ROUGH RIDER (59 page)

In a sea of “Mr. Harvey, Mr. Harvey!”, I screamed, “Preston!”

He turned and looked right at me. The news crews did too. I didn’t say a word, and for an eternity, we just stared at each other like we were the only two people in the world.

Then Preston moved forward, shoving his way through the crowd still clamoring for a piece of him. When he got to me, he tucked me under his arm and pulled me away to the curb where Mr. Fletcher and a limousine were waiting.

“Miss Hearst,” he said, grinning wide. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You too, Gordon,” I told him, ducking into the backseat as Preston opened the door for me before taking his place at my side.

As soon as Mr. Fletcher closed the door, silence reigned. I looked up at my stepbrother and shook my head, the tears coming before I could stop them from running down my face.

“Jesus, Preston. Why?”

“I have a lot to explain,” he said gently, “and a lot to make up for. I know that. Just give me the chance and I’ll tell you everything, Maddy. I promise.”

I nodded, and as Mr. Fletcher pulled away from the curb, I buckled my seatbelt and reached for the champagne cooler I knew only too well was in the limo.

“Good idea,” Preston said. “Let me get that for you.” And he poured us both a glass of champagne as we sat facing each other for the first time in almost a month.

“I take it you’ve figured out by now that everything I said to you that morning was bullshit,” he began. When I nodded, he continued. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to forgive me… I had to get you out of there, Maddy, but I couldn’t tell you why. They wouldn’t have let me, and even if I had, there’s no way in hell you would have left. Either way, the kind of vengeance they would have brought down upon your head would have been cataclysmic.”

“They?” I asked him. “Please tell me this wasn’t all our parents.”

“No,” he answered. “Well, not your mother, anyway.” Preston took a deep breath and loosened his tie. “No, it was my father and Jane, if you can believe it. She’s the reason he knew what happened between you and I. She’d been stalking us for a while, and that night we first made love, she snapped some pictures through the open balcony doors.”

“Jesus,” I breathed, shaking my head. “I don’t believe it. She was obsessed.”

“Yes,” Preston agreed. “But not for the reason you’re thinking. Hell, it wasn’t even for the reason
I
was thinking. It runs so much deeper than that.” He paused again and looked me over. “Christ, you look good, Maddy. You look incredible.”

I blushed. Preston looked good, too—great, in fact. Integrity had done him some good. There was a sparkle in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I could tell he was happier with himself than he’d been in a long time, and that made me happy too.

Knowing that what he’d said was a lie changed everything. But I still needed to know why he’d said it.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me more. What the hell was Jane up to? What was she trying to accomplish?”

Preston sighed and leaned back, spreading his arms over the seat behind him. “Money,” he said at last. “That particular goal goes back a ways. I acquired Jane as a sort of hand-me-down from my father. She’d been his personal assistant, once upon a time, and a little more than that too. Seems she’d been doing her damnedest to become my new stepmother, but my father wouldn’t have it. In his eyes, she was the kind of girl you fucked, but couldn’t turn into a housewife. He ‘gifted’ her to me, hoping she’d settle for ‘the next best thing.’ ” He sipped his champagne and added bitterly, “As it were.”

I made a face. I couldn’t help it. It was just too weird. “She was fucking your father before she was fucking you?”

Preston winced. “Don’t remind me. Anyway, I guess she altered her goals to marry me instead of my father, but when it was clear that wasn’t working out, he hired her back out of pity. She began her game of seduction all over again, this time abandoning the whole marriage plot in favor of serving as his mistress. Maybe she’d never inherit his fortune, but in the meantime, she could benefit from countless secret vacations and gifts.”

“Wow.” It made so much sense. A strange, twisted kind of sense, but sense nonetheless. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Honestly?” Preston grinned. “I guessed. I figured if my father was cheating, it’d be with a younger woman. The one I caught him on the phone with at dinner sounded awfully insecure. He was constantly reassuring her that things were better this way, that she was still special to him despite his impending nuptials, yada, yada, yada. Jane had also gone to great lengths to get those pictures, and with the way my father was trying to push her back on me, I knew there had to be something going on there. So I went out on a limb and got hold of my father’s cell phone one day, and sure enough, there were plenty of late-night calls from Jane.”

