Nice Girls Don’t Kiss Their Stepbrother

Chapter One

Clara

This is the best time of the year. My absolute favorite.

If you don’t like the Christmas season with all the sweet treats, colorful lights, and festive decor, you’re a total Grinch.

I’m the opposite of the Grinch. A jingle-bell earring wearing, fa-la-la-la-la carol-singing, spiced eggnog guzzling Christmas princess.

A sexy version with cute leggings and great hair. A Christmas vixen.

“Thank you for holding,” the monotone voice says over the phone line, jerking me from my holiday happiness. “What can I help you with?”

I explain, in detail, to the third person at this company that the animatronic snowman doesn’t light up like the packaging states. This thing cost three hundred bucks. Maybe they can send a repairman out or something.

“We can refund you,” the person says blandly. “I’ll go ahead and start processing—”

“Refund?” I scoff, shaking my head, the bells jingling in protest along with me. “No, I want you to fix it. It’s going to look so cute with my other decorations, especially at night. Can’t you just send someone out?”

There is silence for so long, I think the person hung up on me. Finally, they sigh heavily, and say, “I’ll escalate this to a manager, ma’am.”

Music begins playing and has my simmering blood cooling because it’s one of my favorite Mariah Carey Christmas hits. I sing along as I wait and text my best friend, Casey.

Me: The Christmas Extravaganza on Main Street officially started. We could go tomorrow if you feel better. I’m dying to see all the stores decked out. Last year Smoke & Sugar won. Who do you think it’ll be this year?

Clearly not hyped up on freshly baked sugar cookies like me, Casey replies back with a green-faced sick emoji. She’s pregnant with her second kiddo, but this one has made her deathly ill. The poor thing can hardly work.

Me: Want me to bring you anything, babe?

Casey: Brayden went to get more ginger ale. Sorry I suck.

Me: Brayden sucks for knocking you up again.

She sends back some laughing emojis but nothing else. I’m bummed she’s been sick because Casey is my ride or die. Without her, I get lonely.

I try to think about the ladies at the salon. There are a few I could invite, but no one I’m super close to. They all like to gossip about each other which means anything I talk about will be fodder for their next conversation without me. I’d rather sit and deal with a snowman fiasco.

As if on cue, the line crackles and a woman answers.

“You got a problem with your product?” she asks, voice gruff likely from decades of smoking.

“It doesn’t light up. The other person said you could send someone out to fix it.”

The woman laughs until she starts coughing. Irritation prickles through me. Finally, she calms down. “Oh, wait. You’re serious?”

“I just want it fixed,” I grumble. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Look, lady,” she says with a sigh, “it’s not worth it to send someone out. We can refund you.”

“Can you at least replace it?”

“No can do. We are plum out of stock.”

My doorbell rings and I’m grateful for the interruption. “Yeah, okay, whatever. A refund is fine.”

After hanging up, I hurry to the front door of my townhouse, wondering if I have more packages coming with new décor. Hopefully I didn’t order a lot from that place because it’s apparently all crap.

I jerk open the door, shuddering at the burst of icy air that rushes in, and am surprised to find it’s not a delivery guy. It’s not my landlord, Reid, or his son, Brayden. It’s not Linda or the kids from next door. And it’s not Riko or Casey’s ex, Derek.

But it’s someone I know.

Someone who’s been avoiding me for years.

“Eric?”

“Hey, sis.”

After all this time, that’s what he says to me? “Hey, sis.” Like he hasn’t basically been ignoring me since he took off to New York?

“What are you doing here?” I demand, leveling my stepbrother with a hard glare, and not moving from the doorway to allow him inside despite the frigid weather. “I hear the Big Apple is glorious at Christmastime. Why are you slumming it here?”

His nostrils flare and his eyes flash angrily.

Well, we can both be pissed off. I don’t care.

He’s been too busy for holidays with our family for years now.

Our little sisters barely even know him.

My mom and his dad, Mike, have both been worried about him.

Not me. I know he’s just being an asshole who’s gone on to bigger and better things.

“You going to let me in?” he asks, arching a dark eyebrow at me.

I’m reminded of a time when his room was across the hall from mine.

He’d always grab hold of the top of the doorframe to my room and chat with me about school, whatever boyfriend I had at the time, movies, music.

Eric was more than my stepbrother. He was my friend.

But then he went off to college, and after that, he became this big-time finance guy amassing a fortune.

All he had to do was sell his soul and turn his back on his family.

With a heavy sigh, I step out of the way. He’s come to me instead of our parents, so something must be up. I’m not even sure how he found this place considering he’s never even been here.

“Smells good in here,” he says as he shuts the door behind him. “You making something?”

Fond memories tickle at my mind. We’d make huge messes in the kitchen, especially at Christmas, making cakes and cookies. Mom encouraged it and Mike loved whatever treats we ended up with. It was fun to spend time with the older stepbrother I adored.

The happy thoughts are erased by sad ones that followed.

I get that he had to leave, but he didn’t have to blow us all off. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that.

Still, concern tugs at my heart as I watch him take off his coat and set it on the back of one of the dining room chairs.

He’s wearing a wrinkled dress shirt and slacks.

The tie around his neck has been undone and hangs limply.

Then, his green eyes dart my way, locking on mine, and I see the tension and fear burning in them.

Something’s wrong.

Unable to keep the anger as my shield, I step closer to him, frowning. “What’s wrong, Eric?”

He scrubs a palm over his face and sighs heavily. “Everything.” A laugh bubbles out of him and it’s bordering on hysterical. It’s so unlike him. Eric is usually confident, playful, relaxed. Tonight, he’s none of those things. He’s anxious, stressed, and maybe even sad.

I walk over to him and hug him. At first, it’s stiff.

