ROUGH RIDER (56 page)

I stared. I wasn’t sure how to answer him, but he didn’t give me time.

“And besides, you can’t keep fucking your stepsister, Preston.”

I watched as his lips curled into a crooked smile, my breath catching as my heart skipped a beat. “Maybe she’s not family yet, but she will be, and then this little dalliance will have to stop. And when it does, it’ll all go bad, Preston. Believe me, I’ve seen what Madison’s mother is like. She’ll go after you and your money faster than you can pull out of her tight little cunt. Maybe she’ll say you raped her, or that you threatened her job if she didn’t go along with your twisted little fucking games. Now, maybe accusations like that don’t hold a hell of a lot of weight between men like us, but fucking your stepsister? Now that’s just plain unacceptable.”

He stood up, his bones creaking as he made his way to my side. He blew a puff of smoke in my face as he said, “You’ll be a pariah, Preston. And so will I. They’ll be wagging this story up and down the news stations and dragging our stock value through the mud. Is that what you want?”

My vision was tunneling. I could feel heat prickling my face. How the hell did he know about Maddy and me? How the hell
could
he know?

“You’re sick,” I said, a feeble attempt to refute his claims, however true they were. My words sounded weak even to my ears. “Jesus, Dad. That’s…”

“You’re going to get rid of her,” he said. “The sooner, the better. Because one day, you’re going to need an heir just like I did, and it’s damn sure not going to be something you can do with
Maddy.
You’re going to need someone cutthroat to help balance out whatever weakness your mother managed to impart in you. Jane should do quite nicely.”

I knew my father had always approved of Jane, but I’d never considered it had anything to do with breeding. I felt sick. I felt like my world was tilting, and I was doing my best to keep holding on as my thoughts careened through my head.

“No,” I said, my lips feeling numb. “I don’t take orders from you. Not from a man who cheated on my mom, and not from a man who…” I trailed off. What had he done, exactly—had he put cameras in my bedroom? I settled for, “…accuses me of sleeping with my own stepsister.”

“We all make sacrifices,” my father said. The heat of his stare was almost hotter than the blood pooling in my cheeks. “All of us, Preston. This will be yours. But the rewards are so much greater.”

“I don’t want to be like you,” I said, backing away from him and turning into the hall. “I don’t want to be anything like you!”

When I stormed into the parlor to get Maddy, she couldn’t have looked more relieved to see me. But that relief soon turned to confusion, and then to concern as I took her by the arm and pulled her from her seat.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

I held her hand on the way out the door, and there was no shame.

“
T
here’s
something I need to tell you,” Preston said once we were back in the car.

Despite his anger, he was taking his time getting us back to the office. In fact, I didn’t recognize any of the roads were traveling down. Whatever he wanted to talk about, it was obviously going to be a lengthy conversation.

“Is this about the shelter?” I asked. “Because if it’s some rambling justification about survival of the fittest straight out of your father’s mouth, then I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s not,” he answered. The moonlight made his sun-kissed face look ashen. “It’s about my father, and what’s next for us.”

I leaned back in my seat. Something about his tone put me on edge, and I felt my pulse begin to quicken and my mouth run dry. I had the feeling this wasn’t going to be a fun conversation.

“Okay,” I told him. “I’m listening.”

Preston took a deep breath before beginning. “When my parents divorced, I was still pretty young. I didn’t really understand what was going on. My mom tried to explain it to me, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. What kid can wrap his head around his parents splitting up?” He shook his head. “I know now that my father was cheating on her, and she couldn’t take it anymore. But back then, she didn’t explain that to me. I guess she didn’t want to tarnish my image of my father, even though for a long time, it tarnished my image of her.”

I listened quietly, hands in my lap as Preston continued. The corners of his eyes were pinched and his mouth had turned into a pained grimace. I felt a pang of sadness for him. Maybe I couldn’t relate—my mother had never felt the need to hold back when badmouthing my father—but the hurt it was causing him was plain on his face.

“That must have been hard for you,” I said. I knew those words were stupid and meaningless, but I felt like I ought to say something.

“It was,” he replied. “To make matters worse, she’d signed a pre-nup before she and my dad got married. So she wasn’t entitled to a dime of his money when they divorced, and my father used his considerable wealth to ensure that she’d walk away with absolutely nothing—including me.”

