Read 01 - The Heartbreaker for Free Online

and Dawne, but Madeline believed someone in the family had to set a proper example. Her cursing wasn’t a good sign.
    “So it’s true?” Sloane asked in a small voice.
    Madeline grasped onto Sloane’s clenched hands and held on tight. “Yes, honey. It’s true.”
    Sloane hadn’t realized it, but in her heart, she’d held out hope that Madeline would deny the claim. Instead, she’d acknowledged her worst fears. She fought back the lump in her throat, determined to get through this without falling apart.
    Madeline met her gaze, and despite everything, Sloane felt the love her stepmother had always shown her.
    “You need an explanation.” Madeline’s voice cracked, but she didn’t pause. “Your mother and I were best friends. I would have done anything for her. You know that. In fact, I did. I married your father so I could raise you the way your mother would have wanted.”
    Sloane squeezed her stepmother’s hand. “You couldn’t have done any more.” Except tell her the truth, Sloane thought, but this conversation was difficult and even Madeline seemed to need reassurance. “You never made me feel like you loved me any less than Eden and Dawne. I love you for that.”
    Madeline blinked back tears. “I love you too. And I love your father. Although, I didn’t fall in love with him until long after we’d married.”
    Sloane smiled. She already knew the story of Michael and Madeline’s marriage. They often told people how they’d come to love one another as they jointly raised Sloane. But that didn’t explain the rest of the missing pieces. “How was lying best for me?”
    Madeline raised steepled fingers to her lips and paused in thought. “Your mother was born and raised in Yorkshire Falls. It’s about twenty minutes from our home in Newtonville. She had been in college and was home on summer break when she fell in love with a man named Samson Humphrey.”
    So that was his last name. Her head hurt and she inhaled slowly, trying to ease the pain with no success.
    “What happened between my mother and . . . Samson?” She forced herself to say the name, as if speaking would help her accept the painful truth.
    Madeline shook her head. “It’s a long story. But Jacqueline’sfather, your grandfather, was a politician who thought his blood was bluer than it really was. He didn’t think Samson was good enough for his daughter, and worried about him hindering his career.”
    “Because Grandfather Jack was a senator too.” She didn’t know the older man because he’d died when she was a child.
    Madeline nodded. “Your grandfather did some digging and came up with some dirt on Samson’s family and used it to bribe the man into staying away from your mother.”
    Sloane shook her head in disbelief, trying to absorb all this information that had been hidden from her for years.
    “Presumably, Samson felt he had no choice.”
    “Or he was weak,” Sloane muttered.
    “Not if your mother loved him, honey. And she did. So there must have been something good in him.” Madeline met Sloane’s gaze.
    The older woman’s eyes shimmered with tears and emotion. Sadness? Regret? Guilt? Sloane couldn’t be certain.
    “Of course he was a good man,” Madeline insisted in a forceful tone. “After all, look at all the good in you.”
    Sloane swallowed hard. She wasn’t about to think about herself now. If she did, she’d fall apart, and she wanted to hear the end of this story first.
    “And another thing”—Madeline blotted her eyes with the back of her hand before continuing—“your mother was devastated when he broke things off. She loved him so much. And when she realized she was pregnant, she packed to go back to Samson.”
    Sloane leaned forward in her seat, the story playing out as if it were someone else’s history being discussed, not her own. “What happened?”
    “Your grandfather didn’t care. He admitted he’d bribed Samson to get rid of him. Jacqueline believed in him enough to know