He almost swerved off the road in his struggle not to slam on the brakes. What the fuck? If she wasn’t his daughter, why were they zipping toward Hartford like someone’s life was on the line? Why had they stopped to get Amy’s mom? “But you said...”
He paused, trying to recall Mr. Montgomery’s exact words. He’d never confirmed or denied his paternity—just turned that awful shade of white.
“I said nothing, which was probably my first mistake.”
Linda’s hand moved between the two front seats, and Mr. Montgomery wasted no time in grabbing the appendage and giving it a squeeze.
“It was my mistake too, John. If I’d have thought for one second she’d get this idea into her head, I’d have come clean long ago. The poor thing. What must she have been thinking of us?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw Mr. Montgomery get that white, scary look again. “She probably thought I was some kind of monster, keeping that from her.”
Ryan swallowed heavily. “That might be my fault. I’m the one who put the idea in her head. If anyone should take responsibility for this, it’s me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Linda said. “No one blames you.”
They’d reached the turnoff for the city, so Ryan slowed even more, adhering to local speed limit laws and feeling sadly deflated. The momentary lift of sliding behind the wheel of this car and seeing what it could do was giving way to a much stronger feeling of fear.
Fear and doubt and the overwhelming certainty that he’d done nothing over the past few months but dig his own grave. And now he was sitting in it. Alone.
“But you should blame me,” he said. “I haven’t done you enough justice, Mr. Montgomery—in fact, I’ve done the exact opposite. I assumed the worst of you and forced Amy to see it too. I understand if this means you’ll want to terminate my employment after this.”
“Would you stop trying to get me to fire you?” The cold steel was back in Mr. Montgomery’s eyes, the command back in his voice, but Ryan was quickly coming to learn that this man wasn’t nearly as ruthless as he’d originally thought. His bark was much worse than his bite. “If you want to leave my employ, of course you’re free to go. But do it on your terms, not mine. And be sure to let me know first, because Len’s been pestering me for weeks to lend you to him for his next movie—he’s got some dangerous rooftop thing we both think you’d be perfect for. I was hoping to offer you a time-share situation, but I understand if that’s not what you want.”
Ryan opened and closed his mouth again, unsure what to say. That offer was everything. And nothing. And all the things that existed in the middle.
“Oh, good. We’re here.” Linda was the first to break the oddly buzzing silence that followed Mr. Montgomery’s speech. Ryan pulled up in front of the hotel, his usual spot when he had important guests to drop off.
“I’ll just, uh, park and join you inside.” Ryan was surprised when Mr. Montgomery merely nodded and took him up on the offer. Surprised, but not offended. He was back in the role of subservience, chauffeur to a powerful man.
And that, he realized, was how Mr. Montgomery wanted it to be.
He wasn’t the man’s friend, but he wasn’t just his employee either. He was treated like an equal one moment, an errant child the next. He was valued and tested and put in his place all at the same time.
For the first time, he realized that Amy might be right about Mr. Montgomery being a decent person. She might be right about everything. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say this felt an awful lot like being part of the family.
* * *
“What if your dad freaked out and had him killed? What if he has him buried out behind the pool house?” Amy gnawed on her fingernail, which tasted considerably less delicious than the mai tai she’d just polished off. She didn’t dare drink another one, even though Jake was on what had to be his fifth glass of whisky by now.
Not that he appeared the least bit intoxicated. While liquor loosened other men, it only caused Jake to button up, his movements tighter and more controlled, his conversation less expansive. And less helpful. He was definitely being less helpful here.
“It wouldn’t be the first skeleton hiding somewhere on our grounds.” He kicked back the rest of his drink.
“Or maybe they rushed over here to stop us and crashed in a fiery wreck. We should check the news channels for information.”
“Ryan didn’t crash.”
“But they should have been here at least an hour ago.” Amy checked the clock on her cell phone. “We’ve dined. We’ve danced. We’re drinking. The only thing we have left to do is slip upstairs and look scandalous, but I was hoping things wouldn’t get that far.”
“They won’t.”
She threw a wadded-up cocktail napkin at him, her anxiety blossoming into full-on irritation. Jake was much less useful in these sorts of situations than Ryan. Ryan wouldn’t have sat there being purposefully obtuse. He’d have laughed with her, however reluctantly. Played along. Turned it into a game. “Would you stop arguing with me for no reason other than to argue?”
“I’m not,” he argued. He lifted his glass and pointed. “They’re here.”
She turned her gaze toward the double French doors to find Mr. Montgomery surveying the room. It didn’t take him long to locate them—they had the best table in the spot, as it was a Montgomery prerogative to be seated under the peacock-shaped Tiffany chandelier that had been hanging there for over a hundred years. Nor did it take very long for his normally calm face to fall into a frown.
Good. Let him frown. He should frown. For all he knew, she was about to diddle her brother.
“Mom?” She got to her feet the moment she saw her mother emerge from behind Mr. Montgomery, her slight form hidden neatly behind his own. Why had they stopped to bring her mom? And where was Ryan? “What are you doing here? You didn’t have to come all this way.”
“Of course I did, sweetie.”
