If I Stay

by Tamara Morgan

“But?” she prodded.

  “But I’ll be damned if I’m letting you go one second before I have to.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I brought you lunch.”

  Ryan looked up from the Maserati he was working on and grinned. In addition to a brown paper bag dangling through the open doorway of the garage, a leg—long and lean and muscular—made an entrance worthy of a showgirl.

  “Be careful what part you lead with,” he said, restraining himself from running his hands and lips and teeth all over that leg. If his fingers weren’t covered in the glistening sheen and pungent odor of motor oil, it would have been a much closer call. “I don’t want to lose my job because I was found making out with the nanny in the backseat of Mr. Montgomery’s favorite Italian sports car.”

  Amy’s head replaced the food and leg. Other than a slight look of exhaustion—which was no wonder, given the lateness of their activities the night before—she looked fantastic. No regrets, no awkwardness. Just her. “I told you already. No one is going to care if we’re seeing each other. It’s not a perfect family situation, I’ll give you that, but we aren’t living in a dictatorship.”

  Yeah, well. Forgive him if he didn’t take her word for it. She probably saw the potential for world peace and rainbows reflected in Kim Jong Un’s eyes.

  “Is that what we’re doing?” he asked carefully. “Seeing each other?”

  She wasn’t nearly as careful. With a laugh and a toss of the brown paper bag at him, she hoisted herself up on the workbench, heedless of the piston rings she knocked over and almost rolled to the floor. “Well, I’ve seen a lot more of you than I ever thought possible, that’s for sure. Feeling sore at all today? Your thighs sure got a workout last night.”

  “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “So am I. Which is why if seeing each other is too much for you to handle, we can call it something else. Slapping fancies. The dance of the love monkey. Whatever.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t mind?” He knew he was only making things worse, prodding at a tiny cut as if determined to turn it into a gaping wound, but he couldn’t help it. While his body appreciated Amy’s generosity, his conscience was having a hard time making it fit. His conscience was having a hard time with everything these days. “Because last night was incredible, and—”

  “Ryan, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop there.” She brought a finger to his lips. “Let’s just go with incredible for now.”

  He hid his flustered reaction by rummaging through the bag. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crust cut off. Fish crackers. A juice box. “Did you steal this from a schoolkid or something?”

  “I’m a nanny, not a chef. Peanut butter and goldfish are all I know. It’d be cheating if I had Holly do it.”

  “It’s perfect.” He gave up the monumental task of keeping himself away from her and drew close enough to steal a kiss. She stole it right back, robbing him of sanity and a sense of his surroundings. “Thank you for thinking of me. Did you eat already?”

  “Actually, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  He washed his hands in a small stone sink and hoisted himself onto the worktable next to her. Taking a big bite of the sandwich—gooey and sweet—he waited for her to elaborate. Her shifty eyes and the way she was running her finger repeatedly around a piston ring were clear signs that this wasn’t just a friendly chat.

  “Don’t look so worried,” he chided. “If it makes things easier, I’ll never mention lunch again. I relinquish all my postcoital rights to dictate your diet and exercise.”

  “No, that’s not...” A slow smile worked across her face, and she pointed at him. “Oh, I get it—you’re being hilarious again. Why do I get the sudden feeling I unleashed a beast last night?”

  He took another bite of his sandwich and didn’t say what he was thinking. Because you did.

  “The thing is, I’m heading into town to have lunch with Jenna.” Amy didn’t know why it was so hard to just say it, but the words weren’t as light on her tongue as she would have liked.

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “Jake is going too.”

  She could feel Ryan’s body stiffen next to hers, and she placed her hand on his thigh to reassure him. Damn. He was so rigid he could snap a belt around that muscle.

  “O-kay,” he said slowly. “What does that mean? Are you going to talk to them about...the situation?”

  “It means I’m having lunch with some friends. That’s all.”

  “Or possibly having lunch with some family.”

  “Friends.”

  “Or family.”

  “Or friends.” She shrugged, but it was a feeble gesture, and they both knew it. “I’ve been doing some thinking, and it doesn’t really matter which one they are anymore, does it?”

  He set his sandwich down on the table—being careful to keep it on the plastic—and turned to study her. Darn it. It was impossible to be light and flippant when he looked at her like that. When Ryan was soft and flirty and hilarious, it was easy to forget that there was also this hard edge waiting for a chance to slice through. Not that she didn’t like the hard edge. She liked it a lot. But it was cutting a little too close for comfort right now.

  “You have to talk to Mr. Montgomery about this. Or your mom. Or maybe even swab the inside of Jenna’s cheek when she’s not looking so you can run a test. You can’t leave this question lingering in the air.”

  “Why does it matter so much to you?” She reached for his hands and held them in her own. His rough palms felt good against hers, so unequivocally male. “I appreciate that your sensibilities are offended on my behalf, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with you, does it?”

  A growl escaped his throat as his fingers tightened on hers. “Goddammit. You make it too easy for people to take advantage of you.”

  She scooted closer and put a hand on his leg again. He felt less like steel this time and more like a man who enjoyed the sensation of a feminine hand moving higher. “Are you taking advantage of me?”

