BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

She could smell him, clean and newly shaven. It was intoxicating.
     
    “...Annalesa?”
     
    “Hmm?” Blushing, she jerked her gaze back to his face, realizing he’d been talking. And she’d been staring.
     
    “Why do you always do that?”
     
    “Do what?” She blinked in surprise.
     
    “Sell yourself short. You’ve always been great at languages. You probably had Dutch down in three days. But you have to say stuff like it ‘eventually rubbed off on you’?”
     
    Why did he have to be so aggressive, even when giving her a compliment? She put her glass back down on the bar and gave him a brittle smile, trying to focus on the compliment part.
     
    “What’s that American expression? Isn’t it impolite to ‘toot your own horn’?”
     
    “Oh, we’re being polite?” Ric cocked a fair eyebrow at her and she flushed. “God help you if you get a job interview. What are you going to say? ‘I’m just okay, I mean, I’m not bad, but I’m still probably not who you really want’?”
     
    “I’ve had three interviews and two jobs,” she interjected, holding up three, then two fingers. “Not a bad record.”
     
    “Real jobs? Or work-study?”
     
    “Oh hush—don’t be so beastly.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
     
    She’d just earned her first degree and it was true, her jobs had been college placements, no “real” interviews for “real” jobs. Their parents had a loads of money and paid for tuition, but they had to make their own spending money. That had always been the deal, even back in secondary school.
     
    Ric leaned back, palms up, in amused, mock defense. She lowered her own eyebrows at him, meeting his smirk with a scowl until he realized she was actually mad. The knowledge that his teasing had hurt her—that he could hurt her, still—finally seemed to sink in. He averted his gaze across the den, into the dark gym.
     
    “Was I being mean?” He shrugged one shoulder. “Touché.”
     
    “I think the word is ‘sorry’.”
     
    “Okay—sorry.”
     
    “Should bloody think so.” She whisked his glass away and topped both of them up with Akavit, passing his back carefully. “So... this huge weight loss, it didn’t involve ditching alcohol?”
     
    “Have to pick your battles—and your sacrifices,” he told her. “I kept some alcohol. And real, full-fat cheese.”
     
    “It would be inhuman to give up cheese!” Annalesa gasped, as if he’d spoken blasphemy. “Low-fat cheese tastes like salty sponge.”
     
    “Yeah, so I kept cheese.” He chuckled at her apt metaphor. “And liquor.”
     
    “No more micro beers?”
     
    “Meh.” He shrugged. “Three vodka doubles costs me twenty minutes on a treadmill—eight beers is a very long, boring hour. You do the math.”
     
    “I never was good at math, but even I can figure that out.” She smiled, taking a long sip of liquor, enjoying the slight shudder that ran through her as the astringent drink made both her tongue and brain tingle. It was strong stuff.
     
    She had to look away as Ric absently scratched a spot low on his waist, pulling his shirt up as he did so. It was hard to not think about brushing her lips over the warm skin of his now-perfect body. She wondered how much skin-removal surgery he’d had to go through. It wouldn’t surprise her if all those tattoos were hiding scars.
     
    “Hey, can I ask you something?” She bit her lip.
     
    He looked at her but didn’t answer.
     
    “I just wondered... why didn’t you tell me? About the weight loss?” Her voice was soft, small. She was afraid of his answer, to be honest, but she had to ask. “You know I would have cheered you on. You know that, don’t you?”
     
    “I didn’t want you to.”
     
    “Oh.” Annalesa flinched. Now she was really hurt, but she tried to cover it. “All right, then...”
     
    “It wasn’t just you.” Ric sighed, shaking his head and looking away. His profile was stunning. No double chin, no hint of chubbiness