My Stepbrother's Arrangement (A Stepbrother Romance) (16 page)

“You have no idea.”

“Is he good in bed?”

“Let me put it this way… you know how you used to tell me that everyone said Mike was shit in bed and I should find someone better?”

“Duh.”

“I had no idea what I was missing until now.”

Annie squealed with joy, bouncing up and down in her seat like an excited toddler.

“Oooooh I’m so happy for you Livvie. It’s about time you found someone who treats you right in bed. Plus I’m so
proud
of you. I thought you were totally gonna marry the next guy you dated. You know, serious relationship, settle down and all.”

“I know. Me too. This just kind of… happened.”

“So when do I get to meet this Kyle?”

“Never!” I squealed. “Absolutely not. It’s too casual.”

Annie laughed. “Fine. Keep him to yourself. But you don’t have to worry, I wouldn’t steal him off you,” she teased, and I stuck my tongue out at her.

“You couldn’t even if you wanted to,” I joked back.

“Look at you, little miss confident. This new sex life of yours suits you.”

I blushed as I laughed. I knew Annie was only half joking. She was right; I felt a lot more confident since I’d started having sex with Kaleb. It was hard not to when the guy made you feel like some sort of love goddess every few hours.

“Anyway, you have to go back to him and tell him what you’re doing. It’s only fair.”

I sighed. “You’re right, of course. Anyway, that’s enough about my life and my problems. Tell me about you!”

Annie rolled her eyes. “You know there’s nothing in my life that’s going to be nearly as exciting as you actually finding a man.”

“Maybe not to you, but I actually think your life is about a million times more exciting than mine.”

“Woo hoo, I got puked on again by a six year old, yeah, thrilling,” Annie replied. “But seriously, I’m not doing much. Really just hospital stuff, and looking at pictures of San Francisco on Instagram whenever I have some free time.”

“Nice. I can’t wait until we get to register for courses. I’ve had a look at everything I need to do for my degree, and I know what classes I want to take in my first semester. I have it all planned out, but I’m hoping that there’ll be room for everything in my schedule. Luckily since they’re all first year classes I figure there’ll be so many different options that I’ll make it into one of the classes, but no guarantees of course.”

“Oh my dear Livvie, you’re such a nerd.”

“Says the woman going into pre-med.”

“Yeah, but at least I’ve been thinking about learning to surf and having a tan in January. You’re just thinking about getting good grades and graduating top of the class again.”

“Don’t pretend you’re not going to do the exact same thing.”

“Oh, for sure. I’m going to show all the other pre-meds that the east coast breeds ‘em smarter. But until then, I’m enjoying the summer and my time off.”

“Oh believe me,” I replied. “I’m getting a
lot
of pleasure this summer too,” I replied, and got another squeal out of Annie for that cheeky little reply.

We hung out for another couple of hours before going our separate ways. We didn’t talk too much about “Kyle”, but Annie was right about what she’d said.

I had to tell Kaleb about my choice. There was no other option. We couldn’t be together, and even if we could he wouldn’t want to. I was putting off the inevitable, and it wasn’t healthy.

Why did the inevitable have to be so sad?

Monday mornings fucking sucked. Invariably.

I went down to the gym before having to be in at work. I was so tempted to just blow off the day and stay home, but I knew my father was going to be in, and I was pretty sure I was going to get one of those surprise visits that he always pretended weren’t just to check up on me.

I blew off a bit of steam in the gym early in the morning before heading upstairs. The hot and cold alternating shower I had after the workout gave me a bit of new energy, and I figured maybe it wasn’t going to be that bad a day.

But when I saw Olivia sitting on the chair outside my office waiting to be let in, her hands perfectly folded in her lap like she was waiting for a job interview or something, I could tell that this day really wasn’t going to get better.

“Come on in, Kitten,” I told her, opening the door for her and letting her in first.

It wasn’t that I was being gentlemanly. I knew she could open her own door. Well, ok, maybe it was partly that. But mostly it was that I wanted to check out her ass as she walked in, and it’s hard to do that when you’re in front.

