PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (24 page)

PRESTON

I
stood on the sidewalk, frozen in place as Madison Hearst cried into my
chest, her delicate shoulders racked by the sobs stealing from her throat. I
wasn’t used to hanging out with a lot of crying women, but I knew enough to
know that these weren’t tears of pain or sorrow. These were hot, angry tears,
tears of rage and frustration held in so long that the damn had burst, and now
they had to come spilling out.

I grimaced before gently placing my arms
around her. I’d shed a few of those kind of tears myself in my life, and it
seemed like offering her the comfort I’d always been denied was the right thing
to do, no matter how awkward it might look to the people surrounding us.

It wasn’t just that Maddy was crying,
though I was certain that was strange enough on its own. What really made me
feel like a spectacle was the fact that we were brother and sister—or at
least, we would be in just a few short weeks.

My miserable fuck of a father was marrying
Madison’s shrew of a mother. They may have deserved each other, but I held onto
the opinion that neither Maddy nor I deserved either one of them. It rendered
us stepsiblings, which I had assumed would count for something, but up until
this moment, I’d been one hundred percent sure that Madison hated my guts.

Everything she’d ever done had
practically screamed it. She looked at me with nothing but disdain, and each
time I entered a room with her in it, the temperature dropped at least two
degrees. She only offered me curt, clipped responses whenever I tried to strike
up a conversation, and that was only if she chose to speak at all. I wasn’t
certain what I’d done to deserve her ire, but whatever it was, I’d been under
the impression that there was just no reversing it.

As a result, I’d given up on having any
kind of relationship with my soon-to-be stepsister. And who could blame me? Yet
here we were, locked in an embrace on the sidewalk of a busy street—and
in broad daylight, no less.

Something had to be wrong. I knew she’d
worked in some kind of office nearby, but was she coming to see me? If she was,
something had to be
seriously
wrong.
It occurred to me that it could have something to do with one—or
both—of our parents.

My breath caught in my throat, but
before I could ask, she lifted her face again and said, “I lost my job.”

I looked down at her, noticing for the
first time how very green her eyes were. If she were any other woman I probably
would have been looking straight down the neckline of her blouse, but something
about Maddy’s face had always struck me as celestial, angelic. That wasn’t to
say I didn’t appreciate her womanly body, those supple curves that made me wish
our parents had never met the very first time I’d seen her... It only meant
that those rare and beautiful eyes were the most breathtaking pair I’d ever
seen.

Which was saying something, because I’d
looked into the eyes of
a lot
of
women.

I didn’t tell her that. All I could
think of to say that didn’t sound incredibly stupid was, “I’m sorry.” And then,
as soon as those words left my mouth, I realized that they
did
sound incredibly stupid. No wonder she hated me.

But instead of fixing me with that
frigid stare she’d inherited directly from her mother, Maddy shook her head and
said, “Don’t be. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault…”

That thousand-yard stare she was
sporting made me uneasy. I didn’t know a lot about her job, except that she’d
worked as an administrative assistant for some rental company, but I got the
impression that Maddy definitely didn’t have a lot of money. She’d never said
as much, but her mother sure as hell had implied it. It was almost as if that
woman wanted her daughter to fail, like she got no greater joy in life than
watching Maddy flounder. It seemed a little wrong when she was spending her
days milking my father for every dollar he was worth.

I shifted uncomfortably. Maddy suffered
a hardship I’d never known. I came from money, and lots of it. In fact, if it
weren’t for being the sole heir to the Harvey fortune, I wouldn’t have had to
work a day in my life. But Dad insisted, and when he made his mind up about
something, there was no changing it—not even if it made everyone else
around him miserable.

Hell,
especially
if it
made everyone miserable.

“I was just on my way to a meeting,” I
said, and that was mostly true. Jane, my personal assistant, had texted me to
let me know she was running hot, as usual. That woman was crazy in the worst
ways. Maybe I was stupid for sticking my dick in psycho, but I was a
hedonist—and a glutton for punishment. Especially when it came at the
hands of a buxom redhead in a leather cat-suit… She knew it was over, but that
wasn’t stopping her from blowing my phone up with one filthy picture after
another today. Part of me wondered if I was meeting up with her to affirm it
was over, or to fuck her sideways…

Maybe both.

Thing was, though, my escapades with
Jane were beginning to take their toll on me. What started in unpredictable and
unlawful ways had started to get dangerous. Suddenly, she wanted more. Maybe it
was all the pressure she was putting on me to meet her parents and take her up
to the Hamptons for a “romantic getaway.” It was her way of trying to make us
something official, but we weren’t, and no matter how many times I tried to
explain that to her, Jane just didn’t seem interested in getting it.

That was probably some kind of red flag.
I probably should have cut things off with her a long time ago. But if it was
all going to end messy anyway, what was the harm in drawing out the good parts
a little longer than I should?

Maddy was staring at me. The little
flame of hope flickering in her eyes died, snuffed out by my careless words. I
scrambled to regroup, to find something to say that didn’t sound like I was
brushing her off.

Because honestly, I would rather have
spent the day with my distraught stepsister than deal with the crazy shit that
my crazy secretary was doing in my office. It was weird to admit it, even to
myself, but it was true.

“Okay, let’s start over.” I took the
Bluetooth earpiece out of my ear and thrust it into my pocket so the steady
stream of notifications I was getting from Jane couldn’t interrupt me. “You’re
clearly having a bad day, and there’s a café I like about a block from here.
Let me buy you lunch.”