Before she could respond, her mother enveloped her in a hug, holding her with a strength she didn’t know the woman still possessed. It was a mom-hug, one of those tight, painful, soul-wrenching embraces that made her feel as if she were a kid again and had just found out the tooth fairy wasn’t real.
She’d been twelve when she’d learned that—always slow to catch on to what everyone else had known forever. Obviously, this was a trait she had yet to outgrow.
“I’m so sorry it had to come to this,” her mom said as she relinquished her tight hold. “I never thought you would push things this far.”
Amy bristled. She’d done a decent job of not holding her mom accountable for all this, but that comment hit a long-dormant spot in her gut. No one expected her to push about anything. That was the problem. She was the happy-go-lucky nanny, the cheerful and dependable daughter. No one cared that being left out of the loop for twenty-six years of her life might actually hurt.
No one except Ryan.
“Yeah, well. There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“And you.” Her mom pulled away and glared at Jake. It was a real nanny glare—the kind Amy was sure no amount of practice would allow her to duplicate. But then her mom pulled Jake into a similar hug, holding him until his stiffness melted away. Amy didn’t know of anyone else on earth who could accomplish that. “You should know better than to try and kidnap my daughter. I’ll find you, young man. Every time.”
“Where’s Ryan?” Amy asked, searching in vain for the last member of the party to join them. The most important member of the party. The reason all this was happening in the first place.
“He’s parking the car,” Mr. Montgomery said. “I thought he could use a few minutes to compose himself.”
Compose himself? Into what?
“Maybe we should all sit down. I think there are a few things we need to discuss.”
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Amy realized—belatedly—that she was totally ruining Ryan’s chances of making a grand gesture here. She and Jake were supposed to have been caught in a scene of questionable morality, where fiery passions and illicit conversations required a timely intervention. Sitting down and sharing a plate of shiitake canapés was hardly the stuff of high drama.
“I don’t think there’s anything I care to discuss with you,” she said stiffly and turned to Jake. “Our room is ready by now, don’t you think?”
Jake lifted a brow but nodded. The man was a good sport, if nothing else. He hadn’t even once tried to ask her what all this was about. She wasn’t sure if it was because Ryan had warned him against trying to pump her for information, or if he simply didn’t care.
“Sit down,” Mr. Montgomery said again, this time with much less kindness in his tone. Last month, last week—heck, maybe even yesterday—Amy would have dropped without a second thought. But even though Jake sat with a heavy sigh, Amy remained on her feet. She was tired of doing what she was told. She was tired of being the girl no one wanted.
Everyone at the table turned to face her, their eyes expectant but not concerned, waiting for her to fall in line just like she always did. “I’ll stand, thanks,” she said.
The wide-eyed, watery look her mom sent her way almost had her giving up her long-overdue obstinance, but it wasn’t until Ryan materialized at her elbow that her knees actually gave way.
“I think you should sit, Amy,” he said, looking grim. His mouth was a firm line, his body resonating with tension where it very clearly didn’t touch hers. “We were wrong. Jake isn’t your brother.”
Jake looked up, startled. “Was that ever a possibility?”
Oh, dear. Amy gratefully sank to the seat Ryan pushed closer to her, savoring the press of his hand on her shoulder. His hand stayed long after she was seated, and she felt rather than saw him arrange himself right behind her. Literally behind her. He had her back yet again.
“Um. A little bit?” Amy was afraid to look around the table, so she studied the grain of the wood instead. “I know it sounds crazy, but Ryan and I had this theory—”
“That we’re related?” Jake raised his voice before realizing they were in a public place. He leaned across the table and hissed, “Are you serious right now? You went out with me thinking we might be siblings? On purpose? Shit, Amy. I almost kissed you.”
“I know.” She dropped her head to the table, all those wood grains beckoning. “But that was before we found out about the... Or before we thought the... Yeah. It’s awful. I quit.”
“Don’t look at me like you want to stab me with your swizzle stick, Jake,” Ryan said. “It turns out Amy and I may have been a touch overzealous in that arena. You aren’t related after all.”
Mr. Montgomery interrupted with a long cough. “That isn’t strictly true.”
A stunned silence settled over the table, almost comforting in how it chilled Amy to her bones.
“But you said you aren’t her father.” Ryan squeezed her shoulder—though whether for comfort or because he needed something to demolish, she couldn’t say. “In the car. You told me—”
Amy’s mom reached across the table and nudged her head up, forcing her to confront the whole tableau around her. Mr. Montgomery, his brows pulled together in concern. Her mother, about to break into tears at any moment. Jake, struggling to hide his horrified expression behind his usual mask of disdain. He didn’t fool her, though. She could see him making the same mental calculations she had that first day. Did we ever...? Have we ever...? What about that one time...?
If he ended up remembering something her own memory had wiped away, she prayed he’d keep it to himself. She was just starting to feel clean again.
“Sweetie, I owe you an apology,” her mom said. Her eyes flicked to Mr. Montgomery. “John and I both do. We thought it would be best if we gave you a normal life—as normal as possible, under the circumstances. A home, a family, any opportunities you wanted in life. But I think we underestimated how important it would be for you to know about your father. I think we underestimated how strong blood could be.”
