RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (37 page)

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.