She opened her pretty mouth, and for a
moment, I was sure she was going to deny me. But then she nodded, lifting her
fingers to her face to brush away the tears still brimming in her eyes.

“I
am
hungry,” she admitted softly.

I smiled. Realizing we’d been holding
one another in the middle of the sidewalk for several minutes now, I released
her and swept her up beside me, pressing my hand into the small of her back.
Maybe that wasn’t an appropriate brotherly reaction, but it was instinct and I
was new to this whole stepbrother thing. Besides, I’d touched my share of
pretty girls that way.

One thing was different with Maddy,
though. When I touched her, I felt something stir inside of me, something like
tectonic plates moving and shifting under the surface. And below that, there
was something flowing and hot, something that made me notice suddenly the smell
of her hair, the smoothness of her skin, the way her ass just barely brushed
the side of my hand as we walked, the fabric of her stylish pencil skirt
clinging to both those ripe, gorgeous swells above her shapely calves and
thighs.

Those heels, too—my God. If they
didn’t scream “fuck me,” I wasn’t sure what did.

But those were just thoughts. Silly
thoughts. The kind of thoughts that came to a man at inappropriate times. Like
when he was hanging out with the one girl in the entire world that was
completely off limits. Totally normal.

Right?

Either way, I needed to get rid of them.
This was probably my only shot at actually getting my stepsister to like me,
and I wasn’t about to let my traditional male stupidity fuck it up.

It didn’t take long to reach the place,
and I was already starting to relax as I led Maddy in through the front door.
Without saying a word, the hostess had noted our arrival and ushered us in to
my regular booth.

“I thought you said this place was a
café?”

I looked around. I’d been to this place
dozens of times, but somehow it seemed as if I’d never really looked at it
before now. The walls were paneled in dark cherry wood with accents of crimson
damask paper that looked like it had been imported from Europe. I’d have bet
that if I’d touched it, it would’ve felt just like silk. The gold highlighting
the pattern was probably genuine too, and looking at them now, I had no doubt
that the amber crystals adorning the chandeliers were Swarovski-made, or
similar.

I shrugged, handing one of the menus our
server had provided over to Maddy. “It is. Just a ritzy one.”

She looked around at the tables surrounding
us and fingered the neckline of her blouse. “I feel like I’m underdressed…”

“You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “You
look fine. I mean, beautiful. You look…” I ground my teeth, trying to regain my
composure. “You’ll fit right in.” Then I opened the menu and buried my nose in
it, inwardly kicking myself for how utterly stupid everything I’d said today
had thus far been.

“What should I order?” Maddy said, and I
realized she probably had no idea what half the things on the menus were. I set
mine down and began to unbutton my blazer to drape it over the back of my
chair.

“If you like lighter fare, anything with
chicken is a good bet.” I finally freed myself of the constraining jacket and
sighed in relief. Finally I could feel my biceps again. “If you’re more in a
dinner mood, there’s always the beef bourguignon.”

“I think I had the TV dinner version of
that once,” she laughed, her eyes flitting over the myriad of items listed for
her. “Um… I’ll go with that, I think. Yeah, that sounds good.”

I smiled. It felt good to see her
without tears in her eyes. “And some wine?”

“You pick,” she said, shaking her head.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She slid her menu over to me and I took
it, stacking it on top of mine.

“You can start by telling me what
happened with your job,” I offered. Even though it was mid-day outside the mood
lighting inside cast shadows over Maddy’s face, shadows that seemed even darker
when I mentioned the dreaded j-word. “I mean, if you want to, of course.”

“I do,” she said. “I’m just so
embarrassed…” She took a sip of her ice water. When she pulled the glass away,
I marveled at the tiny beads that had formed on them.

She licked them away, and I watched the
progress of her tongue, hoping she mistook the intensity of my stare for
interest in her story.

“It wasn’t a good job,” she said,
meeting my gaze. “But it was all I had. It paid the bills and the rent… and
frankly, not much else.” She laughed again. This time, it sounded bitter. “That
was enough for me, though. At least until I found something better.”

I nodded, parroting what I’d heard
others say. “It’s hard out there right now.” I had no real idea about any of
that, of course, and Maddy called me on it.

“Yeah. Not all of us can have an in with
the CEO of one of the world’s most profitable companies.” But then she
swallowed her anger, even though it lit up her face in a very sexy way. “Well,
anyway, I’d been putting up with a lot of shit over there. More so recently,
though the past few years hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park, either.” She
looked at me. “Do you know that the first day I was there, the receptionist who
was supposed to train me left for lunch and never came back? I had four hours’
worth of training before they threw me to the wolves.” She shook her head in
amazement. “It’s a wonder I survived my first six months, let alone four
years…”

“Sounds like they don’t have a clue what
they’re doing,” I said, and that much was a genuine commentary on the matter. I
had learned enough from my father, not to mention Harvard, to know an
incompetently-run business when I saw one. Or, in this case, heard of one. “You
were probably lucky to get out.”

Maddy snorted. “Yeah, in one way, but
what about the other? I’m broke, Preston. Or I will be once I handle my bills
and rent this month. My lease isn’t up for another eight months, and if I break
it early, I’ll owe my landlord
thousands.
”
She continued to fret until the waiter came over to take her order. As she
struggled with remembering the name, I interrupted.