If I Stay

by Tamara Morgan

  Accidents happened to her, sure. She’d been in so many fender benders that random parts of her car fell off in a strong windstorm. Accidents didn’t happen to highly trained drivers who were traveling at twenty-five miles per hour. Something about the tense way Ryan held himself had her backing off, though. For all that he could be sweet and endearing, there was a rough underbelly to the man that made her hesitant to poke too hard.

  “Well?” Jake looked a question at them. “Should we push the car back on the road and get going? No sense in delaying the inevitable. If there’s one thing I know about dealing with my father, it’s that confessing and facing his wrath is best. Like ripping off a cast with your bare hands.”

  “That’s not how the metaphor goes,” Amy said.

  Jake raised a doubtful eyebrow. “How much more painful do you think it is to rip off a cast than a Band-Aid?”

  She recalled a broken leg Monty had as a teenager, back when casts were those huge, lumpy plaster cases that eventually got covered in crudely hand-drawn penises. She also recalled the withered, pasty, god-awful-smelling limb they unearthed the requisite six weeks later.

  “I guess I can see your point. But I still think it’s a better idea for me to cop to it. Mr. Montgomery likes me.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Ryan practically barked the words out, and she accepted them as the command they were. She was also acutely aware of the press of Ryan’s hand on her back, hot and strong and...nudging her toward the back of the car? Seriously? He wanted her to push a vehicle out of a ditch in this dress?

  It turned out the answer was yes. At least she had the satisfaction of seeing Jake being forced to exert a little muscle next to her, his jacket off and shirt rolled up to reveal perfectly ropey forearms.

  Would you look at that? It seemed Ryan wasn’t the only man around here making plans to appear at the Montgomery Manor gun show. She hoped she got invited when the event finally took place.

  She knew exactly who she’d end up rooting for.

  Chapter Six

  One thing Ryan had quite a bit of experience with—people in positions of authority yelling in his face.

  There was an art to taking a good ass-ripping without losing one’s sense of dignity. He’d seen many a man hang his head in shame, accepting his fate without demur. No one respected those guys, least of all him. There was nothing to celebrate in cowardice.

  But he’d also seen plenty of men fly off the handle and end up losing everything. No one really respected those guys either, which was something he’d learned the hard way.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said, refusing to look down from Mr. Montgomery’s round, reddened face. “It was careless and irresponsible of me.”

  Mr. Montgomery rubbed the side of his nose and shuffled through some papers on his home office desk, searching through an unkempt stack that sat firmly under a domed crystal paperweight. Anyone meeting Mr. Montgomery for the first time would be surprised to discover he was the force behind the largest chain of luxury hotels in the world. He looked an awful lot like a poorly organized Colonel Sanders, his robust frame draped in the beige linen suits he favored, which wrinkled as the day wore on until he resembled nothing so much as an exhausted shar-pei. It took him at least ten minutes to locate anything in his mess of an office unless his personal assistant, Katie, was on hand to point him in the right direction.

  When he’d first received the call asking him to interview for the position of chauffeur, Ryan had made the mistake of assuming slovenliness of exterior meant Mr. Montgomery was equally unkempt upstairs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The man saw everything, knew everyone, and controlled both with a force of will that was downright frightening.

  “Do you care to elaborate on that statement?” Mr. Montgomery asked.

  “No, sir. I don’t.”

  There. That right there. The sharp look of intense focus—from eyes so piercingly blue they stabbed like a shard of ice—was just the tip of what the man was capable of.

  “So, if I’m understanding you here—and please correct me if I get something wrong—you took one of my cars out. Without my permission. To escort my son on a date. With my children’s nanny.”

  Ryan nodded at each halt in Mr. Montgomery’s speech, feeling sick. It was a disaster no matter which way they looked at it. And Jake was right—waiting a day to tell him hadn’t helped matters any.

  “At which time you proceeded to run the car into a ditch and cause several thousand dollars’ worth of damage.”