I had wondered why Preston stayed with his father. I had assumed that it was because a boy might want to stay with his dad, but I’d always heard that courts were more likely to award custody to children’s mothers.

I asked him, “How?”

He said, “My father sought full custody. My mom had never intended to take me away from him. She’d wanted to split my time between them so that we could all still be some kind of family. But my dad was vindictive, and as I learned later in life, family courts only side with the mom when fathers
don’t
seek custody. When they do, either joint or sole, they get it over seventy percent of the time. It didn’t hurt that Dad paid off the judge, either. When you have the money to hire the very best lawyers around, not to mention provide an ‘excellent standard of care’ for your child, odds are that the other parent is going to get screwed.”

When he spoke again, his voice shuddered. “My mom walked out of that courtroom with nothing. She was penniless. She’d lost her only child. And not long after that, there was an accident.”

My lips parted. I felt my stomach plummet to my feet. A chill seized me, and I shook my head in utter disbelief. “Oh my God, Preston. I had no idea. I’m so sorry…”

He nodded slowly. “Me too. We didn’t even go to her funeral.”

Preston was quiet for a long while, and I didn’t dare disturb him. That revelation weighed heavily on the two of us. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to lose his mother at that age, and for his father to act like she’d never even mattered.

Miles passed, and finally I mustered the courage to ask him, “Do you know why your dad handled it like that? It couldn’t have been just to get back at her…”

“No, it wasn’t just that,” he said. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles had turned white. “I was valuable to him. Not because I was his child, but because I was his heir. I was eleven at the time, and by that point, he’d already invested quite a bit of time and effort into me. He wasn’t just going to let me go.”

“But surely joint custody…”

“He had to prove a point,” Preston said flatly, wringing the leather in his hands. “In his eyes, my mother had committed the ultimate sin. She’d shattered the perfect image of the Harvey family. What he did with that other woman was discreet. A divorce was public.”

So, this was the man my mother was marrying. Part of me immediately felt like she deserved him. They both treated their children like shit, and maybe it was time for her to get a taste of her own medicine for a change.

But I couldn’t hold onto that feeling for long. My mother was already a deeply miserable woman. The last thing she needed to experience was even more pain and suffering.

“Should I warn my mother off him?” I asked. “Is that why you’re telling me all this?”

“That’s one reason,” he said, his eyes distant. “Another is that I’m certain that he’s doing it again. He’s cheating on your mother, Maddy.” Finally, a bit of anger shone through. “Goddamn him. I’m so sorry.”

I closed my eyes. So, it was even worse than I thought. There wasn’t just a looming threat of infidelity now—it was already here. My mother was just another trophy to Mr. Harvey, a woman he could bring to company functions and let hang on his arm in front of all the other businessmen and their wives. He could hardly do that with his mistress, could he? The wealthy head of a company certainly couldn’t be seen in public with some young slut.

The way men like Mr. Harvey treated women made me sick to my stomach, and my nausea only grew worse as Preston dropped the final bombshell.

“There’s one other thing,” he said. We stopped at an intersection and he looked into my eyes. “Maddy… he
knows.
”

I wished I’d had doubts. I wished that I’d been able to express some confusion as to what Preston could possibly mean. But I couldn’t. I knew exactly what he was talking about. His father knew about our tryst, and everything in my body grew suddenly cold.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “How?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. As he moved past the stop sign, he added, “But somehow he does. And I don’t feel safe staying at my office anymore. Do you?”

Slowly, I shook my head. I was beginning to feel numb all over, the side-effect of shock, I was sure. Would Preston’s dad tell my mother? Had he done so already? No, he couldn’t have. If he did, she would have been sure to bring it up when we were in the parlor.

I could almost see the smugness in her beady eyes as she feigned horror.
Your own stepbrother, Madison. How low will you stoop?

“Is that what he told you in his office?” I asked him, my voice quavering as much as my hands were. “Is that why we left in such a hurry?”

“Yes,” Preston said. “And because he wants me to start taking a more… active role in Harvey Enterprises. Apparently, the way I handled the Verger account impressed him, or something...” He snorted in disgust. “He wants me to shut down my office and fire you.”

