Stepbrother OMG! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #2) by Claire Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

another, talking about something they wanted to do when it got warmer—a
cruise or something they wanted to take. I glanced at Jaxon; his eyes lit up at
the sight of me, and I realized I’d unconsciously picked out an outfit
that—while it wasn’t exactly sexy—showed off my assets pretty well. I shrugged,
flashing a little smile at him while no one was looking before I took my seat
at the table. Dinner was great: roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy,
asparagus and garlic bread. After the all-day snowboarding marathon I was more
than hungry enough to dig in. I’d lost my sense of nausea when it came to
Jaxon’s presence; I was feeling too tingly, too fluttery, too interested in him
to be repulsed by his presence.
    As I sat there at the table, responding to Mom’s or
Bob’s questions, pretending to mostly ignore Jaxon other than the most basic
polite interest in what he had to say about his classes, I felt my phone
vibrate. Knowing how my mom felt about phones at the table, I slipped it out of
my pocket underneath the table and checked it, expecting it to be from someone
at school, or maybe one of my friends from high school. You just had to wear that shirt… the message read. It was from
Jaxon. I felt my cheeks burning with a blush and coughed to cover up my shock.
    A
shirt’s a shirt, I wrote back as quickly as I could, not
wanting to call attention to myself. I realized that it was the same shirt I’d
been wearing the night that Jaxon and I had had sex and my blush deepened. My
phone buzzed again and I took a bite of my roast beef to cover my look at the
screen.
    A
shirt’s not just a shirt when all I can think of is getting it off of you. I tried not to smile. I looked up and responded to something Mom was saying;
some question that she was asking me. I wasn’t even thinking about what she’d
asked—and realized that I’d set myself up for some sort of stupid family game
night activity. Oh well, I thought. It would be easier to avoid temptation if
we were spending the entire night around our parents.
    Your
thoughts are your own problem, I typed as fast as I
could, adding in a smiling emoji. Not very brotherly to be thinking of taking off my clothes… I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t know whether I wanted Jaxon to
make a move on me—and take care of the deep-down tension I felt—or if I wanted
him to go back to ignoring me completely. It had been so nice on the mountain,
laughing and having fun, relaxed, just like it had been before. But we couldn’t
do anything. I knew that—and Jaxon knew it too. My phone vibrated. I waited a
minute or two to check it, knowing without even having to look that the only
person it could be from was Jaxon. The more we both looked at our phones the
better the chance would be that one of our parents would notice it. My phone
vibrated again.
    You
always such a tease, Mia? The first message
read. I’m not like the guys in Tau Delta. I snorted as quietly as possible. No, Jaxon was nothing like the guys in Tau
Delta. They hung on my every word, staring at me while they helped me with Bio
homework.
    You’re
right, I wrote back. The
guys in Tau Delta didn’t just randomly stop helping me in class. Mom was
going on about what game we should play—if it should be Monopoly or a card
game, something like that. “If we play a card game, I want to partner with you,
Mom,” I said, not glancing at Jaxon. It wouldn’t help either of us if we were
partnered up in whatever game our parents decided to spend the night playing.
It’d come out way too easily that we already knew each other; and then, if that
came out, our parents would want to know why we’d kept it a secret, why we’d lied.
And there was no good reason other than the truth.
    We finished dinner and went into the den, where Bob
brought out a bunch of game boards at my mom’s insistence. My phone buzzed
against my leg and I felt my cheeks burning, but I made the excuse of needing
to use the