Step Scandal - Part 3 Read online

  STEP

  SCANDAL

  Part 3

  ROSSI ST JAMES

  COPYRIGHT 2015 ROSSI ST JAMES

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher or author. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or received an advanced copy directly from the author, this book has been pirated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEDICATION

  This one’s for my readers! Love you ALL! ;)

  xoxo,

  Rossi

  OTHER BOOKS BY ROSSI ST JAMES

  Biker Stepbrother 1

  Biker Stepbrother 2

  Biker Stepbrother 3

  CRAVED (By the Alpha Billionaire #1

  CLAIMED (By the Alpha Billionaire #2)

  CHERISHED (By the Alpha Billionaire #3)

  Step Scandal – Part 1

  Step Scandal – Part 2

  Sign Up Below!

  Subscribe to Rossi’s mailing list to be the first to hear of new releases, special sales, and contests!

  DESCRIPTION

  At the ripe, young age of just twenty-four, Harper Bliss is officially an aging pop star. Her label has just dropped her and she can’t book an acting gig to save her life. On top of it all, her mother and stepfather, who happen to be Hollywood royalty, are going through a bitter divorce battle and have little time to help her revive her career.

  Harper needs a scandal. A salacious, jaw-dropping, attention-grabbing scandal that will reignite her career faster than you can say publicity stunt.

  So that’s when she calls in a favor from her estranged stepbrother, Xavier Fox. Though they never really got along growing up, Xavier agrees to help. Guarded and temperamental, he has his reasons.

  The plan? A fake relationship. Three months. Kissing on camera only. No tongue. No sex. All for show. What could possibly go wrong?

  But when Xavier has a confession to make, about that hot summer night six years ago, everything changes.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE - Part 3 of 3 in a new mini serial. Contains NO cliffhanger and adult content. Approximately 35+ pages.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE – HARPER

  TWO - XAVIER

  THREE - HARPER

  FOUR – XAVIER

  FIVE - HARPER

  SAMPLE – BIKER STEPBROTHER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE - HARPER

  “He’s not answering.” I threw my phone down on my bed, next to where Elijah was lying face down with his head buried in a pillow. He gripped onto it as he appeared to be lost in thought. “What are you thinking? You’re being too quiet. I don’t like that.”

  I’d called Elijah the second my mom left that morning. I couldn’t handle the impending shit storm by myself.

  “Just thinking about your next move,” he sighed. “I mean, Sharon Bliss is pissed, which is never good. And he bolted out of here and won’t talk to you know, which also isn’t good. I’m just trying to figure out where you go from here.”

  “I hope you figure something out, because I’m at a loss.” I crossed my arms as I paced the floor of my bedroom.

  I dialed him again. Still no answer.

  “Should I text him?”

  “No, no,” he said. “He’ll see that you called.”

  “Maybe he’s dealing with the wrath of Conrad right now,” I smirked. Conrad was such a kind, gentle soul…until he was angry. And then it was bad. Very, very bad. My phone buzzed in my hand, senting a shock of excitement through my core for a quick second until I saw who it was. “It’s Jenny. Hi, Jenny, what’s up?”

  “I have been fielding calls left and right since last night,” she said in her soft, Brooklyn accent. “So, I think it’s time we make a quote. You’ve been spotted out together twice now. We need to acknowledge it to kind of stir up a little more buzz for you. The choice is yours – you can either continue to deny it or you can make a statement about how close you are and how your parents separation has forced you to realize you love each other. I don’t know. I can come up with something. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  My mouth hung open as the words ceased to find their way out. I didn’t know what to tell her. I needed to talk to Xavier and he wouldn’t answer.

  “Can I get back to you on that?” I asked.

  “I need an answer soon, Harper.” She sounded frustrated with me, but I couldn’t blame her. It was a Sunday morning. I was sure she’d have much rather been sleeping or laying out on the beach or lunching with friends.

  “I’m working on it,” I said, not wanting to tell her that the little plan we’d concocted was possibly crumbling to ashes.

  “If you ask me, I think you should continue denying it, but keep in mind that might ignite an even bigger feeding frenzy. After the photos last night, no one’s going to believe you.”

  “What photos?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “No, what?!”

  “Someone’s shopping around some pictures they took of you two getting out of your limo and going into your house. Together. Alone. Your hair is all messed up and you’re tugging on your dress. Xavier’s hands are all over you. That’s about all I’ll say.” Jenny cleared her throat. It was officially painfully clear that Xavier and I weren’t entirely pretending. “I thought this was supposed to be fake?”

  “It is,” I lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. I didn’t know what was real and what was fake anymore. All I knew was that his dick inside me several times the night before? That was real. “Just give me a few hours okay? I need to catch up with Xavier and see what he wants to do.”

