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  Stepbrother Studs: Preston

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  High school senior, Moxie, agrees to be moral support for her friend, Patches, who is totally enamored with a college boy, so she says yes to a double date, even though she has to lie to her parents to do it.

  But Moxie wasn’t counting on lying about her age to get into an X-rated movie, and she definitely wasn’t counting on her date’s Roman hands and Russian fingers, or the fact that the pants she’s borrowed from Patches are several sizes too small. By the end of the night, Moxie finds herself in far more trouble than she bargained for!

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  Lara has a horrible secret she’s hiding from everyone. The only person in the world she thinks she could tell, who might understand and help her, is her stepbrother, Preston. But when Preston’s helicopter goes down in the mountains, Lara believes she’s been abandoned by the only man she’s ever loved.

  But fate has other ideas. Lara dreams of a stranger and wakes up to find herself alone in a locked room with no food, no water—and no memory of what has happened to her. Injured, blind, and helpless, all she has is a vague memory of a man who has carried her to this place.

  She’s afraid of what might lie behind her… and even more afraid of what may lie ahead. What if she’s jumped from the frying pan into a much hotter fire than she ever could have imagined?

  Stepbrother Studs: Preston

  By Selena Kitt

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  ~ Present Day ~

  Lara dreamed of the mountains where they’d played together as children.

  In a fog, the veil of darkness gave way, but she could still barely see. Everything was miles beneath her as she floated, up and down, carried along a twisting trail. She felt a growing dread and tried to wake herself up. She didn’t like this dream, this darkness, the eerie feeling of being carried helplessly along, her feet not moving beneath her.

  She tried to open her eyes, tried to jerk herself awake, to no avail. Her body bumped up and down, her stomach roiling. She was suddenly nauseous. She just wanted to stop moving, to lie still. That felt safer than the mountains looming vaguely beneath her. She wanted to lie still in the folds of the mountains. She wanted to hide from something awful behind her. Lara had always had a desire, somehow, not to be seen.

  She passed the point between dreaming and wakefulness like an exhausted marathon runner in last place, stumbling over the finish line and collapsing. Gasping, she opened her eyes—but she still couldn’t see. The world was dark and gauzy. What covered her eyes? A bandage? A blindfold? Lara struggled, feeling the arms holding her tighten, her sense of direction righting itself as she realized she was being carried over someone’s shoulder. A man’s shoulder. A very strong man.

  Her head throbbed, a constant beat, but the rest of her felt worse. She hurt all over. Her shoulders ached. Her wrists and ankles burned, as if she’d been stung by a perfect ring of bees. Her hands and feet were numb but starting to tingle, the feeling slowly returning. The pain intensified as she mumbled herself more fully awake, her limbs on fire.

  “Wh—what…?” It was all she could manage. Her voice was gravel in her throat.

  Why couldn’t she remember anything?

  Lara bounced lightly on the man’s shoulders, his path a twisting and turning one, going up and down, but his course felt steady and sure. He carried her carefully, but without effort.

  She tried again. “Wh—what’s happening?”

  No answer.

  “Who are you?” she pleaded, her belly recoiling with fear. She wished he would just stop. “Where are we?”

  “Shhh…” That was the only reply.

  She tried to remember something, anything.

  Lara.

  Her name. That was all.

  It terrified her.

  But while she was afraid, somehow, she knew it wasn’t this man she was afraid of. His one communication with her had been soft and patient, not harsh and dismissive. He stepped with confidence, holding her securely, but with no malice. Had he saved her from something terrible? She thought he had. But what?

  Why couldn’t she remember?

  She wanted to ask him more but her mouth refused her mind’s direction. She had no strength left, it seemed, and again the mountains bounced endlessly below. She wanted nothing more than for it to stop, the feeling of helplessly floating along, everything, even her own volition, out of her control. And still, she drifted, suspended somewhere between dream and reality, the mountains a backdrop in an endless, liminal journey.

  Things slowed. She floated down, the mountains soft beneath her, like clouds. Lara sighed, relieved not to be moving anymore. She found herself hoping that the dreadful thing behind her, which she couldn’t fully remember, would not find her here. When she tried to bring up a memory, she could only hear a voice. Harsh, demanding. It wanted what belonged to it. Lara shuddered with fear, feeling something warm drawn up to her shoulders. But in her dream, she was filled with terror. She knew she had to find a place where she could be unseen, like a small prey animal hiding from a hunter, trembling and paralyzed with fear.

  Lara felt a hand brush her hair away from her face and struggled to remain conscious, trying to force her mouth to ask the questions her mind kept asking, but it was no use.

  Darkness claimed her again and she knew nothing for a long time.

