Stepbrother Forever: A Stepbrother Romance (40 page)

After a time, he grasped my hand in his good one. “I
remember. You helped me with my application before my interview.”

“I did,” I said. One might have thought our very own staffing
specialist would have been able to do that, but alas, Ross wasn’t terribly
familiar with the application process—nor anything else of particular value, it
seemed. “And I apologize that Mr. Culling hasn’t returned your calls. I assume
you’re here about the status of your background check and interview?”

Mr. Davies nodded. I turned slightly over my shoulder to see
Miguel hanging back by the offices, keeping out of sight of Mr. Davies. His
face was turning redder by the second and he had a look of unease about him,
almost as if he knew what I was going to do.

I’d been lying for Ross and Miguel for far too long. I was
going to tell Mr. Davies the truth, and that was something Miguel was
desperately afraid of.

“Mr. Davies,” I said, turning back to him, but this time
without a smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Culling has been avoiding you.”

Lacy gasped. Miguel made a strangled sound like a pig that
had just been stuck in the belly. I continued:

“Your background check came back fine. Your resume was all in
order. Everything was perfect, really—except your arm.” I slowed my words,
taking care not to injure Mr. Davies at all in my anger toward Miguel, Ross,
and the rest of ExecuSpace. “Mr. Culling felt that, as a salesperson, the arm
would keep clients from signing on. He didn’t have anything concrete to reject
your application on, and he knows discrimination against disabled people who
can adequately perform the job at hand is illegal, so he figured that simply
avoiding you would do the trick.

“But now you’re here speaking to me because he refuses to
come out of his office and face you himself, and because our general manager
thinks that an administrative assistant making ten dollars an hour is better
equipped to explain these things to you than, say, a manager. I apologize on
their behalf, Mr. Davies, and on behalf of a company that you really, really
don’t want to work for, anyway. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

Mr. Davies looked at me for a very long time. I knew how I
looked on the outside—calm, perhaps cold even—but on the inside, I felt like
shit. It wasn’t that I had done anything wrong. I was upset because in the four
years I’d worked here, I’d failed to change a damn thing about this awful
company, and people like Mr. Davies were going to pay for it. None of this
would ever come down on Miguel or Ross’ shoulders. It was only nice people,
hardworking people who would bear the burden of ExecuSpace’s moral void. And I
hated to be the one who had to inflict it.

“My… arm,” he said at last, and I nodded slowly. “But it’s
not an issue. I can write just fine. Drive, even. I don’t see what my arm has
to do with being a competent salesperson…”

“It doesn’t,” I assured him. “It has nothing to do with it at
all. But Mr. Culling feels that the perception of ExecuSpace might be marred by
someone who doesn’t look like the rest of us do, and for him, that’s cause
enough not to hire you.” I saw the look on his face, the slump in his
shoulders, and added: “I really am sorry, Mr. Davies. But after a month of
being lied to, I thought the truth might—”

“The truth does
nothing
for me, Miss Hearst,” he snarled, a surprising rage blazing in his eyes. I
could see they were watering. They glimmered like hot coals. “A job is what I
need. And even a shitty one for a shitty company would have been enough for me.
But you people don’t give a shit about men like me, do you? All you see is a
withered arm and you think that means I’m trash, that I can just be tossed into
the gutter. You didn’t even have the decency to consider me for the position,
did you? You just saw the arm. That’s all.”

I pursed my lips. This was exactly what I’d feared. Not only
was Mr. Davies upset by the news, but he was taking that out on me, the nearest
available target. I had to swallow the compulsion to invite him back to Ross’
office and knock on his door until he opened up, but Miguel would probably just
call security and have them haul both Mr. Davies and myself out.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “If you’d like, I can get you the
number for our corporate office in Virginia. There’s a woman named Patricia who
could hear your complaint…”

“That’s enough,” Miguel said, finally loosening himself from
the doorway and practically pushing me out of the way. “Mr. Davies, I’m Miguel
Herrera, the general manager for ExecuSpace. Unfortunately, you just weren’t a
good fit for the criteria we’re looking for right now. I’m sorry no one’s
gotten back to you sooner, but we’ve all been very busy—”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Mr. Davies asked him, his face
taut with barely-contained rage. “You must, because as much as I think your
receptionist there could give a rat’s ass about what happens to me, at least
she had the decency to be honest.”

I felt my own knot of anger and tried not to grimace.
“Receptionist” was something of a dirty word amongst personal and
administrative assistants. Even secretaries were higher up the food chain. A
receptionist was a person who did the least amount of work in the industry,
someone who answered a phone and filed a few papers, maybe.
Lacy
was a receptionist—barely. I didn’t
appreciate being compared to her.

