PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (28 page)

The woman—Jane, I
presumed—didn’t look like she was going to follow the order. But then she
finally did take a step back and I let out a breath, my whole body trembling in
the face of her cold rage.

Preston strode toward us. He was coming
so fast and so hard that for a second I thought he was going to plow straight into
Jane and knock her off her crystal-embellished Louboutins. But she stood her
ground even as he threw open the door behind her, putting himself between the
two of us and allowing me to scamper behind his back.

“Get out,” he snarled with such ferocity
it sent chills down my spine. “Do not
ever
come back, and do not
ever
think that
you can speak to my sister like that.”

Jane snorted. “You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me,” she said, but Preston didn’t entertain it. He took her by the arm,
firmly but not roughly, and dragged her outside over the threshold, leaving her
on the stoop.

“The next time you show up here, or
anywhere else that belongs to me, I’m calling security,” he said. “You’re
fucking crazy, Jane. That’s what got you fired, not
her.
”

“Fine,” she sneered. “That’s just great,
Preston. Because you know what? I’m calling the cops!” She rubbed her arm where
he’d touched her, wincing like he’d pulled it out of place, though it was clear
he hadn’t. “This is assault!”

“Leave,” he said before slamming the
door right in her face and locking it from the inside. I heard her pound on it
a few times before she finally gave up, letting out one last scream as the
staccato beat of her heels descended the steps toward Mr. Fletcher’s car.

I looked up at Preston as he turned. The
veins in his neck were bulging, as were his muscles. I could see the immense
bulge of his biceps, especially under the short sleeves of the t-shirt he was
wearing. It draped nicely around his waist, but even so, with his heavy
breathing a teasing glimpse of his abs were visible. He was the picture of raw
power, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

Slowly, his gaze shifted to meet mine.
He asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” I looked
toward the doors again. “I just feel bad for Mr. Fletcher…”

Preston laughed softly. It wasn’t a
happy sound, but he did seem at least darkly amused. “Yeah. Me too.”

I watched as he left the front door,
making his way toward one of the rooms I hadn’t explored yet. I followed him,
watching as he sat down on a very expensive-looking sofa and put his face in
his hands, snarling into them. It was a deep, primal sound.

“I take it you wanted me to get
breakfast because of that,” I said softly, standing awkwardly in the archway.
He nodded without looking up at me. “Was that the woman you were talking about
in the car—the one who doesn’t respect your boundaries?”

“Or yours, apparently,” he muttered,
running both hands through his hair as he leaned back against the cushions with
a sigh. He shook his head. “I’m just glad it’s over, but it’s eight-fifteen and
I already need a drink.”

I smiled uneasily. “Do you have a bar? I
make a mean Bloody Mary.”

“Not here,” he told me. “This is a place
of business, after all. It’s not like in the Sixties, when we did that kind of
thing…” Preston hadn’t been alive in the Sixties, and yet he somehow seemed
wistful. He waved his hand after a moment. “Coffee would do, if you wouldn’t
mind.”

I set my clutch down on one of the
armchairs near him. “Where’s the kitchen?” I asked.

“Just through here,” he answered,
pointing at a door at the far side of the room. He relaxed while I went through
it and entered one of the most glorious kitchens I’d ever seen.

Though it was keeping in style with the
Italian countryside theme Preston had going on, it was a gourmet ensemble if
I’d ever seen one. The stove looked state-of-the-art and the cabinets, though
made of dark wood, all had transparent doors that let one see their contents without
having to open them first. The fridge was massive, a French door model with a
separate, pull-out freezer down below. Everything was gleaming steel against
wood, except for the copper pot rack hanging above a kitchen island with a
marble countertop.

I found the coffee machine easily
enough. As expected, Preston had an expensive brew tucked away near the
filters. The smell alone did more to wake me up than my own cup back at my
apartment had, and I brewed enough for two before returning to the sitting room
and offering a mug to my stepbrother.

“Look, Maddy, I know this probably looks
bad,” he started, clearly still caught up on my arrival. “You weren’t supposed
to see any of that. She wasn’t even supposed to be here.”

“Relax. It’s none of my business, and
I’m not one to judge,” I replied, thinking back to a little short term office
fling I’d had with one of the mail runners in my earlier days at ExecuSpace.
“I’m just glad to have this opportunity…”

He smiled. “Well, it looks like your
first official duty as my new personal assistant was to get me post-breakup
coffee. How’s it feel?”

I laughed. “Patronizing,” I said,
sitting down on the same armchair I’d set my clutch onto. Its deep,
cocoa-colored leather upholstery was firm, yet soft enough to be comfortable,
and the tufted back gave me more support than I’d thought it would. “Still,
it’s good to have a job. I do have a question, though.”