God damn, that ass.

Maybe a good fuck right here in the office again was all I needed. I could stick my cock deep inside that little ass, make her scream.

Nope, not right now. She looked serious.

I sat down at my desk and looked at her. Those big doe eyes were staring at her shoes.

“So, what’s up, kitten?” I asked, leaning back in my chair, my eyes roaming to her blouse, thinking about the tits underneath. Those perfectly formed, perky little tits.

“You asked the other day about my plans for college.”

Wow, this wasn’t going where I thought it was. I figured it’d be something about that dipshit embezzler she’d found out existed.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I thought I should let you know. I’ve decided to go to Stanford in the fall.”

Stanford? Seriously? In California?

Fuck.

I mean yeah, I knew our arrangement was going to end as soon as the summer did. And that day was coming far too quickly. We only really had a few weeks left.

But still, I’d always assumed she was going to go to like, Harvard. A few hours away. Not the other side of the country.

Fucking hell. It was her life. It was her choice. And our arrangement was just for the summer.

The fact that she was moving across the country shouldn’t make me feel like shit.

Maybe it was just the fact that I was losing a good fuck buddy. That had to be it. Right?

Yeah. It was that. It had to be that.

Fuck.

“Cool. So California, hey? That’s gonna be fun.”

A small smile crept onto her face.

“Thanks. I hope so. Annie’s going there, and then when Yale said no, well she pointed out that between Harvard and Stanford they’re really virtually identical on a resume, and I may as well go where my best friend is going.”

Oh thank God. I was worried that Olivia had chosen Stanford to get away from me.

What? That’s stupid. Why would you think that? Of course she’s not trying to get away from you
, I told myself.

Fuck, this was a bad day.

“Yeah, she’s right. You’ll be pretty far from home though, think you’ll be ok with that?” I hoped my voice didn’t betray just how much I cared about the fact that she was going away. I wasn’t supposed to care. I was Kaleb Leeman. I couldn’t count the number of girls I’d fucked. I was suspended for two weeks from school one year for banging a girl in the boy’s bathroom.  I spent a night in jail last year after punching a guy in the face because he was trying to force a girl to suck his cock in a club. I bought condoms in bulk. I wasn’t the kind of guy who cared when his fuck buddy moved across the country.

Olivia shrugged.

“I guess. I’ve never really been that far from home before, so we’ll see. I think it’ll be fine.”

“I think so too. You’re tough. You’ll manage it. Don’t worry about it.”

She gave me a small smile.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. It’s cool you told me.”

She laughed, and it almost sounded like a bit of a shriek.

“I didn’t want to, you know? That’s why I told you I didn’t know the other day. It’s funny what you get used to. I guess I didn’t want what we had to end.”

Before I could reply she ran out of my office and I sat there, stunned, wondering exactly what she meant by that last sentence.

I leaned back in my chair.

Fucking hell.

This was bad. This was really bad. Because no matter how much I tried to tell myself that I just wanted to fuck her some more, no matter how much I tried to hide reality, it kept crawling back: I was fucking in love with my stepsister.

Fuck.

Oh my God, why did I tell Kaleb that? It was such a spur of the moment thing, and I was pretty sure it was a total disaster.

You’re the absolute worst at dealing with men
, I scolded myself as I went back to my desk and covered my face with my hands in shame.

I wasn’t going to tell Kaleb I lied, and I
definitely
wasn’t going to tell him it was because I didn’t want to think about our time together ending.

Maybe I’d ruined everything.

Hell, I’d probably ruined everything.

Little miss perfect. Little miss great grades. Little miss good head on her shoulders. Little miss can’t handle a relationship with a guy without totally ruining everything.

That was me.

Well, I decided I was going to do the adult thing.

Avoid Kaleb for as long as possible and hope that he had taken the most innocent meaning possible to the words I’d said.

That sounded like a good plan.

Right?

Instead I turned back to my computer and got to work. I opened up Google and started typing in the names of the bogus companies payments had been made to.

