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  Love My Billionaire Stepbrother by Eve Kaye

  Chapter One

  I always dreamed of visiting Paris. You hear about how it’s the sexiest city in the world and, even if you totally believe it, it’s still just words. It’s still just words until you step foot out of your hotel and see the history in the graceful arches of Notre Dame, hear the buzz of passionate accents rise and fall, feel the uneven cobblestone streets underfoot, smell the freshly baked bread at every corner, and taste the pain au chocolat.

  Oh, the pain au chocolat.

  I never knew the gigantic hole in my life until I had my first pain au chocolat two days ago. Some French culinary wizard came up with the perfect combination of flaky crust and doughy inside with melted bits of chocolate.

  I didn’t know the translation but I felt comfortable with a literal take. Pain of the chocolate. Like the pain in your soul as the last delicious morsel leaves your fingertips. Knowing you’re one bite closer to being finished.

  We still had a few days of vacation left, but I already missed them. I missed them while eating them.

  It was that bad.

  I love food.

  And I luuuuuv pain au chocolat.

  Paris overwhelmed me. On its own, it would have been more than I could ingest.

  But it wasn’t on its own.

  He was here too.

  Add him to the equation and the result was something that defied math. It was nature. That chemical signal that skirts right by your conscious thoughts and dives down into your gut.

  Down into your panties.

  My body vied with my good sense for control, for direction. It wanted to do things I knew were wrong. Things I knew were immoral or unethical, or just bad somehow. But a growing part of me didn’t care. That part just felt. It wanted.

  It wanted him.

  Jacob MacCormack.

  Or Jake, as he insisted family and friends call him.

  My soon-to-be-stepbrother.

  What messed up twist of fate made him so gorgeous, so hypnotic, and so my almost-stepbrother?

  Figures.

  Maybe I was destined to be a crazy, old cat lady. I loved cats. I could see that reality. I hadn’t had much interaction with the opposite sex in my exactly nineteen years. It was cool at first. Like I was saving myself for Mr. Right.

  But the cool factor was wearing thin, and crazy cat lady approached.

  At twenty-six, he was seven years older than me. But in the six months or so since our parents started dating, he immediately cast me in the role of baby sister. Like I was in diapers sucking my thumb.

  It really pissed me off.

  Partly because I don’t need another older sibling. My sister Katherine was plenty bossy to go around. She left our home in Los Angeles two years ago to study in Barcelona. It was supposed to be a semester abroad thing. Then she met Raul and two years later, it looked like she might be there to stay.

  I missed her. Terribly.

  Not her bossy bullshit. By my sister.

  I was happy she couldn’t make it to Paris though. I knew that’s selfish, but I didn’t want her treating me like a baby around him. He didn’t need any encouragement.

  It was like he took pleasure in pissing me off. I wouldn’t have cared, except that I wanted him to like me. Like me as an adult.

  A not-stepsister adult.

  Fat chance of that.

  I wasn’t worldly like the rotating harem of supermodels he brought to family dinners. Dad and Brigette, his mom, insisted we have them a couple of times a month, whenever Jake and his older brother Callum were back in the states on business. Our parents wanted all of us to get to know each other.

  To feel like family.

  The only problem was that we were already grown up and, besides, I didn’t want him to think of me as family. His idiot brother Callum was another matter. I already thought of him as an annoying older brother. He bulldozed through family dinners like only an oldest sibling can.

  I missed Katherine not being around for those. I was outnumbered and outgunned. Not to mention feeling fifty pounds overweight standing next to their tall, leggy, beanpole dates.

  Ugh.

  I wasn’t anything like those skin and bone, half-starved creatures. I had curves, lots of them. Even at nineteen, I filled a dress to stretching seams and spilling bosom.

  Jake never even stole a glance, as far as I could tell. I just wasn’t his type.

  It was infuriating.

  So it was a huge surprise when Jake invited me to join him for a trip to Paris. A birthday present for me. A business trip for him.

  Dad had embarrassingly talked about how I’d dreamed of Paris for years. It sounded so girlish. So idiotic next to Jake and Callum who flew around the world attending to their growing business.

  It was nice of him to offer. And I wasn’t too proud to accept the invitation. When I heard Callum and Brigette would be busy elsewhere, that made it all the better.

  The chance to have him alone.

  To show him who I really was. Not the awkward adolescent who sat quietly listening to Callum and he swap tales about the glorious future of their partnership.

  Aegis Power Unlimited.

  I googled it.

