Read Stepbrother JEEZ! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #4) for Free Online Page B

me. I tried to play it off as best as I could, and none of
the guys in the frat asked any questions. They honestly didn’t want to know, I
think. Jaxon and I didn’t say anything about what we were to each other—on
either count—and it was better for us that way. Even if we’d decided to act as
brother and sister, there would be just way too many questions.
    The first time Jaxon and I actually hung out in the
same group, it went from being awkward and weird to being a lot of fun within about
fifteen minutes. Good, I thought. The worst part of it is over. Over the
course of a few days, things started to feel almost normal; Jaxon walked me to
class sometimes, but not always. He and I could be in the same room without
either trying to flirt or feeling miserable. He tutored me again, but never
alone in his room—even as back-to-normal as things had gotten, we both knew,
though we didn’t talk about it, that it would be tempting fate. Instead, he and
I sat in the frat kitchen or in my common room and he taught me the material
that my professor, a very nice but difficult to understand Pakistani woman,
just couldn’t seem to help me make sense of.
    At first, I kept waiting for things to get weird
again. I thought to myself over and over again that in spite of the fact that
Jaxon and I had agreed to just be brother and sister, to just be friends,
something would happen. One of us would lose all self-control and then we’d be
right where we’d been during the holiday—groping each other and screwing around
in private, presenting a totally different face in public. But somehow we both
managed to hold it together.
    About a week after Jaxon and I came to the
conclusion about how we were going to handle the situation, Mom called me. “Hey
Mia baby,” she said when I picked up. “How are classes going?” I was expecting
her to be suspicious—I expected her to want to talk about Jaxon, about what
she’d seen, and the fight. Instead she just asked about snowboarding, about my
grades, all the normal nothings that she’d always asked me about in her phone
calls.
    The next time she called, she did finally bring up
the issue of what had happened during the holiday. I had been waiting for
it—even if I didn’t want to bring it up myself, I knew one of us had to say
something about it. “I wanted to apologize,” Mom said, after a long chat about
what was going on in each of our lives. “I shouldn’t have sprung a new family
on you like that as a total surprise.” I told her it was okay.
    “I mean,” I said, “you’re a grown woman, you can marry
whoever you want. It’s not like you need my permission.”
    “I know that, sweetie. But I should have told you
before.” I told her that it was all in the past and she was relieved. “I
honestly… it’s a small world, isn’t it? I never even really thought about the
possibility that Bob’s son would be someone you know.”
    I laughed. “It could have been more awkward, but
only a little. Imagine if he’d been someone I totally hated.” Mom laughed.
    “Well then there’d have been a lot of fighting but
maybe it wouldn’t have been…” she stopped short and laughed again. “ It’s been weird between Bob and me, but we’ve actually got
a better relationship now than we ever had before because of it.”
    “I’m glad to hear that,” I told her, lying through
my teeth. Ever since the fight between Jaxon and his dad, I didn’t fully like
or trust Bob; his chatty ways, the way he’d thrown Jaxon under the bus, all of
it made me think he was shifty and maybe not good enough for my mom. But I had
to wonder how much of that was because I wanted them to break up—so that Jaxon
and I could be together again, without having to worry about being technical
brother and sister. “So is he just showering you in jewelry?”
    Mom laughed again, more easily this time. “I can
tell you one thing: Christmas is going to be a blow-out this year.” She started
going on and on