Best Kept Secrets Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Loose Id Titles by Evangeline Anderson

  Evangeline Anderson

  BEST-KEPT SECRETS

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.loose-id.com

  Best-Kept Secrets

  Copyright © February 2014 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  eISBN 9781623007775

  Editor: Maryam Salim

  Cover Artist: Reese Dante

  Published in the United States of America

  Loose Id LLC

  PO Box 809

  San Francisco CA 94104-0809

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

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  DISCLAIMER: Please do not try any new sexual practice, especially those that might be found in our BDSM/fetish titles without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Neither Loose Id LLC nor its authors will be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles.

  Chapter One

  Josh and I used to be normal siblings—well, stepsiblings, I should say. His father married my mother when I was seventeen and he was nineteen. It was a whirlwind courtship followed by a beautiful wedding, but Josh and I were just amicable strangers at the time. The plan was for him to go off to the Mars U while I stayed with my mom and her new husband on the orbiting Earth station to finish my last year of prep school. Josh and I probably wouldn’t have had any relationship at all if it hadn’t been for the tragedy…

  Barely a month after they had been married, my mother and Josh’s father—both xenogeologists by trade—went off on a honeymoon-slash-specimen-collecting expedition to the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system just past the orbit of Neptune.

  They never came back.

  We got a few garbled transmissions of their last moment, and at least it looked like they were happy up until the very end. They only had seconds to see the rogue asteroid looming in their viewscreen before their ship was smashed to icy, floating chunks. In a single instant, Josh and I were both orphaned.

  I was devastated. My mother was everything to me, and now I was a minor on my own. I had only two choices: go into foster care for the final year until I legally became an adult, or go and live with my one remaining relative—Great-Aunt Gertrude. Foster care off Earth wasn’t a good option—there were rumors of abuse and slave trading. Ever since humankind had left Earth and struck out for the stars, they’d lost a great deal of their humanity. So I called my great-aunt.

  Aunt Gertrude was living on Titan at the time—Saturn’s largest moon—and I hadn’t seen her since I was six years old. She had dry, dyed blonde hair and unnaturally bright blue eyes, which had been surgically enhanced. In fact, everything on her had been enhanced from her artificially high cheekbones to her unnaturally large breasts. She was in her eighties, but she somehow managed to pull off the look of a hard forty probably because, as my mom had always said, she spent most of her wages on rejuvi treatments and plastic surgery. When I called her on the commu-link to tell her what had happened, she wasn’t exactly sympathetic.

  “Well, I suppose we can find some room for you somewhere, Cassandra,” she said testily, pursing her lips which were puffy from collagen treatments. Her face had the unnaturally tight look that only a laser face-lift can give. “Of course I won’t turn you away—Miranda wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  Miranda was my mother and just hearing her name brought tears to my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I managed to choke out. “I just…I don’t know where else to turn.”

  “Of course you’ll have to get a job and pay rent,” she went on. “Life on Titan is getting so expensive these days. What with the atmosphere dome always needing repairs and the tax hikes they claim are paying for it. Although if that’s so, why do I still have a liquid methane leak in my living room? Answer me that.”

  “I’ll help out,” I said humbly. “I’ll do everything I can. And don’t worry—I’ll take care of all the paperwork to transfer to my new school.”

  “You won’t have time for school—not unless you can squeeze in a few night classes,” she said sharply. “I told you, you’ll have to pay your way.”

  “I will,” I said hastily. “But—”

  “No buts.” Her weird bright-blue eyes flashed greedily. “Unless you have some special skills I don’t know about, you’ll have to take a minimum wage job for at least, oh…say ten to twelve hours a day. That should about cover your share. And all your wages are to come directly to me. After that you can go to school—if you can afford transportation to get there.”

  “But…I want to finish prep and go to college,” I protested. “That’s what my mother wanted for me. I was going to go into xenobiology.”

  “Well, life changes,” Aunt Gertrude snapped. “I’ll get the spare room ready for you. Oh, and you’ll have to get your own ticket here. I hope you can afford it because I don’t have a single credit to spare.” She patted her leathery cheeks. “It takes every bit I have to keep body and soul together.”

  “Especially the body, huh?” A new voice from the doorway spoke up.

  I looked up in surprise to see Josh standing there. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest and a frown on his face.

  “Excuse me?” Aunt Gertrude peered up at him from the screen of the commu-link. “What did you just say?”

  “I’m talking about your face, lady,” he said, motioning at her. “How much did all that cost, anyway?”

  “Why that’s…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aunt Gertrude sputtered. “I…I’ve never had work done.”

  “Sure you haven’t,” Josh said sarcastically. “So now, let me get this straight—Cassandra has to get her own ticket to Titan.”

  “Well, yes.” Aunt Gertrude fluffed her brittle blonde hair. “I’m not made of credit, after all.”

  “Right,” Josh said. “And once she gets there, she’s supposed to give up going to school so she can work ten to twelve hours a day at some mindless job for minimum wage.”

  Aunt Gertrude’s pink puffy lips worked, making her look like a fish out of water.

  “Well she’ll have to—”