  Something to do with next generation sustainable power. A bunch of gobbledygook about replacing oil and taking us into the twenty-first century. I didn’t understand, but it was obviously huge because I saw it on the Fortune 500 list.

  I knew nothing about their business and so didn’t have much to contribute. And between the two, the discussion rarely strayed anywhere else for long.

  But Paris would be different. I would make him see me as the woman I was. Make him see beyond the label of baby sister that he’d already pasted across my forehead.

  Even if I could make him see me, really see me, could I ever have a place in his universe? He certainly didn’t advertise any celestial openings.

  Besides, what would our families think? I wished I could sink the idea, but part of me wouldn’t let go.

  Part of me didn’t care what anyone thought.

  None of it mattered.

  His attention was occupied by a million things. What could I offer that he couldn’t already have? He didn’t strike me as the type to have unfulfilled wants. That just wasn’t the reality of a billionaire.

  I needed a supernova event. Something to blow him away. Something beyond what his harem already offered.

  The problem was, as a virgin, I had no idea what that might be. He and his bimbos were in a different league. A different world.

  I didn’t know what yet, and I only had a few more days to find it.

  Chapter Two

  It had been a perfect birthday. We met up after his last meeting of the day. I was strolling through the lush gardens of the Rodin museum when he called. He met me there an hour before our dinner reservation. I thought the audio guide was informative, but Jake proceeded to take me on a personal tour that sounded like the long deceased sculptor was his best friend.

  Rodin loved to produce. Jake talked about how he used tons of helpers to do his work for him. He would come up with a little mini-design version and then have an assistant do the big version for him. Then he would take all the credit for it. I thought it was straight-up cheating. Jake thought it was good business sense.

  Different worlds.

  The grave sculpture he, or his lackeys, did for him was crazy. It’s this huge black granite thing that arched over his grave and had worlds and worlds of little creepy beings doing different creepy things. Creepy. But beautiful too.

  We arrived late for dinner and were ushered to a table in the corner. Jake sat with his back to the wall. He surveyed the room like a king in his court.

  I never expected to have birthday dinner at one of the fanciest restaurants in Paris. I tried to change his mind, but Jake insisted and I’d yet to win an argument with him.

  L’ Arpege was a three-star Michelin rated restaurant located in the government district. We sat a
t a small round table with high back comfortable chairs. A bright white, stiff tablecloth covered the table and draped over the sides. The dining room was small, intimate. Maybe ten tables total. It was quiet and elegant. Old world elegant. Very conservative. Not flashy or too modern like the tragically hip restaurants back home in Los Angeles.

  Light, sweet smells drifted through the room. Men in suits and women dressed to the nines surrounded every table. Conservative nines. They chatted in hushed tones, sipped at glass after glass of wine.

  My dress was definitely the outlier on the sexy end of things. I didn’t care. It wasn’t for them.

  It was for him.

  My age was definitely an outlier as well. Today was my nineteenth birthday. There was no way anyone else in here was under sixty. Make that our ages. We were the youngest couple there.

  Did they see us as a couple?

  Probably not. He looked completely at ease and I fumbled through every course. Even tripped my heels and almost bit it on a trip downstairs to the bathroom earlier. The wine didn’t help my already near total lack of grace.

  Everyone says Paris is the culinary capital of the world. And L’ Arpege was supposed to be the fanciest restaurant in Paris. So didn’t that mean I was actually, this minute, enjoying a dinner at the best restaurant in the entire world?

  We’d gone through, what, seven courses?

  I’d lost count after four or five. The wine paired with every serving didn’t help my clarity.

  I pushed the fried green tea ice cream dumpling around my plate. I loved sweets usually, but there was only so much food you could eat. And after however many courses of delicious culinary inventions, I think anyone would be pretty stuffed.

  That steamed egg concoction was to die for!

  The egg, still in the shell, topped with fluffy cream and burnt brown sugar. Yum. That was the desert matinee. Course three or so.

  I looked down at my plate and reconsidered.

  It was fried green tea ice cream.

  And it was my birthday.

  I partitioned off another spoonful and took a bite.

  I looked up and Jake had his wine glass raised.

  “Time for a toast,” he said.

  I nervously raised a glass filled with dark red-colored wine, a port I think they said. The waiter guy said this one was perfectly paired to the tangy raspberry sauce on the dumpling. My dad would never have let me drink, but Jake took it as a matter of course. I tried to do the same, but even half-glasses add up.

  My brain buzzed with a gauzy warmth.

  I’d gotten drunk a few times at parties with my girlfriends. I hated the wasted drunk feeling. I had no idea why they loved it so much. I did notice they seemed to enjoy having a justification for doing what they really wanted to do.

