“This doesn’t mean I’m in love with you,” I said before we stepped on the plane.
“And you never have to be,” he replied.
*****
THE END
BILLIONAIRE TWIN STEPBROTHER BOSS Romance – Twin Stepbrothers’ Baby
1
I tried to smile as my mother swept into the room, but it was hard to do. After all, could I really be that happy for her third wedding? She and my father divorced when I was ten. No big deal, I guess. When I was twelve, she married Steve. He was an all right guy. He treated my mother well and did right by me. But for whatever reason, just after I graduated high school, my mother left him.
My mother had never worked a day in her life. Well, not up until that point. My father took care of her, and then Steve did. They both did well for themselves, for us. Steve had his own son, and we all lived together for four years. He made less than my dad, and there were more of us, but still my mother never worked.
Deborah. That was my mother’s name. Deb. It sounded like a serial bride’s name, didn’t it? When Deborah left Steve, she took as much from his as she could. It got her through a couple of years. I left, went to college, and got my own debt, most of it stemming from ridiculous student loans.
And then my mother had to work. She couldn't put it off any longer. For two years she had made it on what she’d gotten from Steve. She dated during that time, but nothing ever turned out to be serious.
First, Deb got a job at a coffee shop. She was fifty. It humiliated her, and she quit within her first week. A few other jobs followed, and then she applied to Harding Corp. I thought that was a dumb name for the company, but they had their hand in a lot of stuff. If you walked into any big box store, half the stuff came from them. Shampoo, blankets, oven mitts, Harding Corp made it all. For such a big company, you would think they would be headquartered in New York or California somewhere, but nope. They had a big building smack dab in the middle of downtown Chicago, where I was born and raised (well, the suburbs at least.)
My mom saw an ad for a secretary, and she figured she would apply. She didn’t know it was a spot for the personal secretary to Gerry Harding, the man who ran the company. His father had inherited it from his own father, who had taken it from his, the man who had built the company. Gerry was good looking, rich, and for some reason, smitten with my mother.
That wasn’t to say my mother was not a catch. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was long and brown, like mine, though I didn’t have to dye the gray from mine since there wasn’t any. Our eyes were similar as well, dark and expressive. Her skin was much tanner than my own, hers the color of caramel, mine somewhere between that of a porcelain doll and snow. I’d ever been one for the tanning bed.
I wasn’t there, of course. I was knee deep in college stuff then. But I can just imagine what my mother wore to her interview: low-cut shirt—she had great breasts, big and round, another trait we shared—and short skirt. Our legs were long and slim, but shapely. My hips were a bit more pronounced, my butt bigger, but my mom could work it. She was a total MILF. She didn’t get the job, but she did get Gerry Harding’s number.
Two years or so later, I was out of college and she was getting married. I had been staying with her for the two weeks since my graduation, but after the wedding she was moving in with Gerry, and I wasn’t sure where I was going to go. But I had to put the worries aside and be happy for my mother. On her third perfect day. Her third wedding. Her once-in-a-lifetime ceremony, for the third time.
She came into the hotel room, her bridal gown over her arm, followed by her stylist, a severe-looking Mexican woman named Marie.
“Oh, honey, I’m so excited,” my mother said as she stopped in front of me and we embraced.
“I’m glad, Mom,” I said.
“Help me, Josie,” she said to me. “I feel rushed. Let's get this dress on.”
“You cannot rush perfection,” Marie said in her thick accent. And so, we couldn’t. I stood in that room, helping my mother with her dress and makeup and hair—whenever Marie would permit me—for much longer than I would spend on my own wedding preparations someday. But finally she was ready, and we went down to a waiting limo, which drove us to an oversized church.
My mother and I had never been religious. Gerry Harding wasn’t as far as I knew, but the church they had rented was massive and ornate, and I was pretty sure the pope would weep tears of joy if he saw it. The ceremony was beautiful, and it was obvious Gerry had thrown a lot of money into it. The party afterward was even more fun.