If I Stay

by Tamara Morgan

  Chapter Nineteen

  “No. I changed my mind. We’re not doing it.”

  Amy laughed and gave a shimmy. “I do look pretty fantastic, don’t I? Jenna’s got impeccable taste when it comes to this sort of thing.”

  On its own, the white dress, which was so small and composed of so much Lycra it barely counted as a tube sock, would have been too scandalous for the evening she and Jake had planned. But the delicate lace overlay, which overlapped the hem and came up over the arms in adorable cap sleeves, elevated it from trashy to classy. Or so she hoped.

  Ryan’s hands dropped to her hips, halting her movements mid-grind, and she gulped when she saw the expression on his face. He really didn’t like this dress. “No. It’s not because you look fantastic.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she said, ignoring the pitter-patter of her heart in her throat. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

  She didn’t doubt for a second that Ryan approved of her appearance—his tongue had fallen a little too far out of his mouth when she’d walked in for that—which meant that his reservations had more to do with the rest of it. The date. And tricking Mr. Montgomery. And—oh, God—the fact that if all went well, he’d be on the first plane out of town.

  Now her heart wasn’t pitter-pattering in her throat. It had stopped beating and lodged there, threatening to choke her.

  So she did the only thing she could think of—she turned on the laughter and the flirtation, ignoring the way he glowered like a man facing the worst day of his life. Again.

  “Relax, Ryan. It’ll all be over in a couple of hours.”

  He didn’t relax. He frowned so hard she could tell he wanted to take relaxation between his teeth and grind it until it was nothing but dust. “I don’t like it. Of all the stupid, reckless things I’ve done in my life, at least the only person I did them to was myself. There are too many others involved in this, and—”

  She grabbed the front of his T-shirt and pulled him close. “Dirk Hardcore likes it. He likes it so bad. He wants to march into that hotel, slam Jake against the wall and demand justice. He wants to save Candi from the biggest mistake of her life—and then slam her against the wall too.” She lost some of her steam and giggled, ruining what was turning out to be a pretty effective argument, if you asked her. “A different wall, naturally. And a different kind of slamming.”

  He didn’t smile. Shit. Why wasn’t Ryan smiling?

  “It isn’t a game this time.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But we’re going to play anyway.”

  She was saved from the agony of his response by Jake’s brief knock on the door. After calling a cheerful “Come in,” she was saved from all kinds of responses. There was nothing for any mere mortal to say when Jake Montgomery entered a room wearing a tux. On those occasions, speech was rendered irrelevant, admiration all that was required.

  My brother, she thought, finding the idea less difficult to digest with each passing day, dresses up crazy good.

  “Don’t look so quick to murder me, Lucas,” Jake strode forward and offered Amy a chaste peck on the cheek. She was happy to report there was no fizzle whatsoever. “I promise to be on my best behavior.”

  “He’s chickening out,” Amy informed Jake, feeling a familiar twinge of guilt getting ready to perform somersaults in her stomach as she pitted the men against one another. You’re doing this for Ryan’s own good. You can’t be the reason he stays. You’d never be happy knowing he sacrificed himself for your sake, that he always has one eye on the door. “He’s not so sure he can hack it.”

  “Is that so?” Jake asked coolly. “Why am I not surprised?”

  It was such a perfect response Amy could have clapped. Ryan took one look at Jake’s smirk and bristled. “I’m not chickening out. I’m second-guessing. It’s different.”

  “Is this where I have to start clucking?” Jake asked. “Because I can tell you right now—I’ve never been very good at farce. Amy, be a dear and start making barnyard noises for me.”

  She didn’t dare. She knew when she’d pushed Ryan far enough.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that, Montgomery?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Ryan tossed Jake a set of keys. “Don’t you dare drive a single mile per hour over the speed limit. Keep your hands to yourself at all times. And if it comes down to me or Amy taking the blame for this, it was one hundred percent my idea. Got it?”

