“Mr. Montgomery—I had no idea, no idea at all.” He shot an accusing stare at Georgia. “I knew your family was in residence in Ransom Creek, but Georgia failed to mention you were here today. Is this a scouting expedition, or merely a courtesy call? I wasn’t aware the Montgomery Foundation had an interest in Homeward Bound.”
“Actually, I’m here as one of Georgia’s volunteers.”
Monty’s hand still hadn’t been relinquished by this point, so he carefully extracted his fingers, shooting a wry grimace at Georgia as he did. To his surprise, she didn’t share his humor in the situation or even appear grateful for the interruption. In fact, she didn’t appear anywhere near the grateful spectrum. She looked...
Uh-oh. She looked furious.
“One of her volunteers?” The man—Monty still didn’t know his name—looked back and forth between them. “You’re here working?”
Even though he could see Georgia’s lips firmed into a tight line and was able to read the warning in the expanding yellow flecks of her eyes, he was determined to commit to the path he was on. Georgia might not want his help, but he was here, and he was happy to offer it. It was a rare day when he got to take advantage of the perks of his position—if he couldn’t throw his weight around when a friend needed it most, what was the point of having it in the first place?
“Of course. When I heard there were volunteer shortages, I naturally stepped up to lend whatever help I could. It’s important to lead through action, don’t you think?” He smiled tightly. “We can hardly expect the community to heed a call to arms if we aren’t willing to do the work ourselves.”
“Naturally,” the man agreed, though Monty was pretty sure he missed the point. “Say, do you have a few minutes to spare? I’d love to talk to you about some of the opportunities that might exist within—”
“He can’t.” Georgia’s voice, flat and dry, broke in.
“I’m sure you can spare him for a few minutes,” the man said with a forced laugh.
“I wish I could, but you were absolutely right about me wasting resources and using this build site as a personal playground. If I’m going to uphold the Homeward Bound mission, we need to buckle down and get to work. And that means all of us.”
Monty knew when he was being dismissed. He would have liked to push things a little further—walked the man through the neighborhood so he could see for himself how far things had come, discuss ideas for increasing interest in the project—but he had to settle for handing over one of his business cards, which only made Georgia’s face grow red and give him a moment’s concern for his personal safety. That was not a happy red.
He didn’t look back as he returned to the house, where the Testosterone Trio stood watching and laughing from their safe distance. Adam, Charlie and Danny burst out in applause as soon as he walked through the plastic, Adam going so far as to throw in a wolf whistle.
“Oh, man. You are in for it now.” Charlie slapped a hand on his back—the friendliest overture any of them had made toward him thus far.
“It was nice knowing you,” Danny agreed. “I hope you remembered to tell your loved ones goodbye this morning.”
“I’ll say this for you, Montgomery,” Adam added as he handed him the roller he’d abandoned earlier. “You’ve got balls. There aren’t many men who’d walk into that situation unarmed. I may not like you, but you’ve got my respect.”
Monty accepted the roller, but not without first checking each man’s face. All three bore the same knowing smirk. “What aren’t you guys telling me?”
“Oh, I tried to tell you,” Danny said cheerfully. “You don’t want to undermine Georgia’s authority. Not if you value your life.”
“But you do it. All three of you—you’ve done nothing but try to tell her what to do since I walked into her life.”
Adam laughed and rubbed his hands greedily. “That’s relationship stuff. Relationship stuff is nothing. We’re talking about the job.”
“You don’t stand between Georgia and the job.”
“You never stand between Georgia and the job.”
Like that, the conversation was over. As if a lunch bell sounded, all three men returned to their work, laughter on their lips and malicious gleams in their eyes.
* * *
Georgia found Monty in the downstairs hallway, painting the ceiling as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The second she stormed through the door, the room cleared, her brothers—the chicken-hearted bastards that they were—taking themselves away without so much as a grunt of acknowledgment. Two of the other crew members fled with them.
Good. It was better this way. There would be no witnesses to the upcoming slaughter.
“Do you have any idea what you did out there?” she said.
Monty didn’t turn right away. He took his time putting his roller down and wiping his hands, his movements as slow and methodical as always. Since he’d once again decided that work clothes meant the tightest-fitting shirt known to mankind, she could see the bunch and pull of his muscles as he moved.
Instead of turning her on—or perhaps in addition to it—those muscles made her seethe with annoyance. It’s not fair. Monty could make even painting seem like some kind of erotic dance. He could swagger around job sites in his too-tight shirt, speaking in his rich baritone, pulling out business cards and his family name like magic.
And because he was so careful, so methodical, she couldn’t even rant and rave like she wanted. She had to stand here at his leisure until he was finally ready to turn her way—which he did, a sincere twist to his smile.
“I’m sorry, Georgia,” he said simply. “I had to do something.”
