Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
My new stepbrother August has made sure of that.
I’m trying to be good over the Holidays, but my new stepbrother is making that impossible.
Good girls don’t have dirty thoughts like the ones August is putting into my head.
They don’t kiss their hot stepbrother in front of the Christmas tree.
And they definitely don’t sneak from room to room while their parents are sleeping upstairs.
Santa might like good girls.
But August likes me naughty.
And there’s only one man I’m aiming to please this Holiday season.
Sorry, Santa.
Load my stockings with coal.
After I take them off for August…
Ho Ho Ho. One look at her hot AF new stepbrother and that’s exactly what Harmony becomes. She tries to be good, but being bad is just too much fun…
Insta-love at its finest in a SAFE read with no cheating and a super sweet HEA guaranteed. Double V-Cards. Enjoy!
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Harmony
“Where are you flying in from?” my Uber driver asks as we pull out of the maze of roads around the airport and onto the highway.
“Australia.”
She looks at me through the rearview mirror. “Did you see any koalas?”
I smile. “There was one living in the tree in front of my apartment building.”
“For real?”
“Yup. Mama and her baby.”
She lets out a low breath. “Lucky. Why did you leave?”
“It was time,” I say as I look out the window at the familiar and unfamiliar sights. We pass a McDonald’s my dad once brought me to after we dropped off my mother on a business trip. There’s a Home Depot beside it. I don’t remember that being there.
“Are you from here?” she asks, looking at me again.
Is she going to talk to me the whole trip?
I was hoping to get a quiet driver for the ride up to my new stepfather’s cabin, but I guess that’s out of the question. I was hoping to get my head straight and prepare myself before I arrived.
“Yeah, born and raised. You?”
“Same. How long were you in Australia?”
I sigh. “Two years.”
“Wow,” she says as she glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Must be excited to be arriving home for Christmas after all that time away.”
I look out the window with my stomach churning. “Yeah.”
“I don’t see any excitement on that face. What happened?”
I look at my fidgeting hands on my lap.
“We’re going to be driving together for forty-five minutes,” she says with a tilt of her head. “I’ll get it out of you one way or another, so might as well tell me now.”
I open the Uber app on my phone and quickly scroll through her reviews.
“Makayla is the BEST!!!”
“She’s the passenger whisperer. Made me late for my appointment tho.”
“A driver and a therapist! Makayla is awsome!”
I could use a therapist right now and lordy knows I can’t afford one. I take a deep breath and turn off my phone.
“I haven’t seen my mom and barely talked to her in two years,” I tell her. “My parents were happily married my whole life and then BOOM, out of the blue, my mom says she’s divorcing my dad and marrying her freaking boss!”
“No shit…” Makayla whispers under her breath. “For real?”
“Oh yeah,” I say as I take off my seatbelt and climb into the empty front seat. “She leaves my dad heartbroken and then moves into a house with this guy who I’ve never even met and then she asks me to move in with her. I was so mad. I wanted to kill her.”
“Damn,” she whispers.
“I know, right?” I say, angrily putting my seatbelt on. “She makes me crazy. How could she do this to us? She ripped our family apart!”
“Was she and your dad close growing up?”
I shrug. “Of course. They were married.”
“But did they seem like they were in love?”
“Yeah.” They got along fine enough, but I never saw them holding hands or kissing. But that’s just how marriage is. You become friends over time. Doesn’t mean that you have to blow it all up as soon as a handsome guy in a suit walks by.
“She wanted to sit down and talk with me about it,” I say, plowing ahead. “Explain some stuff. I couldn’t. Instead of meeting her, I called my friend who was traveling around Australia, working in hostels and other odd jobs here and there, and asked if I could come meet her, so that’s what I did.”
“Did you tell your mother you were leaving?”
“I told her when I had landed in Sydney.”
She whistles low. “That’s cold.”
“She brought it on herself,” I say. “Trust me, she deserved it for what she did.”
“Still, two years,” Makayla says, shaking her head. “That’s a long time to disappear.”
I feel my cheeks getting red as I look out the window. “I emailed her a few times,” I say, feeling a little bit guilty. Our exchanges were always short and tense.
“Hold up, did you miss the wedding?”
The guilt increases. “Yeah, but it wasn’t a big deal. They just went to a courthouse and had a dinner after.”
“A wedding is always a big deal to the bride and groom,” Makayla says, giving me a look like I should know better. “Even if it’s just at a courthouse.”
I look out the window at the buildings whizzing by.
I do regret not being there for her.
But at the time, I just… I just couldn’t be there. My heart was broken too.
“How’s your dad doing?” she asks as she changes lanes.
“He’s great,” I say, perking back up. “He has a new girlfriend who he’s absolutely in love with. They’re so cute together. They came and visited me in Perth. I’ve never seen him look so happy.” Even when he was married to my mom.
“So, you’re spending the Christmas holidays with your mom who you’re fighting with, and a stepdad you’ve never met?”