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

different!”
     
    “I know. I don’t blame you for not recognizing me.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t want to be seen as that guy. Big Dick doesn’t exist anymore.”
     
    Big Dick.
     
    They’d all called him that, hadn’t they? She remembered, flushing.
     
    “I’m less the man—and more the man—than the one who walked away from here years ago.” He squatted to grab his stuff and the muscles in his thighs tensed deliciously. “But Leesa—even if you don’t, I remember what happened the last time we ended up in each other’s arms.”
     
    “Of course I remember.” His coolness stunned her and she tried a light laugh but failed to keep the tremor out of her voice. “How could I forget? You know, speaking of walking away... you never let me... explain...”
     
    “No explanation necessary.” Ric flicked his towel over his broad, bronze, inked shoulder. “I’m going to shower. Meet me in the den in fifteen? We can catch up.”
     
    “Yeah... sure.”
     
    “Great!” He flashed her a grin and pushed out through the gym doors, leaving her standing, dumbstruck, in the middle of the floor, feeling like she’d just been punched.
     
    So much for the ‘whole new world’.
     
     
     

Chapter 2

     
    Ric, apparently, showered like he was trying to clean off a mud-encrusted elephant. It took forever. For-bloody- ever! Her legs were getting tired from all her pacing.
     
    “‘Fifteen minutes’, my arse,” she muttered, flopping down onto the couch in the den. Tiredness crept over her. She wanted to stay awake so they could catch up with him, but her eyelids threatened to close—and stay closed. The couch was very comfortable.
     
    “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
     
    Ric’s voice jolted her awake and her eyes snapped open as he walked through the den and into the little U-shaped bar behind it.
     
    She got to her feet, watching him like she just might be dreaming.
     
    His hair was washed and pulled into a short, low ponytail that hung just below the collar of a pale blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His jeans were almost tight enough to show the muscle definition in his thighs and his feet were bare. She gulped as he reached up to a top cupboard, making his shirt pucker between his shoulder blades. It was going to take time for her to dismiss the mental image of the body she’d seen beneath that shirt.
     
    But he’d made his feelings pretty clear—the past was in the past.
     
    And clearly, should stay there.
     
    He pulled two bottles from the shelf. One was Smirnoff Gold, which she’d never really liked. The other was a frosted bottle with a white metal top and a label that looked like a squashed version of the Danish Flag. She recognized it—Brad sometimes drank it.
     
    Ric got out two cut-crystal glasses and put them on the bar surface between them.
     
    “No vodka for me,” she said before he started unscrewing the cap.
     
    “Okay, but I don’t think you’ll like this other stuff much.” He poured himself a generous measure before stuffing the glass under the nozzle of the ice-maker.
     
    “It’s Akavit,” she said, annoyed at his dismissal of her alcohol knowledge. Akavit was like Norse vodka on steroids. It truly was the drink of gods—assuming gods didn’t suffer hangovers like mortals did.
     
    “You know it?”
     
    “The label’s helpful.” She smirked.
     
    Ric waggled the bottle. “Annalesa, this bottle’s about twenty years old.”
     
    “I don’t mind.” She smiled sweetly up at him until his stern face cracked and he chuckled, pouring a small single into her glass. He filled it with ice and slid it across the bar to her.
     
    “Skol.”
     
    “Proost.” She clinked glasses with him.
     
    “Dutch?”
     
    “I spent six months in Zaandam. A bit of the language had to rub off on me eventually, eh?”
     
    Ric leaned back, propping his elbow against the bar. The motion broadened his chest and made his bicep bulge out against his sleeve.