Dare: A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire Page B

to sleep with her, I’d get myself a sweet new ride.
    He also didn’t seem to realize how easy this was going to be for me. There was no fucking way I was going to fail this stupid dare of his. Picking up chicks was a piece of cake for me, and once I really laid on the charm and knocked off my douchebag stepbrother act, Sophie would be like putty in my hands. Yeah, we’d gotten off to a bad start, but all I had to do was try to remind her of the times we’d had as kids, when we’d actually been close. If I played into the nostalgic side of things, I could easily worm my way back into her affections, and then into her pants. And soon after that, I’d be sitting pretty in my new car. Yep, piece of fuckin’ cake. This might have been the best deal I’d ever made.
    Let the games begin.

CHAPTER SIX
    SOPHIE
    For my Mom, having Tony and Drew move in was like a wonderful dream. She finally had a typical nuclear family who could all have breakfast together around the kitchen table every morning, chatting and laughing like nothing else in the world mattered. For me, it had been more like a nightmare, but dammit, of course my nightmare just happened to look like a dream come true. Yep, I was talking about Drew. Who else?
    And speaking of dreams…well, I’d been seeing quite a lot of Dan in the last week, but it was still Drew in my head every single night, invading my dreams with his tight abs and muscled arms.
    Strangely enough, he’d actually been nice to me for the last few days, but that only made the situation worse. It meant he was up to something. I could just tell, although if you asked me how, I wouldn’t have an answer. Basically, I was just sitting around waiting for a bomb to drop, and it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’, it was a matter of ‘when’.
    Part of his ‘suddenly nice’ act had involved agreeing to help out at the summer camp for the couple of days my Mom had asked us to do, so now we were on our way there together. I sighed under my breath as I clung to my cardboard takeout coffee, and Drew glanced over at me from the driver’s side.
    “Do I turn left up here?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The hum of the city was falling behind us and quickly giving way to the wide expanse of gorgeous Washington scenery, and as we pulled onto the winding road that led to Mom’s land, my heart slowly swelled with excitement. Even though I wasn’t too chuffed about having to go camping with Drew, I was still looking forward to getting out and about in the wilderness and showing the kids a good time. The blue sky and tufts of forest in the distance filled me with a sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt in a long time due to countless exams and college application essays, and I rolled down my window and took a deep breath of cool, fresh air.
    My phone had lost signal earlier, but it came back for long enough to receive two texts from Cerie. We’d already made up after our silly fight, and true to her word, she and Lana hadn’t brought up Drew ever since, other than asking how my family was doing in general. I texted her back, and glancing at the clock on the dash a second later, I saw that it was almost lunchtime. The kids would have arrived at the camp earlier, but there were some volunteers up there already who would be helping them settle in. Our job today was to get all the food prepped for lunch and dinner, and between that we were going to help out with some activities for the kids.
    “What do you think about setting up an orienteering course for the kids?” I said, looking over at Drew.
    “What, like learning to use maps and compasses and shit like that?”
    “Yes.”
    He shook his head. “Nah. Too boring. They want fun. ”
    “Learning can be fun.”
    “Yeah, for nerds like you,” he replied. So he was back to being a tool again. Good to know.
    He saw my face and chuckled. “Relax, I was just kidding. You’re right, it might be cool to do that. We could make it fun by setting up something like a scavenger