Because I Can (Montgomery Manor)

by Tamara Morgan

  He wanted to bury himself in it. In her.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, oblivious to the fanciful notions churning inside him. “How can you hate your family’s hotels? They’re your whole life.”

  His whole life, reduced to a pile of overpriced bricks. “It’s easy,” he said. “You know the saying ‘you have to spend money to make money’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, where I come from, you have to make money to spend money.”

  They exited the elevator and approached their room’s door. Waiting only for Georgia to swipe the key card through, he pushed it open, taking in the familiar sight of a mid-level room in a high-end hotel with a feeling of discomfort. Plush white sofas, curtains that billowed in a nonexistent breeze, a full lounge area before you got to the French doors leading to the bedroom—everything about the six hundred square feet was luxury at its most accessible.

  Georgia crossed the threshold slower than him, and he tried to remember that she was seeing it for the first time. The room was probably impressive to anyone who hadn’t spent two months working out a deal with the company who supplied their thousand-thread-count sheets.

  Unable to prevent himself from touching her for another second, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. She tried to yank herself away, but he buried his head in her neck and inhaled the scent of her like a dying man enjoying his last minutes on earth.

  That was what she was becoming for him, and at an alarmingly rapid rate. Earth. Stability. A feeling that maybe he wasn’t quite as groundless as he’d always thought.

  “It looks to me like you have money enough,” she murmured.

  “There will never be enough.”

  “What do you mean? I know where you live, Monty. I see what you accomplish. You guys are loaded.” She pulled back, her expression puzzled. He loved how her eyes communicated with him even when she didn’t intend to—it was the same with her body, stiff and then yielding and then one hundred percent pliable. She might talk big and swagger large, but in these moments of quiet intimacy, she was just Georgia.

  Just Georgia.

  “Why do you spend so much of your time and energy on Homeward Bound?” he asked, hoping to help her see through the flash and bang of the Montgomery name to what went on underneath. This room was the flash and bang. He cowered in the layers below.

  “Because it’s my job.”

  “Yes, but you have a contractor’s license. You could be making good money building houses for pay instead of offering your services pro bono and not even getting appreciated for it.”

  “Don’t you dare start with Meecham again.”

  “I’m not talking about Meecham. I’m talking about you. Why do you do it?”

  “Because I can,” she said, appearing almost confused at his insistence.

  “So can lots of other people, but they don’t. What makes you special?”

  For all that Georgia prided herself on being an oddity, she frowned in a way that made him think no one had ever asked her that before. She knew she was different, she hid behind her idiosyncrasies as if they were a shield, but she never once considered that those things might make her nothing short of incredible.

  “There’s nothing special about me—that’s why I can do it.” Her frown didn’t lift. “I don’t have a spouse to make demands on my time. I don’t have kids to raise. I don’t have much in the way of a social life. I don’t even have all that high of a cost of living, thanks to my mom, and your dad has helped too—paying me well and allowing me the flexibility to come and go.”

  Monty nodded, hearing substantially more in that answer than she was willing to say out loud. He heard it because it was what echoed inside his own heart, day after long, tedious day. She volunteered—not because she felt called to it or because she enjoyed the elation that came from making a real difference in people’s lives, but because helping others wasn’t even a question.

  “It’s the same for me, but on a bigger scale,” he said. “I don’t have the wife or kids, my personal needs are few and I’m in a unique position where I can actually do something worthwhile.”

  She didn’t respond, and any alarm he felt at having put her off dissolved when he realized she was waiting for him to finish. Without drawing attention to his deficiency, without passing judgment, she stood there and allowed him a chance to pull his thoughts into a coherent sentence.

  He wasn’t sure anyone had done that for him before.

  “Unfortunately, my deal with my father is a bit trickier than yours,” he continued after a pause. “If I want to make the Montgomery Foundation succeed, then I have to make the Montgomery hotels succeed first. As long as I help his hotels thrive, he’ll make sure the money is always there for the projects I care about.”

  Sometimes, it felt like a deal he’d made with the devil rather than his parent. Not that it mattered. The contracts were signed either way.

  Since talking about his dad was the last thing he’d had in mind in bringing Georgia here tonight, he used her momentary distraction to tug at the buttons along the front of her coveralls. She noticed and wrinkled her nose before swatting his hands away.

  “Ew, Monty. I’m serious about the shower. I can’t feel relaxed enough to have sex if there are grass seeds under my fingernails. It was bad enough walking through the lobby with you. People were staring. And fleeing.”

  “Nobody fled.”

  “They fled. They just did it discreetly so you wouldn’t be offended.”

  He thought for sure she was exaggerating, but something about the firm set of her lips had him reconsidering. He tugged on her belt loop to pull her pelvis flush against his own. “So we’ll take a shower.”

  She backed away, her head shaking a distinct and resolute no.

