My Billionaire Stepbrother (Lexi's Sexy Billionaire Romance #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

We don’t have any rooms at our place.”  
    “I mean … ” He looked at my mom, now chewing his lip. I’d seen Bill raging drunk, and it was uncomfortable. Now stone sober, he was worse. I almost wanted to tell him to take a few shots and recover his balls because right now he was embarrassing himself. “I mean your room.”  
    Parker looked up, his head tilted, the sarcastic smile back on his face. He was handsome, his smile toothy and somehow disarming — or would’ve been, I imagined, if he hadn’t aimed it at his father.  
    “Now I know we have one of those at our place.” The smile vanished, and I saw it for the farce it was. Everything clicked.  
    Why were we being introduced?  
    Well, because there had been talk about Bill moving in.  
    And what would happen when Bill moved in?  
    Shit . I was suddenly not okay with this. At all .  
    I knew which room they were talking about. The extra room next to mine — the one where we’d always tossed our junk. I’d noticed Mom clearing it out but thought she was thinning the hoard.  
    I felt incredibly stupid. How could I not have realized that Bill and his son were a package? I’d honestly never considered it. I’d been off in my selfish teen-girl world, caring only about my car and my friends and my schoolwork. Things only mattered if they directly affected me.
    Well, a jaded, obnoxious asshole of a teen boy moving into the room beside mine — sharing my bathroom, becoming a presence in my living space — would affect me a lot .  
    “Wait,” I said.  
    Parker effortlessly read my expression. He turned his hard gaze fully on me for the first time. I wanted to run.  
    “What, you don’t want to be roomies?” He looked up at our parents. “I imagine this is news to you, too, huh?”  
    “I told you, Parker. I told you Maria and I were moving in together.”  
    “Maria and you ,” Parker repeated.  
    “And that means you, obviously.”  
    “Why obviously?”  
    “Where are you going to live? Obviously , you’d live with me.”  
    “I could live with Jimmy, like I said.”  
    “You’re not going to bum off your friends, Parker.”  
    “Oh, no. It’d be terrible , like a deadbeat , hitching onto someone else’s rent for a free ride.” Parker looked at his father then at Mom, but both decided to comment. Hopefully, they were trying to make peace, not refraining from response because it was true. Mom had too much stress and not enough money already.  
    I wanted to weigh in, but it seemed ridiculous. I’d known Bill was thinking of moving in. I knew he had a son. I hadn’t known he had full custody, sure, but failing to put two and two together was dumb. I’d assumed somehow that this son (the one Bill for some reason had thus far avoided introducing) would either live with his mother or … well … anywhere else. Again, I was a teenager. Things weren’t in my world until they were smack-dab in my face.  
    We’d been sitting together for maybe five minutes, and I’d already started counting seconds until he could leave. Duly introduced, we’d never have to meet again. His aura was unpleasant. I sensed anger, violence, irritation, annoyance, maybe self-pity. Sharing the living room with him for an hour was proving to be terrible. I definitely didn’t want him here every day, camped on the couch when I wanted to do my homework, gunking up the bathroom, pissing all over the toilet. Thinking about it gave me chills. The house was meager; now it would be worse. Tense. With this dickhead around, I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling Mom about my day, because I wouldn’t want his ears to hear … or for his sly, sarcastic mouth to mock me.  
    “We talked about this at length already, Parker, and — ” Bill’s temper was beginning to flare. Even without alcohol, it was terrible.  
    “Oh, well,” Parker retorted. “If you talk about something long enough, It stops being unfair.”  
    “Unfair?” Bill snapped.