by Bryce, Megan
She smiled wide, her eyes a shade darker than the pool water. She laughed at him and he watched the shadows in her eyes fade.
She leaned her head back and looked up the sky. “I might be done now.”
“You make helping you very difficult.”
“I’m not selling the house, so you can take your help elsewhere.”
He grunted, floating towards her. “You know I want it. And I know they will pry it from your dead, cold hands.”
She stopped smiling completely. “They’ll pry it from my hands before then.”
“They probably will. But I won’t.”
She looked at him. “I can’t give you anything, Cole.”
“There’s one thing you can give me.”
She grimaced. “I already made that deal once. I’m not doing it again.”
“Not even to save your house?”
“No.”
Cole said, “Then good thing that’s not what I want.”
She looked at him trying not to look at her legs and said, “Uh-huh.”
His teeth flashed. “Okay, it’s not all I want.”
She raised her eyebrows in question, clearly believing there was nothing else she had to give him.
He floated in close, grabbing the ledge above her head and bending down to whisper in her ear.
“I want forgiveness, Maggie. Can you give me that?”
She blinked and her breath puffed against his face. “What do you want forgiveness for, Cole? For screwing me or for screwing our deal?”
“I’ll never be sorry for making that deal with you. We both knew what we were doing.”
“I didn’t know you never meant to go through with your end.”
“I meant to. I was going to work out a new payment schedule with his father. Give him more time, and then. . .”
Cole’s graduation present from his father had been a portfolio of loans. All the debts of one family piled together. Given to him by his father so he could “experience the rush of destroying those who would destroy you”. And then Maggie had come, willing to agree to anything to save that family.
Cole hadn’t need much persuading to take her up on the offer. He got Maggie naked and in his bed and a chance to stick it to his father.
Maggie said, “And then?”
“That little shit came with his father and sat there with that smirk on his face and all I could see was how you would sleep with me because you loved him that much. That pompous little shit with sun shining out his ass.”
Cole took a shaky breath, remembering how it felt to have Maggie. How it felt to have her only because she loved him. “He wasn’t worth it. You couldn’t see he just wasn’t worth it.”
He put his hand over hers, looking into her eyes. “I’ll never be sorry for sleeping with you. But I will be eternally sorry for taking your trust and flushing it down the toilet.”
He willed her to see the truth. That there was nothing in life that he regretted, except for that.
Maggie stared unblinking into his eyes, floated silently next to him, and finally looked away.
She said, “How do you know I haven’t already forgiven you?”
He snorted. “Then say it. Say ‘I forgive you, Cole. And I would love to accept your help.’ And then I will go find a hat to eat.”
Her lips curved. “It would almost be worth it to see that.”
“I’ve learned how to sweeten a deal since we last negotiated.”
She chuckled, unhooking her hands from the ledge and floating away from him. He chased slowly after her, refusing to give her space.
He said, “But before you say anything, know that I’m also going to need a please to go with that forgiveness.”
She narrowed her eyes, shaking her head.
He smiled. A shark smile. “I’ve also learned how to get what I really want when I know I’m going to win.”
“I don’t think you’ve learned when you’re winning a negotiation.”
He didn’t stop smiling. “Oh, I’ve learned it.”
He watched her temper rising in her eyes, watched her fight the knowledge that she couldn’t let this opportunity get away. He’d get her forgiveness, get her in his bed again, and hell, maybe even move into the ranch house with her.
Well, he was a bastard. It wouldn’t be any help to let her forget that.
Then he remembered her penchant for trying to drown him and yielded slightly. “But we can split my payment. Half now, half later. Please now, forgiveness at the end. Deal?”
She dove under the water, swimming swiftly to one end of the pool and then back to him.
Her head broke the surface and she took a deep breath. “Bastard.”
He nodded but didn’t back down. “Say it, Maggie, and I’ll do it.”
“You say it and I’ll do it.”
He started to back away, then laughed. He’d said please once before. So had she. They could keep things even. He could give her that.