Amy was no closer to understanding what was going on than she’d been weeks ago. So she wasn’t a Montgomery?
She looked up over her shoulder where Ryan stood resolute. As soon as her eyes met his, she knew he understood the pain that was shooting through her, starting in her solar plexus and bursting out in every direction. Supernova. This was what if felt like to go supernova.
She wasn’t a Montgomery. She wasn’t a part of this family. She was back to being the odd woman out, the reject, the outlier.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean a normal life? Why shouldn’t my life be normal? What am I?”
“You’re a Hawthorne,” Mr. Montgomery said.
Hawthorne? She wrinkled her nose, trying to recall where she’d heard that name before. It was familiar, but only in a vague, fleeting sort of way, like a dream that refused to hold on after the morning coffee settled in.
“She’s related to Mom?” Jake’s voice cut through the fog, cementing her in the present. “How?”
Nancy Hawthorne. The first Mrs. Montgomery. A woman she remembered as being cold, hateful and very, very tall. Tall like me. Tall like Jake and Jenna and Monty.
“Mom?” she asked, her voice wavering as she looked to her mother. If someone didn’t start explaining soon, she was going to pass out right here on the table. And despite all her fairy princess airs, Amy was not a fainter.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Nancy had an older brother,” her mom said gently. “A very charming, very handsome, very married older brother.”
“Uncle Christian?” Jake demanded. “Uncle Christian is Amy’s dad? She’s our cousin?”
She felt the loss of Ryan’s hand from her shoulder like the loss of the ground underneath her feet. She opened her mouth to ask why he was leaving, where he was going, how he could possibly leave her at a time like this, but he reappeared by her side. He took a seat next to Jake, his solid presence a comfort to them both.
“I think maybe it’s time someone starts from the beginning,” he said.
So Mr. Montgomery did.
The story of her birth didn’t start out with once upon a time, and there weren’t any evil stepsisters to move the plot along, but the cast of characters felt familiar just the same. An older married man visiting his sister and brother-in-law for a few weeks. A pretty young woman stopping in town for a few days on her way to the Big Apple. Her mother’s part was a little bit sad and a little bit sordid. Yes, she’d known he was married. No, she hadn’t intended to sleep with him. But there’d been too much wine from a bar that hadn’t checked her ID and too much flattery for a girl straight from a Minnesota farm. Amy had been conceived in the back of a Montgomery family town car.
It was that, more than anything, that drove the rest of the story to its current climax. Her fairy godmother turned out to be a fairy godfather—one who couldn’t bear the idea of anyone affiliated with his family abandoning his own flesh and blood. When Christian refused to have anything to do with the pregnancy or the young woman he’d foisted it on, Mr. Montgomery had stepped admirably up to the plate. He’d offered to pay Linda enough money to live the rest of her life in comfort, and, when she’d refused his charity, offered her a position as nanny in his home instead.
“‘You’ll raise the children together,’ he told me,” her mom recounted, smiling warmly at the man in question. “‘Whatever she wants, whatever she needs, it’s hers for the asking. We’re her family now.’”
Amy would have burst into tears at that part if Ryan hadn’t grabbed her leg under the table and run a warm hand right up her naked thigh. Her outrage at being molested was secondary only to a feeling of gratitude at the distraction.
“That explains so much
.” She sat back. Ryan’s hand moved to clasp hers, their fingers intertwined. It was a simple gesture, but one that made her feel much stronger than she would have been facing this alone. “Mrs. Montgomery—my...aunt, I guess?—always hated me so much. She couldn’t even look at me without breaking out in a shudder.”
“No, Nancy never did come around the way we’d hoped.” Mr. Montgomery frowned. “Don’t blame her too much for treating you unkindly. It wasn’t a great position for her to be in. You were a constant reminder of her brother’s transgression, proof that he was a man who would willingly seduce an eighteen-year-old and refuse to face the consequences afterwards. He never was invited back to our home. And he never will be—not while I’m there.”
Jake pushed back from the table and got to his feet, his movements jerky. “I’m glad you can all sit around and turn this into a Kumbaya moment, but I’m having a hard time seeing the sunshine and roses. Christ, Dad. Amy’s our cousin. An actual member of this family, not just some sweet kid we all used to dote on in our spare time. How is it possible that, in an entire twenty-six-year span, you never once stopped to think we might like to be apprised of those facts? Doesn’t anyone else see this situation and realize how fucked up it is?”
“I do.”
Amy was surprised to see Ryan’s look of intense anger, directed primarily at Mr. Montgomery and her mother, who were arrayed as allies on the opposite side of the table. She’d thought he was okay, that he was merely listening and supporting, the gruff chauffeur they could all rely on. But he wasn’t being supportive. He was pissed.
“Maybe the two of you thought you were doing Amy a favor, raising her surrounded by luxury, giving her a taste of this life, but did you once stop to consider how it might feel to a little girl? To never quite be one of the family? To always run along a few steps behind the curve, and never know why?”
“I never intended to impart that feeling,” Mr. Montgomery protested. “I’m not sure you realize, Ryan, the exact nature of her place in my household.”
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