PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (67 page)

“I’m
warning you. Run. Run away right now. Just… get the fuck out of here and don’t
look back. Preston Harvey will destroy you, just like he destroyed me. You
don’t really matter to him. No one does.”

The
moment I’d been dreading finally arrived. My shoulders touched the hard wood of
the door behind me, and I cringed, holding onto my clutch tightly as the woman
stopped and looked me up and down. She made a face of utter disgust, as if she
couldn’t bear the sight of what she saw.

“What’s
wrong
with you?” she asked. “Why
aren’t you leaving? Do you want to get hurt—is that it?” She brought her face
inches from mine. “Because if that’s what you want, I’m happy to oblige…”

“
Jane!
” Preston bellowed so loud that for
a moment, I wasn’t sure what he’d said had been a word at all. It sounded more
like a clap of thunder shaking the walls, threatening to knock down every
picture and piece of décor surrounding me. “Get away from her. Now!”

The
woman—Jane, I presumed—didn’t look like she was going to follow the order. But
then she finally did take a step back and I let out a breath, my whole body
trembling in the face of her cold rage.

Preston
strode toward us. He was coming so fast and so hard that for a second I thought
he was going to plow straight into Jane and knock her off her
crystal-embellished Louboutins. But she stood her ground even as he threw open
the door behind her, putting himself between the two of us and allowing me to
scamper behind his back.

“Get
out,” he snarled with such ferocity it sent chills down my spine. “Do not
ever
come back, and do not
ever
think that you can speak to my
sister like that.”

Jane
snorted. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said, but Preston didn’t
entertain it. He took her by the arm, firmly but not roughly, and dragged her
outside over the threshold, leaving her on the stoop.

“The
next time you show up here, or anywhere else that belongs to me, I’m calling
security,” he said. “You’re fucking crazy, Jane. That’s what got you fired, not
her.
”

“Fine,”
she sneered. “That’s just great, Preston. Because you know what? I’m calling
the cops!” She rubbed her arm where he’d touched her, wincing like he’d pulled
it out of place, though it was clear he hadn’t. “This is assault!”

“Leave,”
he said before slamming the door right in her face and locking it from the
inside. I heard her pound on it a few times before she finally gave up, letting
out one last scream as the staccato beat of her heels descended the steps
toward Mr. Fletcher’s car.

I
looked up at Preston as he turned. The veins in his neck were bulging, as were
his muscles. I could see the immense bulge of his biceps, especially under the
short sleeves of the t-shirt he was wearing. It draped nicely around his waist,
but even so, with his heavy breathing a teasing glimpse of his abs were
visible. He was the picture of raw power, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of
him.

Slowly,
his gaze shifted to meet mine. He asked, “Are you all right?”

I
nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” I looked toward the doors again. “I just feel bad for
Mr. Fletcher…”

Preston
laughed softly. It wasn’t a happy sound, but he did seem at least darkly
amused. “Yeah. Me too.”

I
watched as he left the front door, making his way toward one of the rooms I hadn’t
explored yet. I followed him, watching as he sat down on a very
expensive-looking sofa and put his face in his hands, snarling into them. It
was a deep, primal sound.

“I
take it you wanted me to get breakfast because of that,” I said softly, standing
awkwardly in the archway. He nodded without looking up at me. “Was that the
woman you were talking about in the car—the one who doesn’t respect your
boundaries?”

“Or
yours, apparently,” he muttered, running both hands through his hair as he
leaned back against the cushions with a sigh. He shook his head. “I’m just glad
it’s over, but it’s eight-fifteen and I already need a drink.”

I
smiled uneasily. “Do you have a bar? I make a mean Bloody Mary.”

“Not
here,” he told me. “This is a place of business, after all. It’s not like in
the Sixties, when we did that kind of thing…” Preston hadn’t been alive in the
Sixties, and yet he somehow seemed wistful. He waved his hand after a moment.
“Coffee would do, if you wouldn’t mind.”