Preston took a sip of his coffee. He
winced, as if he’d never learned not to let a hot beverage cool. “What’s that?”

I blew on the surface of my own mug, my
lips moving before the wiser half of my brain could stop me.

“Do you fuck all of your secretaries?”

Preston stared at me with an almost
shocked look on his face, choking on his drink.

I felt my face flush and my stomach
plummet, then fill with the wingbeats of a thousand butterflies as Preston
laughed nervously and turned away.

Why
the hell did I say that?

PRESTON

Maddy’s
first day as my new assistant became a lot more boring after Jane had
finally stopped storming around the front lawn. Most of it was spent having her
fill out all the appropriate paperwork and letting her look over Jane’s notes,
most of which I’d managed to salvage after she’d torn through her desk like a
demon in an effort to destroy as much company property as she could. Though I’d
been dreading that moment for months, now that it had passed, I felt relieved.
Maddy had been right. It was good to let go, especially before Jane was in a
position to do anything worse.

“Are you concerned about what she said?”
she asked me at lunch. I’d taken her to a bistro on the lake behind my
property. “About the ‘assault,’ I mean?”

I shrugged. “Not really. Jane has anger
issues, that’s true, but I doubt she’d go so far as to actually file a police
report against me. And even if she did, she’s got no proof. I didn’t grab her
that hard. And besides,” I added with a grin, “I have witnesses.”

“
A
witness, anyway,” Maddy said. “But that’s probably good enough.”

Although I put on an appearance of
confidence, I certainly hoped we were right, the last thing I needed was that
kind of publicity… Regardless of what was going to happen with Jane, by the end
of the first day Maddy was already pretty comfortably settled in. Things almost
felt… Normal.

Except that I couldn’t get Maddy’s words
out of my head…

Do
you fuck all of your secretaries?

Sure, it had been a joke. All in good
fun… But it had my wheels moving in ways they shouldn’t have been moving.

I did my best to ignore it.

When weeks went by without hearing
anything from Jane, both of us breathed a collective sigh of relief. I
immediately forbade any more talk of her, fearful that invoking her name might
make the demon return. I’d have to write up a rule somewhere that disallowed
anyone from going into a bathroom with the lights off and saying “Jane Turner”
three times in front of a mirror, but as it so happened, my attention was far
more focused on Maddy.

I’d had every confidence in her that
she’d turn out to be the perfect new personal assistant, and I’d been right.
I’d just had no idea how right I would be. She was amazingly good at her job,
meticulous and detail-oriented, always taking the initiative to organize and
get things done. She’d memorized my particular way of doing things in
practically no time at all, and by the end of our first month together, I
couldn’t believe the stark contrast between her and Jane.

“I think I’m ready to pronounce you a
permanent hire,” I teased her one day as she made me coffee. She’d finally
figured out the French press, which was far more preferable than the automatic
swill I got out of the machine.

She had smiled and looked at me through
her lashes in that smug, know-it-all way I’d come to love. “Oh, please. I’ve
been permanent since day one. At this stage, I don’t think you could live
without me.”

“Too true,” I’d told her. But neither of
us realized how much I’d meant it until a week later when she overheard me on
the phone. At the time, I had no idea how that seemingly innocuous moment would
change everything between us forever.

****

“Yes, I realize that’s prime real estate. Yes, I know
what’s there now, and I’m sure it can be done. I know my father wants this to
go forward, but I’m just asking you, man to man… Do you
really
want to do this? What your asking crosses an ethical line.
It may be, in fact, a bit… Extrajudicial.”

I stood on my bedroom balcony
overlooking the distant lake. I could see the water gently rippling as a lazy
breeze swept over it, just barely disturbing the otherwise placid surface. It
was late and the sun was setting, but Mr. Verger wasn’t letting me off the
phone without a fight. I watched the sky turn from orange to red, then a hazy
purple as my high-strung client stammered on the other end of the line.

I sighed, hoping my Bluetooth earpiece
didn’t pick it up. I had explained this at least a dozen times, but Harold
wasn’t getting it. I understood why he’d gotten my father involved in this, I
just didn’t want to be part of it. With the company in my hands during the
windup to my father’s wedding, he’d dropped this entire sordid affair on my
lap.

On the surface, it was simple. Harvey
Enterprises has connections, able to bend the will of state and federal
agencies that look into things like code violations. They condemn buildings all
the time. In fact, nothing makes them happier than to slap a big yellow notice
on a door that says ‘CONDEMNED’ on it. It’s like getting their dick sucked for
them. They’d be more than happy to shut down the homeless shelter if the
company threw money their way, and that’s exactly what Mr. Verger wanted me to
do.

