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  Stepbrother Studs: Upton

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  MOXIE

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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

  Winnie spent years in law school and has been living on a law clerk’s meager salary—the only job she could find—while her older stepbrother, Upton, makes six-figures a year writing trashy romance novels under a female pen name for the masses.

  Not that she begrudges him—they might be step-siblings but they’ve always been more like best friends. Upton considers Winnie his muse, so when he calls with terrible writer’s block, desperately begging her to come up to the summer house where he’s trying to meet his deadline, Winnie relents. The truth is, while she makes fun of his profession, she secretly devours all of his novels.

  As Winnie tries to help Upton with his work, she finds that with every barrier they break down, they grow closer to a truth they’ve both been trying to hide from one another. Because while her stepbrother might want her as a muse, that isn’t all he wants. And Winnie realizes, she wants him, too—more than she’s ever let herself admit. Until now.

  Stepbrother Studs: Upton

  By Selena Kitt

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  What in the hell am I doing here?

  I sat in the bucket seat of my rusty Datsun, looking at our old summer home. I hadn’t been up here in ten years. My parents called it, “Going Up-North,” as if that was an actual place when, in fact, our destination was a little Michigan town called Tawas. Once summer hit, our parents would herd me and my stepbrother, Upton, into our family minivan and drive three hours up I-75 to Standish. From there, it was another forty-minutes to the cabin on Tawas Lake, me and Upton stuck in the back with my mom and his dad up front singing classic rock songs. We’d look at each other and roll our eyes every time “Dust in the Wind” came on. Thank God for iPhones, earbuds and wifi. I spent most of my time re-watching Dexter on Netflix while Upton watched YouTube videos.

  The house looked exactly the same—white clapboard with a giant wraparound porch, a bench swing facing the lake and twin bug-zappers on either side of the door that would sizzle all night long. The lake looked inviting in the sunlight. We’d jumped off that dock a hundred times. There were fish that would nibble your toes when we sat on the edge, dangling our feet over, occasionally splashing each other as we watched the sun set, turning the water a deep shade of orange.

  I turned the car off and glanced at the upper windows of the two-story house. Upton was there somewhere, huddled in his room, hard at work on another steamy romance novel. Suburban moms everywhere would be proud. They loved what he called his “Mommy-Porn.” Although his latest text to me revealed he was anything but confident this time around. He’d called me last night, begging me to come keep him company while he finished his latest novel.

  “Come on, Winnie—I need you. Please?” Upton usually didn’t plead.

  “I can’t promise anything,” I told him. “Things have been really busy lately.”

  “But you’re my best muse,” he cajoled, as if flattery would get him everywhere. He knew me too damned well. “I promise, I’ll give you the inside scoop. Doesn’t Susan read my stuff?”

  “Yes.” I rolled my eyes. Susan was the receptionist at the environmental law firm where I clerked and she always had her Kindle open under her desk. “She also likes Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult. No wonder you write under a pen name.”

  “Lucy Dubois is a household name,” he reminded her with a snort. “I mean, I’m no E.L. James, but we both know I can crank out the bestsellers.”

  “Right. You don’t need me, then. I’ll talk to you lat—”

  “No! Winnie!” he cried, sounding desperate. “Don’t hang up. You have to come.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with your crank?”

  He laughed. Then he sighed. “I wish I knew. I’ve lost my mojo or something. I need you.”

  “What can I do?” I nibbled the side of my nail, thinking about all the work I had to do over the weekend. Could I put it off? How bad-off was my stepbrother?

  “Just… come up here.” His voice had softened. He sounded defeated. “You don’t need to do anything. I just need you here with me. You can swim in the lake. I’ll grill us some burgers. And… God willing… I’ll write.”

  “Burgers? That’s supposed to be an incentive?” I scoffed. “You know, this is pure magical thinking.”

  “Winnie, listen…” I heard the sound of the screen door opening and closing. I remembered that door. We’d slammed in and out of it a million times over the summer. “I’ve missed not one, not two, but three, count them, three deadlines for this book. If I miss this one, I’m finished.”

  “I don’t know why you think I’m the cure for your writer’s block.”

  “I don’t think,” he said softly. “I know… please, Win? Please?”

  Jesus, he was really desperate.

  I flopped down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

  I could take my work, I thought. A weekend away wouldn’t kill me. And Upton was clearly determined to get me to come.

  “…Okay,” I said finally. “But I get Mom and Dad’s room!”

  It was the only one with an air-conditioner and it had been a hot summer.

  “You got it,” he readily agreed. Too readily. Geez, he really was desperate. “How soon can you get here?”

  “I have to pack. Get gas. Hit the ATM.” I ticked these things off on my fingers.