  “Hey, now.” She looked back and forth between the two men, hands on her hips. “I can take care of myself. And it was my idea.”

  She might as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid her, but she couldn’t find it in her to be more than mildly irritated. She could practically smell the love in the air as they shook hands and shared a stern man-smile. They were totally friends now. She knew it.

  And she was glad. In the fallout of this day—whatever happened—she wanted Ryan to have a friendly face to turn to. She wanted him to have someone else who would be on his side.

  “Let’s go, Amy.” Jake offered her his arm. “If I have to drive at a snail’s pace the whole way, we need to get moving.”

  After checking to make sure Ryan wasn’t nearing a Hulk moment, she took the proffered limb, her fingers light on Jake’s forearm. She would have liked another minute alone with Ryan, an opportunity to reassure him that everything would turn out okay in the end, but it was too late. She was out the door and into Mr. Montgomery’s favorite Rolls Royce before she knew it, about to head out for a night on the town with a man who was probably her half brother.

  Maybe.

  Possibly.

  Definitely.

  Oh, man. It didn’t matter what she thought. In about four hours, she’d know for sure either way.

  * * *

  Ryan didn’t bother knocking on Mr. Montgomery’s office door. It was late enough that Katie had already left for the evening, so he didn’t have to worry about getting her in trouble. It was just him and the man he’d come to despise in ways he’d never known was possible. Just him and the man who’d given Amy life but not his name, his money but not his love.

  “We have a problem.” He strode inside the wood-paneled, gleaming room, expecting to find his employer in his customary position, head bent over his mess of a desk in a pose of industriousness. What he got was the exact opposite. Two oversized leather club chairs had been angled in one corner to showcase a pair of middle-aged men relaxing amid a cloud of cigar smoke, tumblers of amber-colored liquid in their hands.

  “Oh, I’m sorry for interrupting.” The apology rose automatically to his lips. So did what came next. “Len Brigand?”

  Mr. Montgomery laughed and rose to his feet. “I see my guest needs no introduction. Come in, Ryan, come in. Have a seat. We were just talking about you.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” he stammered. They were talking about him? After hours? Over drinks and cigars?

  “I insist.” Mr. Montgomery turned his chair so that the worn mahogany leather beckoned, taking a spindly hard-backed seat in the corner for himself. “Len, this is the young man I was telling you about. My driver, Ryan Lucas. Ryan, I believe you know—or at least know of—Len Brigand. Len is one of my oldest friends from college.”

  Overpowered by the cigar smoke and the feeling that he was rapidly sinking out of his depth, he took Len’s hand and shook it before falling into the chair. A glass of something cold was pressed into his hand. In a moment of panic, he shoved the drink back, splashing Mr. Montgomery in the process.

  “It’s okay. It’s ginger ale.”

  Ryan looked up sharply, but he was met with nothing but a kind smile from either man.

  “Mine is too.” Len held up his glass in a one-sided toast and winked. “Eighteen years sober, each one a touch easier than the last. You’ll get th
ere.”

  “Oh.” Ryan didn’t know what else to do except drink. The sticky-sweet soda almost made him choke, but that might have just as easily been the sense of panic that was taking over. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He wasn’t supposed to shoot the shit and swap war stories with Len Brigand, of all people. He was supposed to storm in here and send Mr. Montgomery flying after Jake and Amy in a cathartic outrage.

  “I hear you’ve been trying to return to the stunt circuit,” Len said easily as he leaned back in his chair. His ferrety eyes seemed to pierce through the fog of Ryan’s thoughts, extracting the essence and leaving a scooped-out hollow behind. “How’s that going for you?”

  Ryan set his glass aside. The act of moving cup to mouth as a balm wasn’t one he remembered with much fondness. “As well as you might expect, sir.”

  Len smiled. Inside the friendly creases his cheeks made, Ryan could see the straight pearly white teeth that only Hollywood seemed able to perfect. “It’s an unforgiving business, I’ll give it that.”

