TEASE ( A Stepbrother Romance ) By Caitlin Daire

28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Charlotte

Fourteen months later

"I still think football is boring."

I turned to look at Evan, who was glancing around the crowds at Heinz Field stadium with disinterest. I grinned. "Well, why did you come to the game with us, then?" I asked, giving him a playful elbow.

"Because Cade said I have to be here for-"

My Mom nudged Evan, and he stopped talking.

"Cade said you have to what?" I said, arching an eyebrow.

"Cade just wanted to see his whole family here supporting him," Mom said hurriedly.

Evan enthusiastically nodded to back her up, and I narrowed my eyes slightly in suspicion. The two of them were behaving quite weirdly. Neither of them were football fans at all, yet they'd both insisted on accompanying me to Cade's game against the Patriots tonight. Even when I'd told them I didn't mind coming alone, knowing that Evan had just scored himself a girlfriend and might want to spend time with her, they'd maintained their desire to come and watch the game with me instead.

Oh well, it was nice having company.

In the last few years, I'd become somewhat of a football fan out of support for Cade's career, although I was still a bit stunted in my knowledge of all the positions and other such things. I knew enough to know when Cade's team was playing well, though, and every time I had a chance to go to one of his games, I jumped at the chance. He was doing so well, and I couldn't be prouder of him.

For the first few months of his professional career, he'd barely been on the field at all, seeing as he was fourth string QB. But then one of the backups had befallen a season-ending knee injury during practice one day, and the other backup had retired for various reasons. Cade had become second on the depth chart by the end of that season, behind the starter, who was a man named Andrew Harlick. Harlick had then suffered internal bleeding after a hit by a linebacker during a game, and Cade had been able to play a few games.

The next season had then almost started with Harlick still playing as starting QB and Cade as a backup, but due to poor performance on Harlick's behalf during the pre-season games, the decision had been made for him to be replaced by Cade as the starter. The game I was at right now was Cade's second game as starting QB, and from the reception he'd been getting so far, I could tell that he was already getting to be quite popular with the female fans as well as male.

"Cade! Cade Blackwell! We love you!"

I glanced to my left to see several blonde girls screaming and waving as the Steeler's team took to the field after halftime, and I grinned. I wasn't jealous. I was nothing but proud of my man for getting to where he was today so quickly, all through determination, effort and hard work, and I knew he'd never look at another woman the same way he looked at me. They could mob him and throw themselves at him-and one woman actually did throw herself at him one day, hurling herself into his arms after the team had returned from their last away game-but no matter what they did, it wasn't going to make him love me less. I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I couldn't blame other women for wanting him, though. He was sexy as hell, great at what he did, and on top of that, he was already pretty famous in general for being the son of Keith Blackwell, who was likely to go down as the biggest asshole in recent history. Cade and I still got recognized on the street quite often, seeing as we'd been the ones to discover and relay his father's offences to the world via the internet, and we'd learned to take it in our stride. It was all history now, and in the time that we'd known each other, we'd both learned that dwelling on the past never worked out well for anyone.