  “Well hurry up. I’ll thaw steaks.”

  “Ribeyes?” I perked up. I’d been living on boxed macaroni and cheese and Raman. Steak was way better than burgers.

  “Big, juicy ones.” I could hear his grin. “Hurry, my voracious little carnivorous muse. “

  “On my way!” I hung up.

  And while I sat there thinking, what in the hell am I doing here?—I knew.

  Upton called, and I came.

  The Datsun’s door creak
ed loudly as I shoved it open. I grabbed my duffle bag out of the trunk and headed up to the house. The screen door screeched when I opened it and the springs snapped it closed with a loud “bang” as I dropped my bag to the floor. The house was quiet. I could hear the windchimes out back and the faint echo of ducks on the lake. I slipped off my flip-flops and padded in bare feet across the hardwood floor. An old grandfather clock—which had actually been owned by my grandfather, my mom’s dad—ticked away steadily in the family room.

  If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear Upton clacking away on his laptop upstairs. The Great Artist sequestered in his bedroom, pumping out another trashy romance novel. All in a day’s work. He’d claimed he was stuck, but it sure sounded like he was on a roll now. Maybe just talking to me had gotten the juices flowing again? I thought, smiling.

  I walked into the quaint kitchen. My mother had designed it. She went in for the faux rustic stuff. Never my thing. Tiny scarecrows and imitation vintage watering cans decorated the backsplash. A Lang calendar hung on the wall near the phone stand. Random notes, grocery lists, and a Detroit Red Wings schedule peppered the refrigerator door. A half-eaten meatball sub sat on the kitchen table.

  “Gross.” I wrinkled my nose. My stepbrother could be a real slob.

  I waved a fly away—the old, rusty screen could only keep out so many—and wrapped the sandwich up, putting it into the fridge.

  There were two big, juicy ribeye steaks sitting on a plate inside. They made my mouth water. I’d spent years in law school and had been living on a law clerk’s meager salary for over a year—the only job I could find—while my big brother made six-figures a year writing word-porn for the masses. Life was so unfair sometimes.

  But I loved Upton. I truly did. I knew plenty of biological siblings who didn’t get along as well as we did.

  He was my rock and I was his muse.

  Most kids hate when their parents get divorced, but I was only a year old when my dad left. My mother didn’t talk much about him. I knew he drank a lot and had been in prison. Was there now, in fact. I’d never met him. My mother said drinking had impaired his judgment—something he never had in ample supply in the first place. My singular dread involved repeating those same lapses in judgment and embracing my self-destructive side.

  After a second disastrous marriage—I was too young at the time to remember that one, either—my mother settled down with Martin. He was technically my stepfather but I’d always considered him my father. They met at an art gala in Ann Arbor almost twenty years ago. Martin worked doing something with numbers at the DTE building in downtown Detroit—I never did quite figure out what—and my mother was in marketing communications for a mid-sized advertising agency. That made us solidly upper-middle-class. We made enough to afford this little vacation home “up-north,” with occasional side trips to Sea World or Six Flags.

  Martin had rolled his eyes and railed against Upton’s insistence on getting a creative writing degree from the University of Michigan, while praising me to the skies for going to law school—University of Detroit Mercy. But now Upton was making more money than all of us combined.

  Life was funny that way.

  Footsteps down the stairs interrupted my reverie. My stepbrother came downstairs holding a pair of longnecks, padding toward me in his bare feet, wearing a tight, navy blue t-shirt and whitewashed jeans. His blonde hair stood up like he’d been trying to pull it out and he had a good week’s light-colored stubble on his cheeks. Despite his disheveled appearance, he was ridiculously good-looking. If he hadn’t grown up in the Midwest, he wouldn’t have been out of place in a clan of disreputable Central European aristocrats. He would’ve made a devastatingly handsome concierge at a five-star hotel.

  But he would always be my brother. I’d known him for so long, he could be my blood relative by default. Not that anyone could tell that by looking at us. My hair was long, thick and dark, so black it was almost blue in bright light. His eyes were the color of a summer sky, while mine were hazel-green. But it didn’t matter to us that we didn’t look alike—we treated each other like siblings. That was really why I’d made this crazy weekend trip. Yes, he was sometimes infuriating and pretentious—but he was family.

  “Thanks for coming.” Upton handed me a beer.

  “Anything for you.” The cold beer offered a respite from the sweltering heat and I rolled it across my sweaty forehead before taking a long drink.

  I saw Upton’s gaze move down over the orange and yellow summer dress I’d put on before I left—it was stuck to my sweaty body—all the way down to my white strappy sandals, then back up to my face. It was hot outside and even hotter in the house. I wanted nothing more than to peel my dress off and go skinny dipping.

