Free Stepping Over the Line: A Stepbrother Novel (Shamed) by Laura Marie Altom Page A

ripped abs, would they taste salty?
    This was insanity. I turned to leave.
    “Going so soon?”
    I froze. My heart beat too fast. “I, um, forgot something back in my office.”
    “Bullshit.” He sat up, and in the process, stole what little remained of the air in my lungs. His buzz cut made him look dangerous—every inch the murderer society claimed him to be. But I knew differently. What happened with Chad had been an accident. It could have happened to anyone, right? My inner self snorted. Sure. It could have happened to anyone packing a punch powerful enough to knock a grown man to the ground.
    Like a cat, he stood in fluid motion. Before I could think to flee, he was beside me, wreathing me in his earthy, musky smell.
    “I have to go…” I refused to look into his eyes—not that I could have seen them through his sunglasses. This incarnation of my stepbrother wasn’t any person I knew. This man scared me—not because I feared him doing me physical harm, but because I feared the primal urges he brought out in me. He was no longer a southern gentleman, and he made me feel like I no longer wanted to be a lady, but to be the kind of filthy dirty slut who screws her stepbrother not just once, but over and over again.
    “No one’s stopping you…” He held out his arm, as if showing me the way. But he had always been
my way.
One of my dearest friends. My moral compass that was now obviously broken and twisted.
    “Why are you doing this?” I asked in a small voice I didn’t recognize.
    “What?”
    “Playing games. Stop. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but you killed a man—not just any man, but my fiancé. The father of my child.”
    “Point of fact.” Garrett crossed his arms, in the process making his chest all the more impressive. I refused to look his way. “At the time of his death, your
beloved
was banging one of your best friends. This is the last time I will ever say this, but he came at me first. He hurt you first. What happened next was an unfortunate accident for which I will pay a lifetime.” He stepped perilously deep into my personal space. I could no longer think or breathe or focus on anything but his sheer size, and all-too-familiar musky, manly smell. The day had turned unseasonably warm, and sweat clung to his bare skin. “That said, given the chance to do it all over again, I would—not that I’d kill him—but I’d sure as hell have knocked him into Louisiana for humiliating you the way he did.”
    His impassioned speech left me trembling inside, maybe outside, as well. I couldn’t be sure. He made me unbalanced and confused, and before he further twisted my heart, I turned and ran, sidestepping some guy taking pictures of flowers.
    I ran and ran until I reached my tiny corner office in the clinic I’d been so proud to have renovated from a once abandoned apothecary shop. The cheery sun streaming through tall south- and west-paned windows usually filled me with peace and goodwill. Today, the openness made me feel vulnerable. On display.
    I shut the blinds.
    The Chippendale desk Mom had gifted me, as well as the Duncan Grant floral, had been too much, but I loved both. They, along with the striped chintz sofa I catnapped on and the pale blue-on-blue striped walls usually made me feel safe in my new world, but now, with Garrett’s unreadable face haunting me, I feared I might never again feel secure—unless he returned to California.
    His leaving was my only possible solution.
    And so, I sat at my desk and dialed Daddy’s work number. His secretary patched me through, and I asked how his progress was coming on getting my stepbrother’s legal license reinstated. Mom had told me he was working on it as a surprise.
    “Aren’t you a sweetheart,” he said. “Every inch your mother’s daughter, showing concern for Garrett—especially, in light of what your brother had done. But that’s all behind us now.”
    “Of course. Which is another reason why I called.” I