  Like oh it wasn’t me. I was so drunk. I’d never normally do that.

  Yea, right.

  I wasn’t like that. I had no interest in the boys in high school. So I never needed an excuse.

  Until now.

  No boy had ever done it for me.

  Until now.

  But Jake was a man. The only man that had ever gotten me steamy down there.

  And he sat across the table. Sat looking gorgeous and confident like the world was his garden, every flower watered or plucked at his whim.

  Did I mention gorgeous?

  Stupid hot.

  And he was going to be my stepbrother the instant our parents tied the knot.

  Fuck you universe.

  Not cool.

  Chapter Three

  Jake sat upright in his chair. Tall and casually formal. He wore a dark blue suit, the jacket left with the attendant when we arrived. Sleek pale blue shirt that had a subtle sheen. A deep blue-black bowtie neatly knotted at his neck. Jet black hair swept back and slightly wet-looking. Deep blue eyes. Those laughing, teasing, drop-dead-gorgeous eyes that occupied more and more of my dreams each night.

  “You there Jules,” he said.

  He loved calling me that, like we’d been brother and sister for years.

  “It’s Julia to you,” I said and smiled.

  He clinked our glasses together. The soft ting rang through the small space.

  “Happy birthday, Jules,” he said. “I’m sorry the rest of the family aren’t here to celebrate. The nineteenth birthday is a big deal. I remember mine vividly.”

  His eyes glazed over and he smiled crookedly.

  Great. Probably some supermodel orgy or something.

  “One,” I said, “I don’t want to imagine your nineteenth birthday. I’m sure the depravity offended Bacchus himself.”

  “It was fun,” he said with a nod.

  “And two, it’s Dad and Bridgette for now. She’s not my stepmother yet.”

  “You don’t like my mom,” he said. “The woman who shaped and raised me? The woman I love more than any other?”

  Always teasing. Always in control.

  “You know I didn’t mean that,” I said. “She’s great. I’m happy my dad found her. I just meant that we aren’t steps yet. In case you were wondering.”

  He crinkled his brows.

  “So you don’t want to be related to me,” he said. The light tone in his voice dropped through the floor.

  “No, not that,” I said. “Ugh, I’m a little drunk and my brain isn’t working. I think you’re great. Amazing. I love being around you.”

  His demeanor bounded back into the light.

  “Yea,” he said, “I get that a lot.”

  More teasing. I guess I served that softball pitch right down the center.

  “What I meant to say,” I said, “is thank you for this. For Paris. For making my dreams come true.”

  “So I’m in your dreams,” he said. “Good to know.”

  “Shut up,” I said, a little louder than I intended. A few of the people at other tables glanced in our direction.

  I looked down, embarrassed to have their attention. More embarrassed because he was right. I didn’t want him to see the truth in my eyes. My slightly drunk and unguarded eyes.

  “Are you trying to get me kicked out,” he asked. “These people don’t want to hear you babbling about how I’m in your dreams.”

  I didn’t respond.

  The horror of him looking into my dreams was too much. I didn’t know how to respond.

  I should have laughed it off. But the buzz had my defenses askew.

  “I’m kidding,” he said. “Happy birthday Jules.”

  He reached across the table and tinged my glass again. We each sipped our wine. It went down easier and easier. It was delicious. Not at all like the Bartles and James I’d tried back home.

  I looked back up at him. Fairly certain my thoughts were again mine alone.

  “Seriously, thanks for taking me out,” I said. “I mean, for my birthday, not a date. Err, you know.”

  He laughed. Always cool and calm. The perfect counterpoint to my hot and flustered.

  “Obviously. Brothers and sisters don’t date,” he said. “And you’re welcome. I knew you’d love Paris and I’m honored to be your guide.”

  “Do I have to tip you at the end of the ride,” I asked.

  “Only if I deserve it,” he said and grinned.

  Gah!

  His smile was so sexy. A tingle rippled between my legs. A hot tingle that sent shivers up my back. The hair on my arms stood out.

  “Are you cold,” he asked.

  Cold? I was the furthest thing from it!

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  I had to change the subject. My fuzzy brain couldn’t handle it.

  His phone buzzed and skittered a fraction on the table. He looked at the number and frowned.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I have to take this.”

  He turned his body and cupped his hand over his mouth.

  “What,” he said in a whisper.

  He waited for a moment.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not going to tell you that because it isn’t true.�
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  A siren scream escaped the phone.

  He listened for another moment.