  He drew in a ragged breath. “I’m trying really hard not to.”

  She smiled and kept going, her hand squeezing as it continued its northward journey. She stopped just short of manhandling him. “Well, that makes one of us.”

  He released a choking sound that could have been laughter. Either that, or it was the internal struggle of a man whose balls were within her immediate reach. “Take it from someone who spent most of his life pretending his problems didn’t exist—you don’t want to wait until the day everything goes up in flames. It’s much harder to recover from that than you realize.”

  Ryan didn’t talk about himself nearly enough to render that statement casual, and she felt the weight of his confession perched on her heart.

  “And I promise you I don’t intend to let things get that far,” she said, hoping it was enough. “I know I can always go to my mom and ask her, point-blank, if Mr. Montgomery is my dad. She’d tell me. But I need to try this on my terms first. I appreciate that you’re looking out for me—I really do—but I’m not so sure I’m ready to face what happens after. Once I know, that’s it. There’s no taking it back. My life here will never be the same. And you’ve already said you aren’t necessarily going to be here to help me deal with it.”

  The look of anguish that crossed his face was enough to send her whole body quivering. It was an unfair amount of pressure to put on a man—holding his commitment issues accountable for her inability to move past deer-in-the-headlights mode—but it was the truth. If this was going to be the Amy Sanders show, then she was doing it her way. Slow and steady. Confrontation-free.

  “Ryan, I look at you and I see what happens when a person is ripped away from the place he loves. Don’t try to argue. I wasn’t kidding when I said I
’m on to you, that I’ve been watching you for a while now. It always seems to me that no matter where you are in this big house—what you’re doing or who you’re with—you always have an expression of such...despair. Like this is the last place on earth you want to be, and you’re just waiting for the day someone invites you back to your own life.” Hoping to ease some of his torment, she pressed her lips against his, soft and peanut buttery. “I know that feeling well. Too well. I don’t think I could leave here again.”

  “The Montgomerys could hardly keep you from the whole town.” He brushed the hair from her face, his hand lingering on the back of her neck. “Besides—even if they did, you aren’t alone. I made the mistake of pinning all my hopes and dreams on one path, but you’re full of options. You have your mom, your friends, your ballet.”

  “Don’t be too hasty there, Lucas. Yours isn’t the only career that circled the drain.” Since that was yet another topic of conversation she’d happily bury and never face again, she distracted them both by swinging one leg over his lap. “Now kiss me, quick. I have five minutes until I need to leave for lunch.”

  He gripped her thighs and pulled her flush against him. Metal parts skittered off the tabletop and clattered to the ground, taking Ryan’s sandwich with them, but he didn’t seem to care. He ran a hand up, slipping between the warm cotton of her shirt and her skin, which felt soft and feminine under his rough palms.

  “Five minutes isn’t nearly long enough for me to do the things I want to,” he said.

  She arched into him and accepted his hot, needy kiss. Five minutes wasn’t enough time for her either, but she’d take what she could get from this man. She had a feeling it might be good practice.

  With Ryan, she knew she’d always be left straining for more.

  * * *

  “Do I have something on my face?” Jenna lifted a napkin and dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth. “Come on, Amy. You know I count on you to tell me when I have misplaced buttons and gnarly chin hairs. No one else will.”

  Amy laughed and forced herself to stop staring at the wide-eyed beauty across the table. “Ridiculous. You’re flawless from head to toe. You’ve never had a wayward hair in your life.”

  Or moved with anything other than grace or made inappropriate bodily noises or said the wrong thing. With almost five feet ten inches to command, Jenna should have been a study of great, hulking movements and awkward angles. But poise was so deeply ingrained in her DNA that she never so much as stubbed a toe. And even if she did have something on her face, it would probably start a new trend. Mustard face patches. Coffee splotches as the new tie-dye.

  Jenna patted her hair, the signature auburn tresses worn sleek and long, and said simply, “Thank you.”

  No fanfare. No false modesty. Jenna knew her worth and simply accepted it. Amy loved that about her.

  On impulse, she grabbed Jenna’s hand and squeezed—and also took a moment to examine her thumbnail. It was overly wide, just like hers, though Jenna’s cuticles were so perfect they could have been carved of glass. She turned the hand over and glanced at Jenna’s palm. Were life lines an inherited trait?

  “You’re being weird,” Jake said, watching her.

  Um. Yes. Yes, she was. She dropped Jenna’s hand and forced her own two to clasp together in her lap. “I’m just so sad Jenna has to leave already,” she said by way of explanation. “Can’t you stay a few more days?”

  “You still have me,” Jake said. Like Jenna, he was all poise and hair across the table. They’d taken her to the only restaurant in Ransom Creek with cloth napkins, a French-style bistro whose menu items she’d been expected to not only pronounce, but understand—the result of all those years touring Europe, naturally. Damn those fake postcards she’d sent with pictures of the Louvre on them. She was pretty sure she was eating some sort of animal testicle right now. “Don’t I count?”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully, and speared another sperm sac with her fork. “You only want to hang out with me because you’re stuck in Ransom Creek and are bored out of your mind.”