Great. So not only was my new stepfather going to hold this secret over my head for the rest of my life, but as punishment, I’d end up destitute again. My head was reeling and I fumbled for the control on the side of my seat, leaning it all the way back as I tried my hardest not to faint.

“Fuck,” I muttered, closing my eyes as everything began to spin. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

The car stopped. Preston reached over. He took my hands.

“Maddy, look at me.”

I gave the slightest shake of my head. I needed a moment to breathe. I could feel my chest tightening, and there was a steadily growing ache in my jaw. I realized I was grinding my teeth.

“Maddy,” he said again. This time, his voice was far more commanding. “Look at me.”

Trembling, I did as I was told. All the tension in my body faded away as I stared into my stepbrother’s glittering blue eyes.

“I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” he whispered, stroking my knuckles with his thumb. “I made a choice tonight. I never realized how worthless my father’s approval was until I had it, or what it meant until tonight. The man has no soul, Maddy. He ruins the lives of everyone he surrounds himself with. I thought being like him would make me untouchable, but all it’s done is make me just as empty and miserable as he is.”

I remained silent, staring up at him as he grasped my hands tighter. His palms were so warm. I could feel his pulse radiating through them as he said, “I never would have realized any of that without you. The idea of losing you terrifies me. For the first time in my life, I’m…
feeling
something, not just playing a part. Whatever we have between us, however wrong it is—it’s
real.
”

He lifted one of his hands from mine and brought it to my face, lightly sweeping his fingers against my cheek. I leaned into his touch, savoring the comfort it brought. How had I gone from despising my soon-to-be stepbrother to feeling safe with him in just a few short weeks? How had I opened my heart to him despite knowing that it could never, ever work?

“Come upstairs with me,” he said gently. “Stay at my place tonight. I don’t want to be alone.”

I blinked up at him slowly. “But I thought you didn’t trust being in your office anymore?”

“I don’t,” Preston answered. He reached over and fiddled with my seat controls, adjusting them until I was sitting up. “I want you to stay with me in my home.”

I looked up past the gate at the villa beyond. It was absolutely breathtaking. More than that, it looked like a fortress—someplace we could both rest and hide away from the rest of the world until we were ready to face it again.

“Yes,” I told him, unable to tear my eyes away from his beautiful home. “I’ll stay.”

“Good,” he said, finally pulling up to the wrought iron gate. As it opened, he added, “We have a lot to figure out.”

P
reston’s housekeeper
had retired to her one-bedroom suite on the grounds for the evening, so it was just the two of us in his grand estate. Though he had done his best to calm me in the car, my knees were still shaking and I could feel panic squeezing my chest. He suggested I use his master bathroom to relax, and I couldn’t say no to that.

I leaned back in his whirlpool tub, sighing softly as I piled my hair on the side. The water was nearly scalding hot, perfect for releasing all the aches and pains that had built in my strained muscles. I could feel myself slipping away already, the frustration and confusion receding as I lay my head on the built-in neck support, letting myself float weightless in the bath. A moment later I heard Preston enter and I opened my eyes to see him extending a glass of champagne.

“Here,” he said. “You look like you need it.”

I nodded and sighed as I took it from him, bringing it to my lips. This was the good stuff, not the fifteen-dollar bottles I’d picked up from the grocery store once or twice back when I’d been in charge of ExecuSpace’s company parties. Those days seemed so far away now. I’d been shrouded in opulence for so long that I could barely remember what it was like to struggle. Had I become my mother?

I didn’t realize I’d said that last part out loud.

Preston’s eyes darkened as he looked down at me. “No, Maddy,” he said, sitting on the edge of the tub. “You’re nothing like Vivian. Don’t you ever think that. Okay?”

I smiled at him thinly and took another sip of my champagne. I wasn’t in the mood to argue. “What do we do now?”

He rolled up his sleeves and sighed, kicking his shoes across the bathroom floor. Then he reached into the water and pulled my wet feet into his lap, soaking his slacks as he massaged along my arches with exquisite care. I moaned and sank into the water, purring like a kitten as my Preston worked my soles.

“I’m not giving into my father’s demands,” he said, gently stretching and rubbing each of my toes. I nearly swooned. “We’ll find a way out of this. It may have to be extreme, but if you’re willing to go for it, then so am I.”

I opened my eyes. “What exactly are you proposing?” I asked him.