  “Fine. Let me know as soon as possible. In the meantime, I’m staging another appearance for you two. I was thinking something a little less formal and a little more like a trip to the farmer’s market or a fro-yo outing?”

  “Yes, sure. Whatever. I’ll get back to you on everything, okay?” I hung up with Jenny, my mind racing. I needed to talk to Xavier and figure out what the hell was going on. He was in this just as much as me.

  TWO – XAVIER

  One week later…

  A pounding at my door at seven in the morning brought me out of an Ambien-induced sleeping fog. I hadn’t slept much in the week that had passed since I last saw Harper, and the Ambien was a last ditch attempt to get a bit of shut eye.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I mumbled, fumbling my way through the early morning darkness of my apartment until I reached the door. I pulled it open, only to be faced with Harper herself.

  Her blonde hair was piled high on the top of her head and large, black sunglasses covered her eyes. Her lips were pinched and pursed and her hands rested on her hips. “So you are alive.”

  I widened the door and let her pass on through. “Sorry, I’ve been, uh…”

  She glanced around the messy shit hole my apartment had become. An empty pizza box and half-empty beer bottles lined my coffee table. Dirty laundry sat piled in a recliner, and the place hadn’t been vacuumed in days. I would’ve been embarrassed, but I was still half asleep.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said, making it more of a statement than a question.

  She was right. Partially. I hadn’t been so much as avoiding her as I was avoiding the decision I had to make. If I cut ties with her, my mothe
r would be happy but she would be crushed. And the tattoo shop would become the pipe dream it had always been. If I stayed with her another couple months, until the end of our agreement, my mother’s heart would be even more broken than it already was.

  My mother’s distraught face flashed into my mind, punching me in the gut and tugging at my heart. I knew what I had to do.

  “It’s not like that,” I began to defend my actions, though my words ceased when I realized nothing I could say to her would remotely make up for the fact that I was two seconds from hurting her. “The other day, when I came home -”

  “Save it,” she cut me off. “This is just like it was six years ago. You get a piece of me and then you run off. I should’ve known you were going to do this to me again! God, I’m so stupid.”

  “That’s not what -”

  “For once, Xavier, be honest with me. Tell me why you ran off again. Why do you keep hurting me like this?”

  Tears streaked down her cheeks, trailing out from behind the dark sunglasses she’d neglected to remove when she walked in. Maybe she was trying to hide something. Maybe she’d been losing sleep like me.

  “The truth is,” I said, clearing my throat as the words seemed to lodge themselves right there. “I can’t pretend with you anymore. I can’t pretend to be with you when all I really want is to be with you. And I can’t be with you anymore because it’s hurting people I care about.”

  “What, like Conrad?!” she scoffed.

  “No, my mother.”

  She hung her head, seeming to be concentrating on the dingy tan carpet of my apartment. Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, she sniffled before saying, “Shit. I didn’t think about her.”

  My mother was like a cloud of light, always remaining in the background yet silently illuminating the space around her. Harmless and lively. Sweet and kind. No one hated her. Not even Harper – though they’d only met a handful of times over the years.

  “Okay, fine,” Harper said. “That makes this easy enough.”

  She held her head high as she tightened her purse strap over her shoulder and turned to leave. Harper stayed silent as she lingered for three seconds before disappearing out the door.

  There was nothing she nor I could’ve said anyway. Nothing either of us could possibly say would’ve made the situation easier to stomach.

  We wanted to be together, but we couldn’t. It was simple. I didn’t need to go chasing after her, much as I wanted to. And I didn’t need to go making things more complicated than they already were.

  If there was anything I’d learned in my 26 years, it was that life was fucked up and unfair.

  I ambled over to the living room window, watching as she climbed into her car and tugged the glasses off her face to wipe away tears. Before I realized it, my hand had gone sailing through the air and pummeling into the wall next to the window, driving a gaping hole into the drywall.

  I pulled my fist back, my knuckles scraped and bleeding, but the pain was nothing compared to gut-wrenching ache that took hold of me the second I saw her drive away.

  THREE – HARPER

  I needed to get my nails done. I needed to worry about me. I needed to forget Xavier Fox ever existed or that we even attempted to create a phony relationship. This was all a bad dream. We never kissed. We never had sex. We never gave to real shits about each other.

  I knew it was a lie, but I refused to believe any different. It was easier that way. I wiped the tears one by one as they fell, uncontrollable and never-ending, and pulled into a nail salon on Rodeo Drive. I dabbed my face dry and sucked in a blast of arctic air as it blew from my vents.

  Slapping a smile on my face, I headed inside to get my nails done. I picked a happy pink color and took a seat in a chair, listening to the chatter of the Vietnamese manicurists as they spoke their beautiful language. None of it made a lick of sense to me, but it was pretty and it was distracting, and that was what I needed right then.

