“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.
“Then what?” she asked me again. She didn’t move. Not an inch. I could feel blood rush through me, but it wasn’t going to my head. It was going far, far away from it, to places that would be bad for the both of us. “Tell me, Preston. What the hell are you going to do if I don’t stop calling you on your bullshit?”
She was searc
hing me again. I could feel it. The way her eyes bored into mine prickled my skin. It seared my soul. She wanted the truth from me, a different kind of truth from the one I was used to telling. She wanted the kind of truth a man wasn’t likely to give, the kind that made him have to crack his ribs and bare his own heart for scrutiny. Was this how it was supposed to feel? Was this how being with a woman was supposed to be? Was it supposed to hurt like this, in a way that made every ounce of that pain worth it?
No wonder it had never worked with anyone else. If this was how it was supposed to be, and it sure as hell felt like it was, then Madison Hearst was the first woman in my entire life with whom things felt tragically, undeniably right.
I didn’t have an answer for Maddy. Not the way she wanted. Not with words and thoughts. Not with anything but a primal force that took me by surprise as much as it took her.
I grabbed my soon-to-be stepsister, one hand tangled in the sleek waves of her gorgeous brown hair, and I kissed her. God help me, I kissed her with passion and fury. And I loved it...
Oh, fuck.
Those were the only words that came to mind when Preston kissed me, the only words I could possibly form and hold onto long enough to give them meaning and weight. But what did they mean? Was I disgusted with him, my stepbrother for all intents and purposes, for the sweltering sweetness of his mouth on mine? Was I angry that he’d dared to touch me like this, or angry that he hadn’t done it sooner?
I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. I didn’t know what I wanted them to do. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to admit it.