  ~ Four Years Ago ~

  She never told anyone what happened.

  What continued to happen, again and again, in the dead of the night.

  But there was one person she wanted to tell. One person she thought would not only care, but would do something about it. Or try to, anyway.

  That’s exactly why she never said anything to Preston when he came home from military school on holidays.

  Instead, she swallowed her anger, her revulsion, her fear, and she put on her brightest smile when her stepbrother came through the door with a big, warm hug just for her. She didn’t tell him about the man who came into her room at night with his own dark embrace just for her, leaving her trying to muffle her sobs into her pillow after he was gone.

  Because that man was Preston’s father—and Lara knew, if she did tell her stepbrother the truth, Preston would do something drastic, something horrible, and she wouldn’t let him risk his future for her.

  “How’re ya doin’, Miss Bennett?” Preston asked, using his nicknam
e for her. He loved teasing her about her love for Pride and Prejudice.

  “Mr. Darcy, you are a cad!” she exclaimed, grinning as he rolled his eyes and pulled her into his big, strong arms in a giant bear hug.

  Like his father, he was a big man, quite tall—a towering six-foot-four—but broad, too. His biceps were like rocks, but she didn’t mind. Lara kissed him on the cheek, breathing in the scent of his cologne.

  “I got you the best present this year. Have the packages arrived yet?”

  “Yesterday,” she told him, glad when he didn’t let her go right away, enjoying the safety of his arms, his lips brushing her forehead. “What’d you get me?”

  “Nope, not telling.” He grinned, slowly pulling away but still holding her out at arm’s length, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe. “Nice sweater. But it doesn’t beat mine.”

  He was referring to her “ugly Christmas sweater,” a tradition Lara’s mother had started when they were kids and the two of them had continued, even after her death. Lara had spent a long time scouring thrift stores for hers this year. It was pristinely white with a whole family of redneck snow people adorning the front.

  The daddy snowman had a hunter’s cap on and he was holding a beer in one branched hand, a rifle in the other. His snowman wife was in curlers and a housecoat and their two snow children were each holding a beer and a rifle. They had conspicuous, glittery green snot dripping from their carrot noses. Lara thought there was no way Preston had managed to find anything better this year.

  “Check it out.” Preston unzipped his long jacket, revealing his own ugly sweater choice, making Lara laugh out loud.

  “Damnit,” she swore, shaking her dark head at Preston’s widening grin. “You did it again. Mom would be so proud.”

  She rolled her eyes when he ignored her sarcasm.

  “Ya think?” He looked down at his sweater, at the upside-down snowman with a floppy 3D carrot that hung down at his crotch, with two “ornaments” on either side that made it look like a penis.

  “I think I miss her most at Christmas.”

  “I think so, too.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “So... where’s my father?”

  “He’s still in Russia.” Lara didn’t make any effort to keep the relief from her voice. Her father had business dealings all over the world. “He called to say he won’t be home til Christmas Eve. But all the presents are under the tree already.”

  She nodded to the fifteen-foot balsam fir in the foyer.

  Phillip, their butler-slash-driver, had procured the tree, as he did every year, from somewhere deep in the Colorado mountains behind their holiday estate. Kate, the housekeeper they’d grown up with, the woman who had pretty much served as a surrogate mother to them both since Lara’s mother had died, helped Lara decorate it, both of them up on step-stools. Phillip always did the lights first, from top to bottom, standing on a tall ladder. Then he added all of the ornaments to the top third that the two women couldn’t reach.

  When Lara and Preston were very small, they used to creep down the stairs on Christmas Eve, hoping to catch Santa Claus coming down the chimney. It was Preston’s idea to lie with their heads stuck under the bottom of the tree, so that even if they fell asleep, they’d surely be awakened by Santa trying to place gifts around it.

  The two of them would stare up through the branches at the twinkling lights, practically vibrating with excitement. Lara could still smell the sharp tang of pine needles, feel the sap on her fingers from touching the giant tree’s trunk. Somehow, though, she always magically woke up on Christmas morning in her own bed, as did Preston. She wondered now how long her mother and his father had waited before having Phillip carry them to bed—certainly long enough for the two of them to fall deeply enough asleep for the disruption not to wake them—and place the gifts beneath the tree at last.

  They’d stopped doing it after her mother had died but the memory was a fond one.

  “I’ll unpack mine, too, then.” Preston’s eyes were bright. “You’re going to love what I got you.”

  “Quit teasing.” Lara shoved his shoulder, making a face. “Are you hungry? Kate’s been making stew all day.”

  “Starving.” Preston put a hand to his flat stomach, covering the snowman’s black coal buttons. “Kitchen?”

