Read Online PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance by Sarah Sparrows - Free Book Online Page B

structured everything with black on one side
and white on the other, and lay out the spectrum of dominant color between the
two. Each drawer corresponded vertically with the right color for each garment,
no matter where it was.

 
    Proud of the
uniformity, I unpacked the books that I had brought. These went on the shelves
across the room, close to the exquisite floor lamp. There were plenty of places
in the Beach House where I could read to my heart’s content, should living
alone with my brother turn out to be too much a bother.

 
    Last but not
least, I removed a few small, personal artifacts, mostly just for display.
Removed from their padding, I placed them on the end tables, in my private
bathroom, and a few on the top shelf above the rest of the books.

 
    Pleased with
myself, I changed into a comfortable, loose tee and a pair of baggy pajamas. Passing
Sawyer’s room down the hall, I could hear that he had resumed unpacking his
things behind the closed door. I briefly flirted with the idea of yanking the
door open and trying to pay him back – something he probably would have done anyway.

 
    Great, now I’m even THINKING like the jerk.

 
    I instead
retrieved one of my paperbacks and descended down the stairs. Sliding it onto
an end table beside a nice reading chair in a side room, I strolled back
towards the kitchen. It was only now that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything
since the morning, and I was absolutely starving.

 
    There was an
ample selection in the fridge. Rows of sliced, premium deli meats, cheeses,
fruits and fresh vegetables, gourmet yogurts, and much more immediately came
into view. On the door there was a wide variety of beverages: milk, soy milk,
almond milk, orange and pineapple juice, grape juice, apple juice, frigid
coffee drinks, smoothie blends, carbonated sodas…

 
    “There’s no way we’ll eat all of this,” I thought
aloud. “Half of this is going to spoil…”

 
    Pulling out
the bottom freezer compartment, I perused the wide variety of frozen foods. It
seemed like maybe twenty percent of the drawer was filled with desserts and
treats – there were ice cream flavors in here that I had never even heard of, let alone seen. As for the
rest, it was everything you could think of, with the blatant exception of TV
dinners and preserved food. Seemed like our parents had ordered a smorgasbord
of food and stipulated convenience above
everything else – I hated to waste, and was aggravated that there just
wasn’t any room to save anything from spoiling.

 
    I settled on
a borderline gourmet four-cheese pizza. Dreading the nutritional facts, I
closed the drawer on its gliding rails with my extended toe, and then read the
instructions on the back. A few seconds later, the oven was preheating
appropriately, and I began to rip open the box.

 
    A noise
alerted me.

 
    I looked up,
spotting Sawyer in the distance. He was passing through the foyer and on his
way towards the door.

 
    “Hey!” I
called out to him. “Sawyer, HEY!”

 
    He paused,
glancing around until he spotted me. It looked like he was grumbling for a
moment, but he wandered towards the kitchen.

 
    Lazily and
somewhat impatiently, Sawyer leaned against the doorway. “What? What is it?”

 
    “Do you want
some pizza?” I asked, indicating the box. “There’s no way I’m going to eat this
whole thing.”

 
    “There’s no
way either of us is going to eat everything
in that damned fridge…” my stepbrother nodded towards the luxury refrigerator.
For the first time, I realized that it was taller than even him.

 
    “Yeah, you’re
right,” I agreed, looking over at it again. “Why did they have it filled so
much? You and I could get by with maybe a quarter of that freaking thing.”

 
    “Because our
parents don’t seem to know how to live without excess.”

 
    “Well, that’s
not fair,” I reprimanded him with a grim smirk. “Until we met you two, Mom and
I got by