DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!) Read Online Free PDF Page B

comments to hang in the air like a bad smell.
    “See, I knew you liked me really.”
    “Gah! Did you hear anything I said?”
    “I heard you, I just don’t believe it’s the truth, that’s all.”
    I get up, place the chair back where I found it, and head for the door. Without even looking, I know she’s watching my every movement. She may be pretending to read, but if she is, she’s read the same sentence ten times. Just before I go back inside, I turn to her.
    “You’ve got a streak of sunscreen on your forehead by the way, it makes you look cute.”
    ––––––––
    T illy
    I have never met anyone else in my life as arrogant as Landon Maddox. Seriously. He’s so full of himself, if you cut him in half, another Landon Maddox would pop out smiling, just as annoyingly confident.
    First he invaded my life from a distance, and now he’s doing it for real. Everywhere I look, he’s there. If it’s not a giant billboard photo, it’s a TV or magazine advert, a newspaper column, or a radio show. Now he’s literally sat opposite me, chewing down his food look the earth is running out of it.
    Normal people don’t eat this much. I know he’s feeding his ego as well, but this is ridiculous.
    Mom has made what I thought would be enough food for an army, which I now know will be just about enough for one Landon Maddox. I don’t know where he puts it either. As far as I can tell, and not that I’ve been studying it with as much intensity as one might dedicate to a PHD dissertation, he has a flat stomach. A flat, athletic, well defined and perfectly proportioned stomach. Maybe it doesn’t go to his stomach at all, maybe it goes just that little bit further south into his disproportionately large member. He must get back ache just carrying it around.
    “So, Tilly, how is the job hunt going?”
    Marvin knows how my job hunt is going and I don’t appreciate him leveraging my situation to fill a gap in the conversation. If it’s this awkward this early on, maybe we should all just give up and go back to our separate homes. That would make this whole situation a hell of a lot easier to deal with. I could get Landon Maddox out of my mind completely. Millions of other girls would be jealous of me? What an arrogant ass.
    “Can we talk about something else?”
    “What kind of work are you looking for?”
    When I fail to answer Landon’s question, Mom fills in for me. Never mind my request to change the subject, I have just become the subject. Great.
    “Matilda has always wanted to be an artist. Actually, that’s not strictly true, at one point she wanted to be a Disney princess, but that ambition soon faded as she got old enough to realize that position didn’t actually exist in the real world.”
    “That doesn’t stop some people from achieving it.”
    I wait for Landon to qualify the statement but he doesn’t. It isn’t clear if he’s talking about Disney princesses or the fact that just wanting to be an artist is some kind of automatic qualification to achieving it, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. Once again, I feel like I’m going to have to defend my career choice. Mom has never wanted me to be an artist and she hasn’t exactly been tightlipped about it either. She’s one of these people that doesn’t believe art should even exist as a career. She would have been happy if I’d followed her footsteps and become a day in day out, nine to five secretary, and saved thousands of dollars on my student loan.
    “I sculpt”, I say, pre-empting the question. “I draw too. Actually, I do a little bit of everything, but sculpting is my favorite.”
    Marvin, Mom and Landon are all looking at me like I’ve confessed to a crime. Short of Mom putting her hand on my arm and telling me it will all be alright, this feels like some sort of therapy session.
    “What’s the best thing you’ve ever made?”
    It’s a question I don’t expect to come from Landon. In fact, it’s a question I don’t