When Julia's stepbrother Conner returns from his tour of duty, he's a changed man. Once carefree, it seems that now he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. But when taboo feeling grows between them, Conner finds what he needs to heal him…sensual, forbidden love in the arms of his beautiful stepsister.
~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~
If truth be told, I had started to regard him as something more than my brother. In fact, I had developed a crush on him. For some reason, teenage girls always seem to develop crushes on the most inappropriate people. A lot of my girlfriends had a thing for Mr Hardy, one of the teachers at our school. He was kind of handsome, but not for me. Not when I was in love with Conner.
That's what I told myself anyway. I even wrote in in my diary. 'I'm in love with Conner and one day I'm going to marry him.' Even then, I realized that I was living in a fantasy world. He was my brother, after all. There could be no happy ending, no fairytale. He wasn't going to swoop down and elope with me. This wasn't Hollywood. And even in the movies, brothers and sisters did not become romantically involved.
And so, one he was away, I forced myself to forget my feelings for him. I dated, even had my first kiss. By the time we found out he was coming home, I'd erased my former feelings from my memory. I was looking forwards to seeing him, but in a wholesome, sisterly way. I couldn't wait to have the silly boy back!
