PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (32 page)

My father waved his hand as he lit the
end of his imported cigar. “We’re not having a negotiation. Perhaps you’ve
forgotten which name is on the building? I already took care of everything.
Maddy is out, and your personal assistant position has been filled.”

I blinked, unable to form a better
response than two simple words that escaped my lips. “By who?”

He sucked in a long draw before he
answered, blowing a smoke ring as he said the word I somehow knew would bring
me yet another dose of pain.

“Jane.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Jane?” I
echoed. “You’re trying to get rid of the best assistant I’ve ever had, and now
you tell me you hired Jane on as my new PA after I
personally
fired her? What the hell, Dad?”

“She does good work,” he said with a
shrug. “And she keeps you on track. You’ve softened up since you hired on
Madison, and I know damn well Jane can fix that.”

“You’re insane,” I hissed, clenching my
hands into fists at my sides. “Maddy was on my staff when I fixed that deal
with Harold Verger. I haven’t gone soft at all.”

“Oh is that so? You’d blow that deal to
smithereens in an instant, if it meant pleasing sweet precious Maddy. I saw the
way you looked at her over dinner as the little bitch dressed me down in my own
house,” my father said, his piercing gaze meeting mine. “Wouldn’t you, Preston?
I’d bet you’re already considering it. I can see the wheels turning in that
head of yours. You’re angry, aren’t you? That’s good. I want you angry. That’s
the fire you need burning if you’re going to carry this company into the future,
son.”

I stared. I wasn’t sure how to answer
him, but he didn’t give me time.

“And besides, you can’t keep fucking
your stepsister, Preston.”

I watched as his lips curled into a
crooked smile, my breath catching as my heart skipped a beat. “Maybe she’s not
family yet, but she will be, and then this little dalliance will have to stop.
And when it does, it’ll all go bad, Preston. Believe me, I’ve seen what
Madison’s mother is like. She’ll go after you and your money faster than you
can pull out of her tight little cunt. Maybe she’ll say you raped her, or that
you threatened her job if she didn’t go along with your twisted little fucking
games. Now, maybe accusations like that don’t hold a hell of a lot of weight
between men like us, but fucking your stepsister? Now that’s just plain
unacceptable.”

He stood up, his bones creaking as he
made his way to my side. He blew a puff of smoke in my face as he said, “You’ll
be a pariah, Preston. And so will I. They’ll be wagging this story up and down
the news stations and dragging our stock value through the mud. Is that what
you want?”

My vision was tunneling. I could feel
heat prickling my face. How the hell did he know about Maddy and me? How the
hell
could
he know?

“You’re sick,” I said, a feeble attempt
to refute his claims, however true they were. My words sounded weak even to my
ears. “Jesus, Dad. That’s…”

“You’re going to get rid of her,” he
said. “The sooner, the better. Because one day, you’re going to need an heir
just like I did, and it’s damn sure not going to be something you can do with
Maddy.
You’re going to need someone
cutthroat to help balance out whatever weakness your mother managed to impart
in you. Jane should do quite nicely.”

I knew my father had always approved of
Jane, but I’d never considered it had anything to do with breeding. I felt
sick. I felt like my world was tilting, and I was doing my best to keep holding
on as my thoughts careened through my head.

“No,” I said, my lips feeling numb. “I
don’t take orders from you. Not from a man who cheated on my mom, and not from
a man who…” I trailed off. What had he done, exactly—had he put cameras
in my bedroom? I settled for, “…accuses me of sleeping with my own stepsister.”

“We all make sacrifices,” my father
said. The heat of his stare was almost hotter than the blood pooling in my
cheeks. “All of us, Preston. This will be yours. But the rewards are so much
greater.”

“I don’t want to be like you,” I said,
backing away from him and turning into the hall. “I don’t want to be anything
like you!”

When I stormed into the parlor to get
Maddy, she couldn’t have looked more relieved to see me. But that relief soon
turned to confusion, and then to concern as I took her by the arm and pulled
her from her seat.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

I held her hand on the way out the door,
and there was no shame.

MADISON

“There’s
something I need to tell you,” Preston said once we were back in the
car.

Despite his anger, he was taking his
time getting us back to the office. In fact, I didn’t recognize any of the
roads were traveling down. Whatever he wanted to talk about, it was obviously
going to be a lengthy conversation.

