PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (35 page)

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.