  An hour later, I was admiring my nails as I headed out to the street. Only a flood of men with cameras flashing in my face bombarded me the second I turned the corner toward my car.

  “Harper! Harper!” they yelled at me. “Where’s Xavier? What do your parents think? Are you two sleeping together?”

  Question after question. It was all too much to take. I slipped my sunglasses over my eyes and begged myself to remain strong. Don’t cry on camera. Don’t add fuel to the fire. I only had myself to blame for all of that, and I knew that, but it didn’t stop the pain.

  “Guys, guys, back off!” a man’s voice said from behind me. My shoulders fell the instant I recognized it. Hayden. I spun around as Hayden slipped his arms around my shoulders. I whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “Go with it,” he whispered back before turning toward the men. “Harper Bliss and I are officially back together.”

  We stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and as I began to study his face to gauge his intentions, he pressed his mouth against mine.

  Hayden’s kiss was nothing shy of contrived. It felt foreign and almost unnatural. My lips belonged to Xavier, still, after everything we’d been through. Hayden’s kiss only served to solidify that fact.

  I pulled myself away from him, plastering on my best media-fake smile.

  “So there you have it,” Hayden beamed proudly, not letting me go. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure my girlfriend gets to her care safely.”

  He escorted me to my Mercedes, his hand resting on the small of my back as we walked.

  “Why did you do that?” I fumed. Those pictures were going to be all over the internet the next day, and I could only imagine what Xavier might think. Xavier and I may have been over, but the last thing I wanted was for him to think he sent me straight into the arms of an ex-boyfriend like a desperate, pathetic young woman.

  “I was helping you,” Hayden scoffed. “You should be thanking me.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  He shrugged. “Pure coincidence I suppose. I happened to be getting my hair cut at Toni and Guy up the street. Saw you being swarmed. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. Jesus.”

  His face softened, forcing me to accept that maybe, for once, he was telling the truth. I swallowed my pride before saying, “Thanks. Sorry I freaked out at you. It’s been a rough morning.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” he asked, immediately reverting to the asshole I knew well.

  I yanked my door shut and started my car, rolling down the window a few inches. “Bye, Hayden.”

  FOUR – HAYDEN

  I logged into my Facebook account that afternoon. It’d been weeks since I’d checked it, but I needed something to keep my mind off anything but real life. Facebook always made me zone out, and sometimes I could spend hours clicking and reading and forgetting how shitty my current situation was as I focused on other people’s lives. I loved how social media had become a highlight reel for the things people wanted you to believe about them.

  But on the upper right hand side of my page, rested an article boasting that Hayden McDaniel and Harper Bliss were back together. Against my better judgment, I clicked on it.

  A website with a whole page full of photos of the two of them walking down a sidewalk. Them kissing. Him helping her get into her car. She was smiling in one of the photos as she looked straight into the camera.

  Either she was acting or she was fucking with me. There was no damn way she was back with him. She’d just left my apartment in tears that morning.

  I had to know. I had to know why even if it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I grabbed my phone and texted Harper.

  WHY ARE YOU WITH HIM???

  I chomped on my nails as I awaited her response, which came no more than ten long minutes later.

  YOU DON’T GET TO CARE ABOUT ME ANYMORE.

  She may have had a point. I’d released her back into the river, like a fish that could serve me no purpose any longer. Sent her swimming away with a bloody
cut where my hook had been. I didn’t get to care about her anymore, but I cared anyway.

  I grabbed my truck keys off the table and headed outside. I knew exactly where I had to go and what I had to do.

  ***

  The shop where I worked didn’t open for a couple more hours, which was perfect. That’s all the time I needed. I grabbed a sheet of paper and sketched out an anchor, exactly like the one I’d drawn for her that hot summer night when we were younger; the same tattoo she’d had placed just below her hipbone.

  A half hour later, I’d prepped my skin and gloved my right hand. Firing up the irons, I pressed the tiny needle into the canvas flesh, inking the underside of my left forearm. It burned like hell, like a hot lighter being pressed against my skin, but I didn’t stop until it was done.

  I pulled the machine away when it was complete – an anchor wrapped in sailor’s rope. The tattoo artist with commitment phobia had finally chosen his newest tattoo. I’d told her to anchor herself to something solid once before, and in a fucked up way, I was anchoring myself to her. I’d never stop loving her, even if we could never be together.

  I rotated my arm to the left and then the right, admiring my work and wishing more than anything that she were there to see it.

  FIVE – HARPER

  “Why are you crying, honey?” Elijah asked. On my way home, I’d made a beeline for his place. I didn’t want to be alone, not after the day I’d just had.

  “I stopped by Xavier’s this morning,” I said, wiping a tear. “He doesn’t want to go through with this anymore.”

  “I kind of figured that when he stopped returning your calls.” Elijah pursed his lips and spoke out of the side of his mouth as he rubbed my back.