Possessive Silver Fox Stepbrothers (Stepbrothers' Forbidden Fantasies #11)
1. Chloe
CHLOE
My knees wobble on the platform at Union Station, and I haven't even seen them yet. The train stretches ahead of me like a gleaming taunt—all polished steel and old-world luxury that screams money louder than anything my father has ever bought.
I adjust my grip on my weekend bag and force my legs to move.
Four days. I can survive four days with three men who have perfected the art of making me feel invisible.
I've done it before—every Christmas, every Fourth of July pool party, every stilted family dinner where I sit at the far end of the table and pretend their silence doesn't sting.
The difference is those events had exits. I could excuse myself early, drive back to Evanston, lock my dorm room door and pretend the whole thing never happened.
This train doesn't have exits. Just eighty feet of heritage railcar luxury and nowhere to run when the conversation dies after thirty seconds. Again.
A porter checks my name against his clipboard and gestures toward the rear cars. "Right this way, Miss Rutherford."
The transition from regular passenger cars to private luxury happens in the space of three steps.
Suddenly the carpet is thicker, the walls are real wood instead of plastic, and everything smells like money that's been polished until it gleams. My father didn't book this trip because he wanted to see me enjoy myself.
He booked it because dropping eighty grand on train tickets sounds impressive at the country club. The vow renewal ceremony—who renews vows on their third anniversary?—is just another excuse to throw money at something until people are forced to admire it.
I'm twenty-two. I should be cramming for finals or splitting a bottle of two-dollar wine with my best friend. Instead I'm walking toward four days of careful smiles and one-word answers from three men who treat me like an unwelcome houseguest in my own family.
The door to the private cars is solid mahogany with brass fixtures. I push through and step into the lounge.
They're already here. All three of them.
Adam notices first—or rather, my body notices Adam first, the same way it always does.
Forty-two years old and lounging by the window like he owns the train car and everything in it. Dark hair without a thread of gray, trimmed beard that frames a mouth I've spent three years trying not to stare at.
Gray eyes that flick up when I enter, then away again like I'm scenery. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled to his elbows, and I catch a glimpse of the tattoo ink that disappears under the fabric.
Full sleeves on both arms, I know from family gatherings where he's worn short sleeves and I've spent entire conversations wondering how far the designs go.
Heat creeps up my neck before I can stop it. Three years of this man grunting responses to my attempts at small talk, and my skin still prickles like he touched me instead of ignored me.
Chris sits directly across from where I'm standing, and when our eyes meet, he doesn't look away immediately the way Adam did. Forty-five years old, the eldest of the three, with salt-and-pepper hair and a trimmed beard to match.
Brown eyes that hold mine for one beat too long before he drops his gaze to the tablet in his lap. The extra second sends something low and warm through my stomach—not in my chest where butterflies are supposed to live, but deeper. More honest.
I clench my jaw and look away. Chris Harrington has given me exactly twelve words, and I'm reading romance novels into eye contact that lasted two seconds.
Harry stands at the bar with his back to me, pouring bourbon into a crystal tumbler. Forty-three years old and six feet seven inches of broad shoulders and quiet distance.
Salt-and-pepper hair like Chris, but his beard is darker. He glances at me in the mirror behind the bar—dark blue eyes that meet mine for less than a second before he turns his attention back to his drink. Even that brief look makes my pulse flutter like he'd spoken my name.
This is pathetic. I am pathetic. Three years of monosyllabic stepbrothers who leave rooms when I enter them, and I still can't train my body to stop reacting like they're actual people instead of beautiful statues that occasionally grunt in my direction.
The irony is not lost on me that none of us share a single drop of blood. Donald Rutherford is my biological father. Allison is their biological mother.
When Dad married Allison three years ago, I gained three stepbrothers overnight—men who were already in their forties when I was nineteen and struggling through my sophomore year at Northwestern.
A marriage certificate and a wedding reception where I stood in heels that gave me blisters, watching three gorgeous men in tailored suits become my family without speaking a word to me the entire night.
The lounge car is exactly what eighty thousand dollars should buy—leather seating arranged around a central space, a full bar stocked with top-shelf everything, and a dining table that seats six.