  Jenna sat back and looked carefully at her brother. Amy knew, based on the few private snatches of conversation they’d managed, that Jenna shared some of her concerns about the current state of Jake’s life—spiraling, spinning out of control. Unfortunately, she was far too busy to do something about it. Amy couldn’t name what it was Jenna did for the hotels, but it had something to do with a lot of foreign travel and mysterious meetings with mustachioed men in suits. At least, that was how she’d always pictured it in her head. It was all very glamorous in there.

  “Be nice,” Jake chided. “I’m suffering from the pains of rejection over here. I’m still having a hard time figuring out how the chauffeur got the better of me.”

  Amy’s eyes flew open. “You know?” What else did he have insider information on? How deep in Montgomery Manor mysteries did he go? She grabbed Jake’s hand and examined his thumb, flustered when she discovered another fine example of an overly wide nail. Dammit. Lots of people had similar-looking fingernails. They were fingernails, for crying out loud. There were only so many variations on a theme.

  Jake gently withdrew his hand. “I might not be the most astute member of my family, but even I have the ability to smell out a romance when it’s taking place right under my nose. Besides—no man suggests taking a woman out on a date with her mother unless he’s in it for the long haul. He’s clearly smitten.”

  The long haul part threw her, which was the only reason she could think of for how many seconds it took the rest of that statement to sink in. She sat up, alarmed. “Wait—going to the beach with Mom was Ryan’s idea?”

  “Of course it was. You didn’t think I came up with that self-sacrificing gesture on my own, did you?”

  “And he let you take credit for it?”

  Jake waved a hand. “The mysteries of love. Don’t ask me to explain them—I couldn’t even tell you where to start.”

  “But...you...” She was confused and overwhelmed and so touched by Ryan’s gesture that she was having a hard time finding the words. Of course it was Ryan who’d come up with the day at the beach. That was playful Ryan, sweet Ryan, the Ryan who would make sure she enjoyed herself even if it was at his own expense. Now that she’d started getting to know this man—both biblically and personally—she was discovering he was composed almost entirely of gestures like these.

  It made her so happy. And so very devastatingly sad.

  “But I nothing, Amy.” He reached across the table and pinched her chin. It was a gesture she remembered well from childhood, from all those times she needed comforting and he’d been there to supply it. “I still don’t think it was very nice of you to grow up so thoroughly without warning me first, but the truth is that you’re too good for me. You’re too good for all of us.”

  “That’s not news. The rest of us have known that forever.” Jenna rolled her eyes and continued picking delicately at her lunch—lettuce with a side of lettuce. “She’s the heart you and Monty and I don’t have. She always has been.”

  Amy gulped and stared at her hands, wide thumbnail and all. That, right there, was what Ryan would never understand about her relationship with the Montgomerys, why it was so hard for her to upset the balance of things now that she’d finally found her place again. When she looked at these people, all she saw was love. Acceptance. A home. It didn’t matter if they shared the same blood as her—they would always be her family.

  Right?

  Oh, dear. Now she was crying.

  “Well, shit.” Jake looked back and forth between the two women, bewildered. “What’d we say?”

  “She’s clearly losing it,” Jenna said calmly. “Sweetie, I think maybe you need to get out more—find some time to do your own thing. Dad says you haven’t used the studio even once since you’ve been back.”

 
; “Oh.” She sniffled, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, stalling for time. “I didn’t know it was still there. I was sure it’d be a supply closet by now.”

  Jenna wiped daintily at her mouth. “Serena tried to put her exercise equipment in there, but Dad wouldn’t have it. It was always his hope you’d find a way back to us, and he wanted everything waiting just as you left it.”

  “I’d like to see you dance sometime,” Jake said, sounding as though he meant it. And not in a creepy way either, which only made things worse. Sincerity from these two was the worst possible sentiment right now. “I always meant to sit in on one of your shows.”

  “I tried once,” Jenna said, also intent. “In Germany, I believe it was.”

  She waited a long moment, painful in the way it dragged on, until Amy was able to gather enough courage to meet her gaze. It was a mistake. She felt as though she was looking at a softer, feminine, much more attractive version of Mr. Montgomery—calculating but not cold, shrewd but not unkind. Jenna was clearly her father’s daughter.

  But am I?

  “It was when I was there for the opening of the hotel in Zurich,” Jenna added.

  Calculating and shrewd, all right. Amy sank in her chair.

  “Zurich?” she said weakly.

  “I suppose I should have told you I was coming, but I wanted it to be a surprise. It was my own fault.”

  “She wasn’t there?” Jake asked.

  “Out sick for that performance, I believe.” Jenna smiled and returned her attention to her lettuce. “Isn’t that right, Amy?”

  Amy—never adept at lying—did the only thing she could think of. With a bright smile, she shoveled in as much food as could reasonably fit and chewed. And chewed. And chewed. It was amazing what a full two minutes of wrapping her mouth around testicles could do to change an unpleasant topic of conversation.

  She thought about Ryan and swallowed. That was definitely a trick she’d have to remember for later.

  Chapter Fourteen