The Step Sister Read online

  “Or ever stopping the destructive behavior.”

  “Or ever stopping the behavior,” Tracy repeated. “You’d realize it and try to change it. I really believe that. Vickie doesn’t seem capable of understanding how her behavior leads to her consequences. You do.”

  “Can you quit insisting that I make nice with her? I’m old enough to know what’s what now and I’m so tired of pretending she’s my mother. She’s not. I don’t want her to ever be. You only want me to make nice with her because it makes what you and Dad did seem not so bizarre. I don’t care what you and Dad did. It happened like, ages ago. But she still hurts me and you don’t. Just…” Julia shut her eyes, feeling too exhausted to go on. She couldn’t take having Vickie a part of her life anymore. Not when she had so many other issues to contend with. “Just please, let me be your daughter exclusively. Not hers.”

  “Oh, Julia. Of course you’re my daughter.” Tracy again embraced her, rubbing her cheek on the top of Julia’s head. Julia sucked in a breath, smelling Tracy’s perfume, which provided an instantaneous comfort and presence that reminded her of home, love, and safety. Leaning back so she could look Julia in the eyes, Tracy said, “Okay. No more making nice. You’re my daughter, not hers.”

  Julia sighed. “Thank you. I don’t want to see Vickie anymore and I don’t want any more contact. She took Dane away from me just as deliberately as she deserted me over the past eighteen years. She’s already left him twice that I know of. I mean, really, why does he put up with it?”

  “I’ve never understood the unconditional acceptance and tolerance Vickie extracts from the men in her life. God knows I could never expect any man to put up with that kind of erratic, crazy shit.”

  “Even Dad? How could he handle it?”

  “You really don’t want to go there.”

  Julia smiled at Tracy’s dry tone and nodded her understanding. “No, I really don’t. But I really don’t want her around me anymore. You realize what this means, don’t you? She took Nate away from me too. My stepbrother no longer exists.”

  Tracy squeezed her hand. “You know Nate thinks of you now and always has as his full-blooded sister, not a stepsister. So do Ally, Kylie, and even Tristan. You’re kind of everyone’s…”

  “Stepsister.”

  “No. Little sister.”

  Julia’s lips compressed together. “That sounds better than stepsister.” She eventually nodded at Tracy as she smiled. Tracy slicked her hair back. “Now what?” Julia asked.

  “Now? We have to figure out how to eliminate your anxiety. Debilitating anxiety. You’re not faking it, honey.”

  “What if I can’t though? What if I never learn how to control it and I end up living with you forever? Just a stupid, useless girl who can’t even work, let alone, attend college. Lord knows what happened when I tried to go there before…”

  “Home schooling worked out well for you.”

  “Mom—”

  She shook her head. “I know, okay? It seems hard but you’ll be fine. We’ll find a way to live with it, okay? No matter what it takes. Or how long, I should add. But will you get there? Of course you will, yes.”

  Julia sniffled and rubbed her nose. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. Never have been, not even for a single day. Even when I told Donny I could never be your mother, I was already doing it.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “From the beginning and we’ll see it to the end. The one thing your mother could never do is the very thing you excel in.”

  Chapter One

  JULIA LINDSTROM RUBBED HER sweaty palms on the material of her slacks. Her right leg kept bouncing up and down, as though she had restless leg syndrome. No. Nope. She was anxious. Always with the anxiety. It had plagued her from her teens until now. After two years of working with Dr. Grad she’d gotten it under control, but it did often rear its head. And what better trigger for anxiety than the formal, judgmental circumstances of a job interview.

  Her first job interview ever.

  She’d spent the last four years working as her dad’s receptionist in his computer consulting offices. It was not, however, how she wanted to spend her life. She had no definable objective of what she wanted to do with her life, but staring at computers all day was not it. Her dad had gotten her a job interview. Now, here she sat waiting to enter the man’s office, all the while her stomach jumped around as if on a dose of speed.