But I understood that this wasn’t about me. This was about
Mr. Davies and his embarrassment at the treatment he’d endured. Though I’d
meant for the truth to be helpful to him, I knew that it couldn’t have been
easy to hear, and I tried to accept his hatred gracefully.

Miguel, however, was showing signs of cracking. I could see
his brow lining with deep wrinkles and the muscle in his jaw was steadily
twitching.

“Sir, I assure you, what Miss Hearst has said is in no way
representative of our company’s values or beliefs. She is
obviously
misinformed.”

“Then why?” Mr. Davies demanded, his voice rising. “Why won’t
Mr. Culling return my calls? Why did you decide not to hire me?”

Miguel sneered. “We’re not under any legal obligation to
disclose that. In fact, our HR department discourages us from—”

“Fuck your HR department!” Mr. Davies railed, getting so
close to Miguel’s face I could see spittle marring his skin. “And fuck you!”

Before Miguel could retaliate, Mr. Davies left, storming off
through the doors to the elevator with steps that shook the office floor.

As the weight of his anger dissipated, I felt another
sensation flooding in. What I had done was, objectively, the right thing. I’d
given a man honestly when no one else would, and I’d stopped being the whipping
girl everyone wanted me to be. I’d stood up for myself and for my own values.
But at what cost?

Miguel turned to me. I raised my chin, doing my best to look
confident, but not smug. I was preparing to defend my decision when the words
I’d been dreading left his mouth.

“Get your things and turn in your key card. You’re fired.”

Almost without thinking and with shock softening the blow, I
removed my lanyard and threw it at him.

“You can’t fire me. I quit five minutes ago.”

I grabbed my clutch from the front desk, turned, and strode
out the doors, following Mr. Davies. Miguel was yelling something at me, but I
couldn’t hear him—probably some clichéd movie-villain line about how I’d “never
work in this town again.” He seemed like the type.

The blood rushing in my ears was deafening, and I could feel
my body quaking as I pressed the button for the elevator car. Equal parts
relief and dread seeped into me, but I tried not to let either one win until I
heard Lacy’s shrill voice calling to me over the baritone roar of Miguel’s
furor.

“But Maddy! I don’t know what all you do! Send me an e-mail
with everything once you get home, okay?”

And then I finally let the dam burst. I laughed.

And as the elevator car finally reached my floor, and as it
descended to the next, and the next, I laughed and laughed some more.

My laughter died as soon as I hit the lobby.

It wasn’t until I’d shown myself out through the revolving
door that I realized the tears brimming in my eyes weren’t the funny ones. They
were hot and stinging, tears of rage, desperation, and utter despair. Soon I
realized that I really wasn’t laughing at all anymore, not even in that
hysterical way people do when they feel like they’ve got nothing else they can
do to chase the pain away.

No, I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard it hurt, so hard my chest
felt like it would split in two, so hard I was sure I could feel my ribs
starting to cave and poke at my lungs.

I was standing on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets
in the city bawling my eyes out in the afternoon rush. Cars and taxis whizzed
by too fast for me to see anything more than the blur of their movement, but
somehow I was certain that the dark eyes inside them were all on me. Passersby
craned their necks to ogle at the crying woman slowly wandering toward home,
fascinated by me like I was some kind of moaning spirit haunting 47
^th
Street, a jilted bride still searching for her lover or a desolate mother
seeking her long-lost child.

They made the whole thing feel more dramatic than it was, but
for the most part, they all left me alone. That was fine by me. The last thing
I needed at that moment was a stranger’s pity.

I steadied myself for a moment on a parking meter near one of
those pruned-just-so trees cities put up along the sidewalks to imply they
weren’t
completely
destroying the
environment. It was every bit as fake as the offices I used to pretend to work
for. I could feel cold sweat making long trails down the lines in my palms
despite the shade, and my chest felt like someone had taken the muscles and
stretching them out paper-thin. I knew what it was. I’d experienced it before.
In fact, panic attacks had become a common occurrence since I’d started working
at ExecuSpace, and even Zoloft couldn’t seem to keep them at bay. Human beings
weren’t meant to work the way ExecuSpace expected them to. Human beings weren’t
meant to endure such constant, debilitating stress.

