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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  MY HOT STEPBROTHER

  THE SECRET: A SECRET BABY ROMANCE

  MR. BIG SHOT

  AGAIN: A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE

  UNEXPECTED: A SECRET BABY ROMNACE

  PREVIEW OF ARIA FORDS BOOKS

  THANK YOU!

  ABOUT AUTHOR

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  By Aria Ford

  PROLOGUE

  The girl standing in front of me took off her shirt.

  I couldn't help staring as the buttons unclasped one by one to reveal the pale white cleavage. It was thrust into an improbably-small piece of underwear and it drew my focus. The girl was beautiful in an explicit, made-up way and I felt my loins stiffen. I watched the pale body under her shirt appear inch by inch.

  “Wanna kiss, big boy?” she whispered.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, forcing myself to do so before the sight and sound and scent of her got overwhelming and I couldn't refuse anything.

  “No,” I said.

  That took all my effort. Feeling drained, I stood and walked to the door. I was shaking when I stood there, drawing in gulps of air. Behind me the music carried on, and with it the scent of cheap cigarettes and the sound of loud laughter and loud, rhythmic music.

  “Jerry!” One of my friends called out – Pete. His voice came across the loudness and the music and got into my head. I turned to stare across at him. He was holding a glass of beer. He was already red in the face and smiling.

  “Where you going, Jerry?” he called out, repeating the nickname my friends had given me. It grated on me. It was part of my former life.

  I sighed. “Pete, I can't.”

  I stayed where I was at the door of the Reef Club – really an overstated name for a seedy bar in the worst part of LA.

  “Can't what?” Pete asked. His face creased with concern – evidently he wasn't too drunk to notice my desperate frustration.

  “I can't do this anymore.”

  Pete sighed. “What's wrong, Jared?” he asked. “I mean, really wrong?”

  I shook my head, trying to swallow the lump that had unwittingly appeared in his throat. I had drunk quite a lot, and I knew the sudden urgent intensity of my feelings was at least partly to do with that. But it was more than that. The news about Callum had cut me hard. I still couldn't think anything about it without feeling that strange, cold numbness right inside me.

  Callum was dead. He would have been twenty. Shot in a gang-related incident on the street. I knew Callum had been involved with the heroin dealers. It was probably why he'd been hanging out with the Marlow Gang in the first place. That didn't matter – no-one deserves to die for having gotten involved with stuff like that. Everyone deserves a second chance. Now he was dead.

  He was a good friend. A good man. His life should never have ended that way.

  I dragged fresh air into my lungs, wishing something would exculpate the terrible rancid smell of smoke and cheap alcohol and sweat from my mind and nostrils. I hated this place now. Why was I even here? Callum had died living the kind of life I'd been living. It was time.

  “I don't want to live like this anymore.”

  I focused on Pete's face as he said it. I looked into my friend's wide, bloodshot blue eyes. He swallowed, and nodded.

  “Jared, I...I understand,” he began. “We...”

  The name of Callum was like a lead weight in the air between us. We didn't have to speak it for both of us to know what we meant.

  “I need to get out of this, Pete,” I said. “Callum would have agreed too.”

  That was what he'd said to me the last time I saw him. Which was why it hit me so hard, as such a horrible irony, that he'd died. He wasn't meant to die just when he'd decided we were both going to live a better life.

  Pete nodded slowly. The rest of the group – Jake and Bill – they hadn't been as close to Callum as I had. Callum had been restless and different and spoken more to me than he had to the rest of them.

  “You're right,” Pete agreed. “He would want that. Good for you. We understand.”

  I swallowed. The words meant a great deal to me. I had been afraid to walk away – afraid of losing the social circle I had. Of being on the edge of things the way Callum was. Now I knew: they wouldn't reject me just because I wanted to better myself, and that meant I had to try.

  I wanted more than getting drunk and having sex with girls who I didn't know and who didn't know me. I wanted to remember my weekends clearly and make real love. Hell, from a childhood on the streets to an early adulthood of dissolution, I wasn't sure I knew if love even existed.

  It was time to find out.

  I let out a long sigh. That was it.

  I wanted more than that. Callum had wanted more than that. And he'd died trying to find it. But I wasn't planning on dying before I took that brave step out of the life I'd known and into the life I had no idea about but knew sounded good. I wanted it.

  I was ready for it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Darby

  I stood on the edge of the field and hissed at my brother. Around us the Wyoming day cooled to night.

  “Alex, I can't go in there.”

  My brother sighed. “I know, Darby. But really, you can.”

