***COVER REVEAL*** FORBIDDEN ~ a Stepbrother novella by Danielle Jamie

Spring Break 2015 was supposed to be spent lying on the white sand beaches of Mexico sipping fruity cocktails with my friends and my boyfriend, Heath. Instead I found myself single and flying back home to San Francisco to spend it with my mother, her new boyfriend and his son, Linc.

Linc, or as my friends like to call him ‘Forbidden’, is my future stepbrother and the one person who gets under my skin unlike anyone else.

We call him Forbidden because like the fruit in The Garden of Eden, Linc is tempting and completely untouchable.

I’ve hated the arrogant jerk for as long as I can remember. But a week alone together, followed by a drunken bet, leads me onto a path that once taken…there is no turning back.

Chapter One

Zipping my suitcase, I pull my luggage off of my bed and look around my room one more time before wheeling it out if the room. My stiletto heels clink loudly down the hall as the sound ricochets off of the walls of the long hallway. I stomp my way down the long winding metal staircase of the apartment myself and two of my friends share just off campus.
Everyone else has already left, flying or driving back home for spring break while I sat here procrastinating for as long as possible before finally having no choice but to go back home. Spring Break officially starts today, March 30th. But because today’s a Monday, my roommates along with almost everyone else here at the California State University in Long Beach all left on Saturday. Half of the school more than likely are sipping drinks poolside in Cabo right now. Exactly where I should be, alongside my roommates Dallas and Hailey. But instead I’m like the other half of the college population who opted to go home and take advantage of having mommy and daddy to cook, clean and do their laundry for them.
Normally I’m more than thrilled to return home after being away at school. But this time—not so much.
Usually returning home means hanging around my house with all of my friends as we catch up after being apart at college. But, instead, I’ll now be playing house with my mother and her newest flavor of the damn month.
Three years ago, right after my graduation, my father and mother sat me down to tell me they were getting a divorce. I knew it was coming. They were never together. I hadn’t witnessed my parents be affectionate towards one another in years. It was just a matter of time before they went their separate ways.
Of course, they did the cliché thing a lot if parents do because they think it’s the best choice. But the reality of it is we’d all be a lot happier if they turned off the life support on their sham of a marriage when they knew it didn’t have a chance of recovering. Instead, they chose to wait until the child graduates high school and then once they prepare to leave for college, Bam! Hit them with the major shocker, which in reality was completely obvious: they were getting a divorce.
Two years later my father has eloped with some girl half my mother’s age doing yet again another cliché move. But oddly enough I actually like Alison. She’s sweet, funny and a great shopping partner. It’s a little weird feeling as if my stepmother is one of my best friends, but I guess it’s better than him marrying someone I can’t stand.
Sadly though, my mother has not had the same luck in the love department as my father. She’s had her fair share of boyfriends but nothing that resulted in anything long term.
She texted me this morning with a reminder to be at the airport by three p.m. so I don’t miss my flight back to San Francisco. Along with her reminder was also a message telling me that I was to head straight home after my flight lands and that a car would be waiting for me. I guess she has something important to tell me, and it can’t wait.
Of course, it’s no shocker. My mother is one of the top divorce attorneys in all of the Golden Gate district, so she’s used to getting her way or fighting you to the death until she does.
My father is a family practice doctor who has always put others first. Which with his career, was a good thing. But on a personal level, not so much. I think that’s a reason my parents’ marriage fell apart. My mom and dad were polar opposites. My dad is someone who loves to go on spur of the moment trips and live life freely while my mother was a workaholic who lived by her work and social calendar.
My mom knows me well enough to know as soon as my plane touched down I would’ve been high tailing it to my dad’s house so I could kill time there before I had to go home. When I return from college, my mother always insists I come to her house first then my fathers a few days later because she always says we need mother-daughter time to catch up.
I used to love our time together, now not so much. All thanks to her newest boy toy Matthew Sarris. I guess he’s some up and coming golfer on the 2014-2015 PGA tour which I could give a flying fuck about. Golf is the most boring sport on the damn planet. My mother used to agree with me on this and would bitch at my father whenever he would turn it on. But now it’s her favorite sport and every day she’s off, she’s spending it with him at the county club where he’s teaching her how to golf.
Matt is nice, don’t get me wrong. But he is the most arrogant person on the planet. I swear he stares at his reflection grooming his perfectly slicked back hair every time he passes a damn mirror or a window that casts his reflection. To make matters worse, he has a son two years older than me who is just as big of a self-obsessed douchebag as his father.
Luckily, until now, I’ve not had to spend more than a few days with Matt or his son Linc because he was with his mother in Sacramento during Christmas break. But because it’s Spring Break, Linc and I have been demanded to spend a week in San Francisco with my mother and Matt for what they keep claiming to be family bonding time.
Now come on? They’ve been together five months. I am counting down the days until my mother grows bored and kicks him to the curb. He’s been jet-setting all over the world since they started seeing each other. My mother gets jealous easily, so their relationship is a ticking time bomb. He’s extremely attractive for his age and, it’s rare that men like him want a woman pushing fifty, especially when they’re only forty-three.
Most men are shallow pigs and need pretty, young, eye-candy trophy wives on their arms. Especially if you’re famous. Which from the looks of things he’s really grown in popularity over the last year in the PGA.
I wouldn’t put it past him at all to be banging the crap out of golf groupies, which sadly they do have—it’s pretty pathetic.
Go be a football or Major League Baseball groupie. At least then you have a chance to see some actual eye-candy. Not a bunch of old geezers popping Bayer tablets, so they don’t have a heart attack while walking eighteen holes!
I hail a cab and try to push thoughts of going home to the back of my mind. For now I’ll pop my earbuds in, crank up some T-Swift and get lost in my steamy romance novel to pass the time until my flights boards.
I can only pray for thick fog and a long flight delay. But with the forecast for once predicting nothing but blue skies and sunshine back home I doubt that’ll happen.
San Francisco here I come. Please let me find my house stocked with enough booze to put me in a coma for the next week, or so help me God, I may not survive this spring break.