Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

Everything she’d ever done had practically screamed it. She looked at me with nothing but disdain, and each time I entered a room with her in it, the temperature dropped at least two degrees. She only offered me curt, clipped responses whenever I tried to strike up a conversation, and that was only if she chose to speak at all. I wasn’t certain what I’d done to deserve her ire, but whatever it was, I’d been under the impression that there was just no reversing it.

As a result, I’d given up on having any kind of relationship with my soon-to-be stepsister. And who could blame me? Yet here we were, locked in an embrace on the sidewalk of a busy street—and in broad daylight, no less.

Something had to be wrong. I knew she’d worked in some kind of office nearby, but was she coming to see me? If she was, something had to be seriously wrong. It occurred to me that it could have something to do with one—or both—of our parents.

My breath caught in my throat, but before I could ask, she lifted her face again and said, “I lost my job.”

I looked down at her, noticing for the first time how very green her eyes were. If she were any other woman I probably would have been looking straight down the neckline of her blouse, but something about Maddy’s face had always struck me as celestial, angelic. That wasn’t to say I didn’t appreciate her womanly body, those supple curves that made me wish our parents had never met the very first time I’d seen her... It only meant that those rare and beautiful eyes were the most breathtaking pair I’d ever seen.

Which was saying something, because I’d looked into the eyes of a lot of women.

I didn’t tell her that. All I could think of to say that didn’t sound incredibly stupid was, “I’m sorry.” And then, as soon as those words left my mouth, I realized that they did sound incredibly stupid. No wonder she hated me.

But instead of fixing me with that frigid stare she’d inherited directly from her mother, Maddy shook her head and said, “Don’t be. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault…”

That thousand-yard stare she was sporting made me uneasy. I didn’t know a lot about her job, except that she’d worked as an administrative assistant for some rental company, but I got the impression that Maddy definitely didn’t have a lot of money. She’d never said as much, but her mother sure as hell had implied it. It was almost as if that woman wanted her daughter to fail, like she got no greater joy in life than watching Maddy flounder. It seemed a little wrong when she was spending her days milking my father for every dollar he was worth.

I shifted uncomfortably. Maddy suffered a hardship I’d never known. I came from money, and lots of it. In fact, if it weren’t for being the sole heir to the Harvey fortune, I wouldn’t have had to work a day in my life. But Dad insisted, and when he made his mind up about something, there was no changing it—not even if it made everyone else around him miserable.

Hell, especially if it made everyone miserable.

“I was just on my way to a meeting,” I said, and that was mostly true. Jane, my personal assistant, had texted me to let me know she was running hot, as usual. That woman was crazy in the worst ways. Maybe I was stupid for sticking my dick in psycho, but I was a hedonist—and a glutton for punishment. Especially when it came at the hands of a buxom redhead in a leather cat-suit… She knew it was over, but that wasn’t stopping her from blowing my phone up with one filthy picture after another today. Part of me wondered if I was meeting up with her to affirm it was over, or to fuck her sideways…

Maybe both.

Thing was, though, my escapades with Jane were beginning to take their toll on me. What started in unpredictable and unlawful ways had started to get dangerous. Suddenly, she wanted more. Maybe it was all the pressure she was putting on me to meet her parents and take her up to the Hamptons for a “romantic getaway.” It was her way of trying to make us something official, but we weren’t, and no matter how many times I tried to explain that to her, Jane just didn’t seem interested in getting it.

That was probably some kind of red flag. I probably should have cut things off with her a long time ago. But if it was all going to end messy anyway, what was the harm in drawing out the good parts a little longer than I should?

Maddy was staring at me. The little flame of hope flickering in her eyes died, snuffed out by my careless words. I scrambled to regroup, to find something to say that didn’t sound like I was brushing her off.

Because honestly, I would rather have spent the day with my distraught stepsister than deal with the crazy shit that my crazy secretary was doing in my office. It was weird to admit it, even to myself, but it was true.

“Okay, let’s start over.” I took the Bluetooth earpiece out of my ear and thrust it into my pocket so the steady stream of notifications I was getting from Jane couldn’t interrupt me. “You’re clearly having a bad day, and there’s a café I like about a block from here. Let me buy you lunch.”

She opened her pretty mouth, and for a moment, I was sure she was going to deny me. But then she nodded, lifting her fingers to her face to brush away the tears still brimming in her eyes.

“I am hungry,” she admitted softly.