I
set my clutch down on one of the armchairs near him. “Where’s the kitchen?” I
asked.

“Just
through here,” he answered, pointing at a door at the far side of the room. He
relaxed while I went through it and entered one of the most glorious kitchens
I’d ever seen.

Though
it was keeping in style with the Italian countryside theme Preston had going
on, it was a gourmet ensemble if I’d ever seen one. The stove looked
state-of-the-art and the cabinets, though made of dark wood, all had
transparent doors that let one see their contents without having to open them
first. The fridge was massive, a French door model with a separate, pull-out
freezer down below. Everything was gleaming steel against wood, except for the
copper pot rack hanging above a kitchen island with a marble countertop.

I
found the coffee machine easily enough. As expected, Preston had an expensive
brew tucked away near the filters. The smell alone did more to wake me up than
my own cup back at my apartment had, and I brewed enough for two before
returning to the sitting room and offering a mug to my stepbrother.

“Look,
Maddy, I know this probably looks bad,” he started, clearly still caught up on
my arrival. “You weren’t supposed to see any of that. She wasn’t even supposed
to be here.”

“Relax.
It’s none of my business, and I’m not one to judge,” I replied, thinking back
to a little short term office fling I’d had with one of the mail runners in my
earlier days at ExecuSpace. “I’m just glad to have this opportunity…”

He
smiled. “Well, it looks like your first official duty as my new personal
assistant was to get me post-breakup coffee. How’s it feel?”

I
laughed. “Patronizing,” I said, sitting down on the same armchair I’d set my
clutch onto. Its deep, cocoa-colored leather upholstery was firm, yet soft
enough to be comfortable, and the tufted back gave me more support than I’d
thought it would. “Still, it’s good to have a job. I do have a question,
though.”

Preston
took a sip of his coffee. He winced, as if he’d never learned not to let a hot
beverage cool. “What’s that?”

I
blew on the surface of my own mug, my lips moving before the wiser half of my
brain could stop me.

“Do
you fuck all of your secretaries?”

Preston
stared at me with an almost shocked look on his face, choking on his drink.

I
felt my face flush and my stomach plummet, then fill with the wingbeats of a
thousand butterflies as Preston laughed nervously and turned away.

Why the hell did I say that?

Maddy’s
first day as
my new assistant became a lot more boring after Jane had finally stopped storming
around the front lawn. Most of it was spent having her fill out all the
appropriate paperwork and letting her look over Jane’s notes, most of which I’d
managed to salvage after she’d torn through her desk like a demon in an effort
to destroy as much company property as she could. Though I’d been dreading that
moment for months, now that it had passed, I felt relieved. Maddy had been
right. It was good to let go, especially before Jane was in a position to do
anything worse.

“Are
you concerned about what she said?” she asked me at lunch. I’d taken her to a
bistro on the lake behind my property. “About the ‘assault,’ I mean?”

I
shrugged. “Not really. Jane has anger issues, that’s true, but I doubt she’d go
so far as to actually file a police report against me. And even if she did,
she’s got no proof. I didn’t grab her that hard. And besides,” I added with a
grin, “I have witnesses.”

“
A
witness, anyway,” Maddy said. “But
that’s probably good enough.”

Although
I put on an appearance of confidence, I certainly hoped we were right, the last
thing I needed was that kind of publicity… Regardless of what was going to
happen with Jane, by the end of the first day Maddy was already pretty
comfortably settled in. Things almost felt… Normal.

Except
that I couldn’t get Maddy’s words out of my head…

Do you fuck all of your
secretaries?

Sure,
it had been a joke. All in good fun… But it had my wheels moving in ways they
shouldn’t have been moving.

I
did my best to ignore it.

When
weeks went by without hearing anything from Jane, both of us breathed a
collective sigh of relief. I immediately forbade any more talk of her, fearful
that invoking her name might make the demon return. I’d have to write up a rule
somewhere that disallowed anyone from going into a bathroom with the lights off
and saying “Jane Turner” three times in front of a mirror, but as it so
happened, my attention was far more focused on Maddy.

