PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance by Sarah Sparrows Page A

might get into a few little scuffles while I’m in
town…keep up appearances. You know how it goes.”

 
    “Aw, hell yeah! ” Darren smacked the bottle
down hard on the table. I flinched, expecting the glass to shatter under the
force of his movements, but it somehow held together. The drinkers at the next
few tables glared over at us, but Darren didn’t seem to notice. “Just like the
old times!”

 
    I chuckled at
his enthusiasm. I thought back to how quickly he and I had become friends, or
how he’d helped pick me up last time I’d come to Pensacola… I’d counted on this
man once, and I knew he’d do me right now that I was back.

 
    “That’s
right, man. Just like the old times.”

 

 
 
    SAFFRON

 
    Chapter 11

 
    PENSACOLA

 
    PRESENT
DAY

 
 
 
    E nough was enough. I was tired of moping
around our luxury villa, trying to keep out of his way. Sawyer clearly didn’t
want anything to do with me, and I was going to find out why. I knew he would
never explain himself without some prodding, so I did the next best thing.

 
    I followed
him.

 
    You see,
there was a small, white plastic box that dangled from my keys. It was a GPS
tagger that allowed me to easily find them from an app on my iPhone. The way
the device worked was to lead me to the general area from my phone, so long as
I had a decent Wi-Fi connection, and then beep loudly when I request local
discovery. It was a handy little white box, very small and easily forgotten.
Attaching it to his Suzuki while he took a mid-afternoon nap on the couch was
no trouble at all.

 
    I tested it
on the phone, and sure enough, I got a fairly accurate reading from the app.
This gave me everything I needed to finally see what my darling stepbrother was
up to. Maybe I’d even figure out why I was being forced to spend the summer
holed up with him.

 
    Even then, I
knew that it was a tremendous breach of trust, but I was so furious with him
that I gleefully ignored the consequences. When he left at night, I would
occasionally check up on him, forcing my eagerness deep down so that I could
concentrate on other, more important things, such as reading, shopping, or
occasionally going out to see a movie by myself.

 
    To my
surprise, it seemed like he just drove around like a maniac. He’d hop on the
interstate going one way, drive that direction for thirty minutes, and then
whip around and do the same thing the other way. There didn’t seem to be any
rhyme or reason to it. Once, he drove over the state line and kept going, then
just stopped somewhere. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what he was doing,
because the cell reception out there was pretty weak, but it stopped tracking
him near an interstate exit with a pair of motels. I assumed he was just
stopping for the night, although I was afraid that he’d never come back.

 
    The next day,
I checked the app a few times. He hadn’t gone anywhere since then, and after
lunchtime he was on his way back. Sure enough, he turned up an hour or two
later, acting as if nothing had happened.

 
    I wanted to
mischievously jab at him. Out all night
with a woman? I would have asked. But I was too afraid of him to say
anything of the sort, and I stayed out of his way. When he came back through
the door, he made no effort to find me or check up on me, so I continued going
about my business.

 
    But watching
my stepbrother leave the city and maintain an average speed of 80 miles per
hour at all times grew weary, so I dedicated my efforts elsewhere. Mostly, this
went back to shopping and reading, although there’s only so much shopping you
can do when you’re miserable, and the endless reading was finally growing
tiresome.

 
    One night, I
decided to mix things up a little…and I finally visited one of the nearby
clubs.

 
    Club Selene
looked like your regular beachside hotspot. With a darkened view of the ocean
through staggered floor-to-ceiling windows, plenty of mood lighting, and