“Is this about the shelter?” I asked.
“Because if it’s some rambling justification about survival of the fittest
straight out of your father’s mouth, then I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s not,” he answered. The moonlight
made his sun-kissed face look ashen. “It’s about my father, and what’s next for
us.”

I leaned back in my seat. Something
about his tone put me on edge, and I felt my pulse begin to quicken and my
mouth run dry. I had the feeling this wasn’t going to be a fun conversation.

“Okay,” I told him. “I’m listening.”

Preston took a deep breath before
beginning. “When my parents divorced, I was still pretty young. I didn’t really
understand what was going on. My mom tried to explain it to me, but it didn’t
make a lot of sense. What kid can wrap his head around his parents splitting
up?” He shook his head. “I know now that my father was cheating on her, and she
couldn’t take it anymore. But back then, she didn’t explain that to me. I guess
she didn’t want to tarnish my image of my father, even though for a long time,
it tarnished my image of her.”

I listened quietly, hands in my lap as
Preston continued. The corners of his eyes were pinched and his mouth had
turned into a pained grimace. I felt a pang of sadness for him. Maybe I
couldn’t relate—my mother had never felt the need to hold back when
badmouthing my father—but the hurt it was causing him was plain on his face.

“That must have been hard for you,” I
said. I knew those words were stupid and meaningless, but I felt like I ought
to say something.

“It was,” he replied. “To make matters
worse, she’d signed a pre-nup before she and my dad got married. So she wasn’t
entitled to a dime of his money when they divorced, and my father used his
considerable wealth to ensure that she’d walk away with absolutely
nothing—including me.”

I had wondered why Preston stayed with
his father. I had assumed that it was because a boy might want to stay with his
dad, but I’d always heard that courts were more likely to award custody to
children’s mothers.

I asked him, “How?”

He said, “My father sought full custody.
My mom had never intended to take me away from him. She’d wanted to split my
time between them so that we could all still be some kind of family. But my dad
was vindictive, and as I learned later in life, family courts only side with
the mom when fathers
don’t
seek
custody. When they do, either joint or sole, they get it over seventy percent
of the time. It didn’t hurt that Dad paid off the judge, either. When you have
the money to hire the very best lawyers around, not to mention provide an
‘excellent standard of care’ for your child, odds are that the other parent is
going to get screwed.”

When he spoke again, his voice
shuddered. “My mom walked out of that courtroom with nothing. She was
penniless. She’d lost her only child. And not long after that, there was an
accident.”

My lips parted. I felt my stomach
plummet to my feet. A chill seized me, and I shook my head in utter disbelief.
“Oh my God, Preston. I had no idea. I’m so sorry…”

He nodded slowly. “Me too. We didn’t
even go to her funeral.”

Preston was quiet for a long while, and
I didn’t dare disturb him. That revelation weighed heavily on the two of us. I
couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to lose his mother at that
age, and for his father to act like she’d never even mattered.

Miles passed, and finally I mustered the
courage to ask him, “Do you know why your dad handled it like that? It couldn’t
have been just to get back at her…”

“No, it wasn’t just that,” he said. He
was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles had turned white. “I
was valuable to him. Not because I was his child, but because I was his heir. I
was eleven at the time, and by that point, he’d already invested quite a bit of
time and effort into me. He wasn’t just going to let me go.”

“But surely joint custody…”

“He had to prove a point,” Preston said
flatly, wringing the leather in his hands. “In his eyes, my mother had
committed the ultimate sin. She’d shattered the perfect image of the Harvey
family. What he did with that other woman was discreet. A divorce was public.”

So, this was the man my mother was
marrying. Part of me immediately felt like she deserved him. They both treated
their children like shit, and maybe it was time for her to get a taste of her
own medicine for a change.

But I couldn’t hold onto that feeling
for long. My mother was already a deeply miserable woman. The last thing she
needed to experience was even more pain and suffering.

“Should I warn my mother off him?” I
asked. “Is that why you’re telling me all this?”

“That’s one reason,” he said, his eyes
distant. “Another is that I’m certain that he’s doing it again. He’s cheating
on your mother, Maddy.” Finally, a bit of anger shone through. “Goddamn him.
I’m so sorry.”

