Playing it Cool (Sydney Smoke Rugby) Read Online Free Page B

is?”
    Harper gave a half laugh. “It’s the way a lot of people do.”
    “We’re talking about Chuck now, right?”
    “My stepbrother…” Harper picked her way carefully through this. She didn’t have a lot of time for Chuck—she certainly didn’t feel like she owed him any family loyalty—but he did have to work with guys like Dex, and she had no desire to fuck anything up for him, either. “Let’s just say we don’t see eye to eye.”
    “How in the hell did you come to have the misfortune of being related to that tosser?”
    Harper blinked at the patent distaste in Dex’s voice. “He’s not…liked?”
    According to Chuck—who had the good fortune to be born with classic, clean-cut good looks and a great physique—he was Mr. Popularity. Apparently all the footy players loved him and, with his unparalleled ratings, he was being groomed to host the studio’s rugby show when the position next became vacant.
    Her gaze roamed over Dexter Blake’s face. He wasn’t classically good-looking at all. Sure, he was tall and broad, but his dark hair was a little too unruly and there was nothing clean-cut about the rugged, stomped-on features that gave him the rather battered appearance worn by a lot of rugby players.
    But his face did more for her than Chuck’s brand of pretty ever had.
    “Not liked?” He laughed and it was music to Harper’s ears. “He’s barely tolerated. He’s a total dick who cares more about looking good and getting his face on the camera than he does any hard-hitting sports news. But hey…the female audiences love him.” His brow scrunched, accentuating the rugged appearance. “Apparently.”
    The last was said with such confusion that Harper laughed. “It’s okay. I don’t get it, either.”
    She’d seen too much of his ugly heart to consider him any kind of attractive.
    “Have you been related long?”
    Harper doodled paint absently on her canvas, not really paying too much attention to what she was creating, the paintbrush as much an extension of her as a ball was to Dex. She sipped her wine, trying to decide whether she should go into all the gory details. Ultimately, with Dex’s long, slow strokes distracting her, she found herself wanting to tell him.
    “I was ten when my dad married Chuck’s mother. He was fourteen. And well and truly the golden boy as far as my stepmum Anthea is concerned.”
    “So he was always a prick?”
    Harper’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Pretty much. I think he was threatened that I was as tall as him and not some pretty, dainty little girl who was going to hero worship him. He used to call me harpoon because that’s what whales like me needed.”
    Dex’s hand stilled mid-stroke and his knuckles turned white. “Did you tell your dad?”
    “Nah.” Harper had been lucky to have Em and a decade of body-positive messages that had given her a good sense of herself, even if the crushing weight of a society obsessed with bodily perfection played havoc with her confidence from time to time. “He was happy after being sad for so long about Mum dying. And Anthea was okay. I mean…she was cute and petite and blonde and ate like a sparrow, and I think my size eleven shoes were a constant embarrassment to her, but it wasn’t really until after my dad died a few years ago that it’s become all about Chuck again. Especially since his big nomination for the annual television awards. Anyone would think he was up for a freaking Nobel Prize.”
    “So…if your dad’s not around anymore, why have anything to do with Chuck and his mother at all?” he asked, dipping his paintbrush in the red again.
    “Because when I was twelve they had twins—Jace and Tabby. They’re my brother and sister and they mean the world to me. When Dad died, they were the same age I was when I’d lost my mother to a car accident, and I promised my father while he was in the hospital that I would always look out for them. So I grit my teeth and pretend all is