Because I Can (Montgomery Manor)

by Tamara Morgan

  If Monty were a Lennox, this was where he’d challenge his dad to an arm-wrestling match or to a knife-throwing contest. They could settle things the old-fashioned way, with adrenaline and anger and an undercurrent of affection underneath it all. Instead, he had to use his words like a Montgomery. Fucking Montgomerys.

  “Those weren’t hints, Dad. They were reprimands.”

  He frowned. “They were meant to be hints.”

  “They felt like reprimands,” Monty said quietly. “They’ve always felt like reprimands.”

  His dad looked suddenly ancient, the weight of decades of hard work lining his face and hunching his shoulders. Monty wished he could have said that the first emotion he felt was one of pity or affection for the man who’d given him life, but the thrum of the ocean filling his ears and his throat was one hundred percent for himself.

  If I’m not careful, that could be me.

  “Ten hours a day—that’s my maximum,” he said. “Fifty hours a week.” The number sounded painfully small to Monty’s ears, but he was resolved to stick to it. He’d take up hobbies. He’d take up twelve hobbies. With any luck, Georgia would agree to be at least half of them.

  “I can respect that,” his dad said with a nod. “But only on one condition.”

  Damn. He knew it had been too easy. “What condition?”

  “If you ever feel like I’m reprimanding you again, you’ll come talk to me, okay?” His dad’s voice grew gruff. They weren’t a hugging family, and they didn’t start now, but this was as close as they’d probably ever get. “It was never my intention to make you feel chastised—not now, and certainly not when you were younger. I just didn’t know how else to get through to you. You’ve always been so driven, so self-sufficient. I didn’t realize how much you disliked it all until it was too late.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and stuck his hand out, noting with alarm that it was shaking. It didn’t matter much, though, because his dad’s was too.

  “I’m proud of you, John. I always have been. None of us would be where we are today without you.” They clasped warmly, two men sealing a deal that lifted worlds off both their shoulders. “Now, about Georgia...”

  Monty dropped his hand with a start.

  “Don’t worry. I was only going to say how well she’ll do for you—for all of us. When she’s not climbing up trees or out windows, she’s the perfect addition to this family. Charitable, hardworking...I don’t know why I never realized it before.”

  Monty did. Because his dad, like the rest of them, had failed to see beyond the handywoman exterior to the woman she was inside.

  “I’m curious, though,” his dad continued. “Where did you have Ryan take her?”

  “To her execution.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I sent her to the one place she wants to go least in the world.” Monty grimaced. “Perfect addition or not, don’t be surprised if we never hear from her again. Or me, for that matter. Look for my body in the sidewalk. I’m guessing that’s where she’ll put me.”

  * * *

  The day of the fateful surprise birthday party that forced Adam to the hospital, Georgia had been completely unaware that plans were being hatched behind her back. In true devious form, her mom and brothers had already thrown her a small family celebration, complete with presents and cake and insults on her rapidly advancing years.

  No way could she have known that a second party—this one much more elaborate in its construction—had also been underway, and she answered the call to replace a moldy roof panel at the rec center without a second thought. Naturally, when she flipped on the lights to find about fifty of her nearest and dearest screaming their joy at her arrival, she’d turned on her heel and fled. The overwhelming sensation of everyone she knew and loved coming out to celebrate her, and for no reason other than the shifting of her age from twenty-four to twenty-five, had been too much.

  She’d been damn close to crying.

  She’d made it as far as the heavy exit doors before Adam caught up with her, but he’d been quiet for once in his life, and she’d slammed the door behind her without being aware that his limb was preventing it from closing all the way.

  All fifty guests had accompanied them to the hospital.

  Georgia was prepared for the worst this time. When Ryan dropped her off at the Ransom Creek High School gymnasium, she lifted her skirts, clutched her Frisbee and prepared to face whatever lay in wait for her.

  A surprise party wouldn’t surprise her. An intervention wouldn’t change her. She was immune to any and all of the persuasions of wealth Monty had at his disposal.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t immune to this.

  Almost every face inside the gym was one she recognized. Her brothers were there, looking their best in suits and ties, flanking their mom in the same plum-colored suit she’d worn to Adam’s wedding. Most of her building crew and their families were also there, dressed in everything from their Sunday best to the flannel she saw them in every day.

  Taken alone, this wouldn’t be a bad thing. She knew these people, liked these people, would much rather spend the evening with them than a thousand Kennedys. But in the distance stood enough linen-covered tables to seat the whole lot of them, and a podium was set up on a stage next to a blown-up picture of a younger version of herself laughing as she straddled the empty frame of a house.

  That was when she also noticed the reporters.

  Among a burst of applause and a flash of cameras, a woman took the stage. Hers was another familiar face—Patty Truitt, a woman she’d know anywhere because she’d been the recipient of the first house she was contractor for. She had three older daughters and one young son, and Georgia had been tickled at the thought of how that little boy would grow up, surrounded by a protective layer of females, probably as screwed up as her in the end.