  Unforgiving. That was one way to put it.

  He struggled to calm himself, finding it difficult to know where to look, where to land. This was really happening. There was a real chance they could make this work. Except...he had to rescue Amy first.

  He cleared his throat, determined to stay focused on the task at hand and not the drum pounding inside his chest. “I’m really sorry to do this, but would it be possible for me to have a few minutes alone with Mr. Montgomery? There’s, uh, a pressing issue I need to discuss with him.”

  Len’s surprise was evident in a forehead that wrinkled all the way up to the crown of his bald pate. “Of course. I’ll wait outside, shall I?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Mr. Montgomery said, looking a question at Ryan. “I’m sure we’ll just be a moment.”

  “Don’t rush on my account.” Len got to his feet, leaving his ginger ale on the side table. “And take your time. Family comes first.”

  “I’m not family,” Ryan said quickly.

  “We appreciate it,” Mr. Montgomery said just as fast.

  It seemed Len took all of the air out of the room, because the moment the door clicked behind him, the walls began to spin and Ryan had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from bolting to his feet and following him out of there. Mr. Montgomery, annoying under the best of circumstances, outdid himself by merely sitting there and letting him struggle.

  No questions. No nudges. Just a calm, forgiving patience.

  “It’s about Jake and Amy,” he finally said. Almost all of the steam had left him by that time, and the words sounded flat to his own ears.

  “Oh?”

  No less-helpful syllable existed on the face of the planet. “It’s just...they’re gone. I thought you should know.”

  “Gone where, exactly?”

  “My best guess? Hartford.” Specifically, to the Montluxe. Even more specifically, to the lounge for drinks and dancing before slipping upstairs to the penthouse. That was assuming Ryan and Mr. Montgomery didn’t get there first. “He took the Rolls.”

  “You begin to interest me. How, exactly, did he get it?”

  Ryan had to fight the urge to cover his flaming ears with his hands to prevent the man from seeing his lies. Dammit. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go at all. Mr. Montgomery was supposed to fly into a fury, fall into a panic—take on some sort of action other than smiling calmly at him.

  “I must have left the key chest unlocked. I went to close up for the night, and they were gone.”

  “And you immediately deduced the car was taken by Jake and Amy? You’re much quicker on your feet than I gave you credit for. I wonder why they were so careful to keep it a secret from you.”

  “Well, when you mentioned you’d like me to keep a close eye on them, I, uh, took it upon myself to pay more attention to the cars, and...” Fuck this. He was done. There was a reason he drove the cars in the movies, not starred in them. He sprang to his feet. “Don’t you even care? Regardless of how I know or where they’ve gone, the fact of the matter is that Jake and Amy are together. On a date. Alone.”

  “I hate to be obvious here, but shouldn’t that bother you a lot more than it bothers me?”

  He swiveled his head to stare at Mr. Montgomery. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

  “There’s no fucking or kidding on my side of things, I assure you.”

  “You asked me to keep an eye on them.”

  “And I thought you did admirably well at it.”

  “You wanted to prevent them from dating.”

  “I still do. Which was why I was so pleased when it came to my ears that the two of you seemed to be forming a romantic attachment of your own.”

  Ryan’s head swam. There was so much to process in that statement, he didn’t know where to start. So he focused on the one thing currently causing the vein in his temple to throb. Even though it ruined all their plans, even though Amy would probably never forgive him, he couldn’t stay quiet on this subject another second. He was so tired of being tempted and trapped and yanked around. At least one person in this house needed to step up and lay out the truth.

  “But she’s not here with me. She’s out there. With him. Even you have to admit that the two of them being related to each other makes that a big fucking problem.”

  Finally, finally, he got a reaction out of the man. The glass slipped from Mr. Montgomery’s hand, landing on the table with a clink. “What did you just say?”