Who knew, maybe I’d get lucky?

To my surprise, each one of the bogus companies did actually have a website.

“This is awesome,” I murmured to myself. I knew that every website had a whois, the record of who bought it, and even though the registration info was set to private – and I imagined it was bogus even if I could see it – I knew that by paying a company a few dollars I could see what other websites were hosted on the same server.

Being a total nerd had its advantages, sometimes.

After about half an hour of searching and paying for info, I had my results.

All of the websites that were hosted on the same server were for the same bogus companies, except for one.

It seemed to be some kind of finance blog.

I opened a browser window and clicked over to it. Sure enough, it was one of those “how to make money on the internet” type sites.

“For when stealing from your company just isn’t enough,” I muttered to myself as I moved the mouse over to the “about” page.

Unfortunately for me, the page was pretty sparse with details.

I’m an accounting executive from New York with a wife, two kids and I’m working towards financial freedom and making a better life for us. After all, college degrees and private school tuition don’t pay themselves! Join me as I teach you the secrets to making every dollar go further and bring you the financial freedom you and your family deserve.

An accounting executive. That was something. We had been correct, it was someone high up in the company. Suddenly, my heart stopped. Kaleb’s uncle Ted. The one who had caught us in the house. He was an accounting executive. Hell, he was
the
accounting executive, as company CFO. And he was from New York and had a wife and two kids, who were currently in private school.

No, surely not. It couldn’t be. He was always such a straight arrow. Besides, all executives had a wife. And two was the most popular number of kids to have, right? There was no way it was Ted Leeman. It had to be someone else.

Right?

I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was going to puke. Sure, Ted was an ok guy. I didn’t especially like him, but I didn’t dislike him either.

Then I thought about what would happen if it
was
him, and the nausea came back with a vengeance.

He had caught Kaleb and I having sex at the fourth of July barbeque. He totally had leverage against us. If it was him, and he told anyone, he’d tell on us, surely.

Oh no. This was bad. This was really bad.

Stop it. Stop panicking. It could still be someone else.

But I couldn’t stop. All I could think about was Ted telling our parents about what we were doing. About how we’d spent the entire summer fucking each other’s brains out. About how whenever our parents were gone at night Kaleb would sneak into my room and bring me to new peaks of pleasure I didn’t know my body could even reach.

It didn’t matter that I was embarrassed about telling Kaleb that I didn’t want what we had to end. This was way more important.

I didn’t even say hi to Helen as I rushed past her and went straight into Kaleb’s office. He was on the phone, and motioned for me to have a seat. I plopped myself down in the chair in front of his desk. I was a nervous wreck. I could tell that I was playing with my hands, fidgeting, looking out the window.

What had I found out? This could be bad. This could be really bad.

When Kaleb hung up the phone, he looked at me, concerned. It must have been obvious that I had something big to share.

“What is it?” he asked, his eyes looking at me as though they looked deep into my soul.

“I think your uncle Ted might be the one embezzling.”

So much for saying things gently. Kaleb didn’t panic at all, he just leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

“Ok. What did you find?”

I showed him the path I took, and the website. I took him to the about page.

“Ok, well I’m not saying you’re wrong here Kitten. You may very well not be. But I also think we need more solid proof than this. After all, Ted isn’t the only accounting guy here with a wife and two kids.”

“I know. I just… I thought of him, and then I started to panic in case it was him because of him catching us at the Hamptons, and…”

Kaleb lifted up a hand, a small smile on his face, stopping me from continuing on my rant that had started bordering on the hysterical.

“Let’s do some more searching, ok? Surely it’s not going to be impossible to find out who owns this site.”

“Ok. Ok, let’s do that.”

I moved the chair over to the other side of Kaleb’s desk and sat down next to him. He buzzed Helen, asking her to go get us some coffee. I had to laugh a little bit, getting coffee was supposed to be my job.

“Ok, so first, let’s find the blog’s social media sites, and see if we can glean anything that way.”

“Sure.”