Above us, accessible by a narrow staircase, is a glass dome observation deck that probably offers three-sixty views of whatever landscape we'll be crawling through for the next thirty plus hours.
Everything polished and perfect and designed to make other people jealous.
The train lurches slightly as we pull away from the station, and I grab the doorframe to steady myself.
Chris looks up from his tablet. "Your room is the second door on the right."
Nine words. More than he's said to me since Easter, when he responded to my question about his work with "Fine, thanks." I should probably frame the moment.
"Thank you." My voice comes out steady, which feels like a small miracle given that my pulse is doing something inappropriate just from basic human interaction.
I walk toward the sleeping car, hyperaware that three sets of eyes might be watching me leave. The corridor is narrow—narrow enough that two people couldn't pass without pressing against each other or flattening themselves against the wall.
The thought makes my stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with the train's movement.
My room is small but luxurious in the way only old money knows how to do. A full bed with crisp white linens, an en-suite bathroom that's somehow both compact and elegant, and a window that shows Chicago sliding away into evening light.
I lock the door and sit on the edge of the bed, finally allowing myself to acknowledge what the next four days are going to feel like.
Trapped.
Fourth of July two years ago, Adam took off his shirt by the pool at Dad and Allison's house, and I excused myself to get ice I didn't need just so I wouldn't stare at the ink covering his chest and shoulders.
Last Christmas, Harry brushed past me in the kitchen doorway, and I spent the rest of dinner replaying the two seconds when his shoulder touched mine.
Easter brunch, Chris handed me the salt when I asked for it, and our fingers touched long enough for me to catalog the fact that his hands are bigger than they look and warm enough to make me wonder what they'd feel like somewhere other than a salt shaker.
But those events had exits. I could leave. I could drive home to my dorm and spend the rest of the weekend pretending my stepbrothers were normal humans instead of walking reminders that my body has terrible taste in men.
Here there's nowhere to go. The corridor outside my door is generous by train standards but not by human ones — especially not when the humans in question are over six feet tall with shoulders to match.
The lounge is a shared space. Every meal will be at that table for six, with a private chef who'll serve courses and disappear, leaving us to fill the silence with clinking silverware and careful small talk that dies before dessert.
I could hide in here. Lock the door and claim motion sickness. Order room service and avoid the lounge entirely.
That would be pathetic, and I refuse to be pathetic.
I want a drink. If they're going to ignore me, fine. They can ignore me while I make myself a margarita and pretend their presence doesn't affect my breathing.
The lounge is exactly as I left it when I push back through the door—Adam by the window, Chris with his tablet, Harry at the bar. The train has settled into a steady rhythm, and the landscape outside is already shifting from city to suburbs to something flatter and more open.
I walk to the bar and reach for the tequila bottle.
The moment my fingers close around it, all three conversations stop. The silence is immediate and total, like someone turned off the sound in the room. I can feel them watching me, but I don't turn around.
I'm twenty-two years old, not twelve, and I'm allowed to make myself a drink on my father's eighty-thousand-dollar train.
My hands shake slightly as I line up the bottles — tequila, lime juice, triple sec. Just slightly, but enough that I have to concentrate on not dropping anything.
"You old enough to drink?"
Adam's voice comes from behind me, and I turn to face him, tequila bottle still in hand.
He's moved from the window to the edge of the seating area, close enough that I can see the gray flecks in his eyes and smell whatever expensive cologne he wears.
Something dark and warm that makes my core clench.
This is more words than he's spoken to me since Thanksgiving.
"I turned twenty-one last year. Your secretary sent me a gift. Thank you for that, by the way."
The response comes out polite and careful, the same tone I use for distant relatives and Dad's golf buddies.
I'm not expecting anything more than a grunt or a nod, because that's what Adam Harrington does.
He acknowledges my existence in the smallest possible way and then goes back to pretending I'm furniture.
"I sent the gift. Not my secretary."
My hands pause on the bottle. The red designer handbag that arrived for my twenty-first birthday with a note that said "Happy Birthday" in handwriting I didn't recognize.