  Lloyd Cartwright owned a general construction company that built commercial buildings. She had not one skill set for that industry. He was hiring for an assistant. His direct assistant. What did that entail? She had no clue. Just that Lloyd had agreed to interview her for it.

  Finally, his secretary who she hoped not to become, named Judy Ann by the name plate on her desk, told her she could go ahead to the last office down the hallway.

  With sweaty palms, she entered Lloyd Cartwright’s office and met the man as he stood up from his desk, walked around it and put his hand out to shake hers. She instantly burned up with humiliation while they shook hands. There was no way he wouldn’t notice her clammy palms. Forcing her resolve, she made eye contact and smiled a polite, reserved grin. He smiled far more naturally and nodded at her, before he took a seat at his desk again. He indicated towards the chair before his large desk. “Please sit down.”

  “Thank you,” she mumbled, head ducked down as she did so.

  Lloyd was… well, yeah, pretty hot and handsome in a debonair, sophisticated way. It was hard for Julia not to respond to the ripple of awareness that shot down her arm when they first shook hands and he unleashed his killer smile on her. He had silver hair. Not gray. Oh, no. No old, faded, lackluster gray for Lloyd. His silver hair set off the most amazing electric blue irises in his eyes. He was fit and trim, standing at about six feet tall and wearing a sports coat, jeans and a buttoned-up shirt. Very casual and at ease.

  “So, you’re Donny’s daughter. He’s talked a lot about you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “All not true.”

  Lloyd chuckled. “So, you…” He had her resume before him and was glancing over it. He lifted his eyes back to her.

  “Don’t have any necessary education or experience for this job,” she finished for him.

  Startled, his expression dropped and then lifted upwards into a smile as he pushed the paper away. “Honest. No bullshitting, huh?”

  She shrugged. “It is what it is. You don’t have to pretend to humor me for my dad.”

  “Well, that might be a start. You must have a sense of humor to survive around here.” He rested his elbows on the sides of his chair. “Let me be honest. The job is working as my direct assistant. It involves coordinating between the different job sites and handling anything that comes up. You may need to set up meetings with me or arrange for deliveries to the job site or handle the incoming submittals. All of which you are not trained for…” Leaning back in his chair, he nodded towards her abandoned resume he’d tossed on his immaculate desktop. “The thing is, whoever I put in this job has to be someone that I can stand being around for long periods of time. We will be working closely together enough of the time that we must have an amicable, working relationship. I prefer someone who is quiet but does whatever I ask without a lot of guff or questions. But if they are too mousy, they won’t speak up if I’m wrong. You know, they must also catch any of my mistakes. So I’m looking more for a good personality than an outstanding resume.”

  She twisted her clammy hands in her lap below the desk so he couldn’t witness her awkwardness. She kept her face neutral and her gaze on his. She appeared semi-confident even though she wasn’t. In fact, she was breathless with her discomfort and incompetence. “Good, because I don’t have one… a resume, that is, but I do have a decent personality and I think I can work with you.”

  She held his gaze. For a long while. He twisted his lips as he leaned forward. “Well, I like your bluntness. I like your upfront approach. So let’s see about that.
Why don’t we try it out for a while?”

  “You mean, you’re hiring me?” Her tone of voice reflected her shock.

  He smiled how one would when indulging a child with their favorite ride at a carnival. “Yes. It saves me from having to advertise and sort through a dozen applicants. You kind of fell in my lap without any work. So why not you?”

  “I don’t know anything about construction.” She felt compelled to emphasize that in case he somehow missed such an important fact.

  His lips twitched. “I caught that. I can teach you about construction and the way we run things, but I can’t teach you to have a decent personality. So I value your honesty, and having that already, allows me and my staff to train you. Make sense?”

  She kept her face passive as she nodded, “Yes, Mr. Cartwright.”

  He stood up with his hand out. “So you want to try this?”

  She stood too and put her hand in his, shaking it. “Okay. Let’s try it out.” She could have groveled in gratitude, despite how inept she was for any job. But she refrained from doing that, and pretended that she expected this outcome. She was good at appearing confident. She often had a serious expression on her face, one that people seemed to assume was inner confidence or unflagging belief in her skills. As if. But she managed to fake it despite her constant anxiety, stress, and neurotic tendencies.