I closed my eyes. So, it was even worse
than I thought. There wasn’t just a looming threat of infidelity now—it
was already here. My mother was just another trophy to Mr. Harvey, a woman he
could bring to company functions and let hang on his arm in front of all the other
businessmen and their wives. He could hardly do that with his mistress, could
he? The wealthy head of a company certainly couldn’t be seen in public with
some young slut.

The way men like Mr. Harvey treated
women made me sick to my stomach, and my nausea only grew worse as Preston
dropped the final bombshell.

“There’s one other thing,” he said. We
stopped at an intersection and he looked into my eyes. “Maddy… he
knows.
”

I wished I’d had doubts. I wished that
I’d been able to express some confusion as to what Preston could possibly mean.
But I couldn’t. I knew exactly what he was talking about. His father knew about
our tryst, and everything in my body grew suddenly cold.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “How?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. As he moved
past the stop sign, he added, “But somehow he does. And I don’t feel safe
staying at my office anymore. Do you?”

Slowly, I shook my head. I was beginning
to feel numb all over, the side-effect of shock, I was sure. Would Preston’s
dad tell my mother? Had he done so already? No, he couldn’t have. If he did,
she would have been sure to bring it up when we were in the parlor.

I could almost see the smugness in her
beady eyes as she feigned horror.
Your
own stepbrother, Madison. How low will you stoop?

“Is that what he told you in his
office?” I asked him, my voice quavering as much as my hands were. “Is that why
we left in such a hurry?”

“Yes,” Preston said. “And because he
wants me to start taking a more… active role in Harvey Enterprises. Apparently,
the way I handled the Verger account impressed him, or something...” He snorted
in disgust. “He wants me to shut down my office and fire you.”

Great. So not only was my new stepfather
going to hold this secret over my head for the rest of my life, but as
punishment, I’d end up destitute again. My head was reeling and I fumbled for
the control on the side of my seat, leaning it all the way back as I tried my
hardest not to faint.

“Fuck,” I muttered, closing my eyes as
everything began to spin. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

The car stopped. Preston reached over.
He took my hands.

“Maddy, look at me.”

I gave the slightest shake of my head. I
needed a moment to breathe. I could feel my chest tightening, and there was a
steadily growing ache in my jaw. I realized I was grinding my teeth.

“Maddy,” he said again. This time, his
voice was far more commanding. “Look at me.”

Trembling, I did as I was told. All the
tension in my body faded away as I stared into my stepbrother’s glittering blue
eyes.

“I’m not going to let anything bad
happen to you,” he whispered, stroking my knuckles with his thumb. “I made a
choice tonight. I never realized how worthless my father’s approval was until I
had it, or what it meant until tonight. The man has no soul, Maddy. He ruins
the lives of everyone he surrounds himself with. I thought being like him would
make me untouchable, but all it’s done is make me just as empty and miserable
as he is.”

I remained silent, staring up at him as
he grasped my hands tighter. His palms were so warm. I could feel his pulse
radiating through them as he said, “I never would have realized any of that
without you. The idea of losing you terrifies me. For the first time in my
life, I’m…
feeling
something, not
just playing a part. Whatever we have between us, however wrong it
is—it’s
real.
”

He lifted one of his hands from mine and
brought it to my face, lightly sweeping his fingers against my cheek. I leaned
into his touch, savoring the comfort it brought. How had I gone from despising
my soon-to-be stepbrother to feeling safe with him in just a few short weeks?
How had I opened my heart to him despite knowing that it could never, ever
work?

“Come upstairs with me,” he said gently.
“Stay at my place tonight. I don’t want to be alone.”

I blinked up at him slowly. “But I
thought you didn’t trust being in your office anymore?”

“I don’t,” Preston answered. He reached
over and fiddled with my seat controls, adjusting them until I was sitting up.
“I want you to stay with me in my home.”

I looked up past the gate at the villa
beyond. It was absolutely breathtaking. More than that, it looked like a
fortress—someplace we could both rest and hide away from the rest of the
world until we were ready to face it again.

“Yes,” I told him, unable to tear my
eyes away from his beautiful home. “I’ll stay.”

“Good,” he said, finally pulling up to
the wrought iron gate. As it opened, he added, “We have a lot to figure out.”

****