Kaleb went to the Facebook page for The Secret Life of an Accountant blog, and had a look at the info. First of all, no one Kaleb was friends with liked the page.

“Are you friends with your uncle?” I asked. Kaleb just gave me a look.

“You’re right. Stupid question. Of course you’re not.”

We scrolled through old posts, comments, etc, looking for information, but after fifteen minutes we were still none the wiser.

“Ok. That didn’t work. How about Googling the site? Maybe something will come up that way.”

“Definitely.”

Kaleb typed the blog name into Google. The first three pages were just various blog posts from the site itself. Then a couple pages of people referencing the blog in their own social media pages, or on their blogs.

Then we hit the jackpot.

“Hey, how about that LinkedIn one?” I asked, pointing out a new link on the bottom of the fifth page.

“Yes. Awesome.”

Kaleb clicked it and a profile came up.

“Andrew Pollock, accountant at Leeman Investments,” Kaleb read.

The photo was of basically the most generic looking middle aged upper management white dude ever. His brown hair was greying at the temples, he wore an expensive suit in the corporate headshot.

Underneath, on the list of employment, he listed that he had been running The Secret Life of an Accountant for three years.

That was it. That was him. That was the guy.

“That’s got to be him,” I whispered. “It wasn’t your uncle after all.”

“Wait. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I agree, it’s probably him. But I want to be sure before we go to my father.”

“Yes. Of course.” Kaleb was right. He always had such a cool head on his shoulders. While I was sitting around panicking and freaking out about things, he’d found a solution. And it was a great solution.

“Let’s go back to Facebook, see if his profile is public. At least that way we might be able to see if he has a wife and kids.”

“Good idea Kitten,” Kaleb replied. “Who knew a girl with brains like yours would also be such a good fuck?”

I ignored the blush that crawled up my face as Kaleb re-opened Facebook.

He typed “Andrew Pollock” into the search box, and the third result down was a guy who looked almost exactly like the picture on his LinkedIn profile.

“That one,” I exclaimed, and Kaleb clicked on his profile.

A bunch of pictures popped up. His profile was mostly private, but we could see whenever he changed his profile picture or cover image.

“Well, he had a cover image there of him with a woman, and two kids. Boy and a girl. What are the odds those are someone else’s kids?” Kaleb asked, pointing to an update of his cover image from six months earlier.

I nodded. “Definitely. That’s good enough for me. He’s the guy.”

“Same.” Kaleb’s face went grim. “Part of me wants to fuck you right here, right now in celebration. Most of me, actually. But at the same time, I’m fucking pissed off. This guy works here, and he’s been stealing money from the company. From
us,
really.”

I nodded. “Agreed. Who is he here?”

Kaleb opened up the personnel files for the company – his father had basically given him unlimited access to company files – and searched for the name.

“Andrew Pollock – Head of accounting. Well, he wasn’t lying, and we were right. He is pretty high up. In fact, Uncle Ted is his direct superior.”

“Shit. This is bad news, isn’t it? We’re going to have to tell your dad.”

Kaleb nodded. “Definitely. I can tell him if you’d like. I’ll give credit where credit is due, of course. But in case you don’t want to be there.”

“No, I do. I want to make sure he understands, too.”

“Ok. Sounds good. I’ll schedule a meeting with him sometime over the next couple of days.”

“Good. Let me know when it is.” I got up to leave, my whole body feeling completely wiped. The whole day had been such a crazy roller coaster of emotions, I just felt like going home and having a nice, long bath.

“Will do. And Kitten?”

“Yes?” I asked, rolling my eyes. There was no way Kaleb was ever going to stop calling me that.

“Nice work.”

“Thanks,” I replied as I left. It was crazy what effect Kaleb telling me how well I’d done had on my body. I felt like you do when you enter a heated building coming in from the midwinter cold, how the heat flows through your whole body suddenly.

God. Why did I feel this way around him? Why did my mood suddenly take an upturn every time I saw him? Why did the temperature feel like it went up five degrees every time he walked into the room?

I knew the end of our relationship was approaching. But I definitely didn’t want it to.