  “Did I say it wrong?” He’d tried to make it sound sexy, but maybe he’d gone too far. Dammit—he never did get any advice from Jake on how to make these things come out easier. “We had such a good time in the fake shower, I thought it might be fun to try—”

  “No way.” She was still moving backward, close enough now to the bathroom door she could lock herself in. “When I said I wasn’t expecting you, I meant it.”

  He blinked.

  “I wasn’t expecting you, expecting you.”

  Still nothing. “I have no idea what that means. Are we speaking in code?”

  She sighed and threw up her hands. “So much for ladylike mystery. I haven’t had a chance to shave my legs, okay? I not only smell like a mermaid, but I look like a yeti underneath all this. I’m a grab bag of mythical creatures over here.”

  “Get in the bathroom, Georgia.”

  “See? I told you. I’m disgusting. Men run in fear when they see me coming.”

  He began unworking the knot of his tie. “Get in the bathroom, Georgia.”

  “And I hope this fancy hotel of yours stocks safety razors. Cartridge razors are dull on purpose so people have to throw them away after one use.”

  “Get in the bathroom, Georgia.”

  “I’m just saying—it’s another ploy by big business to increase unnecessary consumerism. You shouldn’t encourage them.”

  He didn’t bother repeating himself again. In a quick, lunging attack he didn’t know he had in him, he scooped her up and carried her, kicking and screaming and laughing, into the bathroom. It gleamed with marble and brushed nickel—a few more deals he remembered without much fondness—but for the first time in his life, he thought he might rather like it in here.

  * * *

  He shaved her legs for her.

  Georgia lay in the giant whirlpool tub, stark-ass naked, smelling of soap bubbles and lavender body wash, her leg held aloft while Monty concentrated on moving the razor over her calf. From the look of intensity on his face, she figured there was
a fifty-fifty chance he’d slice open her veins.

  She didn’t care if he did. The image of him perched on the edge of the tub with his collar undone and his sleeves rolled up was one she’d take to the grave with her. It would be the bloody, painful grave of a woman who died from bleeding out in an Italian marble bathtub—but dammit, that woman died happy.

  She ducked her head under the bubbles and counted to sixty, using her momentary invisibility as an opportunity to release an underwater scream. It was a scream of ecstasy and confusion, lust and something more. This couldn’t possibly be her life right now.

  “You know, the more you splash around, the greater the chances I gouge a hole in your knee,” Monty said calmly as she resurfaced.

  “I’ll be still,” she promised, but it was impossible when he lifted her leg higher, the razor snaking a path up her inner thigh. He could have been stripping the skin and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was that far gone.

  “Have I ever mentioned how much I love your legs?” he said, twisting the limb to get a better look at it.

  “Once or twice.” Her voice came out a sigh. “But you can tell me again.”

  “It’s because they’re so strong.” He ran his hand over the patch of thigh he’d just shaved—he said it was his way of testing to make sure he didn’t miss any spots, but Georgia was pretty sure he was doing it to torment her. “I never really thought about strength being its own kind of beauty before, but it is. When I touch your legs, I’m admiring what’s on the surface, but I’m also appreciating the work that goes into shaping them. I’m admiring the woman whose life and livelihood created them.”

  “They’re just legs.”

  “No. They’re your legs.”

  She stared at him, mesmerized by how easily he was able to quash her inadequacies, almost thirty years of feeling not good enough for anyone—boys, men, herself—wiped away in the space of one luxurious bath. He dipped the razor in the water and made a motion to keep going but she sat up, sloshing water all over the floor.

  “I’m ready now.”

  He seemed startled. “But you said you can’t feel sexy until your legs are hair-free. I’ve got a whole thigh left to go.”

  “I’m ready, Monty. Now.”

  He understood without the need for her to explain further. With a nod, he got to his feet and extended an oversized white towel. “I’ve got a good feeling this time.”

  She practically came on the power of his piercing gaze alone. “I do too.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Goddammit!” Georgia pulled herself off Monty’s lap, leaving him exposed and at full attention. There sat a gorgeous erection with a gorgeous man attached, and it might as well have been a crayon for all it was getting her off. “It’s still not working. Why isn’t it working?”

  He cleared his throat. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “No.” Her voice came out surly and strained, but she refused to apologize for it. Anyone’s voice would be surly and strained in this situation. She was naked, she had one-point-five shaved legs, and one of the most generously understanding men in the world was literally sitting there waiting for her command—but she was no nearer an orgasm than if she’d spent the day bowling. “Yes. No. Yes. Final answer.”

  “Do you promise not to get angry at me?”

  “This isn’t me being angry. This is me being frustrated beyond belief. If I was angry, you’d be on the floor by now.”

  He offered a sympathetic smile, puncturing her rage at its center. It was impossible to throw a tantrum in the face of naked commiseration. Naked commiseration was the worst. She sank on the edge of the bed with a sigh, not even caring when her stomach fat folded in on itself like an accordion.

  “Okay—you can tell me,” she capitulated. “Does it feel crooked inside? I bet it feels crooked inside.”

  Now he was sympathetic laughing, which was only a small step above the smiling. “It doesn’t feel crooked. It feels perfect.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I’m not. I never lie about anatomy.”