  “Lookin’ good.” Upton winked and clinked the neck of his bottle with mine as I brought it down. “You wear that to the office?”

  I rolled my eyes. “My boss prefers mini-skirts with garters and stockings.”

  Upton laughed. He knew I was kidding.

  Upton constantly teased me about using my looks to get ahead, as if he could talk—pretty boy and hypocrite. He knew my work at the law firm was seeking to disprove that notion. I came from a family—on my mother’s side—where women were meant to coast through life on the way to a lucrative marriage. My mother had bucked the usual pattern, choosing bad boys, at least until she met Martin. But she’d raised me to be a “good wife someday,” in spite of Martin’s nudges to the contrary along the way. While I loved my mother, I wasn’t about to fulfill her stereotypical idea of modern womanhood. Life was too short to be a fashion accessory.

  “What’s it like in the city?” Upton asked.

  “Hot as fuck. Cooler out here by the lake. Hey, weren’t Dad and Mom up here last week?”

  “Don’t remind me.” Upton cringed. “The bed springs are old in this place.”

  I laughed. “Our parents as sexual beings. Paging Dr. Freud.”

  “Jesus, Winnie. Stop!” He made a face. “How am I supposed to write smut with that image in my head? You’re not helping my writer’s block.”

  “I thought just my presence was magical,” I teased, taking another swig of beer.

  “It is.” He put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in for a half-hug, planting a kiss on the top of my head. “I feel better already.”

  “Well, I’m hot and tired and hungry,” I told him. “When do I get steak?”

  He laughed. “Come on upstairs. You can take a nap before dinner.”

  He grabbed my duffle bag and I followed him up the stairs. It was even hotter on the second level. My dress was sticking to me like a second skin. I was glad I’d called Mom and Dad’s room with the air-conditioner. It would be nice and cool.

  “I started the motor for ya.” Upton opened the first door at the top of the stairs and a waft of cool air hit me.

  “Oh, that’s heaven!” I breathed deep, going in to flop down face-first on the big king-sized bed. The springs squeaked noticeably and I laughed, turning my face to look at my stepbrother. He dropped my duffle bag on the floor.

  “You nap,” he said, cupping my calf and squeezing gently. “It was a long drive. I really appreciate you coming.”

  “Did I hear you writing?” I murmured, my eyes already closing. The cool air and the soft bed were the perfect napping combination. I never ran the air in my apartment because it was too damned expensive.

  “Yeah.” His fingers stroked the back of my knee and I shivered. “After I talked to you, I got inspired. See what you do to me? Even from a distance…”

  “Mmm.” I wiggled on the bed, feeling his hand stroking a little higher up on my thigh. “God, that feels good. I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” He slid his hand down my leg and squeezed my foot gently before going over to the windows to draw the blinds against the sun.

  “I’ll just nap for a few minutes,” I mumbled, looking at him through half-closed eyes as he went toward the door.

  “Night
, Winnie.” He smiled.

  “Mmkay,” I managed as he shut the door behind him.

  Then I was asleep.

  I woke up a few hours later, disoriented and shivering, drooling on the coverlet.

  I got up and went into the attached bathroom to pee, hearing the clack of Upton’s keyboard in the room next to mine. They were attached through the master bath. After I flushed and washed my hands, I opened the connecting door to his room, seeing him sitting at the desk facing the window. It had an incredible view of the lake, turning orange and crimson in the slowly setting sun. Had I really slept so long? I smiled, seeing the sports car and movie posters still hanging on the walls from when we were kids. The small single bed had a Lamborghini Countach poster above it.

  “Why don’t you change these?” I suggested as I came into the room. Upton glanced back at me and smiled. “You could update it so it’s less twentieth-century. Feels like I’m in a time capsule from 1986. I’m half-expecting to see a rotary phone and a Rolodex.”

  “Binge watching Mad Men on Netflix again?”

  I grinned. “How can you tell?”

  “No one uses rotary phone in a sentence anymore.” He studied my face. “Have a good nap?

  “Delicious.” I stretched and sat on the bed as he swiveled his chair toward me, leaning back in it. “So, how’s it going? Getting all the words?”

  “Too many, to be honest.”

  “Too many words?” I raised my eyebrows. “Is that a thing?”

  “You wearing your suit under that dress?” he asked as I stretched my legs out, putting my feet in his lap. “We could go for a swim.”

  “I don’t need a suit to swim.” I grinned at the surprised look on his face. “And neither do you. We used to do it all the time when we were kids—remember?”

  “The optimum word there being ‘kids’,” he said, taking one of my feet in his hand and massaging the sole with his thumb. “Although I think you’re probably just as flat-chested now as you were then…”