“I can’t believe he let you get close enough to grab his cell phone,” I said. “I would’ve thought for sure that your father would have been keeping an eye on you.”

Preston laughed. “I had to play the part of the baby bird with the broken wing for a while, but my father’s a megalomaniac. At the end of the day, he was so sure he had bested me that he couldn’t help but flaunt it. He was convinced I was nothing to him, that I couldn’t possibly have anything up my sleeve. Honestly, it wasn’t a hard act to pull off. I
was
devastated about you, Maddy. You have to believe me about that. I understand if you can’t forgive me… I gave you a good recommendation at that law firm…”

There was still so much hurt swirling inside of me, and yet I could tell that Preston wasn’t lying. He had risked so much just to tell me the truth. Unlike the things he’d said to me that morning in his bedroom, this was all real.

“I do,” I whispered. “You tore me apart, Preston. But I believe you.”

He nodded somberly. “I know. And I know that apologizing doesn’t cut it. But I am sorry. Do you want to know the rest?”

“Yes,” I said, gulping down the rest of my champagne before pouring another glass. “Let’s hear it. I want to know exactly how you took them all down.”

Over the next several miles, Preston explained everything to me just as he’d promised. After he’d become certain that Jane and his father were involved, he’d spent the next several days “confiding” in her. He’d done everything short of getting intimate with her to convince her that he’d “seen the light,” and that he wanted her back. He spoke at length to her about her relationship with his father, all while wearing a recording device. And then, once he had what he needed, he’d presented that tape to my mother.

Predictably, she’d been furious—and, as Preston told it, a little heartbroken too. She’d taken the whole thing straight to his father, which had ensured Jane a security escort from Harvey Tower in front of all the friends she’d made, and more than that, she’d never work in the city again as long as the Harveys were around.

In an attempt to salvage things with my mother, Mr. Harvey had felt obliged to take her on a one-week “pre-honeymoon” to work things out. Preston took that opportunity to put in a few calls with state and Federal authorities concerning his father’s illicit and unethical dealings with a senate candidate—after he’d gone through his father’s files in his absence, of course.

Once the authorities had what they needed, they’d come down hard on Mr. Harvey and Mr. Verger while Preston had gained immunity—after all, his father
had
been blackmailing him, and thanks to Jane, he had the pictures to prove it—and as a result, the board of directors had no choice but to vote Mr. Harvey out of his position, as was in their best interests. Since he’d been groomed for the position since childhood—and since this stipulation was part of the corporate bylaws anyway—they’d unanimously agreed to put Preston in his place, and the rest of it I’d seen play out on the news conference on TV that afternoon.

It was an incredibly well-orchestrated plan, and frankly, I was in awe of just how perfectly it had gone. But I was also pissed, because it seemed pretty unnecessary for him to have said what he did before.

“They threatened to come after you, Maddy,” he finally explained. “They would have ruined your life… Or worse. And they’d frozen all my assets until I forced you to go, so our plan of running away together wouldn’t have worked. I needed you to be so convinced I was a monster that you didn’t come back until everything was settled.”

“And is it now?” I asked him. “Settled, I mean.”

“As much as it can be,” he said. “I have my money back, as well as unfettered access to the company’s finances, too. In addition, I get to direct our future endeavors—and that means the shelter on 39
^th
Street stays right where it is.”

“You’re incredible,” I said, laughing as I let it all sink in. “I can’t believe you did all this.” But one thing gave me pause. “How’s Mom taking it?” I asked him.

“Not well,” Preston answered. “I’m afraid I’m no longer going to be your stepbrother. I know you’re broken-hearted over it, but we’ll just have to get past it, somehow…”

I punched him in the shoulder, and he cringed dramatically. “Shut up. You’re serious, though? They’re not getting married?”

Preston laughed. “My father is very possibly going to jail, and even if he’s not, he’s been disgraced. She blames him for everything, while he blames her for being out of the country while I turned him in to the authorities. Really, they’re perfect for each other. I don’t see how it wouldn’t work out.”

I shot him a look and he added, “Don’t worry. I’ve made sure she won’t have a thing to her name. I gave her a nice little going away package. And then I told her never to come back. I hope that wasn’t overstepping it.”

