Read Mine - A Stepbrother Romance for Free Online Page A

life would have been a lot easier.
    We hadn’t been dirt poor growing up in my ‘fake’ family, but we hadn’t even been close to middle class, either. My Mom had handmade all my clothes in the early days, and Dad didn’t make much at the factory he worked at, but it was enough to put food on the table and pay for me to attend the local public school. I’d obtained my first part-time job at fifteen, making milkshakes and coffees at the local diner after school, and that had allowed me to contribute to the house and save enough to eventually buy a cheap secondhand car to get myself around when I was seventeen.
    When I’d told Roy’s assistant that I wanted to meet him, she’d immediately laid out some ideas. He could come and visit me here, but apparently what he really wanted was for me to go and stay with him at his home in Rhode Island for a while, and it hadn’t taken me too long to agree to that. What did I really have here in Leyton that was worth staying for? Sure, I had a few good friends like Tina and Ewan, but was that enough? Aside from that all I had was a broken-down car, a low-paying job and a felon for a father…who as it turned out, wasn’t even my father.
    It had been a fairly easy decision when those things were taken into consideration. Of course I’d go to Rhode Island. Why not? I’d get to meet my biological father, find out what he was like, and maybe experience a different kind of life for a while. It was going to suck not seeing my friends, but I was definitely going to come back and see them, and we could text or call whenever we wanted. If I wanted to see their faces, we could even use Skype.
    I’d felt bad quitting my job and only giving a few days notice, but Barbara didn’t seem to care that much. There was always some other jobless nineteen year old to replace me. I’d originally planned on dipping into my savings to buy a plane ticket from Wisconsin to Rhode Island, but Roy’s assistant had shut me down immediately. She said he was insisting on sending one of his private planes to get me, and my heart had leapt into my mouth at that. One of his private planes. So he had more than one. Jeez. He really was rich.
    So now here I was in the early hours of the morning, waiting to board at an airfield not far out of town. Tina and Ewan had dropped me off, and I tearfully said my goodbyes as we hugged.
    “You better not forget about us now that you’ve got a big rich daddy,” Tina said jokingly.
    “I won’t,” I said. “I promise I’ll text you every day and call you whenever I can.”
    “I hope that includes me too,” Ewan said, pulling me into a bear hug.
    “Of course.”
    A crisp feminine voice called out to me a moment later. “Arizona Keller?”
    I turned to see a slim blonde woman heading over to us. She looked fairly young; mid-twenties, maybe.
    “Uh…yes, that’s me,” I said with a smile.
    She didn’t return the smile and simply sniffed as if she had a cold. “My name is Victoria Shaw. We’ve spoken on the phone. I’m Roy’s chief personal assistant. He sent me to meet you and take you back to Newport.”
    “Oh, of course,” I said.
    “My apologies for being late. There was an incident with the espresso machine on board. Anyway, the pilot is getting ready to take off, so I’ll need you to board with me now.”
    She spoke in such a professional yet robotic manner that I suddenly wondered if it was a good idea for me to join this world for even a second. I couldn’t possibly fit in. I didn’t know how to speak like I’d had some Ivy-league education. I didn’t even know what to wear. Right now I was clad in a faded pair of jeans with a cotton tank top and cardigan from Forever 21, and I’d assumed no one would notice or care how I was dressed. The look on Victoria’s face as she looked me up and down told me otherwise.
    “Okay…well, I’m ready to go,” I said, summoning up a shred of confidence.
    Victoria turned on her heel and strode away over