  She snorted. It was as close to a laugh as he was going to get.

  “As someone who recently got some similar advice on his phone sex skills, I’d venture to suggest you’re thinking too much about it. There’s a point—I’d say about five minutes in—when you stop feeling and start thinking. I can tell your concentration shifts by your expression.”

  “My expression? Oh, hell. Do I make funny faces on top of everything else?”

  “Not funny. Determined is a better word for it. It’s like you’re in the final stretch of a marathon and have no intention of coming in second.”

  She dropped her head to her hands. “That sounds awful.”

  The edge of the mattress sank as he took a seat next to her. Monty was so solidly comforting and warm, the intoxicating strength of him at odds with the lavender soap currently making him smell like a bath and body store. His arm fell around her shoulders as he pulled her close. “It’s not awful. It’s kind of cute, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I’m not cute.”

  “You’re cute when you want to win the race.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m maniacal—a fanged beast who’ll trip anyone trying to pass me.”

  “Georgia.” His finger came up under her chin, forcing her head up. His lips touched hers for the barest whisper of a kiss. “You’re thinking too much again.”

  “Never, in all my life, have I been accused of thinking too much. I wouldn’t even know what it feels like.” Even though her voice grumbled, most of it was for show. No one had ever called her cute before. Beautiful would have set her warning bells off, but she could believe cute. Cute was for sloths and pigeons and all of nature’s odd quirks.

  “Trust me—overthinking things is a subject I know well. It took me ten minutes to decide on a pair of socks before I came to get you.”

  “Did it?” She glanced down at his feet, even though they’d been bare for quite some time now. He had perfect feet in addition to perfect everything else, each toe well-proportioned and placed. “What’s so hard about socks?”

  “Well, first of all, I wanted a pair that would go well with my suit. I thought about something whimsical, maybe a pinstripe, but none of those ones were clean. And then I didn’t want something too heavy since you’ve always been so open about your own lack of toe sweat.”

  She laughed and relaxed against him, burrowing into his chest like a sloth. Or a pigeon. “I have naturally arid feet. You shouldn’t compare yourself to me.”

  “And you shouldn’t compare yourself to what you think other women experience. I’m not saying your internet porn is wrong, but sex isn’t all moaning and mutual climaxing—there are times when everything goes the way you have it planned, and there are times when it’s an awkward fusion of bodies and moisture and air.” He paused, but with that suspended breath he adopted when he wasn’t through yet. “At another risk to my personal safety, I’d say you haven’t spent enough time with one partner to realize that not all sex is good sex, but that all sex can still be good.”

  Monty was afraid that he’d overstepped his boundaries, but he lowered his hand to Georgia’s side and began running his finger along her naked body anyway. He liked how she had this way of merely tolerating it for the first few seconds, like a cat, before finally relaxing enough to actually enjoy it.

  “What’s the longest you’ve ever been with someone, since you’re so full of wisdom on the subject?” she asked.

  He hesitated. Part of him—an admittedly large part—balked at the idea of telling Georgia anything about his past relationships. He didn’t like talking about his failures any more than she liked experiencing them, and there was something off-putting about talking about one woman while another curled up naked in his lap.

>   But he owed her the honesty of a real answer. She was literally laying herself bare for him. The least he could do was return the favor.

  “My most recent relationship lasted a little over ten months.”

  “Oh.” Her voice sounded small, but she dropped a hand to his thigh and began absently running her fingers up and down it. As she wasn’t one to fall easily into gestures of affection, he took it as a good sign. “Did you love her?”

  “I was with her for almost a year, Georgia. Of course I loved her.”

  Her hand didn’t stop moving against his leg, and his body was quick to remind him that the longer she went without satisfaction, the longer he did too. “I’m not jealous, in case you were wondering,” she said.

  “I wasn’t going to suggest it.”

  “But it does seem unfair. You make it sound so easy.”

  “It wasn’t easy, not by a long shot.” It was baffling how a woman who would dig her heels in and do the work of fifteen men without a word of protest also expected relationships and sex to be simple. “But it was worth the effort. At least, I thought so at the time.”

  “What happened? Or should I not ask? You don’t have to talk about it if it’s painful.”

  “It’s not painful,” he said. “At least, not in the same way it used to be. She’s actually getting married in a few weeks, and my dad has all but given me an ultimatum to attend so I can prove to the world how non-painful it is.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  He huffed his protest. “Not nearly as awful as the dates he’s been trying to secure for me.”

  Georgia was silent for a moment, and he thought maybe he’d ruined the moment, introduced too many weird factors into what should have been their time together. “Is that what you were arguing about the other day?” she eventually asked.

  “It’s what we’ve been arguing about for weeks.”

  “I don’t mind.” She continued stroking her fingers up and down the length of his thigh, tracing the ligaments as if committing them to memory. “I imagine there are all sorts of high-profile events like weddings you need to attend. It’s no fun to go to those things alone—believe me, I’ve been to enough to know.”