Mr. Verger had big plans for that space.
He’d quietly bought up buildings on either side of the shelter, and once he
owned the final piece of the puzzle, there’d be nothing stopping him from razing
the entire block and putting up some gaudy condo tower in its place.
Gentrification at work.

Sure, we would lose a rec center and the
only homeless shelter within a twenty mile radius in the process, but Harold
Verger had deep pockets—the kind that could not only pay off the code
enforcement officials, but could go a long way in supporting Harvey Enterprises
in all manner of future endeavors.

That was the rub. From what my father
had told me, Mr. Verger had a very good shot at becoming a US Senator very
soon. Money could buy you many things, but if you wanted real influence, you
needed to know the right people. My father would very much like to know a
senator. He’d very much like to have done favors for one, so that that senator
might be amenable to returning those favors in his more prestigious future. And
what my father wanted, my father got, even if that meant tearing down a
perfectly good building to get it.

Only he wasn’t going to do it. He was
going to make me do it. I wasn’t completely heartless, though. I’d first seen
the job as a moral quandary. Homeless people already had it rough. Why make it
rougher by eliminating one of the few safe spaces that they had?

I kept telling myself there were always
more safe spaces, and there was plenty of land in the city. The non-profit
organization keeping both the rec center and the shelter open could always open
some new ones. It might take a year or two, but it would get done.

“Young man, I was a lawyer for twenty
six years. Don’t lecture me on the law. I was under the impression you would
take care of this without any questions being asked,” Mr. Verger said. “Your
father made certain assurances.”

I could feel my temples throbbing.
Though I hadn’t thought about her in weeks, I would almost have preferred a
conversation with Jane to one with this guy.

“All right, Mr. Verger. I’ll get the
ball rolling on Monday. We’ll have that homeless shelter knocked flat in three
weeks or less. The recreation center might take a bit longer, but I’ll
personally expedite the process. You have a nice weekend, all right?”

“You too, Mr. Harvey. Oh, and tell your
father I say hello, will you? I’ve got a hankering to play some golf next week.
Let him know I said so.”

I forced a smile into my tone. “I’m sure
he’ll be thrilled.”

I could barely contain my excitement
when Mr. Verger finally hung up. I couldn’t imagine that man as a senator, with
the kind of power to make decisions that could affect all of America. He was
incompetent, fidgety, uncertain, and a complete worry-wart. Then again, I
couldn’t think of a senator who wasn’t completely ill-suited for the job in one
way or another. I guessed there was always room for one more.

I turned around, taking my Bluetooth
earpiece out and nearly running straight into Maddy. It wouldn’t have been the
first time we collided, and I grinned at her as I shook my head.

“Maddy, we’ve got to stop meeting like
this…”

“How could you?” she asked me, her voice
barely above a whisper. She looked utterly horrified, and it took me a few
seconds to realize she’d overheard the conversation I’d been having on the
phone.

“Oh. You mean the shelter?”

She stared at me. “Of course I mean the
shelter. And the recreation center! And oh God, what else is there?” Then she
waved her hand and shut her eyes. “No. Don’t tell me.
Really.
If there’s more, I don’t want to know…”

“Oh, come on,” I said, moving past her
and into my bedroom. “It’s urban renewal, nothing more. The condo development
is going to bring in a lot more money for the city than a homeless shelter ever
did, and it will reduce crime and vagrancy. Ten years from now, you won’t even
recognize the city center. This is a win, Maddy. We should celebrate.”

I turned back to see if she was coming,
but she hadn’t moved. I sighed, leaning against the wall. “Come on. I’ll take
you anywhere you’d like. Do you like seafood? There’s this place over by the
marina. It’s a bit of a drive, but the lobster is worth it.”

“I can’t even comprehend this right
now,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of my bed. She shook her head at me,
eyes pinched. “Urban renewal? Extrajudicial? You’re talking about a criminal
conspiracy. Are you fucking serious right now? I know that part of the city.
You’re going to help someone build a fancy pants condo development and knock
down a
homeless shelter
and a rec
center
for disadvantaged kids?!
Have
you lost your mind, Preston? Never mind that—have you lost your
soul?
”

I watched the red-orange hues of the
dying sun light up her face. They complemented her anger perfectly. She looked like
a painting, the portrait of a woman on the edge of rage. It was stunning.

“Look,” I told her, “this is business.
Mr. Verger has connections and my father still has the final say. You know how
it is. It’s still about getting the biggest piece of the pie, no matter what
you have to do. I don’t like it, but I’m not running the show here. Not yet. I
have to do what I’m told just like everyone else. I mean, come on, Maddy. You
should know this better than anyone. If I don’t do this, my father will.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her face had
tightened. Anger had turned to disappointment. “I just didn’t think you would
do something like this. You seemed different. You told me you were going to
save the world…”

I shook my head. “I’m not a saint,
Maddy.”

