Read Online DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!) by Stephanie Brother - Free Book Online

the country look, but at least I’ve had the presence of mind to wear boots. I’ll give the all star athlete ten minutes before he starts complaining his feet are sore. That should serve him right.
    To be fair, the scenery here is spectacular, and although it’s hot, it’s nice to be out of that tiny house and in the middle of nowhere. I thought I’d never say it, but being in the middle of nowhere is actually a lot more relaxing that I thought it would be. I’ve brought my cell anyway, just, you know, on the off chance there’s a signal out here, but I’d be just as happy not being able to use it.
    Marvin has selected what he has referred to as a gentle hike, which is supposed to take us past a lake and nature reserve stocked full of a wide variety of different birds and other wildlife with important but impossible to remember names, and back to the car in a kind of oval loop. I had no idea he was such a geek about stuff like this, which makes me wonder briefly whether Landon might not be his biological son after all, until a close analysis of their mannerisms tells me otherwise.
    They don’t look all that similar, but they carry themselves almost exactly the same way. It’s curious. Landon’s undoubtedly got swag, but on his dad it comes across as something different. It’s the same movement with a completely different drive. On Landon it comes across as arrogance, whereas on Marvin it’s something more akin to deference. If he paid attention, Landon could learn a lot from his father.
    Over the first fifteen minutes of the walk, I find myself watching Mom and wondering how similar the two of us are. I never knew how much of a geek she was either, but with Marvin by her side, the two of them look like a matching pair of nerds. Both of them have their binoculars ready to spy the birds, their trekking boots to weather all conditions, waterproof shorts and jacket, and no doubt a box of rations in case of emergency. She’s nothing like me, thank God. I would die if I ended up like that.
    Out here, Landon is like a little child. He’s either running from the end of one field to the next, chasing away birds, picking flowers he shouldn’t or just generally causing mayhem. Actually, he’s more like a little dog than a little boy, because children are generally much more intelligent. Maybe he’s never seen the countryside at all. He’s certainly giving that impression.
    Thirty minutes in, when Landon has worn himself out enough, and although he’s not saying it but I know his feet are sore from wearing the stupid team issue flip flops he’s brought along, we all kind of fall into a line and trudge along the sun beated track, Marvin at the front, Landon at the back and Mom and I pegged in the middle.
    “I’m hungry.”
    “What do you want me to do about it?”
    “Did we bring any food?
    “Did I bring any food, or did you bring any food?”
    “Dad?”
    Like I say, he can’t go two minutes without needing some kind of attention. I guess it’s that ego he has to feed.
    “We’ll have lunch when we get back home.”
    “We have to wait until we get back home? Didn’t you bring any chocolate or anything?”
    “No.”
    “That’s not very survivalist, is it?”
    “You’ll have to catch and kill a duck.”
    “I can’t believe we didn’t bring any chocolate.”
    We stop for a moment while Marvin points out some exotic species of bird in the air, which Landon and I can’t see because we don’t have binoculars. We all have to wait patiently until Marvin confirms it’s flown over, and all I see are wisps of cloud and hazy lines choked by too much sun. When Marvin has jotted it down in the notebook he carries around his neck, we get going again.
    “Mom, since when have you been into birding?”
    “Oh, you know, I’ve always dabbled.”
    Mom has never dabbled. I doubt she even knows the difference between a goose and a swan, she’s here because Marvin is. I let it go. The last thing I want to do is break