My Stepbrother's Regret novel · Chapter 14 of 32
Chapter 14: Not My Brother
The lawn man put his cap back on and went out the back door very fast.
The housekeeper turned on the faucet and ran water over nothing.
"She isn't my sister," Roarke said.
"She's my daughter, and you're Myles's son, and we're a family." My mother's voice shook beautifully. "In this house. Under this roof. Myles, I can't..."
"I'd known her five weeks yesterday," Roarke said.
"Enough," Myles said.
He didn't look at me.
He didn't look at Roarke either.
He looked at the sticky note on the panel, the master code in his own handwriting, for a long time.
Then he peeled it off, folded it in half, and put it in his pocket.
"I'd like you both to go," he said.
We went.
By Tuesday it was everywhere.
Mags got it first, from a customer who wanted "Forever" engraved on a money clip and was dying to tell somebody.
"Gibbons boy," the customer said. "Shacked up with the new wife's girl. In a pawn shop."
"Watch shop," Mags said.
"What?"
"It's a watch shop. If you're going to spread it, spread it right."
By Wednesday a North Shore moms group had a post with eleven hundred comments.
It had a blurry photo of me at the shop door in Roarke's white shirt.
The caption said STEPSIBLINGS?? with two question marks.
Roarke read the comments on Mags's couch with his feet over the arm and got quieter and quieter.
"Stop reading them," I said.
"Somebody says we grew up together in that house."
"I met you in May."
"I know when you met me."
"Then stop reading them."
He'd rented the empty one-bedroom across the hall from Mags on Monday afternoon, month to month, for cash.
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