  As they had held each other’s gaze and touched hands, there was a distinct something that zinged between them. It was an instantaneous reaction. She was sure it wasn’t just on her end either. She dropped his hand, smiled without speaking and therefore, revealing anything that might have exposed her real self. Her incompetent self. The self that was going to be Lloyd Cartwright’s new assistant.

  “Come this way, let me introduce you around.”

  Led out to the front entry of the offices, she was formally introduced to the matronly Judy Anne who didn’t even pretend to smile at her. Her eyebrows rose up and then back down after her gaze scanned over Julia with a cool, “Hi.”

  Next, she met Walter, the bookkeeper who was a tall thin man with glasses perched on his nose and thinning blond hair. He waved hello with the same lack of interest as Judy Ann. Not exactly a friendly office staff.

  From there they went to the first office, a small enclosure with no windows where she was introduced to the project manager named Phineas, who grunted at her without sparing a glance up from where he was pouring over paperwork in front of him. A tie was shoved haphazardly over his shoulder, as his shirt buttons strained over his stomach. He wasn’t all that overweight, but seemed to prefer too small of shirts.

  Last, they walked into a larger office with a window and an older woman, who was perhaps in her fifties. She turned from the table she sat before while perusing a set of blueprints. She had long brown hair, perfectly straight it brushed over her shoulder. She had virtually no eyebrows and drew them in with a single line of brown pencil, but they were crooked and therefore distracting. In order to avoid staring, Julia forced her gaze down to Margaret’s brown turtleneck and not the distinct and odd eyebrows. “And this is Margaret, the other project manager. Margaret, Julia. We’re giving her a shot as my new assistant.”

  Margaret’s face didn’t move in recognition of the words. “Really? Well, good luck to you, Julia.” Her words were right, but her tone was not. Her glare perused Julia and was as scathing as her tone of voice dripped disdain. Puzzled, Julia felt a ripple of uncertainty travel down her spine. She’d rubbed this woman wrong before she even spoke.

  Lloyd then set her up with Walter, going over her new hire packet. Two hours of paperwork and instruction, after which she was given an office right next door to Lloyd’s. It was small, with only a desk, plans table, and file cabinet. The walls were white and the floor had blue carpeting. Functional and utilitarian. No window. Windows seemed to be a status symbol in these offices. Lloyd walked her to the front door. “We’ll start in my office at eight o’clock and I’ll give you a rundown, okay?’

  It sounded far more than okay. Tomorrow she had work outside of her father’s office. And it didn’t entail staring at a computer and fielding phones calls all day. She restrained the urge to throw her arms around Lloyd in gratitude. He gave her the job. A chance. The chance to be a new and improved Julia Lindstrom.

  ****

  Chris Vaughn leaned back on the seat of the excavator he was operating, pausing to watch his father crossing the graveled lot. He was headed towards the mobile job shack that housed the offices where Chris and his crew worked. Folding his arms over his chest as the giant machine under him idled away, he felt the engine’s vibrations travel up through his torso to where the top of his head met the hard hat. He sat up straighter when the figure he spotted trailing behind dear, old dad filtered into his consciousness.

  Who was that? Chris scooted around, squinting against the harsh sunlight of the blistering blue sky and platinum sun. Blonde. Tall. Slim. She was wearing a ridiculous white dress. White! Of all the colors, she chose white for this muck hole? Her dress ended at her knees, surrounding her slender frame, and he could see the multi-inch spiked heels from where he sat. Who was she? Scurrying after the old man, who appeared to be her primary focus, she trailed behind him like a duckling chasing its mother.

