Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) Read online

  Addison frowns. "Yeah, assistant."

  "Actually," I interrupt. "That's why I was hired. Your mom forced Addison to take me on as a charity case. I lost my job, and Addy is just too nice to tell you that."

  "Oh, Hendrix, that sucks," Gracie says. "For you, obviously. I wouldn't want to have Addison as my boss, either." She sticks her tongue out at Addison, who makes a face at her, but still avoids looking at me. "I have to run, but I want to catch up later. And don't feed him sugar, Addison. Hendrix, you have to make sure she doesn't. Last time Addy babysat, she gave him a cupcake and I practically had to peel Brady off the walls when we got home."

  "Roger," I say.

  "Oh, cute, you're so military still," Gracie says, planting a kiss on Brady's head before she heads for the door. "Okay, I'll see you later today. I don't know how long these things take, so I'm not sure how long I'll be. Are you absolutely positive you've got this, Addy?"

  "Oh my God. You act like I've never babysat Brady before. Get out of here," Addison says. She busies herself playing with Brady for a few seconds, before looking up at me. "You told Grace that you're my bodyguard."

  I shrug. "Yeah, so? It's what I was hired as."

  Brady grabs his truck from Addison's hand and bounces off the couch to "zoom" it along her coffee table, and she turns around to face me. "So, you know that's not exactly how it is. You made it sound like I chose to hire you out of the goodness of my heart."

  "And?"

  "So why did you say that?"

  I shrug. "It seemed like the thing to say at the time."

  She looks at me for a long time before speaking. "Did you really get fired?"

  "I quit, but they were going to fire me, so it's the same thing."

  "Why did they fire you?"

  "Hell, you're nosy."

  "You're my employee, aren't you? I'm supposed to know these kinds of things," she says. But the corners of her mouth turn up and I know she's joking.

  "Am I?" I ask. "I thought I was your bodyguard."

  "That means you work for me," she says.

  "Yeah, I'm supposed to guard your body."

  Addison narrows her eyes at me. "Very funny," she says. "Not in the way you apparently mean."

  "How do you know what I mean, Addy-girl?" I ask. "You have a dirty mind."

  Brady runs for Addy, crashing into her leg with all the force of an almost-three-year-old boy, and she looks down at him and laughs. "What do you want to do, Brade-man? You want to go to the park?"

  "Yes! The park! The park!" Brady shouts.

  Addison looks up at me and grins. "Well, since you're my employee, you can be in charge of the diaper bag."

  I should be annoyed, carrying the diaper bag and tagging along with Addison and Brady down the sidewalk to the park. But I'm not. We take turns pushing Brady in the swing and following him as he runs through the grass, and we don't talk about much of anything.

  Except I watch Addison's face beam as she plays with him, and the way she tucks her hair behind her ear as she glances over her shoulder at me when she's chasing Brady through the grass, and I feel...lighter somehow, not edgy the way I usually feel. I find myself laughing as Brady tries to catch the rubber ball I toss at him.

  On the way back to the apartment, when we stop for ice cream, I nudge Addison. "You're a bad aunt, you know," I say as Brady shovels a spoonful into his mouth. "Grace is going to kill you."

  She grins at me. "I'm a great aunt," she says. "And besides, he'll run it off before we give him back to Grace anyway. Or swim it off. There's a pool in the apartment building."

  The image of Addison in a swimsuit flashes in my head, and my cock stirs, right here in the fucking ice cream shop. I force my thoughts the hell away from Addison.

  "Brady loves swimming," she says. "Want to go swimming, Brady?"

  "Let's go swimming!" Ice cream drips down his cheeks and he pounds the table with his fist.

  "Swimming," I say. Damn it. The last thing I want to do is see Addison in a swimsuit at the pool.

  Of course, I'm lying to myself. It's the only thing I want.

  SIX YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS AGO

  I'm slicing through the water, the repetitiveness of the strokes doing what they always do, lulling me into a near-hypnotic trance. Before I was discovered on the reality show, we couldn't afford a pool or swim lessons or anything like that. I barely knew how to float. That changed when I was on the show. Hell, everything has changed since I was discovered. Now I have a heated pool, in its own glass enclosure outside. That's freaking fancy.

  Most people swim in the mornings, but I like to swim at night. After the sun goes down, the lights on the sides of the pool turn the water an iridescent teal color. The water muffles the sounds from outside and I turn my brain off, losing all sense of time and place while I just swim in teal-colored water and tune the rest of the world out.

  I'm usually alone out here, no one caring enough to intrude on my swim time, but when I pull myself up to the side of the pool, Hendrix is sitting in a chair, lighting up a cigarette. I wipe the water from my face, resting with my arm on the edge of the pool. The cool evening air hits my skin and makes me shiver.

  So does the way Hendrix looks at me.

  "How long have you been there?" I ask.

  "A few minutes," he says. His eyes never leave mine, and the way he looks at me makes me glad to be mostly hidden in the pool.

  "You shouldn't smoke," I say.

  "Thanks for the lecture." He exhales smoke in rings at me, and I roll my eyes.

  "It stinks, and it's not healthy," I note. I know I sound like a total downer, but I can't help myself. Hendrix has such a blasé attitude about life, like he doesn't give a shit what happens. It gets under my skin.

  "I don't need a lecture about the risks," he says. "My mom died of cancer."

  "And you're still smoking?" I ask, my voice rising. I'm annoyed with his cavalier attitude about everything. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  Hendrix shrugs. "It's my life, Addy-girl," he says.

  "Not for long, if you keep it up."

  Hendrix laughs. "I should be more like you, right? All work and no play?"

  "What?" My voice squeaks. "What do you think I'm doing right now?"

  "That?" Hendrix asks. He doesn't finish his cigarette, though. He puts it out, halfway through, and leans back in his chair, looking at me. Sometimes I wonder what he's thinking when he looks at me like that. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to know. He's definitely evaluating me. Judging me. "Even when you're swimming, you look intense."

  Intense. No one has ever called me intense before. "What, have you been watching me?"

  "Yes." He speaks the word with no hesitation or embarrassment, and I have to look away, swallowing hard.

  "You've been watching me swim?"

  Hendrix shrugs. "Nothing better to do in this place," he says. "I've been bored."

  "I thought you had friends."

  "They're boring."

  I laugh uncomfortably. "I'm so flattered that spying on me is less boring than hanging out with your friends."

  "You should be."

  "Are you getting in the pool or are you just going to sit there watching me like a creep?"

  Hendrix laughs. "I don't swim."

  "Why not?" I ask, sinking down into the water, up to my neck. I'm chilly, but I'm also aware of the way Hendrix is looking at me, and I'm not sure I like it. Or, more accurately, I'm not sure I'm supposed to like it. "Oh, no, wait, it's not cool enough for you, right?"

  Hendrix makes a weird face, and looks away. "I can't swim."

  "Can't, as in, you don't know how to swim?"

  "Nope," he says. "Never had a reason to learn."

  "Weren't you in military school?" I ask. "They don't teach you that there?"

  "It wasn't the fucking Navy," he says.

  "I can teach you." I blurt out the sentence, immediately regretting it. Why did I just say that? I don't want to be stuck spending any more time with Hendrix than I ha