I’d
had every confidence in her that she’d turn out to be the perfect new personal
assistant, and I’d been right. I’d just had no idea how right I would be. She
was amazingly good at her job, meticulous and detail-oriented, always taking
the initiative to organize and get things done. She’d memorized my particular
way of doing things in practically no time at all, and by the end of our first
month together, I couldn’t believe the stark contrast between her and Jane.

“I
think I’m ready to pronounce you a permanent hire,” I teased her one day as she
made me coffee. She’d finally figured out the French press, which was far more
preferable than the automatic swill I got out of the machine.

She
had smiled and looked at me through her lashes in that smug, know-it-all way
I’d come to love. “Oh, please. I’ve been permanent since day one. At this
stage, I don’t think you could live without me.”

“Too
true,” I’d told her. But neither of us realized how much I’d meant it until a
week later when she overheard me on the phone. At the time, I had no idea how
that seemingly innocuous moment would change everything between us forever.

****

“Yes,
I realize that’s prime real estate. Yes, I know what’s there now, and I’m sure
it can be done. I know my father wants this to go forward, but I’m just asking
you, man to man… Do you
really
want
to do this? What your asking crosses an ethical line. It may be, in fact, a
bit… Extrajudicial.”

I
stood on my bedroom balcony overlooking the distant lake. I could see the water
gently rippling as a lazy breeze swept over it, just barely disturbing the
otherwise placid surface. It was late and the sun was setting, but Mr. Verger
wasn’t letting me off the phone without a fight. I watched the sky turn from
orange to red, then a hazy purple as my high-strung client stammered on the
other end of the line.

I
sighed, hoping my Bluetooth earpiece didn’t pick it up. I had explained this at
least a dozen times, but Harold wasn’t getting it. I understood why he’d gotten
my father involved in this, I just didn’t want to be part of it. With the
company in my hands during the windup to my father’s wedding, he’d dropped this
entire sordid affair on my lap.

On
the surface, it was simple. Harvey Enterprises has connections, able to bend
the will of state and federal agencies that look into things like code
violations. They condemn buildings all the time. In fact, nothing makes them
happier than to slap a big yellow notice on a door that says ‘CONDEMNED’ on it.
It’s like getting their dick sucked for them. They’d be more than happy to shut
down the homeless shelter if the company threw money their way, and that’s
exactly what Mr. Verger wanted me to do.

Mr.
Verger had big plans for that space. He’d quietly bought up buildings on either
side of the shelter, and once he owned the final piece of the puzzle, there’d
be nothing stopping him from razing the entire block and putting up some gaudy
condo tower in its place. Gentrification at work.

Sure,
we would lose a rec center and the only homeless shelter within a twenty mile
radius in the process, but Harold Verger had deep pockets—the kind that could
not only pay off the code enforcement officials, but could go a long way in
supporting Harvey Enterprises in all manner of future endeavors.

That
was the rub. From what my father had told me, Mr. Verger had a very good shot
at becoming a US Senator very soon. Money could buy you many things, but if you
wanted real influence, you needed to know the right people. My father would
very much like to know a senator. He’d very much like to have done favors for
one, so that that senator might be amenable to returning those favors in his
more prestigious future. And what my father wanted, my father got, even if that
meant tearing down a perfectly good building to get it.

Only
he wasn’t going to do it. He was going to make me do it. I wasn’t completely
heartless, though. I’d first seen the job as a moral quandary. Homeless people
already had it rough. Why make it rougher by eliminating one of the few safe
spaces that they had?

I
kept telling myself there were always more safe spaces, and there was plenty of
land in the city. The non-profit organization keeping both the rec center and
the shelter open could always open some new ones. It might take a year or two,
but it would get done.

“Young
man, I was a lawyer for twenty six years. Don’t lecture me on the law. I was
under the impression you would take care of this without any questions being
asked,” Mr. Verger said. “Your father made certain assurances.”