As I sucked in long, slow breaths, I tried to entertain
myself with happier thoughts.
It’s for
the best. Think about your health. Think about your peace of mind. This job
couldn’t have been good for you. Even if it was putting food on the table,
who’s to say that you wouldn’t end up in the hospital for stress a few months
down the line? It’s not like they offered health insurance. You were one
medical disaster away from being destitute, anyway…

It was all true. But the fact remained that I wasn’t one
medical disaster away from financial ruin anymore. Now, thanks to a rage that
had been building for far too long and a mouth that didn’t know when to seal
itself shut, I was already there.

I changed tracks on my train of thought, trying to get a grip
on something solid—a plan, maybe. The damage was done, and there was no way to
undo it, but what I could do now was find a way to move forward.

I knew the job market. I’d been searching for a replacement
position for months now in secret. I’d only had one interview, and that
position had offered even less in the way of compensation. Still, I was sure I
could find something, but time was a factor, and I had no safety net.

That particular thought made my vision blurry and my blood
boil. It didn’t have to be like this…

The reason I had no safety net had a name, and it was
Mother.

My mother, Amanda Hearst, didn’t believe in being supportive.
She believed in “tough love,” as in, “you better not screw this up, honey,
‘cause you’re on your own.” She had made it clear to me from a very young age
that my mistakes were my own. My successes, however, she attributed to her
stellar parenting.
Classic
mother.

“Those other kids failed because their parents let them,”
she’d tell me, her carmine lips twisted into a smug smirk. “If it wasn’t for me
and how hard I’ve pushed you, you would be just like them.”

I had comforted myself for a time with the idea that she was
only that hard on me because we were broke. We were the kind of broke that
nobody liked to talk about—lower middle-class, just poor enough to scrape by,
but somehow too wealthy to qualify for any kind of assistance. My father had
walked out on her when I was just a baby, and for years I told myself that his
abandonment and the way the system has spurned her had made her feel like if
she didn’t teach me to rely on myself—and only on myself—then I would fall to
the same fate. She didn’t want that for me, I always thought. She just chose to
show it in a cold and hurtful way.

That illusion had shattered three months ago when my mother
had announced her engagement to Charles Harvey, the billionaire CEO of Harvey
Enterprises. I had no idea what their business actually entailed, but whatever
it was, it brought him more money than God, and as my mother was oh-so-quick to
inform me, I wasn’t entitled to a penny of it.

“I didn’t raise you to be a leech,” she’d told me when I’d
said that it would be nice not to have to worry about money for a change. I
hadn’t meant that I intended on blowing it on some kind of shopping spree. I’d always
wanted to finish my college degree, and work was getting in the way…

That didn’t matter to her.

Her scowl had sent chills down my spine and twisted my guts
into knots. “You’re not an infant, Madison. You’re an adult. That means you
make your own way in this world.” She’d looked so devastatingly disappointed as
she added, “I thought I’d taught you better than that.”

In my anger, I’d asked her what, exactly, I would have to do
to be worthy of a little help every now and then. It felt like she’d punched me
right in the face when she answered, “Marry rich.”

I’d realized then that my mother had never had my best
interests in mind. My father leaving hadn’t made her protective of me. It had
made her protective of herself. It had made her selfish and cruel, and I hadn’t
spoken to her since.

Which was why I couldn’t call her now. I couldn’t dial her
number and say, “Mom, I need help.” She wouldn’t give it. I doubted if she
would even bother to answer the phone.

As usual, I was on my own.

I was still trying to achieve a stiff upper lip when I let go
of the parking meter and set off down the sidewalk in the direction of home.
Unfortunately, the moment I did, I barreled straight into a man who’d had the
misfortune of stepping between me and my downward spiral.

His chest was so hard under his button-down shirt that I was
sure he’d broken my jaw, but the material of his blazer was so soft that it
felt like I’d landed on a cloud. It was silken, almost, and as I gently pressed
it with my fingers, tilting back my head to look up at who I’d just assaulted,
I felt his breath hitch at my touch.

As the halo of the sun faded behind a cloud, I got a good
look at the stranger’s face. My throat clenched and I uttered a sound that was
half a snort, half a wheeze.

“Preston? Seriously?”

“Maddy,” he said, his stormy blue eyes glittering as he spoke
my name. “Well, this is a surprise…”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to push him away
and sweep past him in a fit of disgust. I wanted to walk so fast down the sidewalk
that I left all memory of him in my wake, a spoiled brat who got absolutely
everything his heart desired while I couldn’t even manage to convince my own
mother to keep me off the streets.

But I couldn’t do any of that. Instead, to my shame and horror,
I buried my face in his expensive blazer and cried.