Hard Bastard(90)

“What a gentleman.”

I slipped my hand through his arm and placed it on his bicep, feeling the strong bulge. I felt tingles run down my spine.

“Not such a gentleman. I’m using you for support.”

I laughed. “Well, at least you have the appearance down.”

“You know me. Always with the appearances.”

We walked together into the main banquet room just as Jules was beginning to introduce the speaker. She didn’t glance in our direction, but I felt many of the heads in the room snap toward us. Eyes locked onto Lincoln and stared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He simply moved forward with me, looking smug and confident as he entered the room. I couldn’t imagine many of them recognized him, since they weren’t exactly his target audience, but there had to be a few people conscious enough of pop culture to know him. I just hoped it wasn’t weird.

Quickly, we found our spots, and the waiters filled our wine glasses. Lincoln gave me a grin as the speaker walked onstage.

Suddenly, looking at his cocky and alluring smile, I realized something.

Inviting him was a bad idea. A really bad idea. I thought it would be fun to have someone my age around, but my heart wouldn’t stop hammering just sitting near him, and he kept giving me these looks. These arrogant, sexy looks that made my knees shake.

It was going to be a long night.

“Are you Based Carter?”

The girl was probably our age, maybe a couple years younger, and had long, dirty blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was pretty in a conventional way, skinny and tall and all that. She was our waitress and I had seen her eyeing Lincoln all night long as one speaker turned into the next. He had pretended like he didn’t notice, or at least he hadn’t acted like he cared, until she finally worked up the nerve to ask.

“I sure am. What’s your name?”

“Wow. I’m Cindy. I’m a huge fan of yours.”

“That’s cool. Thanks, Cindy. Always good to meet a fan.”

“Listen, will you sign something?”

“Sure. Napkin?”

“I mean, they’re cloth.” She frowned, unsure.

He wasn’t listening. He pulled the napkin off his lap and looked up at her. She hesitated a second and then held out a black Sharpie. He proceeded to write, “To Cindy, jump off shit and fly, Based Carter” on the napkin and handed it to her.

“Not used, I promise.”

She giggled. “That’s okay. I mean, thanks so much.”

“No problem, Cindy.” He gave her an absolutely winning smile.

I was surprised by how smoothly he handled it. I knew he was famous, but that was the first time I had seen him deal with a fan. Clearly he had practice.

She stood there for a second staring at him before scampering off, shoving the napkin into her pocket quickly. I gave Lincoln a look.

“Does that happen a lot?” I asked.

“Not really. I mean, more and more in the last year, but it’s not like BASE jumping is super popular.”

“Still, must feel weird.”

“You’re not kidding. After the clothing deal went through, and I was in that Pepsi ad, I got recognized a lot more. That was surreal.”

“Pepsi ad. I forgot about that.”

He laughed. “How could you? Worst shit I’ve ever done, but they paid me a lot.”

I laughed along with him. He hadn’t talked much about his career until then. Throughout the years apart, I had seen him go from pretty obscure jumper to being in national ad campaigns. He wasn’t exactly Hollywood famous or anything like that, but whenever there was an extreme sports-based campaign, they always called up Based Carter. He was becoming pretty recognizable.

So much that his waitresses gushed over him like he was something special.

I took a bite of my salad and looked away. The speaker portion of the night was over, and most people were eating their “complimentary” dinner and drinking from the open bar. Lincoln was keeping our entire table entertained with stories from his travels, which ranged from a friend of his that pretended to fall off a cliff but was actually wearing a parachute to the time he broke the world record for jumping from a man-made structure only to end up arrested a few hours later. He was charming and kind and magnetic, and I could barely keep my eyes off him.

Which only made the doubt lodged in the center of my stomach that much worse. I knew what I wanted, but there were too many things in our way.

Mostly the fact that he was my stepbrother.

As the waitress took away our plates, a live string band began to play something slow but apparently danceable. I watched couples stand up from their tables, make their way to the little dance floor, and begin to slowly move around the space. Lincoln gave me a grin.