  I clenched my fists at my sides. Why did no-one understand?

  “I need to go back. And you know what Uncle's like...we'll all get talked into staying for another week and I can't! I have work to do.”

  Well, that wasn't strictly true. It was holiday season and I had taken a week off. I could stay. I just wanted to have some time to myself, in civilization, to catch up on filing and to the administrative stuff for which I never had time. I hadn't banked on being stuck out here.

  Alex gave me a serious look. “You know, Darby – you need to slow down sometime.”

  “Oh, for...” I glared at him. My brother is a handsome, six-foot man with blue eyes and a stunning smile. The fact that he's a well-earning financier doesn't make him any less appealing to girls, either. But sometimes, especially now, when he treats me like his baby sister, I want to punch his arm like when we were kids.

  “What?” he asked, those baby blue eyes serene. “It's true, Darbs.”

  “That doesn't mean that it makes it any easier to hear it, over and over again. If anyone else tells me to slow down, I swear I'll...”

  “What was that, auntie Leona? No, it's okay... we're both vegetarian. Yeah.” He turned back to me. “Come on, Darby.”

  I sighed. “Alexander, you know what?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I'd only agree to something like this for you.”

  Alex looked pleased. He smiled at me.

  “I'm glad to hear it, Darby. Well. Come on. We should go in before we cause even more disturbance... as two vegetarian-borderline-vegans in this place, we're freaky enough.”

  I laughed. Alex had a way with words. I often thought he should have gone into law. He could persuade anyone to do anything. As it happens, I was the one who went into law. Funny how these things happen.

  Which was, of course, my problem. I am a junior lawyer at a busy firm. I need to work. Hard. I really don't need to spend a week sitting on my bottom in the middle of nowhere. But since I'd already been persuaded to come on this craz
y family reunion thing, I might as well go along with it.

  “Okay,” I said to Alex. “I'll join in. But only if you promise me we'll stick to my plans.” My plans were to get on the plane in two days' time.

  “Okay,” he promised.

  “Good.”

  I let myself be persuaded to follow him into the tent my uncle had raised in the sprawling backyard.

  “Whoa!”

  I caught my breath as someone stumbled into me. How rude! I was about to let slip a word I'd never normally use in polite company, when the someone turned around.

  I stopped dead. With strawberry-kissed hair, a long, lean face and the brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen, the rude guy was stunning. He was dressed in a denim jacket that looked like it really was torn and grease-stained, jeans and a t-shirt. There was at once something really hot and something a bit unkempt about him – imagine a skinny, strung-out and slightly stubbly Matt Damon.

  Not too skinny, mind – the shoulders under that jacket were ripped.

  “Uh,” I said, blinking. “You might have looked where you were going,” I added, feeling slightly nettled.

  “I didn't see you there,” he said with an uneasy shrug. He was already turning away.

  He didn't seem particularly contrite and my anger rose. It was bad enough being persuaded into this in the first place without this rudeness. This was my family gathering!

  “Well you should have looked,” I snapped.

  I saw Alex go red beside me and I rounded on him, too. “What, Alex? It's rude to walk into people. If you're even a bit polite, you apologize.”

  Alex went redder. “Sorry,” he said. “This is my friend, Jared.”

  “Your friend?” I was astonished. Hot or not, the guy looked like Alex must have picked him up at a rough bike rally. Not that Alex rides bikes.

  Alex looked embarrassed. “Yes. I met him when I was living in LA.”

  “Oh.”

  I was surprised. I was going to ask more, but the rude guy spoke. He made wide eyes at my brother.

  “Alex, I should go.”

  “What?” I said. I don't know why, but that made me even angrier. I hadn't had an apology, and now he was ignoring me and interrupting my discussion with my brother. “Listen, you,” I said. “At least apologize before you go.”

  I kept my voice low, but as it happened I didn't need to worry – the collective Gilmore family was making enough noise in the tent to cover an apocalypse.

  He looked helplessly at Alex, as if to ask him why this strange woman was shouting at him. Alex winced. “Darbs, he...”

  “I don't care what he does or doesn't do,” I said. I glared at the man. He glared back, those blue eyes iced. I found I was enjoying this now.

  “I'm here as a guest,” the man – his name was Jared, I must remember that – reminded me.

  “I'm here as a Gilmore,” I snapped.

  The man's eyes widened and then narrowed. He pushed past me out of the tent.

  Alex looked at me. “You upset him,” he said.

  “I upset him?” I felt my temper direct at my brother now. “Alex! I didn't do anything. He started it. I...”