I
could feel my temples throbbing. Though I hadn’t thought about her in weeks, I
would almost have preferred a conversation with Jane to one with this guy.

“All
right, Mr. Verger. I’ll get the ball rolling on Monday. We’ll have that
homeless shelter knocked flat in three weeks or less. The recreation center
might take a bit longer, but I’ll personally expedite the process. You have a
nice weekend, all right?”

“You
too, Mr. Harvey. Oh, and tell your father I say hello, will you? I’ve got a
hankering to play some golf next week. Let him know I said so.”

I
forced a smile into my tone. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

I
could barely contain my excitement when Mr. Verger finally hung up. I couldn’t
imagine that man as a senator, with the kind of power to make decisions that
could affect all of America. He was incompetent, fidgety, uncertain, and a
complete worry-wart. Then again, I couldn’t think of a senator who wasn’t
completely ill-suited for the job in one way or another. I guessed there was
always room for one more.

I
turned around, taking my Bluetooth earpiece out and nearly running straight
into Maddy. It wouldn’t have been the first time we collided, and I grinned at
her as I shook my head.

“Maddy,
we’ve got to stop meeting like this…”

“How
could you?” she asked me, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked utterly
horrified, and it took me a few seconds to realize she’d overheard the
conversation I’d been having on the phone.

“Oh.
You mean the shelter?”

She
stared at me. “Of course I mean the shelter. And the recreation center! And oh
God, what else is there?” Then she waved her hand and shut her eyes. “No. Don’t
tell me.
Really.
If there’s more, I
don’t want to know…”

“Oh,
come on,” I said, moving past her and into my bedroom. “It’s urban renewal,
nothing more. The condo development is going to bring in a lot more money for
the city than a homeless shelter ever did, and it will reduce crime and
vagrancy. Ten years from now, you won’t even recognize the city center. This is
a win, Maddy. We should celebrate.”

I
turned back to see if she was coming, but she hadn’t moved. I sighed, leaning
against the wall. “Come on. I’ll take you anywhere you’d like. Do you like
seafood? There’s this place over by the marina. It’s a bit of a drive, but the
lobster is worth it.”

“I
can’t even comprehend this right now,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of
my bed. She shook her head at me, eyes pinched. “Urban renewal? Extrajudicial?
You’re talking about a criminal conspiracy. Are you fucking serious right now?
I know that part of the city. You’re going to help someone build a fancy pants
condo development and knock down a
homeless
shelter
and a rec center
for
disadvantaged kids?!
Have you lost your mind, Preston? Never mind that—have
you lost your
soul?
”

I
watched the red-orange hues of the dying sun light up her face. They
complemented her anger perfectly. She looked like a painting, the portrait of a
woman on the edge of rage. It was stunning.

“Look,”
I told her, “this is business. Mr. Verger has connections and my father still
has the final say. You know how it is. It’s still about getting the biggest
piece of the pie, no matter what you have to do. I don’t like it, but I’m not
running the show here. Not yet. I have to do what I’m told just like everyone
else. I mean, come on, Maddy. You should know this better than anyone. If I
don’t do this, my father will.”

“Yeah,”
she said. Her face had tightened. Anger had turned to disappointment. “I just
didn’t think you would do something like this. You seemed different. You told
me you were going to save the world…”

I
shook my head. “I’m not a saint, Maddy.”

She
shook hers too. “No, I know that. But this is something I would have expected
from your father. Not from you.”

Now
that
struck a chord. I could feel the
snarl in my voice before I’d even answered. “I’m nothing like my father. You
know that.”

“Do
I?” she asked me, looking up at me again. Her green eyes searched mine the same
way they had back at the restaurant the day she’d lost her job. She was looking
for an answer, but this time, she’d already asked the question. “Do I have any
idea who you are at all?”

“Of
course you do.” I sighed. “Look, Maddy, you’re blowing this way out of
proportion. Non-profit groups get funding all the time. Charitable donations
are tax-deductible, for fuck’s sakes. Sure, we’re going to shut the shelter and
the rec center down, but once it’s gone they can build on some other parcel,
maybe something with a view out past the suburbs.”

