Score - A Stepbrother Romance Read Free Page B

Highland Park home, staring down at me. He’d been prattling on about…what? I’d barely been listening. It was something to do with a woman he’d been seeing. I couldn’t even remember her name. Something Diaz? Fuck knows. She was a waitress he’d met at one of his campaign dinners a few months back, and I had no idea why he was so enamored with her.
    Sure, she sounded like a nice woman from what he’d told me in the past, but it wasn’t like it could go anywhere between them. My father was your typical arrogant politico—the way he saw it, waitresses were for fucking, not for relationships. Only women of ‘high breeding’ or some such shit were good enough for serious relationships. Fucking elitist bullshit, but that’s how it was with my family.
    “We’re engaged. I proposed to her last night,” he said, staring at me intently to gauge my reaction.
    Shit. Did I hear that right? Did he seriously just say he was fucking marrying the waitress?
    Scratch everything I just said. Obviously the status quo had changed, and a waitress was apparently good enough for my father now.
    Maybe this change of heart had something to do with the upcoming election. He was running for Governor of Illinois, and right now, all he had was the votes of some of the upper middle class and the so-called elites in liberal circles. Marrying a woman like…shit, whatever her name was…would probably win him a lot more votes from a lot more demographics.
    Yup, that sounded exactly like something he would do. To him, life was politics, and politics was life. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he was marrying a woman purely to gain an extra few demographics.
    “You’re getting married?” I said, matching his gaze. “To...”
    He rolled his eyes. “Nina. Nina Diaz. Yes, we’re getting married. And before you start, no, this has nothing to do with the election. I can see what you’re thinking.”
    I folded my arms across my chest. “Really? So you actually love this Nina woman. The waitress.”
    I had no problem with her being a waitress. Fuck no, I wasn’t that much of an asshole. I just knew that my father would usually have a problem with ‘marrying down’ as I’d seriously heard him refer to it in the past.
    “Yes, I do,” he replied, his steely gaze still fixed on me. “I care for her very much. She’s a wonderful person.”
    “And you went ahead and proposed to her without even running it by me first? I still live here, y’know.”
    I’d wanted to move out and get my own place ages ago, but as long as I was in college, my father had insisted that I remain in the family home. So I’d stayed, only to shut him the hell up, and now he was springing a new mommy on me. Ha.
    “It’s ‘you know’, not ‘y’know’. For heaven’s sake, Chase, I don’t spend all this money on your education only for you to speak like some sort of…”
    “Like what? Like some sort of person in the service industry? A waitress, perhaps?”
    I was only teasing him now, but his eyes narrowed.
    “Knock it off. As for your other question, you might be my son, but I do not need to run any of my life decisions past you. You will meet Nina tomorrow night. We’ll have dinner at L’Atelier, and you can get to know her and her two children. In a civil manner, I might add.”
    “Wait, she has fucking kids?”
    Wow, so not only would my father likely be nabbing a large portion of the working class and Latina votes by marrying this woman, he’d probably be getting the votes of at least half the single mothers in this state. How noble of him…
    “Here’s a photo of them which she gave me to show you,” he said, reaching into his wallet and pulling out a small, faded picture. “She has two daughters. Lina is eighteen, and Lily is five.”
    I looked at it, expecting to feel nothing for the people who would soon be my stepfamily. Instead I felt like I’d been hit in the guts by a sledgehammer and had the wind knocked right out of