I smiled. Realizing we’d been holding one another in the middle of the sidewalk for several minutes now, I released her and swept her up beside me, pressing my hand into the small of her back. Maybe that wasn’t an appropriate brotherly reaction, but it was instinct and I was new to this whole stepbrother thing. Besides, I’d touched my share of pretty girls that way.

One thing was different with Maddy, though. When I touched her, I felt something stir inside of me, something like tectonic plates moving and shifting under the surface. And below that, there was something flowing and hot, something that made me notice suddenly the smell of her hair, the smoothness of her skin, the way her ass just barely brushed the side of my hand as we walked, the fabric of her stylish pencil skirt clinging to both those ripe, gorgeous swells above her shapely calves and thighs.

Those heels, too—my God. If they didn’t scream “fuck me,” I wasn’t sure what did.

But those were just thoughts. Silly thoughts. The kind of thoughts that came to a man at inappropriate times. Like when he was hanging out with the one girl in the entire world that was completely off limits. Totally normal.

Right?

Either way, I needed to get rid of them. This was probably my only shot at actually getting my stepsister to like me, and I wasn’t about to let my traditional male stupidity fuck it up.

It didn’t take long to reach the place, and I was already starting to relax as I led Maddy in through the front door. Without saying a word, the hostess had noted our arrival and ushered us in to my regular booth.

“I thought you said this place was a café?”

I looked around. I’d been to this place dozens of times, but somehow it seemed as if I’d never really looked at it before now. The walls were paneled in dark cherry wood with accents of crimson damask paper that looked like it had been imported from Europe. I’d have bet that if I’d touched it, it would’ve felt just like silk. The gold highlighting the pattern was probably genuine too, and looking at them now, I had no doubt that the amber crystals adorning the chandeliers were Swarovski-made, or similar.

I shrugged, handing one of the menus our server had provided over to Maddy. “It is. Just a ritzy one.”

She looked around at the tables surrounding us and fingered the neckline of her blouse. “I feel like I’m underdressed…”

“You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “You look fine. I mean, beautiful. You look…” I ground my teeth, trying to regain my composure. “You’ll fit right in.” Then I opened the menu and buried my nose in it, inwardly kicking myself for how utterly stupid everything I’d said today had thus far been.

“What should I order?” Maddy said, and I realized she probably had no idea what half the things on the menus were. I set mine down and began to unbutton my blazer to drape it over the back of my chair.

“If you like lighter fare, a

nything with chicken is a good bet.” I finally freed myself of the constraining jacket and sighed in relief. Finally I could feel my biceps again. “If you’re more in a dinner mood, there’s always the beef bourguignon.”

“I think I had the TV dinner version of that once,” she laughed, her eyes flitting over the myriad of items listed for her. “Um… I’ll go with that, I think. Yeah, that sounds good.”

I smiled. It felt good to see her without tears in her eyes. “And some wine?”

“You pick,” she said, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She slid her menu over to me and I took it, stacking it on top of mine.

“You can start by telling me what happened with your job,” I offered. Even though it was mid-day outside the mood lighting inside cast shadows over Maddy’s face, shadows that seemed even darker when I mentioned the dreaded j-word. “I mean, if you want to, of course.”

“I do,” she said. “I’m just so embarrassed…” She took a sip of her ice water. When she pulled the glass away, I marveled at the tiny beads that had formed on them.

She licked them away, and I watched the progress of her tongue, hoping she mistook the intensity of my stare for interest in her story.

“It wasn’t a good job,” she said, meeting my gaze. “But it was all I had. It paid the bills and the rent… and frankly, not much else.” She laughed again. This time, it sounded bitter. “That was enough for me, though. At least until I found something better.”

I nodded, parroting what I’d heard others say. “It’s hard out there right now.” I had no real idea about any of that, of course, and Maddy called me on it.

“Yeah. Not all of us can have an in with the CEO of one of the world’s most profitable companies.” But then she swallowed her anger, even though it lit up her face in a very sexy way. “Well, anyway, I’d been putting up with a lot of shit over there. More so recently, though the past few years hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park, either.” She looked at me. “Do you know that the first day I was there, the receptionist who was supposed to train me left for lunch and never came back? I had four hours’ worth of training before they threw me to the wolves.” She shook her head in amazement. “It’s a wonder I survived my first six months, let alone four years…”

“Sounds like they don’t have a clue what they’re doing,” I said, and that much was a genuine commentary on the matter. I had learned enough from my father, not to mention Harvard, to know an incompetently-run business when I saw one. Or, in this case, heard of one. “You were probably lucky to get out.”