  “I’ll pay it back.”

  Mr. Montgomery raised one of his hands—a large, meaty appendage decked only with his thin gold wedding band. Ryan took the gesture as a clear no, which was only to be expected. If erasing an accident were as easy as writing a check, he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

  He waited for the next words—the ones that would show him the door—to fall on his ears. Getting fired was never a pleasant sensation, but he’d weathered worse than this before. So imagine his surprise when the door wasn’t shown to him. It opened instead, showcasing Jake in the doorway wearing his customary smirk.

  Ryan felt no lost love for the guy, but he had to admit to enjoying a surge of appreciation at the sight of that smirk. It took balls to show that face to a man like Mr. Montgomery, even if you did have a safety net in the shape of shared DNA.

  “I hope I haven’t missed the axe falling,” Jake said, moving into the room as if on air. “I do so love to watch a grown man cry.”

  “You’re just in time,” Ryan said wryly. “But I’ll save you both the trouble. And the entertainment. I appreciate the opportunities you gave me, Mr. Montgomery, but consider this my formal resignation. I’m sorry to have damaged your car.”

  He extended a hand, expecting to shake and be done with it. He had no idea where he’d go next—if maybe he could eke by on his tiny savings until good news arrived—but he’d be damned if he’d leave with his head hanging. At least this time no one could blame him for being under the influence of alcohol. He’d been under the influence of something else entirely.

  Jake tossed himself into a chair, heedless of the fact that the other two men were standing. “I hate to follow a grand speech like that one, but I think we all know what really happened in that car.”

  “We do?” Ryan swallowed heavily. He hadn’t meant to be so obvious.

  “Yes, we do.” Jake returned his stare with a level calm. “I’m sorry, Daddy Dearest. I made Ryan trade me places. I was trying to impress Amy with my driving skills and fishtailed on the gravel. It was a rookie mistake, and the shame of it has haunted me all night.”

  “That’s not—” Ryan began, but a quick warning shake of Jake’s head stopped him. More curious than anything else, he kept his mouth shut and waited to see what Jake said next.

  “I’m a reckless, feckless scoundrel.” Jake shrugged and inspected his fingernails. “I told you summoning me home was a bad idea. If you knew what was good for you, you’d reinstate my inheritance and send me packing. There’s no telling what I’ll be up to next. Or who I’ll damage with my heedless ways.”

  Mr. Montgomery stared at his son for a full sixty seconds, an awkward minute in which Ryan struggled to understand what was going on. Was Jake Montgomery—a man who would gladly throw an entire bus full of people under their own vehicle—standing up and taking the blame for him?

  Not only did it make no sense, it was completely unacceptable.

  “No. That’s not—”

  “Ryan.” Mr. Montgomery quelled him with a stare. “Let my son speak, if you please.”

  “It’s just a car. I’m sorry for the damages, but no one was hurt.” A look of real concern marred Jake’s brow. “Well, not much. Amy’s got a fat lip today, but she says she barely notices it.”

  Ryan tensed. If Amy had been a
ny more hurt than that...

  “You’ve seen her today?” Mr. Montgomery asked sharply.

  “This morning. I wanted to make sure she was okay—see? I can clean up after my messes. I even gave her some special medicine.” He winked. “Lips like those require some careful looking after.”

  Oh, hell no. It was a good thing the bastard was standing up for him right now, or they’d both be rolling on the floor. Insinuations like that—and in front of his own father, no less—kicked Ryan on a visceral level.

  “Am I to understand you intend to keep seeing her?”

  Jake placed a hand over his heart and sighed. “If she’ll have me.”

  “She’s not one of your toys, Jake. She’s an employee. You do understand the dynamics of the situation, do you not?”

  “She’s your employee. Not mine.” Jake stood and tugged his sleeves back into place around his wrists.

  “And if I ask you to back off as a personal favor?”

