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Just like with the last ripe peach I hadn’t realized he’d wanted or known I’d needed to protect until it was too late.
I’d been in juvie for the third time—for losing my shit after walking in on him with his hand down my stepsister’s leggings—when carbon monoxide filled our house. Dad had been out of town on business.
Without a prenup to ensure his dead wife’s remaining family inherited her estate, Dad had gotten it all.
A muscle ticked in my jaw as memories battered my head. He hadn’t defended himself when I’d given him that black eye, but I’d come to realize what he was capable of. Fear for my own life kept me quiet, and I didn’t share my suspicions with the police who’d investigated the little ‘accident.’
And in a quiet exchange neither of us spoke about once settled, Dad greased a few pockets to clean up my record.
I hated that I owed him one. But my birthday loomed, and I would find my freedom.
He excused himself to go take a piss—without so many words—and Mrs. Reed watched him walk out the parlor door, a small smile on her lips, eyes shining like a fool in love. Totally smitten with a man she never should’ve allowed into her bed. She’d been won over by a selfish prick whose bank balance dwindled.
That inheritance from his dead ex-wife? Gambled away.
Almost destitute, he’d found himself a new toy, one with a young daughter, a seemingly virginal young girl ripe for the plucking.
Addilyn didn’t even glance his way as he checked out her legs in his periphery while striding past.
The girl definitely had smarts to not be drawn in by my snake of a father—even if she was a bitch.
“You’re a very lucky young man to have such a distinguished role model,” Mrs. Reed murmured in a breathless tone after Dad shut the parlor’s door behind him.
A spew of words filled my mouth, and even though I expected Dad would hear about whatever shit I wanted to say while still fighting off bile at the memories, I didn’t give two fucks. I wasn’t eighteen, and he couldn’t legally toss me out just yet. The fucker was stuck with me until spring.
Besides, the way he looked at Addilyn pissed me the hell off. Fuck him and his bad choices that had left us damn near penniless.
“Lloyd’s full of shit,” I muttered, lounging back like a sprawled, rebellious teen since I expected the bitch queen wouldn’t appreciate it.
Addilyn’s head jerked my way, big blue eyes wide as hell, lips parted on a gasp.
“Young man,” Mrs. Reed whispered fiercely. “In this household we show respect for our elders!”
I slowly turned my head toward her. My soon-to-be stepmom from hell held her chin high, same as her snobbish daughter. Didn’t they realize looking down their noses like that left their necks exposed? Pink spread over Addilyn’s mother’s cheeks too but not in a way that made me want to keep her unsettled. I figured she would expect me to address her Mother like her daughter did, but Mrs. Reed would soon find I did things however the fuck I wanted.
Perhaps I would take to calling her Ingrid, her given name. I expected she would love that shit.
Having zero respect for the widow since she couldn’t judge a man’s character, I didn’t feel the need to show her any. But I knew how to play the game, and the strange, stirring desire to keep her daughter safe for as long as I could restrained my usual rebellion with a tighter than expected leash.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured, priding myself in keeping the sarcasm from my voice while putting on a full-on smile that always landed me where I wanted. Too bad it hadn’t worked on Dad when I learned Ingrid had a daughter and I suggested he find a woman closer to home. And too bad begging to not move to snow country or transfer schools my senior year got ignored.
His newest lover’s face smoothed a bit.
Keeping Ingrid happy meant Dad would stay off my back.
Keeping Dad away from Addilyn would keep me happy.
Alaska might be cold as fuck without nearly enough sunshine for my liking, and even though I told myself I hated the princess for getting my ass dragged north, she was like a ray of golden sunlight shooting down from the heavens. Feigning disinterest in her sexually and allowing my annoyance loose over having another stepsister would keep us both safe.
I hated her, but I wasn’t so much a bastard that I’d allow Dad to get after her ass while I was around. I would protect her for as long as I could before I hightailed it back to California.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t annoy the shit out of her in the meantime. Fuck knew I would need to find something to smile about out in the backwoods of no-man’s land for the next couple of months.