There was no trace of arrogance as he spoke, nothing cocky or smug she could latch on to and beat him over the head with, and instead of assuaging her anger, his apology only fueled it. Goddammit—any self-respecting man would at least give her something to vent at. Her brothers would have wasted no time in provoking her ire.
“Do something?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
“Like pulling rank?”
“Yes.”
“And humiliating me in front of my entire crew?”
“Not on purpose.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
He hesitated. “I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t appreciate the way that man was talking to you.”
That had to be the sweetest thing anyone ever said to her, grandparents and greeting cards included. There were so many implications behind his statement—that she was a woman who deserved to be treated well, that he would stand up and be the one to do it, that he cared, period.
So of course she exploded.
“No one likes the way Meecham talks to me. No one likes the way Meecham talks to anyone. He’s an asshole.” She’d somehow crossed the room and got up in Monty’s face. Proximity to this man always unsettled her, but she buried the feelings of longing and desire, allowing the more easily managed anger to the forefront. “But he’s my asshole, and you don’t get to mess with that without my permission first.”
Monty kept a perfectly straight face, but she realized what she said about two seconds later.
“You know what I mean,” she muttered, her cheeks aflame. “I get that you’re all-powerful and can swoop in here to fix things with your big words and fancy name, but I spent years earning my spot on this team. Do you know how many licensed female contractors there are in the state of Connecticut? Do you have any idea how much crap I’ve had to wade through to get to this point?”
He didn’t answer, because he couldn’t possibly know. No one did—not even her brothers, the people closest to her in the entire world.
The construction world was a shitstorm of misogyny, and she’d been standing in the middle of it for as long as she could remember. She’d stopped keeping
track of how many slurs on her femininity she’d suffered, of how many times her appearance was used as an invitation for insult, but she knew to the exact number how many volunteers she’d had to kick off the team because they refused to take orders from a woman. It was thirteen men over the course of one year. Thirteen hardworking, desperately needed men who’d put everyone in danger by not being able to tuck their dicks away for eight hours a week in order to help people in need.
Meecham blamed her for it—and rightly so. A male contractor wouldn’t have suffered the same staffing shortages she did. A male contractor would have been happy to slap his compatriots on the back and tell Georgia it was a good thing she had a decent ass, because no man would ever want to fuck her from the front.
But what Meecham didn’t understand, and what each of the men she’d banned from the project didn’t understand, was that their doubt and cruelty didn’t make her want to quit. It only made her want to try harder. No one was going to kick her in the shin and call her ugly and make her cry.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
“This is my crew and my project,” she said, her voice dangerous. “And if being in charge means I have to let Meecham spit all over me once a month so he can go back to his funders with his head held high, then I’ll do it. I’m tough. I can take it.”
“But you shouldn’t have to take it, Georgia. That’s the thing.”
The last of her patience snapped at the sound of his voice, so earnest, so outraged on her behalf she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t need Monty’s pity or his munificence. She didn’t need him to speak down to small men on her behalf. What she needed was to tackle the deep, systemic issues that had plagued her since birth. She was too much of a woman to succeed in this business, but not enough of one to succeed in her own life. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a middle ground.
There had to.
“What is it about you and your father that makes you both think I can’t handle this? I know I’m up against a wall, and I’m trying to tear it down.” She felt hot tears prick at her eyes, which only fed her anger. She was not going to cry. Not over this, and not in front of a man she was supposed to be using only for sex. “This isn’t something that money or power can fix, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me do this on my own terms.”
He reached out to her. “Georgia, I’m sorry—”
“You need to go.” She dashed a hand across her eyes, furious with herself for letting things get this far. Monty had not only demeaned her in front of Meecham, but now she was demeaning herself by letting her emotions win. How typical. How female. “Thank you for your help with the construction—with everything—but I think it’s better if you leave now.”
“Leave?” His brow came down heavily, his eyes hurt. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do mean it.”
“Georgia. Please.” He reached, this time coming perilously close to pulling her into a hug. A week of training had prepared her for it, forced her body to curl into his embrace as if it were the only thing it wanted. His strong arms, that wide chest, the way he was able to make her feel desired without even kissing her—those things were dangerous out here. More so than falling beams and asshole supervisors.
“No.” She jumped back. “Not now, Monty. Can’t you see I need you to go?”
Monty’s troubled gaze didn’t lift, and she thought for a moment the tears were going to win, that she was going to break down before this mountain of a man moved an inch. But she heard the shuffle of feet from the rear, the tread of three quietly approaching allies.
They arrayed herself alongside her—Charlie and Danny to her left, Adam to her right—her brothers, her best friends, her favorite people in the world.
“I warned you, Montgomery,” Adam said. “I told you what would happen if you hurt her.”
Monty opened his mouth as if he wanted to speak, but he clamped it shut without allowing any words to cross his lips.