  Jake laughed, a sound that rang hollow and stopped as abruptly as it started. “You’re going to have to offer me something a lot better than that. Amy is worth at least ten of you.” As a parting shot, he added, “And don’t fire Ryan. I put him in an impossible situation. The fault is one hundred percent mine.”

  And that was it as the door shut carefully behind him. No explanations. No apologies. Just an assumption of blame that was in no way his own.

  Ryan’s head swam.

  “Well.” Mr. Montgomery cleared his throat. “What have you to say to that?”

  The only thing he could say. “I’ll pack my bags this afternoon.”

  It was the worst possible time for him to leave—and there was no way he could count on a letter of recommendation after this—but the other option was unacceptable. He wouldn’t place himself in Jake’s debt for a job he wasn’t even sure he wanted in the first place. Ransom Creek was supposed to be a stepping-stone toward Hollywood, a way station on his journey back to the top. Nothing more.

  “No. I don’t accept your resignation.”

  Ryan stared so long that Mr. Montgomery actually cracked a smile and told him to relax. “Do you know how it is I’ve been able to keep my hotels afloat in the current economic climate?”

  The response on Ryan’s tongue—that the whole world knew he’d married Serena Clare for her family’s money—obviously wasn’t the right one in this situation, so he opted for the safe answer. “Good business acumen?”

  Mr. Montgomery chuckled and steepled his fingers. “While my vanity thanks you, the truth is that I’ve made it my habit to invest in people, not businesses. Surely you’ve noticed that the majority of the staff here is unemployable in any traditional sense of the word?”

  Alex and his military past. Ryan and his stunt career. Even Amy, who’d given up her spot on a touring ballet company to become a nanny. That wasn’t even counting all the other staff members he hadn’t allowed himself to get to know. They were all overqualified for this life of servitude. Yet here they were.

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “It’s not out of the goodness of my heart, I can tell you that. I know it might behoove me to sugarcoat the situation and pander to your pride, but I have too much respect for you to stoop that far, so I’ll give it to you straight. In my home and in my hotels, it’s always been my goal to engender an environment of loyalty, to ensure that the people who rely on me for employment feel more than just a sense of financial obligation.”

  Fancy words for “You buy them.”

  “I care for them. As more than cogs in a machine. As people.”

  Ryan wasn’t falling for it. “It was kind of you to give me a chance, but I don’t think—”

  “I don’t pay you to think. I pay you to drive and to follow my orders, both of which you’ve done admirably up until yesterday.” There was that smile again, kindly and cold and unsettling all at once. “It’s not my intention to lose a good driver because of my son’s irresponsibility. What I’d like to do instead is add to your duties.”

  “Sir?”

  “Sit, please.” He waited until Ryan arranged his limbs in a semblance of relaxation. “What do you know about Jake’s relationship with Amy Sanders?”

  Too much. Not enough.

  He chose one. “Nothing.”

  Mr. Montgomery accepted the statement with a nod. “I was afraid of that. As much as I’d hate to lose you, I’d hate to lose Amy even more.” An almost cherubic expression passed his face. Was it possible her charm had actually pierced that fleshy, ironclad exterior? No wonder Ryan and Jake had already fallen at her feet. No mortal man stood a chance. “She’s not just an employee to me. She and her mother, well, they’re family. I won’t sit back and watch my son trifle with her in an attempt to get at me.”

  “Sir?” Ryan echoed.

  “She and Jake can have nothing to do with one another,” Mr. Montgomery continued, as if Ryan hadn’t spoken. “It’s one hundred percent nonnegotiable, and I need an inside man to make sure of it. Are you following me?”

  Not really. “I won’t do anything that would hurt her, if that’s what you’re asking me for.”

  “Of course not.” Mr. Montgomery didn’t elaborate. “What I’d like for you to do is keep an eye on the pair of them.”

