Almost Stepbrothers

Chapter Seven: He Had No Idea

Robyn

I unwound my legs from around Phoenix’s waist and positioned my feet against his muscular thighs. I used his legs as a springboard and pushed away from him.

Letting him pull me in close had been a mistake. It was like flirting with fire, and I didn't want to get burned.

Phoenix was hot, there was no arguing about that. He had a perfect body, thick and muscular, and maybe a little too bulky. He had really great hair and a handsome face, and a cocky smile to go with it. And he was fully aware of his own beauty and had a silent expectation that every woman within a five-mile radius was going to melt at his feet.

Well, I wasn’t going to be one of those women falling for his charms and feeding his enormous ego. I didn’t care how attractive he was. He may or may not be too old for me, but age wasn't the real issue. I knew his type. He would only ever see me as a s****l conquest. He had no interest in me as a person. So, I took my own advice and shoved him firmly into a friend zone in my mind.

Not to mention that my track record with men was pretty abysmal. I’d had all of two serious relationships. I had dated my first crush for all of six months before his family picked up and moved to Houston. The long distance thing fizzled out within a couple of weeks after that. And my second attempt at a boyfriend had lasted a mere two months before I dumped him. And boy, had that ended on a bad note.

I had since decided that I would stick to the fictional men I wrote in my stories.

“So are you and Jack twins?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. I just wanted some inane conversation to break the tension between us.

“Yep, born twenty-seven minutes apart.”

“Let me guess, Jack is the oldest?”

“How’d you guess?”

I began kicking my way across the pool. “I don’t know, I guess he has that obnoxious first-born vibe.”

Phoenix laughed easily. “Yeah he does. But he’s all bark and no bite. Underneath all that grumpiness, he’s a pretty good guy.”

I highly doubted that, but I didn’t express it. Phoenix tried to swim closer to me, but I was determined to keep a buffer zone of water between us. “I’ve heard your mom calling you Robbi,” he pointed out. “But I prefer your full name. Robyn is very pretty.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” I never liked it when my mother called me Robbi. That was my dad’s pet name for me, and it didn’t sound right coming out of anyone else’s mouth. I eyeballed him, noticing that with his heavy muscular bulk, he had to work pretty hard to stay afloat. “Wanna race?”

He sized me up with a smirk. “That hardly seems fair.” I knew what he was thinking. He was taller than me, he probably thought he could easily outswim me. But he had no idea yet what I was capable of.

“Ten laps,” I challenged him. It wasn't a full-sized pool, so ten laps were actually a fairly short distance.

“Fine. What do I get when I win?” He was so cocksure that he was going to take the prize.

I thought for a moment. A kiss was the first thing that came to mind, but I shoved that aside. “A foot massage, every day for a week.”

“Sweet! And what do you get, if you win?”

“The same thing, of course.” I moved to the edge of the pool. “Are you ready?”

He took his mark at the wall beside me. “I have to warn you Robyn, I’m extremely competitive, and I hate to lose.” His eyes glittered at me, and I had a feeling he was talking about more than a friendly wager in a backyard pool.

“So am I,” I said with a shrug, “you call go.”

“Go!” He took off with a tremendous splash.

I kept pace with him as he sliced through the water. I quickly realized that Phoenix had done this before. He probably swam on a team in high school or college. Despite his size, his turns were perfect. His technique was absolutely beautiful. We swam neck and neck until the 8th lap. Then I dug down into my energy reserves and turned up the heat. My muscles were burning, my lungs were straining for more oxygen, but I pushed harder.

I would always push harder.

I slipped ahead of him in the final stretch. I could not tell how far ahead I was, but I knew he was close. My fingers brushed the far wall and I popped up just as he reached the edge.

“Damn girl,” he said, panting for breath.

I smiled sweetly and pulled myself up on the side of the pool. “I’d like my foot massage just before bed,” I teased. I was only kidding, I had no expectation that he was going to touch my feet.

He propped his forearms up on the side of the pool and wiped the water out of his eyes. He looked like he was posing for a photo op in one of those hot guy calendars. All he needed was a cute fluffy kitten beside him. I caught myself staring a little too long and jumped to my feet.

“Thanks for the swim, Phoenix.” I said over my shoulder. I toweled off, slipped on my cover up, and wrapped my hair in the towel so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. “See ya later!” I could feel his eyes staring at my back, but I didn’t turn around to look again.

Space. I needed space.

I hurried away from the pool, back into the house, and headed straight for the shower. I felt anxiety starting to creep up my spine. And it wasn’t because of Phoenix. Sure, he was pretty to look at, but I knew he was just toying with me like a cat bats around a mouse without actually killing it. No, the anxiety was because I had disrupted my routine. Going to the pool was not in the plan.

My routine kept me sane.

I quickly showered to get the pool chemicals out of my hair and off my skin. I slipped on clean clothes and went back to my work. I opened the drawer and pulled out the sketchbook, and flipped it open to the drawing I’d been working on. It was a sketch of one of the characters in my new book, a big man confined to a wheelchair.

This was part of my writing process. Visualizing the characters, the scenes, the settings. Eventually, I would pick my favorite illustration and use it to create a cover. What my mother didn’t know, what nobody knew, was that I had already completed and published six e-books and was now working on number seven. I wrote under a pseudonym to make sure that my identity was protected.

Anonymity allowed me to stretch my imagination to the limit, without fear. If I thought for one moment that my mother, or God-forbid the stuffy professor, was reading the adult content in my books, I would die.