Georgia felt more relief at the sight of Monty’s slowly retreating form than she could possibly express. If it had been the two of them alone in the house, she would have caved. She would have thrown herself at him, begged him to hold her tight and—horror of all horrors—cried in his arms.
If she thought she had problems earning respect now, she couldn’t imagine what would happen if her crew found her sobbing because one man yelled at her and another one cared.
A Lennox didn’t cry, dammit. Not without a bruise to show for it first.
Chapter Thirteen
“If I ask you for advice about something, can you promise not to laugh, criticize or otherwise humiliate me?”
“No.”
The speed with which Jake responded had Monty pressing his fingers firmly into his eye sockets. He wasn’t sure what the direct pressure on his ocular nerves was supposed to accomplish, but at least it stopped him from hanging up the phone in a fit of irritation.
“Is that a no to the advice, or a no to the humiliation?”
Jake paused long enough to think about it—or at least to give the appearance of thinking about it. Monty’s brother had always been excellent at manipulating conversations so that he was the one in charge. “The latter. You know I’m against getting involved in your problems as a general rule, but this one sounds like too much fun to pass up. How can I help humiliate you?”
Monty sighed and sat back in his office chair. He had a thousand and one things he should have been working on, but so far all he’d managed to do was make a sex recording, delete it before he got up the nerve to send it to Georgia, order flowers and then hastily cancel the order once he remembered who the intended recipient was, and plot various ways in which he could get Georgia’s supervisor fired without her knowing about it.
He was a mess—and not just because he’d spent the better part of his morning staring moonily out the window. He had no framework for this sort of thing. Ninety percent of his inability to successfully navigate interpersonal relationships was due to not extending himself enough. He didn’t leave his desk, he didn’t go to parties, he didn’t get involved—these weren’t exactly the type of qualities a woman looked for in a lifelong mate.
But if anything, Georgia preferred those things about him. She was the one reluctant to give up five minutes of her workday for a hug. Her idea of a party was beer and a dartboard. And she wanted him to be less involved in her life, not more. The fact that she’d banned him from her work site—literally banned him, her brothers forming a barricade daring him to try and come back on Sunday—proved how little his presence mattered to her overall happiness.
He wanted to matter, dammit. He wanted Georgia to be sitting at home right now, feeling as adrift as he was.
“If I tell you what I need help with,” Monty said, “this doesn’t go any further than the two of us.”
“Unfair. I reserve the right to tell Becca. You know how much she loves a good humiliation.”
She didn’t—Jake’s wife was actually one of the nicest people Monty knew, but he doubted he’d get his brother’s help any other way. “Okay, you can tell Rebecca, but she’s the only one. I mean it, Jake. This is serious.”
“No. You? My dearest, most foolhardy brother? You intend to be serious for once?”
Jake clearly had no intention of making this easy on him, but Monty couldn’t say he was surprised. Since boyhood, Monty had been the one to make the rules, set the boundaries, infuse his siblings with the dignity they were so sorely lacking. As one who hated rules, boundaries and dignity in equal proportions, Jake relished any opportunity to gain the upper hand.
“You’re good with women,” Monty said. “Or you used to be, anyway.”
“I beg your pardon—I still am good with them. Do you have any idea how many married women I flirted with at the Eaglewood gala last night? I had to be in visible raptures over no fewer than a doze
n new gowns. Becca signals me the name of the designer from across the room. One blink is Valentino. Two is Badgely Mischka. You don’t want to know what she does for Dior.”
Monty felt his skin growing hot. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, but you make it so easy.” Jake paused. “By the way, you should get a call from Winifred sometime this week. She wants to hear all about your foster care initiative.”
“Our foster care initiative,” Monty corrected him, but allowed the subject to drop from there. His brother didn’t like to admit how much a part of the Montgomery Foundation he was now, but there was no way Monty could have accomplished as much on his own. Jake was so good at people. With one charming smile and a flick of his wrist, he opened doors that had been closed to Monty for years.
“So...you’re calling me about lady advice?” Jake asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t call her a lady.”
“Even better. What can we call her?”
Monty almost said her name out loud. Georgia. My secret lover. Our family handywoman. A person you used to make fun of for being the only female in a hundred-mile radius you didn’t care to see naked. “A friend.”
“That’s boring. Pick something else.”
“There is nothing else.” She wasn’t his girlfriend, but she wasn’t some random stranger he was willing to walk away from either. In Monty’s limited vocabulary, there was no phrase large enough—or small enough—to contain what she meant to him.
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Should you be sleeping with her?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, now. Things are starting to get interesting.” Jake made a humming sound in the back of his throat. “I don’t suppose this is why Jenna was called back to the lair to find you a love life, is it?”
“What?” Monty planted his feet more firmly on the ground. “Jenna’s coming home?”
Because I Can (Montgomery Manor) Page 18