  “You want me to spy?” He had no room for incredulity, he knew. Spying was exactly what he’d been doing yesterday. Spying and careening into a ditch when it seemed Jake was about to land a kiss on Amy’s lips. Surely that made him the worse of the two men sitting in the room right now.

  “Think of it more as playing chaperone. Jake already likes you—I’ve never seen him stand up for anyone’s job before. Use that to your advantage. Watch the pair of them. Keep the relationship from developing further by any means necessary. I’ll gladly increase your salary. What do I pay you now?”

  Ryan felt as though he was being pushed to the edge of a cliff. “I don’t want your money.”

  One of Mr. Montgomery’s bushy white eyebrows, as rounded as the rest of him, rose. “None of it? I find that hard to believe. I’ve been paying your salary for two years.”

  “I only mean I don’t want any additional money. Not for this.”

  “I see,” he said slowly, and Ryan got the impression that he really did see—much deeper than Ryan was comfortable with, much closer than anyone had peered in years.

  “And what if I were to offer you more than that?”

  More than money? There was only one thing in the world Ryan wanted more than cold, hard cash, and it didn’t bear thinking of. Not even Mr. Montgomery’s influence extended to Hollywood. Not even he could get Ryan behind the wheel of a stunt car again.

  Could he?

  Ryan repaid Mr. Montgomery’s careful evasion with some of his own. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  “I disagree. I think you understand my terms perfectly. Make my job easier, Ryan, and I’ll see what I can do about yours. You’d be surprised how many of my hotels are located on the West Coast.”

  “I’m not for sale,” Ryan said, his voice a growl.

  But he could feel himself wavering, sensed the familiar slippage of temptation under his feet. This time, though, it wasn’t the call of a whisky on the rocks that sent him reeling. It was the thrum of speed in his veins, of danger and excitement around every corner. He could practically taste the burned rubber in the air.

  It tasted fantastic.

  “Of course you’re not for sale,” Mr. Montgomery said. It was clear neither one of them believed that, but Ryan persisted, forcing himself to hold firm.

  “What you’re asking of me is wrong.”

  “I don’t disagree.” Mr. Montgomery nodded twice and then stopped, a bobblehead on broken springs. “But I’ve always found that the further I go in business, the more often I’m called upon to ma
ke difficult decisions. What seems like clear-cut black and white at the bottom of the ladder takes on indistinguishable shades of gray from way up high.”

  Ryan found himself picking up where Mr. Montgomery left off, his agreement clear in the up-and-down movements of his head before he realized what he was doing.

  Oh, God. Was he really agreeing to this? If Mr. Montgomery was this against Jake’s involvement with Amy, there was no reason for Ryan to interfere. The man had singlehandedly brought a decaying hotel empire back to a place of crowning triumph. He’d crushed a competitor using nothing but legal clauses and the sheer force of his will. He’d even gotten Ryan to somehow feel as though quitting was the last thing he wanted to do right now. He could definitely stop his son from dallying with the nanny.

  But Ryan didn’t want Mr. Montgomery to be in charge of that. He didn’t want this shrewd, powerful man to hold Amy’s heart in his hand and squeeze whenever he felt the urge.

  If any man was going to hold her heart, dammit, it was going to be him.

  “You see, Ryan?” Mr. Montgomery rose and extended his hand, bringing the conversation to a halt. Ryan had no choice but to shake it. “I invest in people. Did you know I had my assistant call a few of the studios in Hollywood before I hired you? I wanted character references.”

  He grimaced. “I can’t imagine they were very good ones.”

  “Horrible. Any other man would have sent you packing.”

  The implication—that Mr. Montgomery wasn’t any other man—hung in the air between them.

  “I thought you hired me because I was cheap.”

  “I hired you because I liked what they had to say.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That you’re unpredictable. Reckless. You take uncalculated risks with other people’s property.” He paused. “That you were washed up and everyone knew it but you.”

  Jesus. That was worse than he expected. “Is this where I ask why those qualities appealed to you?”