn my brain off, losing all sense of time and place while I just swim in teal-colored water and tune the rest of the world out.

I'm usually alone out here, no one caring enough to intrude on my swim time, but when I pull myself up to the side of the pool, Hendrix is sitting in a chair, lighting up a cigarette.  I wipe the water from my face, resting with my arm on the edge of the pool.  The cool evening air hits my skin and makes me shiver.

So does the way Hendrix looks at me.

"How long have you been there?" I ask.

"A few minutes," he says.  His eyes never leave mine, and the way he looks at me makes me glad to be mostly hidden in the pool.

"You shouldn't smoke," I say.

"Thanks for the lecture."  He exhales smoke in rings at me, and I roll my eyes.

"It stinks, and it's not healthy," I note.  I know I sound like a total downer, but I can't help myself.  Hendrix has such a blasé attitude about life, like he doesn't give a shit what happens.  It gets under my skin.

"I don't need a lecture about the risks," he says.  "My mom died of cancer."

"And you're still smoking?" I ask, my voice rising.  I'm annoyed with his cavalier attitude about everything.  "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Hendrix shrugs.  "It's my life, Addy-girl," he says.

"Not for long, if you keep it up."

Hendrix laughs.  "I should be more like you, right?  All work and no play?"

"What?" My voice squeaks.  "What do you think I'm doing right now?"

"That?" Hendrix asks.  He doesn't finish his cigarette, though.  He puts it out, halfway through, and leans back in his chair, looking at me.  Sometimes I wonder what he's thinking when he looks at me like that.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to know.  He's definitely evaluating me.  Judging me.  "Even when you're swimming, you look intense."

Intense.  No one has ever called me intense before.  "What, have you been watching me?"

"Yes."  He speaks the word with no hesitation or embarrassment, and I have to look away, swallowing hard.

"You've been watching me swim?"

Hendrix shrugs.  "Nothing better to do in this place," he says.  "I've been bored."

"I thought you had friends."

"They're boring."

I laugh uncomfortably.  "I'm so flattered that spying on me is less boring than hanging out with your friends."

"You should be."

"Are you getting in the pool or are you just going to sit there watching me like a creep?"

Hendrix laughs.  "I don't swim."

"Why not?" I ask, sinking down into the water, up to my neck.  I'm chilly, but I'm also aware of the way Hendrix is looking at me, and I'm not sure I like it.  Or, more accurately, I'm not sure I'm supposed to like it.  "Oh, no, wait, it's not cool enough for you, right?"

Hendrix makes a weird face, and looks away.  "I can't swim."

"Can't, as in, you don't know how to swim?"

"Nope," he says.  "Never had a reason to learn."

"Weren't you in military school?" I ask.  "They don't teach you that there?"

"It wasn't the fucking Navy," he says.

"I can teach you."  I blurt out the sentence, immediately regretting it.  Why did I just say that?  I don't want to be stuck spending any more time with Hendrix than I have to.  Do I?

"You're going to teach me to swim," Hendrix says.  I'm not sure if it's a question or a statement.

I shrug.  "No big deal.  Forget I even offered."

"Okay," he says.

"Okay, like you want me to teach you to swim?"  That's the last thing I expected.

"Show me what you got, sweet cheeks."

PRESENT DAY

"Show me what you got, Addy-girl."  Hendrix stands in the shallow end of the pool in my apartment building, his hands on the edges of Brady's float.  "You ready to race, Brady?  Think we can beat her?"

Brady laughs hysterically, but grips the edges of his float tightly.  "Yes, yes, yes!  Race!  Go, go, go!"

"You asked for it."  I feint a mock dive into the water, but don't really, instead taking my time floating on my back as Hendrix kicks Brady to the other side of the pool.  Brady's laughter echoes through the room as Hendrix reaches the end.

"Touch the edge of the pool so we win, Brady!"

"Oh, you're too fast for me, Brade-man."  I high-five Brady, and make eye contact with Hendrix, and for a second, I feel like I'm a teenager again, my heart racing as I look at him.  All of those nights in the pool, teaching Hendrix to swim; the gradual tenuous friendship we developed, both of us guarded, prickly porcupines; and my unspoken attraction to him that I was never quite sure he reciprocated, even when he kissed me...

Of course, that didn't stop him from bragging that he did more than that, lying to his friends about me.  The memory of that night flashes in my head, and I look away from Hendrix, diving back under the water and swimming the length of the pool to the other side.  When I come up for air, Brady is wailing and Hendrix is standing, chest deep in the water a few feet away, pulling him out of the float.  "She's right there, Brady, see?" he says, turning toward me.  "He's scared because you disappeared."

"Crap."  I pick up Brady in my arms.  "Brade-man, I was just swimming underwater!  Surprise!"  Then he starts giggling.

Hendrix already has his back toward me as he pulls himself out of the water to get towels.  Part of me wants to explain my awkwardness, confront him about that night and get it out in the open.  But the other part of me, the more reasonable side, reminds myself that as comfortable as it was this afternoon hanging out with him and Brady, that Hendrix is not my friend.  He's on my parents' payroll, and he's pushing their agenda – and the studio's agenda.

After Brady is fed dinner and bathed and curled up on the sofa in the living room, passed out before we even had a chance to watch the cartoon I'd bought, Hendrix sits on the loveseat across from the exhausted toddler and I.  "You're good with him," he says.

I shrug.  "I would hope so.  He's my only nephew."

The silence between Hendrix and I, with nothing else to distract us, is practically deafening.  Hendrix clears his throat and gives me a serious look, his brow wrinkled.  "I don't know why you -- "

As soon as he starts to speak, the knock on the door interrupts him, and I open it for Grace, the whole time wondering what Hendrix was going to say.  "And?"  I ask.  "How was it?"

"It was amazing!" she says.  "I think they liked me.  The photographer seemed happy, and said I was easy to work with and -- "

"You look so great.  I love the hair and the make-up and -- "

"Tell me this is what it feels like when they do your hair and makeup and everything for your concerts and your events," she says.  Her face is radiant, and she looks ecstatic.

"Well -- " I start to say that it's really not, but then I stop.  "It is," I lie.  It felt that way in the beginning, but not anymore.  Now it's just part of the routine, a burden more than anything, having to play a role.  But I don't tell Grace that.  Why ruin the magic?  She's happy.  And beautiful.  "You should go surprise Roger."

Grace smiles, but there's no joy behind her eyes.  "I think I will," she says, glancing at her watch.  "If he's home, I mean.  He's working late a lot."

"Roger is a corporate litigator," I tell Hendrix.

"That's about the last thing you expected, I'm sure," Grace says, laughing.  "Me and a freaking lawyer."

Hendrix shrugs. "People change," he says.  The words are directed at Grace, but Hendrix never takes his eyes off me.

People change.
  I'm not sure if Hendrix is trying to convince me or himself.