Stepbrother Forever: A Stepbrother Romance (52 page)

“I have to go,” I said, turning to Mr. Princeton. “I’m sorry.
I really am. And thank you so much for everything. But I have to go.”

“Maddy—” he began.

I was already gone. How could I possibly stay here?

I raced through the parking garage. I didn’t even bother to
get into my car. I kicked my heels off, tucked them under my arm, and made a
beeline for the crowded sidewalk where people were lining up to gawk at Preston
Harvey and the monumental decision he’d just made.

The reporters were all over him. They were screaming his name
along with their questions, all of which was lost to the thrumming of my ears
and the cacophony of the crowd. I didn’t care about any of it. All I wanted was
to get to him.

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.