VULTURE (a Stepbrother Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

torso. I let my eyes fall, feeling guilty that he’d come all this way, and I watched as his chest puffed out as he inhaled, the crisp white shirt stretching slightly with each controlled breath.
    “Sara, you couldn’t have kept me away,” he replied as I met his clear blue eyes. There was a flash of pity? Or was it worry?
    We stood for a beat looking at each other before he pulled me towards him and took me in his arms.
    “How did you know?” I asked, my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat thudding steadily. I was dangerously on the verge of tears. Enveloped in his arms, I’d never felt safer, and my body shook with grief. The tremors were not for my husband but for the loss of something I never thought I needed. My body was on overload. I couldn’t remember the last time someone held me as tight as this, put their whole self into a hug. Officer Pierce had done his best with his handholding, but this was something much more intense. I didn’t want Harvey to let me go.
    “Someone from the hospital called me. I should’ve been here sooner. I’m so sorry, Sara.”
    “They told me he didn’t suffer, it was painless,” I said, believing his apology was sympathy for my loss.
    He pulled and looked down at me. “Pity. I never liked the bastard anyway.”

3
    Harvey
    S ara looked lost when I first spotted her at the end of the corridor. Hunched over in her seat, her body broken in more ways than one.
    My stepsister wasn’t the greatest looking beauty in the world, but she’d had this light when I first met her, something that pulled you in, that made you want to be around her—a spirit that told the world to fuck off, that she could do anything. But over time, it faded to nothingness. She spent less and less time with the family, pushing us away, happily building up her new life with her husband, or at least that’s what I’d thought.
    But the woman I saw before me, shrunken and wrecked, paled in comparison to the confident girl I’d met a few years ago when our parents had married in their golden years. I almost didn’t recognise her.
    A strong feeling of dread gripped me as I held her in my arms. She shook like a leaf, and all I wanted to do was to make it stop. This couldn’t all be due to the sudden death of her husband. Or maybe it was. I had no comparison to draw from, no emotional investments made or lost. I rubbed her arms; through her cardigan I felt her pliable flesh give way to my touch. So different to the stick figure I’d had my hands on earlier.
    “He had his faults, I suppose,” she considered, replying to my earlier outburst. I regretted saying the words, I should’ve held them back, been more sympathetic, but in my world if you didn’t say what you meant right away it was considered pandering.
    “Ignore me, I had a shitty night.” I was grateful, though, that this little emergency had gotten me out of another boring award’s ceremony. Another mandatory circle-jerk for the board of directors.
    Sara’s eyes flickered to the left, reminding me that Sadie, my personal assistant and secretary, was standing off to the side.
    “Two seconds, I’ll be right back and I’ll get you home, OK?”
    She nodded and flung her arms around her curvy torso as soon as I stepped away.
    “Anything I can do?” Sadie asked, her voice hushed so as not to let Sara overhear.
    “No, I think I can take it from here. I’ll probably need you to make some arrangements in the morning for Sara, though. We’ll take the car now. Will you be all right to take a cab back?”
    “Yeah, of course. Oh, before I go. That thing from earlier—I presume you want it thoroughly handled? The usual pump-and-dump?”
    I almost laughed at her crudeness but choked it back at the last moment—not the right place or time. But comments like that were the very reason we got on so well; Sadie was practically a carbon copy of me. The female version, in stilettos.
    “You know me all too well,” I said with a wink.