I’m still mad at being snubbed off and he’s being awkward.

But then, as if he is finally able to drop his guard, he melts into my embrace, squeezing me so tight my breath is stolen from my lungs.

His scent is familiar, despite the cologne he wears.

Beneath the expensive scent is the smell of cinnamon and vanilla.

It never made sense for him to smell like a cookie, but he always did. It’s just him.

“Can I ask you a huge favor even though I don’t deserve it?” he rasps out, voice filled with shame. “Can I stay for a few days until I can find my own place?”

I pull away from him to pin him with a concerned stare. “Under one condition.”

“What? Do your laundry?”

It’s a good idea since I hate laundry, but I shake my head. “No, you tell me why you’re here. Every detail. You don’t get to be vague with me.”

His jaw muscle ticks as he scowls. I expect him to argue because he does that sort of thing. Instead, he gives me a curt nod. “Yup.”

“Go get your stuff,” I tell him, shooing him away from me. “I’ll get some hot cocoa going.”

Ten minutes later and we’re both sitting on my couch, sipping our rich hot chocolate that’s crammed full of mini marshmallows.

I love coffee as much as the next girl, but the hot cocoa is kind of me and Eric’s thing.

It always cheered us up if one of us were having a bad day.

As a bonus, I plated up a bunch of the red and green sugar cookies I made and set them on the table close by.

It’s funny seeing him all cozy under a fuzzy blanket covered in red-nosed reindeer like he’s ten-years-old again when I first met him. Talk about blasting back to the past.

“So,” he says in a rush, “I fucked up. Bad.”

This has me nearly choking on my drink. Since when?

Eric is an over-achiever. He excels in everything he does.

It always made me feel sort of inferior.

Where he made straight As, I made Bs and Cs.

Eric went to college on a full academic scholarship and I went to tech school for massage therapy, seriously racking up school debt I’m still paying on.

My stepbrother moved to New York City and lived in an apartment where the monthly rent likely costs more than what I pay in a year on my townhouse.

Eric fucking up is inconceivable to me.

“Are you going to elaborate?” I ask with a frown. “That’s pretty vague.”

He sets his cocoa down on the table and then pinches the bridge of his nose.

Eric is classically handsome in the way that his dark brown hair is always gelled to stylish protection, his smile is wide and bright, and his jawline is sharp.

If finance wasn’t his calling, modeling or acting could definitely have been another route for him.

“You know what I do for a living, right?”

I nod slowly. “Finance.”

“Well, yeah,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I’m a day trader. Essentially, I buy and sell stocks all day for my clients, hoping to get them the best returns. You have to be focused and always anticipating market movement.”

He lost me at stocks.

I rub oil on people all day. Stocks are about as foreign to me as golf or geology or computer programming. It’s all complicated and something someone else does so I don’t have to think about it.

“In essence,” he says with a smirk, “I play with other people’s money.”

I can’t imagine being so rich you let other people play with your money, but rich people are crazy. I’ve seen my fair share of them come into the salon. Sometimes they blab about all the strange ways they spend their money.

“But they know the risk, right?”

“Yes.” He looks down at his hand and frowns. “It’s just business. You win some and you lose some.”

“So what did you do that’s so bad?”

He rubs at the back of his neck as if working himself up to confess his sins. It makes me wonder if the tension has gotten to him and he needs me to knead the muscles there, or if it’s just a nervous habit.

“I got close to one of the clients,” he admits. “Started hanging out a lot. Going to bars for drinks. Vacations. Ball games.”

“You slept with your client?”

His lip curls up. “What? No. My client, Tommy, was a friend.”

So far, I don’t know what has him so upset. It’s normal to make friends with people. Sometimes they’re clients. I go have lunch every so often with one of my elderly clients, Wynona. That’s just humans being humans.

“Anyway,” he rushes out, “he told me about some things he heard about happening overseas. Technically, it could be seen as insider information, but more than likely, it was just here-say. Regardless, I took the information and made some big buys for him. I thought that’s what he wanted, but…fuck.”

“What happened?”

“It was all bogus,” Eric grumbles. “And he ended up losing a lot of fucking money. He then tells me he has no recollection of even telling me this shit. Tommy went to my bosses and told them I was unprofessional for befriending him and mismanaged his money without his consent.”

“What a dick,” I hiss out. “But he told you to.”

“Essentially, yes. And, because I was within my parameters of our contractual agreement, I wasn’t in any legal trouble. He couldn’t sue me.”

“That’s good.”

“Not really.” He shakes his head and his features pinch bitterly.

“He threw a big enough fit to my managers, that it got me fired. I stupidly signed a non-compete when they hired me on which means I can’t get another job like this one for a fucking year, Clara.

Not that it would matter. Tommy made it his mission to smear my name in every circle he runs in.

I’ll never be able to work in this industry again. ”

As much as I hated that he left us to go pursue his big dreams, I hate it worse that someone stole them from him.

“I guess I’m just surprised you came here rather than to our parents.”

The despair bleeds away as a smile tugs at his lips. “This shit is humiliating. You’ve always kept my secrets. I figured you could keep this one too.”

I saved him numerous times by covering for him when we were younger.

When he drove his dad’s car for the first time alone and side swiped a mailbox, I took the blame telling Mike I accidentally fell on it with my bike.

And when he had sex for the first time with one of my friends during a sleepover, I never told a soul.

Just like he’d cover for me if I sneaked out and picked me up countless times after getting drunk at parties, though underage.

Like the hot cocoa, keeping secrets was kind of our thing.

“Fine,” I say with a resigned huff. “Under one condition.”

“Another one?” He grins at me, green eyes twinkling

“You have to go to the Christmas Extravaganza with me since my best friend is sick.”

“Deal.”