Trick - A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire Read Free Book Online

insisted that I eat dinner in the house with him and the others. All part of his ‘getting the family closer together’ scheme, I imagine.
    Patrick was already back from the studio by the time I entered the main dining room, and he was sitting in a chair with his feet up on the table, a glass of whiskey in one hand and his cell phone in the other. He was probably texting one of the many girls he kept on the side to join him for a quick romp later, and I rolled my eyes and hissed at him.
    “Dad will kill you if he sees your feet up on the table like that,” I said. “You know we have to eat off that, right?”
    He arched an eyebrow. “So you’ve never heard of plates before? Where I’m from, we don’t eat directly off the table.”
    “Oh, shut the hell up. You know what I meant.”
    Dad entered the room a second later with Julia on his arm, and the Irish housekeeper trailed behind them with a tray of covered dishes. She’d introduced herself as Penelope earlier, and she seemed nice enough.
    “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. “Just need to get the rest of the food.”
    “Thanks, Penelope,” Julia said, flashing her a sweet smile as she brushed her dark hair behind her ears.
    Julia was a small, fragile slip of a woman who seemed perpetually scared of her own shadow, and I wondered what had happened to her to make her like that. It was definitely nothing to do with my Dad. He’d been madly in love with her since the moment they met, hence the quickie wedding after only a few weeks of dating. I couldn’t blame him. She was a lovely woman, and it was hard to imagine how she could have given birth to such a massive tool like Patrick.
    “Penelope and I went and picked up some South African foods for you,” she said, taking a seat across from me. “We found some boerewors at a gourmet butcher, and there’s even peppermint crisp tart for dessert. I thought you might be missing some of the foods you had while you were on your trip.”
    “Oh, wow, thanks,” I said, my mouth watering at the thought of boerewors. It was a type of South African sausage, and it was better than any other sausage I’d ever tasted.
    Julia smiled at me, and I returned the expression, grateful that my Dad had found someone so nice. He’d had a rough time after he and my Mom divorced, mostly because he’d found it difficult to trust again. Mom hadn’t physically cheated on him, but she’d had a brief emotional affair with a man she met online, and that had been the death knell in their relationship. She’d claimed it was because she never saw him, which made her crave attention elsewhere, and while I would never condone cheating in any capacity, I could see her point. He’d always been so busy with work that he’d hardly ever been around for her or me when I was young, and I couldn’t count the amount of school events he’d missed because of his job. He’d even been late to my graduation.
    My parents had accepted that they’d both been at fault for their marriage falling apart, and they were on fairly amicable terms now. They both seemed a lot happier with their new partners. Julia didn’t seem to mind the long hours Dad worked, and Adam was a good match for my Mom, seeing as he was retired and thus had a lot more time to spend with her.
    I cut off a piece of boerewors and chewed on it, savoring the delicious meaty flavors, and my Dad looked at me.
    “All settled in, Princess?” he asked.
    I swallowed and nodded. “Uh-huh. After dinner I’m going to start writing up ideas of things we can do to fix Patrick’s media image.”
    He nodded. “Good, good. Let’s not talk about work now, though. How’s that boyfriend of yours doing?”
    As I replied, I saw Patrick out of the corner of my eye. He speared half a sausage with his fork and held it right up to his lips before opening his mouth and licking the tip of it in some sort of parody of someone giving a blowjob. Julia and Dad were both looking directly at me and