All Chapters of StepBrother Secret Obsession : Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Please hold your chin up slightly, Miss Evelyn,” the makeup artist said in a quiet voice, holding a small cosmetic brush near my cheek.I sat silently in front of the large illuminated mirror in my third-floor bedroom. This room was located at the very end of the quiet hallway. It was much smaller than the grand master suites in the main wing, but it was the only space in this massive stone mansion where I could lock the door and feel safe from cold stares.Across the room, laid out neatly on my bed, was a designer evening gown. It was soft champagne silk, sent up by the family stylists under Arthur Vance’s direct orders. Two assistant stylists were carefully steaming the long hemline, while a senior hairdresser prepared gold hairpins and expensive diamond jewelry on my vanity table.I stared at my reflection in the glass. My skin looked smooth and glowing under the bright vanity light, but my eyes were dark and tired. In my left hand, I was still holding the single red rose Dorothy h

Clara?" Dorothy's voice came out thick and slow from the bed. I was standing just inside the door with my hand still on the light switch, and I didn't move. I didn't answer. I couldn't. If I said even one word, he would know it wasn't her. I waited until my eyes got used to the dark. A little moonlight was coming through the gap in the curtains, enough for me to see the bed and the shape of him on it. He was lying on his back with one arm over his face. I could hear him breathing, fast and heavy, like he had just run up three flights of stairs. Far away downstairs, I could still hear the orchestra. It sounded small and thin from up here, like it was playing in a different house. "Clara," he said again. "You came." I put my hand over my mouth. I wanted to leave so badly. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. Clara's mask was itchy against my face and it had her perfume on it, something sweet and expensive that I would never have bought for myself. It felt strange to smell her

I sat on the floor against the door until I stopped shaking. It took a while.When I could stand up, I went into the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as I could stand it. I scrubbed my skin until it turned pink. It didn't help. I could still hear him saying Clara's name. And I kept thinking about Clara herself, asleep somewhere in the house, with no idea that I had used her face.By the time I came out, the sky outside my window was turning gold. Downstairs the staff had started moving around. I could hear trays clinking and a vacuum cleaner going somewhere in the hall. In a couple of hours the whole house would be awake.I sat down at my dressing table in a towel to comb out my hair, and that's when I saw the pins.When I came back to my room I had pulled the last of the gold hairpins out of my hair and dropped them on the table without looking. They were the leaf-shaped ones with a tiny pearl on the end, the kind of thing only expensive stylists think of. I counted them. One, two,