BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) Read Free Page B

didn’t know the woman’s first name, and probably never would—to meet her at the door, but of course, she hadn’t told anyone when she was arriving. Still, from the note, Payne had kept tabs anyway. The housekeeper said there was a plate of boeuf bourguignon and green beans for her in the fridge, compliments of their chef—a quiet, dark-skinned man inexplicably called “Ham,” who spoke little English but could cook like the dickens.
     
    Smiling, Annalesa put the card down and the banana back. It was nice to be remembered, but her appetite seemed to have suffered worse jetlag than her body. She wasn’t hungry—although she should have been. Just like she wasn’t tired, even though exhaustion threatened. Instead, she was wound like a top, ready to spin.
     
    That was the other thing about coming home—memories returned, unbidden. She wished she could control them, turn them on and off like a faucet, but it was impossible. If home was her axis—her center, her core—then everything here was liquid, malleable, unmanageable. Memories flowed like molten lava, wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, beyond her control.
     
    Like the fact that she’d kissed Ric in this room.
     
    Annalesa didn’t think she would see Ric again after their parents had separated, no matter how much Brad gave lip-service to Annalesa always being his daughter. But it had turned out their parents’ lives and businesses were far too entwined for a quick separation.
     
    Besides, her mother seemed to get along with Brad even better after they were apart, strange as that was. This graduation party at the Maine house had been their parents’ idea—they still shared many mutual friends and associates—and Annalesa couldn’t come up with a reasonable objection, although, God knew, she’d tried.
     
    They’d spent some happy years here, Annalesa remembered, which was probably why she thought of this place as “home.” She’d spent middle and high school, her formative adolescent person-becoming years, in this house. With her mother, her stepfather—and Ric. In spite of the divorce, they still acted, in many ways, like a family. Her stepfather still sent her Christmas gifts and called her on her birthday.
     
    It was only Ric who had gone so silent.
     
    Not, Annalesa thought, her defenses completely down now, that she could blame him.
     
    A flicker of motion caught her eye through the two sets of windows—the den and gym, respectively—and she rubbed her eyes, squinting. Someone—hidden from view—was using the cross-fit battling ropes tied to a balance bar at the far end of the gym.
     
    She only recognized the equipment because she’d had a brief, agonizing session with a personal trainer she never intended to see again. The idea was to shake the ends of the ropes to make waves across the floor for thirty seconds at a time. It might look easy, but the horrible things weighed an absolute ton.
     
    She stared, stunned, as the ropes continued to move at a dizzying speed, making them just a blur. That kind of strength pretty much eliminated her mother or stepfather from the possible list of people who could be using their gym. Neither of them had that kind of stamina. Of course, she didn’t, either. She didn’t know many people who could work the ropes like that—if any at all.
     
    Who could it be?
     
    Even from a distance, she saw the floor of the gym was littered with kettlebells, medicine balls and giant, tractor tires—and that also ruled out Ric. Even as heavy as he was, he’d always been physical, but he was strictly a punching bag and bench press sort of guy.
     
    He didn’t do the ‘small equipment shit’.
     
    Intrigued, she left the den, heading down the long, bare-brick corridor toward the gym doors. She peeked through the huge porthole window, seeing that the mystery exerciser was—big. Really big.
     
    From a distance, he’d looked human-sized, but this man was huge —and heavily inked. He was keeping