  “Race you.”

  Whenever Preston was home, they acted like they were little kids again. In spite of their age difference—Preston was three years older than she was—they’d always gotten along. There had never been any sibling rivalry between them, and when Lara’s mother had passed, it had only served to make them grow closer together. She was glad this would be his last year at military school and she hoped he would go to college somewhere close to home, like the University of Colorado or Colorado State. At least until she was done with high school. She had dreams of going far, far away to college after that. Far away from this house—and her stepfather.

  They joyfully spent the next three days in each other’s company, before Preston’s father was due to return. They swam in the indoor pool, played both chess and Yahtzee—Preston always won the former while Lara invariably won the latter—and took long, lung-bursting walks up the mountain path behind the house, her mittened hand in his gloved one.

  When Preston led them off the path, a trusting Lara followed him and wasn’t disappointed. As if by magic, a tiny cabin appeared. Inside they found just three rooms. The main one was both living and kitchen area, with a bedroom to the right and a small bathroom to the left. Preston said it had been built for hunting, a sport his father liked to pursue in what little free time he had from work.

  In all the years they’d been coming to the Colorado mountain property for Christmas—it was so remote, they often had to go by helicopter in the winter, if heavy snow closed the roads—she’d never known this little cabin in the woods existed. Approaching it for the first time, she imagined them as Hansel and Gretel, abandoned, alone, seeking shelter and solace in each other.

  But they weren’t orphans, even if Lara often wished they were. Her stepfather was still very much alive and, as the time ticked by, edging nearer to Christmas Eve, she grew quiet and withdrawn.

  Preston noticed, although he didn’t press her about it. His father’s flight from China wasn’t due in until after midnight so the two of them sat up in the big drawing room—Katie had started a fire earlier in the day that had burned down to embers—Lara curled up in a chair staring at a book she couldn’t quite bring herself to actually read and Preston doing some work on his laptop.

  She stared into the dying light of the fire, her body growing tenser with every second that ticked by on the big, antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room, hoping her stepfather would be too exhausted from his flight to come to her room that night. Having Preston in the house wouldn’t be enough to deter him, she knew. Her stepfather had ways to keep her quiet. But it didn’t happen as often when Preston was home and she knew she should be grateful for that. She sat there, swallowing back tears, wondering how long she could go on like this.

  “Hey...” Preston’s voice broke her out of her trance and she looked up to see him bent over her chair. “Lost in thought?”

  “Yeah.” She gave him her best attempt at a smile, blinking fast. “Sorry.”

  He frowned, reaching out to brush hair away from her face. Just his touch made her want to cry.

  “I know something that will cheer you up.”

  “What’s that?” She glanced at the clock, seeing that it was eleven-thirty. She’d been up since five, for their pre-dawn hike up the mountain, and she should have been exhausted but instead, she felt wired, strung taut. Her limbs prickled with dread, her belly clenching.

  “Come on.” Preston held out his hand and she took it, his swallowing hers as he pulled her to standing.

  He led her out of the drawing room, down the hall to the parquet-floored foyer where the Christmas tree stood in the curve of the staircase. The lights in the foyer were off, the sky
lights high above black rectangles, but the tree gave off a soft, multi-colored glow. Lara felt herself soften at the sight of it, despite her anxiety. There was something magical about a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve—even if you weren’t feeling very Christmasy.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, watching Preston moving gifts around.

  A part of her still wished they waited until Christmas morning to put presents out. One of her favorite parts of Christmas as a child had been coming down that wide, curving staircase to peer around the corner and see a mountain of brightly wrapped boxes with shimmering bows on them where, just the night before, there had been none.

  “Come here.” Preston, wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt, got down on the floor in the space he’d made, holding out his hand to her. She went to him, nose wrinkling in curiosity—what was he up to?—letting him pull her down onto the parquet floor beside him. They sat cross-legged, facing each other.

  “Don’t you remember?” he asked, cocking his dark head and smiling at her. They were both dark-haired and dark-eyed and everyone always thought they were actually brother and sister instead of steps. Their mother had never corrected people, because it had always felt that way, too. “What we used to do on Christmas Eve?”

  Of course, she remembered.

  “But Preston... there is no Santa Claus.”

  “I’m Santa now.” He reached over, digging behind one of the larger boxes, and pulled out a small blue box wrapped with a white ribbon.

  She just looked at it resting in his palm.

  “Open it,” he urged, handing it to her.

  “For me?” She couldn’t quite believe it. The tears that had been threatening all night surfaced and began to overflow. She ducked her head so he wouldn’t see and untied the ribbon, pulling the top off the box.