  “Come on, Georgia. You’re supposed to come sit with us.” Adam appeared by her side.

  “Fuck you, Adam.”

  “Ha-ha. I deserved that, but you still have to sit.”

  “And you, Charlie? Danny? What the hell? You guys are supposed to have my back.”

  “We do have your back, George. That’s why we’re here.” Charlie led her to a table where her mom was already settling in, his hand firm on her shoulder as he thrust her to the seat.

  “You look very lovely in your dress, dear, but you could at least pretend to smile.” Her mom reached across the table and pushed at her cheek in an attempt to get her facial muscles to move. “This is a celebration.”

  A celebration of what? Her inability to meet organizational goals? The sad reality that she’d most likely be out of a job both at Montgomery Manor and Homeward Bound after this? This was the worst party of all time.

  Patty murmured a few requests for everyone to be seated before she started speaking. Georgia figured it would be some kind of rah-rah, yeah-for-our-leader speech, but she was surprised when the woman began with, “One of the things no one tells you about being broke, homeless and near rock bottom is how hard it can be to ask for help.”

  Georgia sat up in her chair, the hair on the back of her exposed neck standing on alert. Was this going to be an intervention after all?

  “I’m not going to tell you the story of how I got there, or what kinds of struggles I faced to get up again, but I will say this—at a time when I needed the most support, I found myself clinging to every scrap of pride I had left, pretending it was all I needed to make it through.” Patty shot a thumbs-up in Georgia’s direction, and she knew she was trapped for at least the duration of this speech. “Which is why I’ll never forget what happened when I showed up one afternoon to see how the construction was going on my new home—my family’s new home. I picked a day when I was sure no one would be around, so I wouldn’t have to explain what I was doing. But someone w
as there, and I’m sure you can all guess who it was, sneaking in to do some extra work when she thought no one was looking.”

  There was laughter and several glances thrown her way. Georgia thought about hiding behind the Frisbee or sinking lower in her seat, but her stupid dress allowed for zero wiggle room.

  “Georgia must have known who I was, but she didn’t say anything to make me feel uncomfortable. Instead, she asked if I could give her a hand. Now, I’d never even picked up a hammer before, and anyone with eyes could tell she had everything under control, but I’ll never forget the way she walked me through the process of framing a window. I ended up working side-by-side with her for two hours that day, and I’m pretty sure she had to redo everything as soon as I left.”

  Laughter again, and this time Georgia didn’t feel quite as swallowed up by it. She remembered that day. She’d gone in to build because she’d just had to fire her very first volunteer for carrying off some of the copper wiring to sell at a scrap yard. He’d thought Georgia didn’t know enough to notice.

  She knew enough. She noticed.

  “I don’t think I picked up on the message until later—maybe not even until I had the keys in my hands and was able to move my kids in to their new rooms—but that day helped shift my perspective of my situation. It wasn’t that Georgia was kind to me, or that the Homeward Bound organization changed my life. Instead, it was how the act of being asked for help made such a difference in the way I saw myself. It made me feel important, as if I mattered, as if I had control over my own future again. Any of you who’ve been where I was—and I know many of you have—are aware of how much that tiny bit of control means.”

  Patty’s speech continued for a few more minutes, this time focused mainly on her kids and how happy they’d been to see the community coming together as each new house went up. Georgia wasn’t stupid or blind, and she knew the message being driven home was one Monty planted there himself.

  It’s okay to ask for help sometimes, you stupid woman. She didn’t see why he had to be so dramatic about it with a whole freaking dinner party.

  But then another person took the podium right after Patty. Hank Newell, an electrician she’d worked with on a house they built years ago, long before she was anything more than an eighteen-year-old kid on the crew. He talked about the day Georgia hit her thumb with her hammer, but she didn’t want to have to leave before her shift was over, so she wrapped it in gauze and kept working. By the time night fell, her thumb was twice its size and they’d had to bore a hole through the nail to release the blood that had built up behind it.

  After him there was another speaker. And another. And another. All of them told stories about Georgia—some touching, some funny, most of them enough to cause her cheeks to go up in flames.

  Food was served and taken away while people talked. Reporters buzzed around asking her family and friends for quotes. At least twenty people asked where they could sign up to help her with the next big project.

  And that was when it hit her.

  This wasn’t a celebration dinner or a way for Monty to insert a sneaky commentary on how she needed to let people help her for a change. He was fixing her staffing problem. After she told him to stay out, banned him from her site, closed the door on her heart, he’d gone ahead and fixed things anyway.

  The bastard.

  He’d done exactly what he said he could do—he’d given her story a face. The reporters would walk away with someone for the community to sympathize with, someone for them to root for, so they would take a more vested interest in the outcome.

  She was a face. He’d made her a face, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  “I didn’t see Monty come in with you,” her mom said, hugging her for what had to be the twentieth time. She’d noticed her mom tearing up during one or two of those speeches—and she cried about as much as the rest of her family. “I thought for sure he’d want to be here to see this. He’s been working so hard this past week pulling everything together.”