  “We know,” Ryan said through his teeth. “Between your shady deals and her mom’s excessive worry, it wasn’t hard to put the rest together. At what point will you finally care enough about Amy to tell her the truth? How much longer does she have to be a partial member of this family before you finally accept her as your daughter?”

  Mr. Montgomery turned unnaturally pale, the white color such an extreme departure from his normal fleshy hue that Ryan dropped his anger and hurried to his side. “Can I get you a glass of water? Should I call in Len?”

  “No, no. I’m fine.” Mr. Montgomery began choking, so Ryan ignored his response. He poured a glass of water from the sideboard pitcher and, kneeling in front of him, pressed it to the older man’s lips. Mr. Montgomery sipped and immediately sputtered, sending an alcohol spray all over the front of Ryan’s shirt. “And that wasn’t water.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” He stepped back. “But you were so pale. I don’t think my career can handle a murder charge on top of everything else.”

  Mr. Montgomery waved his hand. “It’ll take a lot more than this family of mine to kill me. If they wielded that kind of power, I’d have been forced to cock up my toes decades ago.” The vodka seemed to help, and he took another deep pull, this time swallowing the liquid. “Tell me, Ryan—is Amy aware of what you just told me?”

  “She is.”

  “And she believes herself to be my daughter?”

  Believes? He hesitated. “She does.”

  Mr. Montgomery’s lips drew together tightly. “Take me to her.”

  “I told you, I don’t know—”

  “Young man, I’ve come to grow quite fond of you over the past two years, but if you don’t take me to where the pair of them are hiding right this minute, I’ll take you out back and show you firsthand just how difficult it is to kill me.”

  Despite the harshness of Mr. Montgomery’s words, Ryan’s lips twitched. “Are you offering to fight me, sir?”

  “Don’t think I can’t do it. You might be half my age and in a hell of a lot better shape than I ever was, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. It was how I disciplined my boys for years. I imagine you could benefit from a few right jabs yourself.”

  Ryan felt his ears growing warm. Not “You’re fired.” Not “Get the hell out of my sight.” It sounded an aw
ful lot like Mr. Montgomery was offering him the exact opposite.

  “I’ll get rid of Len while you bring the car around,” he commanded. Ryan sprang to his feet and rushed to the door, happy to be back in the action again. “And Ryan?”

  He hesitated, his hand on the knob. “Yes?”

  “Something fast, please. As fast as you’re comfortable handling.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Forget Hollywood. Forget alcohol. The thrill of the ride was what Ryan really felt burning in his veins.

  * * *

  “Must we speed quite this drastically?” Amy’s mom spoke up from the backseat of the Ferrari FF, her voice small. “I understand you’re upset by all this, John, but they won’t do anything drastic in the next thirty minutes. They’re just kids. They’re probably at the bar trying to drink each other under the table. Don’t you remember when they did that for Amy’s seventeenth birthday? I still don’t know where they got that bottle of gin—but I do know she wouldn’t touch the stuff after that, even to this day.”

  Even though Mr. Montgomery shook his head to indicate that Ryan could maintain the ninety-mile-per-hour pace he’d set since they’d pulled onto the interstate, he eased up on the gas. Since Amy had promised to be able to keep Jake in check, there really wasn’t any need for haste, and he didn’t want to give Amy’s mom a heart attack on top of everything else.

  He’d done enough damage as it was.

  “I wish one episode of overindulgence was all it would take to cure Jake of his excesses,” Mr. Montgomery said. “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with him, Linda.”

  “He’s young. Give him time.”

  “I was running a multimillion dollar company at his age. Had already started my family. Youth is no excuse.”

  “If I remember correctly, you weren’t a complete paragon back then. There are one or two indiscretions I can think of—”

  Ryan gave over to a fit of coughing. Indiscretion? Is that what they’d call it?

  “Not that kind of indiscretion.” Mr. Montgomery looked over at him and frowned. “Amy’s not my daughter, Ryan, much as I might wish otherwise.”