She shook hers too. “No, I know that.
But this is something I would have expected from your father. Not from you.”

Now
that
struck a chord. I could feel the snarl in my voice before I’d even answered.
“I’m nothing like my father. You know that.”

“Do I?” she asked me, looking up at me
again. Her green eyes searched mine the same way they had back at the
restaurant the day she’d lost her job. She was looking for an answer, but this
time, she’d already asked the question. “Do I have any idea who you are at
all?”

“Of course you do.” I sighed. “Look,
Maddy, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. Non-profit groups get funding
all the time. Charitable donations are tax-deductible, for fuck’s sakes. Sure,
we’re going to shut the shelter and the rec center down, but once it’s gone
they can build on some other parcel, maybe something with a view out past the
suburbs.”

“You actually think the homeless give
two shits about a view?” she snorted. “You can’t just shove them out of the
city and forget about them. You sound like a true one-percenter.”

“One percent? You’re the one who cried
for help. I didn’t hear you complaining when I wrote you that ten thousand
dollar check,” I argued. “Or when I hired you. Or when I paid you, for that
matter.”

“Don’t you
dare
throw that money in my face,” she hissed, launching up from
the bed. “You gave me that money to help me out when I was nearly destitute.
And the rest you paid me for good, honest work. I haven’t been your kept woman,
Preston. I earned that money working for you!”

“Which is why you should do what I tell
you now and get in the goddamn car!” I was seething. I didn’t like this. I
didn’t like the way she was challenging me, like suddenly she knew more about
business than I did, like she had any idea what it was like to be me, Preston
Harvey, the son of a billionaire whose first and only love had ever been cold,
hard cash.

And yet I did like it. In fact, I loved
it. Maddy never looked more beautiful than when she was standing up for
herself. She had a backbone stronger than most men I’d known in my lifetime,
and when she had a mind to, she put up one hell of a fight.

But I couldn’t stop the words from
coming out of my mouth now. There was too much momentum, too much frustration
welling up inside me, rattling my bones. “You work for me, which means my
decisions are your decisions. If I say ‘jump,’ you say, ‘how high?’ If I tell
you that what I’m doing is the right goddamn thing for my company, then you
shut up and accept that maybe the guy with the Harvard business degree knows what
the fuck he’s talking about. If those are things that you can’t handle that,
then…”

“Then what, Preston?” she asked me. Jane
had always had a heat in her, a passion, and a deep, ugly anger too, but Maddy
was different. Her flame was brighter, stronger than any I’d ever seen before.
It danced higher, more beautifully than Jane’s ever had, and I was drawn to it
like an unlucky moth gazing upon its flickering shape, mesmerized by how wild
and effulgent she was. “Then you’ll fire me? You’ll send me back to my shitty
apartment with some savings and hope I land on my feet? Maybe if I’m lucky,
you’ll throw in an excellent job reference too, as long as I don’t make a scene
like Jane did when I storm out.” Her lip curled in a defiant sneer. “Is that
what you do to everyone who dares to tell you like it is, or just the women?”

I hated hearing that woman’s name leave
her lips. It poisoned everything it touched, and the last thing I wanted to
imagine was anything tarnishing Maddy’s sweet, soft, supple lips.

I stared at them, unable to look away.
They were set into a firm line, one that meant she wasn’t going to back down.
But I needed her to. I needed her to stop, because with every word she spoke,
something hungry stirred inside of me.

“You love to flirt with poverty, don’t
you?” I shot back, my muscles tense and vibrating beneath my skin. She was like
a live wire sending currents through every part of my body, but I didn’t know
of what. Was it anger? Disdain? Or was it something I couldn’t quite explain,
something that seemed closer to lust than to fury?

“You had your own apartment, Maddy.
Maybe you had to take a bus to work, but you had a job and a roof over your
head. You act like your struggle makes you better than people like me, but you
haven’t had to deal with half the shit that
really
poor people do. You get the self-righteousness with none of the suffering, and
that gets you off, make you feel special so you can look down on an entire
class of people. Grow up.”

She pursed her lips, and her eyes
flared. “Is that what happened to you, Preston? You grew up to become your
father—a man who would rather stuff more money in his pockets than think
twice about the rest of the world trying to just get by out there? You are
literally talking about destroying the only place the homeless in this city
have to go! It’s
evil,
and if you
don’t see it, then maybe you should ask yourself how long you’ve been staring
into the abyss of wealth and business and politics, and whether or not it’s
begun staring back into you.”

I closed the distance between us.
“Maddy, if you don’t stop…” I lost the will to finish that sentence. I didn’t
know what to say. I just kept staring at the woman who would become my sister
and thinking how goddamn beautiful she was.