“It wasn’t,” I assured him. “I cut off all contact a while ago, and I don’t regret that decision one bit. I’m glad she’s out of my life. Speaking of which, why didn’t you let me know any of this sooner? If you’d explained, I would have stayed away until it was through.”

“I tried,” Preston said, “but you wouldn’t take my calls. And you changed your number, remember? Didn’t you listen to any of my voicemails? I just assumed you’d given up on me. That press conference was a last ditch effort to get through to you. I thought for sure you’d never want to see me again. But despite everything…” He softly, tentatively laid his hand on mine. “I had hope.”

Just like the first time, an electric charge swept through me as Preston touched my hand. I shivered in a way I hadn’t dreamed of since the last time we’d been together. When I looked into his eyes, it was like all feeling returned to my body. I was alive again, all because Preston had touched me again.

“I missed you so much,” I whispered to him.

Preston cupped my face in his hands. “I missed you too,” he told me. “You’re like the oxygen I breathe, Maddy. I can’t live without you.”

He kissed me hard on the mouth, pulling me into a tight, passionate embrace. The city passed us by, but I wasn’t aware of any of it. All I knew was Preston’s love and desire, and it was all I ever wanted to know.

It had been too long since he’d held me like this, too long since I’d felt anything but agony at his absence. “I want you,” I murmured into his mouth, knowing that I didn’t have to say it, but needing to anyway.

“We’ll be home soon,” he whispered back, tangling his fingers through my hair. “I need you more than anything, Maddy, and in a few minutes, we’ll have each other again.”

I shook my head. “I can’t wait that long,” I told him. Then I pressed the button that put the tinted, soundproof divider between us and Mr. Fletcher up, and I lifted my blouse up over my head.

Preston smirked and shook his head at me, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from my breasts. As I released them from my bra he pulled it away, taking one in each hand as he kissed me again, his fingers brushing over my skin with such reverence I thought I would burst into tears right there.

“I’m so sorry,” he said over and over again. “I wish there had been some other way…”

“Make it up to me,” I told him, pushing his head down between my thighs.

Preston sank to his knees in front of me, pushing my skirt up my hips and sliding my panties down my calves as he gingerly kissed his way up my legs. He took his time, caring nothing for what was happening outside the limo, focusing only one my body and how many ways he could make it sing under his expert caress. I leaned my head back and moaned as he pulled me toward the edge of my seat, and when he pressed his lips against my aching womanhood, I felt my core shudder and hum with delight.

“Preston,” I breathed, grasping his hair. His tongue made one long lick from my entrance to crest of my vulva and I sighed, arching, my nipples puckering in the cool air conditioning as he spread my folds with his fingers.

“Every day of my life,” he said between licks. “I’ll do this every day of my life if it means you’ll forgive me.”

“Oh, Preston,” I said again, shivering as he began to torture my bud in earnest. “I already do.”

But that didn’t stop him. I knew it wouldn’t. I had been counting on it.

He slid one of his fingers inside of me, using it to brush my sweet spot as his lips wrapped around my tender nubbin and sucked gently. I reeled, my heels on his shoulders as he devoured me. I felt like the only woman in all the world at that moment, like nothing that had happened to either of us had ever mattered. We were all there was, all there ever would be. I closed my eyes, squirming as Preston brought me to the edge of oblivion, holding me there as I moaned his name and inhaled his scent with every labored breath I took of him.

“Don’t stop,” I urged him, pulling on his hair as a wave of pleasure shook me. “Jesus Christ, Preston. Don’t ever stop!”

“Never,” he promised, getting back up onto his knees. He laid me back against the leather seat, climbing on top of me as we kissed again and I tasted my sweet nectar all over his lips.

I whimpered and pressed up against him, my fingers quivering as I worked each button on his shirt. I swept it away, reveling in the sensation of his smooth, broad chest pressed against my own. I could feel his abs ripple against my taut tummy, could feel the weight of him pressing down on me in all the right ways. Involuntarily I parted my legs for him, letting his hips rest in the valley between them. I didn’t even have to think about making love to Preston. It was something as natural as blinking, as breathing in the air around me. My body acquiesced to it before the question was even asked in my mind.