  Georgia blinked. This past week? But that was the week he’d left her. That was the week he’d stopped caring.

  She looked down at the Frisbee on the table with a growing sense of panic. Exactly when had he gone back to the house to get it?

  “He’s too chicken.” Adam strode to join them, his hands in his pockets. “He knew Georgia would want to rip out his eyes and shove them down his throat, so he stayed away.”

  “Rich bastard,” Danny said. “He talks big, but there’s nothing there to back it up.”

  Charlie, as always, was the last to arrive. “I’m just surprised George is letting him get away with it. If it were my boyfriend sneaking around my back and sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted, I’d have something to say about it.”

  “I’m not twelve,” Georgia muttered. “You can’t goad me into going over there and confronting him.”

  “You sure? I’ll lend you my car,” Charlie offered.

  “If you think you can manage it in that dress, I’ll lend you my motorcycle,” Danny added.

  “Fuck you two.” Adam never could manage to be outdone for long. “I’m the one who’s all emotionally attached to the guy now. I’m driving her myself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Monty had nine hundred and forty-six emails waiting for him on his computer.

  A few years ago, he’d taken a trip to Denver to oversee a hotel groundbreaking, and a snowstorm had forced him into a dead zone for a full forty-eight hours. He’d had no email, no phone, no real contact with the outside world.

  He’d been so twitchy to find the thirty or so messages awaiting him on the other end, he hadn’t set foot in Denver since. He didn’t trust anywhere in Colorado. Boycotting an entire state was as ridiculous as not trusting calculator watches, but superstitions had a funny way of taking root and never letting go.

  He allowed himself one email—to Thomas, who deserved to be the first to hear the news that everything would be back up and running again—and took a deep breath.

  “Turn it off, Montgomery. It’s late. You can tackle them tomorrow.” Even though it took every ounce of willpower he possessed, he forced himself to shut the laptop and rise from his desk. Nothing in the office had been touched in the weeks he’d been gone, though he did notice that Sarge had managed to wrestle his way in to perform the long-neglected dusting.

  He stretched and contemplated the bookshelf, wondering if two detective novels would be enough to entertain him for the night until he figured out a better way to use his downtime. What he wanted to do—sneak in to Georgia’s dinner to see how she reacted to catching a glimpse of herself through other people’s eyes—wasn’t an option. As much as he longed to be there, he was afraid his presence would only cause her to shut down.

  And she needed to hear those things. Maybe she’d never forgive him for pulling rank and swinging his full Montgomery might, but that was the risk he had to take. He didn’t know how else he could break through and make her realize how important she was to the community. To everyone.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  He turned at the rich, velvety voice that had grown so familiar he heard it in his dreams. “Georgia?”

  “I hope you’re planning on using that book as a shield, because you’re going to need it.”

  He placed it carefully on the desk instead. “I’m not scared of you.”

  Sometime in the past few hours, she’d removed the dress and slipped back into her coveralls. The sight of her in them, with her shorter hair and an angry twist to her mouth, almost ended him. Ferocious, strong and stunning in every regard—there was nothing he loved more.

  She pulled her hammer from out of her back pocket.

  I lied. There was something he loved more.

  “I mean it, Monty. I’m furious with you.”

&nbs
p; “I figured you would be.”

  She stepped closer. “I told you to stay out of my business.”

  “I know you did.”

  Closer still. “You had no right to make me a public figure like that. Everyone is going to know who I am and what I do.”

  “I’m sorry, but I thought it was high time they deserved that chance. It was selfish of me to try and keep you to myself all that time.”

  She released a choking sound and dropped her hammer, narrowly missing her foot in the process. “Goddammit, Monty. You’re doing it again. You’re not supposed to be nice and apologetic when I’m mad at you. It only makes things worse.”

  He grinned. “I know it does. You hate apologies almost as much as you hate surprises, but I’m not going to evoke your wrath just so you have someone to rage at. If you want to yell, you’re going to have to go find your brothers.”

  “Don’t tempt me. It was hard enough to come in here as it was.”

  He didn’t waste another second. No way was he letting her out of this office—not until she realized how much she meant to him, not until she acknowledged her own worth. With a lunge, he had his arms wrapped around her and wrestled her to the ground.

  “You barbarian!” She wriggled and flailed underneath him, her body growing increasingly warm where it pressed against his. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m subduing you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can, Georgia. And because it’s time for you to tell me a story.”

  She stilled but didn’t stop, and he had to clasp her wrists in his hands, holding them above her head to keep her in place. Her breasts pushed against his chest, the rapid movements of her breathing only heightening his awareness of each part of her. “I don’t know any stories,” she said.

  “Then talk to me. Let me hear about your night. Tell me how it felt to sit there in an expensive gown, surrounded by people who love you, drinking champagne and knowing you made a difference in the lives of everyone in attendance.”