Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

He looked into the camera and said, “There have been a lot of people who were hurt along the way, people who didn’t deserve it and who never should have been in the line of fire to begin with. As a company, we have often asked others to sacrifice for us instead of being willing to sacrifice anything ourselves. The future of Harvey Enterprises is simple: more ethics, more honesty. If that means less money, so be it.” He paused. I felt like he was staring right into my eyes. “If that means those that we’ve hurt can finally see some justice now, so be it.”

“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 t

hat 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.