TEASE ( A Stepbrother Romance ) By Caitlin Daire

5

Chapter 5

Rayna

After I heard Jace leaving the house, I headed out as well. Liana and I had chatted for a while earlier when I'd called her to tell her I'd be moving into the manor, and after we hung up, I headed to her place to get my stuff. It didn't take long; all we had to do was pack up my things into the four giant suitcases I'd brought with me and shove them into her car to take back to my new home.

"Thanks for your help with this," I said as we stashed the last case in the trunk of her car. "And thanks for having me for the last week."

She grinned. "No worries, you can stay anytime. I'm so jealous, though. You get to move into that giant place!"

"Don't worry, it's not that great," I said with a shrug. "My new room is right next to Jace's. Out of the billion or so rooms in that huge place, that's where they put me!"

Her smile grew even wider. "Ooh la la!" she said in a silly voice. "It's like your parents actually want you two to hook up."

"He wishes."

"More like you wish."

I put my hands on my hips. "I told you earlier, that's not going to happen! He's so freaking annoying. You should've heard what he said at lunch."

I was more or less trying to convince myself that nothing was going to happen, rather than convince Liana.

She winked. "Well, you know what they say...men are like babies. If you want them to shut up, just shove your boobs in their mouth."

"Liana! I'm not shoving my boobs in Jace's mouth, let alone anything else."

She raised her eyebrows. "Uh-huh," she said, clearly not believing that I had zero interest in Jace anymore. Truthfully, she was right. The thought of last night's encounter still made me tingle in the best kind of way, but I knew it couldn't happen again.

Not now, not ever.

"I still can't believe he's actually your stepbrother," she continued. "When you first told me your Mom's fiancé was named Gerald Wilde, it didn't occur to me that he might actually be related to the one Wilde guy I know."

"Doesn't matter," I said with a rueful smile. "We both know now, anyway."

"Yeah," she replied. "Anyway, before we haul all this crap back to the manor, do you wanna grab some tea or coffee somewhere?"

"Sure," I said with a smile.

We headed towards the nearest café for some much-needed caffeine, and Liana filled me in on more details of the guy she'd hooked up with last night.

"...thing is," Liana continued, after giving me far too many details of her sex life. "I really like him. I have for a while. I think I told you about him ages ago; he works in the accounting department at the office next door to where I work, so we run into each other a fair bit. We've had this flirtation thing going on forever, so it felt like last night had been coming for a very long time."

"Yeah?"

"I know what you're thinking; I always fall for guys and then lose interest. But this time it really is different. I've liked him for ages, and when I heard that Tom actually knows him too and was inviting him to the masquerade party, it was like...well, basically, last night just made it even worse. I actually want to be with this guy, like proper boyfriend and girlfriend."

I smiled as I sipped on my latte, and Liana's expression turned dreamy as she continued. "So what did you think of him? Cute, right?"

"I didn't actually get to see his face because you were kissing it all night," I said. "Plus he had that Zorro mask on."