  Chris sighed. Sure, of course, Barbie there was most likely his dad’s new assistant. He liked them young and fresh out of business school. He usually started sleeping with them after the first month he hired them. It sometimes took longer, but he almost always succeeded in seducing them. At best, his father could be called a philanderer. That was the nice name for it. A male whore. A player. But unpaid gigolo suited his father much better as far as his conscience was concerned. Chris had often heard women discussing Lloyd Cartwright, calling him a silver-haired fox and a distinguished, older man. Chris’s father seemed to possess a power over these young women, who were usually barely in their twenties. He first posed as an accomplished mentor to them, and then a sexual relationship naturally ensued. Most of those didn’t end well, however. At least not for the women. Chris wondered why they never saw Lloyd as a father figure, or possibly even a grandfather figure. Chris could only continue to wonder. His dad turned fifty-six this year, not even remotely close to the ages of the barely legal women he slept with.

  After three failed marriages, Lloyd enjoyed the entire smutty, mid-life crisis package that he proudly offered to young women. But it wasn’t a crisis confined to mid-life. Oh, no. His dad had been doing the same thing for thirty years. The only factor that changed was Lloyd’s age, never the ages of the women.

  Lloyd had no idea that one of the many, perhaps dozens of affairs he had could have resulted in the birth of a son. Chris Vaughn. But so far, Chris didn’t tell that to Lloyd. Chris only intended to meet the man whom his mother claimed was his father. However, at their introduction, Lloyd held out his hand to shake Chris’s, erroneously assuming Chris was there to interview for a job, since he looked like a construction worker.

  Chris was six foot seven with a broad chest and strong arms, rippled with muscles. Wearing a t-shirt that stretched across his massive chest, his impressive girth was the result of many hours of weightlifting. His tattoo-sleeved arms, bald head, and crooked nose instantly told anyone he wasn’t an average male.

  Chris was startled at first by Lloyd’s assumption that he was there for a job, but he went along with the interview. He lied and said he saw the Help Wanted sign in the office window, and had some experience on construction sites, which was certainly enough for him to qualify for a job at CGC. Lloyd hired him at once. Since then, Chris did everything imaginable in the construction of a commercial building. From grunt work like spreading gravel to helping with roof assembly to finishing work installing hardware on cabinets and doors at the end of a project. There was no task that Chris didn’t volunteer for just to gain experience.

  Lloyd promoted Chris to site superintendent and assigned him to his first project, one which he had to run out in the field. When
material or subcontractors arrived on site, Chris was the one they checked in with and from whom they took all instructions. Chris was the responsible one now; it fell on his shoulders if anything went wrong with the workers or the construction process. Chris took a crash course in reading blueprints during the last four years. Being a quick study, he managed to hide his initial ignorance on the subject when he started. He never intended to do anything more than monitor the man who was his natural father. He still hadn’t decided if he even wanted to get to know him.

  Somehow, a few months turned into four years, and Chris still hadn’t told his dad his true identity. He remained undecided. Even now. In all honesty, Chris loved the damn job. It was a complete surprise. Initially hired as a laborer, his job title included anything from debris removal, to running errands for his superiors. Chris did it diligently. He was observant, motivated, and he didn’t leave until all the tasks of the day were finished. That soon got him noticed. He hated to be idle and tended to excel at whatever he attempted, whether it be excavating a ditch, or sweeping up the sawdust inside a warehouse. His best efforts showed every time. All the time. There was no job Chris thought he was too good for.

  As reward for all his hard work, he’d worked his way up the ladder and now currently worked as Lloyd’s newest site superintendent.

  Chris shut down the excavator and jumped out of the cab to cross over the muddy hole, heading towards the job shack. It was March and they could break ground after enduring a long winter of more than average rain and frigid temperatures. It invariably resulted in a mucky soup regarding any dirt work. The earthmovers required full-sized excavators and dump trucks to remove the hills of sludge. They would later fill it with gravel and rocks, part of the site plan for proper drainage.

  He smacked his boots on the stairs beside the door, brushing them several times on the boot scrubber. It didn’t do much to remove the caked-on mud. Dried mud masked the brown leather and the treads on the soles were full of stuck-on bits. The hems of his jeans were ripped and frayed, streaked with more lines of brown mud.