  I trailed off as my aunt appeared again.

  “Are you all gonna join in?” she asked.

  I sighed. “Coming, auntie.”

  I put my hand on Alex's arm and led him into the tent.

  “We can't just leave him like that,” Alex said, hesitant.

  “Like what?”

  Alex led me back the entrance and he pointed at Jared. The garden was cooling off to evening now, the sky pale blue. I could just see the shape of Jared at the gate, the paler color of his shirt and the pale blue jacket. He was leaning on the gatepost, his hands balled into fists. He was staring out across the landscape. He looked sad and tense and worried. I felt my heart twist with feeling.

  “What can I do?” I asked hesitantly.

  My brother shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe I should call him. He's...it's a long story.”

  “I've got a reasonable attention-span,” I said hotly.

  Alex grinned at me. “Sometimes I forget you're twenty-seven,” he smiled.

  “You're four years older, big-brother.” I protested, but his smile was so gentle that I couldn't really be mad at him. Not for long.

  “I know,” he said. “Listen, don't let Jared upset you, okay? I'll explain why, later. Just... forgive me?”

  I smiled. “For what, Alex?”

  “For bringing someone rude?”

  I laughed. “Oh, Alex. It's not your fault.”

  He grinned. “Thanks.”

  He was about to go outside and talk to his friend when I put my hand on his arm. “Let me,” I said. I don't know what made me say that. But something about that defeated pose made me want to reach out to the odd stranger.

  Alex raised a brow. “You sure, Darbs? He's...unpredictable sometimes.”

  I frowned. I was starting to wonder what exactly it was that was the matter with this guy. I knew I'd probably hear more about it sometime. For now, all I wanted to do was make things better. I headed out into the garden.

  “Jared?” I called.

  He turned around. His face was tight with emotion, his blue eyes staring reproachfully. I sighed.

  “Look,” I began. “We can forget it. Okay? Whatever I did that... stressed you. You're welcome. Alex invited you. It's not like he didn't invite me too. Kind of,” I shrugged.

  His face changed from bleak to confused. “How d'you mean?”

  I sighed. “Well, I didn't want to come. Not really.”

  “It's your family,” he said woodenly. “Like you said. You belong here.”

  I sighed again. “You think so?” Sometimes I felt like an outsider. Not with Mom, Dad or Alex, obviously. But with Dad's crazy mountain connection, yes. The idea of neat, trim ordinary people who lived neat, ordinary lives didn't seem to have occurred to anyone around here.

  He grinned. “I dunno about that.”

  I laughed. “Thanks.”

  When he smiled, I noticed again that he was really handsome. Those blue eyes had a hesitant quality, as if he was waiting for censure. I felt my heart flip. What was in this guy's past? I wished I knew.

  He looked at his hands. “I didn't mean offense,” he added. “I mean, now. And earlier. Sorry.”

  I was stunned. He had apologized? To me?

  “It's okay,” I said. “I was a bit over-the-top.”

  He shook his head, grinning. “You sure put me on blast.”

  I smiled. “I get a bit mad sometimes.”

  He chuckled. “I guess I do too.”

  Again, I noticed that hesitance about him. It was a weird combination. Either he was so intense and cold, or the opposite – hesitant and shy. What was with this guy? I was interested. I wanted to get to know him better.

  I shrugged. “You new here?”

  He nodded. “Grew up in LA.”

  “Oh?” I frowned. “Why the move?”

  He looked at the toes of his scuffed shoes and said nothing. I shrugged.

  “You know what? It's cold out here.” I shivered, rubbing my shoulders in an exaggerated manner. “Go inside, huh?”

  He said nothing. His eyes were still focused on the ground and his throat worked as if he was trying to swallow some deep worries. When he eventually looked up, he didn't say anything still. He just walked toward the tent.

  “Okay,” I shrugged. “We'll go inside.”

  I hadn't meant for him to hear it, but he did. He turned and looked at me.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm... a weird dude.”

  I smiled. “Probably not that weird,” I assured him. He grinned, that sweet smile.

  “Maybe not.”

  We went into the tent together.

  I saw a seat with Alex and Mom and went to join them. Alex looked across to where Jared was joining my cousins in the only other available seat round the big outdoor tables. He looked at me and made round eyes.

  “Well d
one,” he said.

  I frowned. “What, Alex?”

  “I thought it would be harder to persuade him to come in here.”

  That was weird. I made an inquiring face at my brother. He shrugged.

  “I'll tell you tomorrow. Okay?”