Free STEPBROTHER ROMANCE BOX SET: Romance Stories For My Hot Stepbrother, My Younger Stepbrother Soldier & Dr. Stepbrother (Romance, Alphas Bad Boy Soldier ... Forbidden Short Stories, Military Romance) by Andrea Niles, Trudy Valdez

Chapter 1 – The Secret
     
     
    “Doing anything this weekend, Andrea?”
    Looking up from the chart she was currently writing notes on, Andrea lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
    “Not sure just yet. Why do you ask?”
    The nurse who had come up beside her smiled.
    “Just thought I’d ask. I’m looking at a pretty boring weekend myself.” Her voice went a little flat. “Though I’ll bet he isn’t. Look at that. Doesn’t it just make you want to march in there and start pulling them off to work by their ears?”
    Over by the nurse’s station, her stepbrother was holding court, three slender young residents hanging on his every word. Andrea let out a puff of air that might have been a laugh. It might, if she was Nadia. But she knew Darren didn’t have much more than the time of day for those girls. She snuck another glance at him, tall and blond and square-jawed. He caught her looking and shot a grin her way, with a there and gone again expression that said he would rather be standing next to her than in his current location. When Andrea looked down at her chart again, it was to hide her smile.
    The thing about her and Darren was, they had a secret.
    “Someone ought to,” she said, for Nadia’s benefit. “I’m sure they have better things to do than stand around and giggle at my stepbrother’s overinflated ego.”
    Not that she really thought Darren’s ego was over-inflated, but they teased each other frequently as they went about their days, and their coworkers had learned to go along with it.
    Their parents had married when Andrea was in middle school and Darren was a freshman. Back then, they’d hated each other. Andrea was convinced that Darren was arrogant, and spoiled. Darren thought she was rude. They'd hardly spoken to each other for months.
    Then Andrea they had gone back to school.
    She had never really been what a lot of people considered perfect. Too tall to fit the cheerleader mold, Andrea was a big girl. Curvy, but not the kind of curvy high school guys were nice about. The high school girls hadn’t been much better. Andrea had withdrawn into herself. She spent a lot of her time avoiding other people.
    When Darren found out how they were talking to her, he hadn’t been happy. He’d walked up on a pack of them around her, slipping snide insults into what was ostensibly a conversation. She’d looked up to find him on the fringes of the group, and had dropped her gaze again, expecting him to take their side, but instead he’d stepped into the middle and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and, with fantastic disdain in his crisply accented voice, told the little huddle of jocks and cheerleaders to shut the fuck up. Andrea had never heard him swear before.
    That was when she started looking up to him. Their animosity had thawed, and they had even become friends. Their parents had been pleased. 
    The rest hadn’t come until later.
    They’d been home for Christmas. He’d taken her out on the porch, both of them wrapped up in jackets against the chill of San Francisco’s winter. Standing there with one elbow against the railing, a glass of wine held in his other hand, Darren had confessed that he wanted something more than what they had.
    Andrea had been incredulous. He could have his pick of any woman in a fifty mile radius. What did he want with her? Not to mention that he was her stepbrother. That she had always wanted him didn't come into it. Who wouldn't want him? But Darren had shaken his head at the look on her face, and tipped her chin up with a hand beneath it.
    “That doesn’t matter. And as for my apparent ability to obtain any woman I want, what I want is you.” His eyes were soft and earnest. “You know I wouldn’t tease you about this, Andrea. I’m not that cruel.”
    He wasn’t. She knew it. But there was alcohol on his breath, like he’d had to find the courage to say the words, and it wasn’t something they could ever act on. Darren should never have brought it up.