“You
actually think the homeless give two shits about a view?” she snorted. “You
can’t just shove them out of the city and forget about them. You sound like a
true one-percenter.”

“One
percent? You’re the one who cried for help. I didn’t hear you complaining when
I wrote you that ten thousand dollar check,” I argued. “Or when I hired you. Or
when I paid you, for that matter.”

“Don’t
you
dare
throw that money in my face,”
she hissed, launching up from the bed. “You gave me that money to help me out
when I was nearly destitute. And the rest you paid me for good, honest work. I
haven’t been your kept woman, Preston. I earned that money working for you!”

“Which
is why you should do what I tell you now and get in the goddamn car!” I was
seething. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like the way she was challenging me,
like suddenly she knew more about business than I did, like she had any idea
what it was like to be me, Preston Harvey, the son of a billionaire whose first
and only love had ever been cold, hard cash.

And
yet I did like it. In fact, I loved it. Maddy never looked more beautiful than
when she was standing up for herself. She had a backbone stronger than most men
I’d known in my lifetime, and when she had a mind to, she put up one hell of a
fight.

But
I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth now. There was too much
momentum, too much frustration welling up inside me, rattling my bones. “You
work for me, which means my decisions are your decisions. If I say ‘jump,’ you
say, ‘how high?’ If I tell you that what I’m doing is the right goddamn thing
for my company, then you shut up and accept that maybe the guy with the Harvard
business degree knows what the fuck he’s talking about. If those are things
that you can’t handle that, then…”

“Then
what, Preston?” she asked me. Jane had always had a heat in her, a passion, and
a deep, ugly anger too, but Maddy was different. Her flame was brighter,
stronger than any I’d ever seen before. It danced higher, more beautifully than
Jane’s ever had, and I was drawn to it like an unlucky moth gazing upon its
flickering shape, mesmerized by how wild and effulgent she was. “Then you’ll
fire me? You’ll send me back to my shitty apartment with some savings and hope
I land on my feet? Maybe if I’m lucky, you’ll throw in an excellent job
reference too, as long as I don’t make a scene like Jane did when I storm out.”
Her lip curled in a defiant sneer. “Is that what you do to everyone who dares
to tell you like it is, or just the women?”

I
hated hearing that woman’s name leave her lips. It poisoned everything it
touched, and the last thing I wanted to imagine was anything tarnishing Maddy’s
sweet, soft, supple lips.

I
stared at them, unable to look away. They were set into a firm line, one that
meant she wasn’t going to back down. But I needed her to. I needed her to stop,
because with every word she spoke, something hungry stirred inside of me.

“You
love to flirt with poverty, don’t you?” I shot back, my muscles tense and
vibrating beneath my skin. She was like a live wire sending currents through
every part of my body, but I didn’t know of what. Was it anger? Disdain? Or was
it something I couldn’t quite explain, something that seemed closer to lust
than to fury?

“You
had your own apartment, Maddy. Maybe you had to take a bus to work, but you had
a job and a roof over your head. You act like your struggle makes you better
than people like me, but you haven’t had to deal with half the shit that
really
poor people do. You get the
self-righteousness with none of the suffering, and that gets you off, make you
feel special so you can look down on an entire class of people. Grow up.”

She
pursed her lips, and her eyes flared. “Is that what happened to you, Preston?
You grew up to become your father—a man who would rather stuff more money in
his pockets than think twice about the rest of the world trying to just get by
out there? You are literally talking about destroying the only place the
homeless in this city have to go! It’s
evil,
and if you don’t see it, then maybe you should ask yourself how long you’ve
been staring into the abyss of wealth and business and politics, and whether or
not it’s begun staring back into you.”

I
closed the distance between us. “Maddy, if you don’t stop…” I lost the will to
finish that sentence. I didn’t know what to say. I just kept staring at the
woman who would become my sister and thinking how goddamn beautiful she was.