He took her hand. “We’ll say it together. No tricks.” He looked down at the hand he was holding and said, “We’ll say it together and help each other out. And then forget about those other times. We’ll start over.”
“You really think we can?”
He looked back up into turquoise eyes. “I’m willing to try.”
She blinked and swallowed. He counted to three softly and they whispered together.
“Please.”
Cole inhaled deeply, pulling her closer. He said, “Let’s never do that again.”
Maggie’s lips stopped their pinching and she let him tow her towards him.
He said, “Besides, the only place I ever want to hear a Caldwell beg again is in the bedroom.”
“You’re really pushing it.”
“I can’t help it. It’s in my genes.”
Her legs tangled with his and his heart thumped in his chest.
She said, “Don’t remind me of your genes.”
“A man can’t help where he comes from.”
Maggie looked unconvinced and he didn’t want to spend any more minutes defending his parentage. He was done feeling inferior about the mud he’d crawled out of.
He planted his lips on hers, his eyes wide open. Wide enough to see that she wanted him, just not enough. Never enough.
She murmured, “I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“You’re going to. It just won’t be part of our deal.”
This time he wanted her in his bed, begging, because she wanted him. Not because she sold herself too low.
A diabolical gleam entered her eyes and she wrapped her arms around his neck, her breasts prodding him in the chin, and put her mouth next to his ear. She whispered, “If that’s why you’re doing this, it’s only fair to let you know I won’t be inviting you into my bed again. Ever.”
He dropped his chin until his lips touched her skin. He kissed the silky skin on her chest and said, “It’s not why I’m helping you. It’s just a side benefit.”
He slid his hands down her thighs and pulled her legs around his waist. “And who said anything about a bed? This pool works just fine.”
Maggie’s teeth bit gently into the fleshy part of Cole’s ear and his fingers curled involuntarily into her thighs.
“Christ, Maggie. You know I can’t wait to get under you again.”
Her teeth bit a little harder and her low laugh zinged right down his spine.
She pulled back from him, looking behind him. She said, “You’re going to be waiting a lot longer.”
A golden voice behind him said, “Hey, Sis. Who are you entertaining?”
Cole’s body tightened. He turned around, Maggie’s legs still around his waist, his fingers still digging into her thighs but now not with lust.
Tanner pulled a lounge chair toward the pool, sipping from a tumbler and choking when he looked up and saw just who Maggie was wrapped around.
Tanner stopped dead and stared. His hand shook, the ice clinking and his drink sloshing.
Maggie tried to unhook her legs and Cole crushed her tighter to him.
Maggie murmured, “Down, boy. He’s not smirking now.”
No, he wasn’t. Cole had wiped that smirk off his face twelve years ago.
Cole looked away from the sunny-assed shit and into Maggie’s suddenly clear green eyes. Looked to see if there was any love left in there for the man who’d married her sister.
When she didn’t even bother to glance at Tanner, Cole loosened his grip on her thighs, let her unwrap her legs.
Tanner finally choked out, “What is he doing here?”
Maggie looked at Tanner, flicked her eyes to the glass he was holding, then looked back at Cole. She stared at him, all but saying out loud that she didn’t think he would really go through with it. That he’d really help her for just a promise of forgiveness.
Cole smiled at her and said, “Why, I’m marrying the empress here. Congratulate us, Tanner. You’re the first to know.”
Tanner Beaumont sat in the dark, watched the moonlight reflect off the pool, and drank. He’d emptied the first bottle, was well into the second, and had at some point stopped bothering with a glass at all.
Cole Montgomery. Here. And engaged to Maggie.
If Tanner had had any proof that his luck was finally turning, this disproved it. If Tanner had had any hope of seeing respect in society’s eyes again, this ended it.
Cole hated him. Had hated him since they were both seventeen. Cole had destroyed Tanner’s family just to get even with him. Cole would destroy this family as well.
They were already hanging by a thread. Cole must have smelled the blood in the water and come to finish them off. In one fell swoop, he would end both the Beaumonts and the Caldwells for good.
Tanner smelled Ginny before he saw her. Just a slight hint of magnolia to warn him to wipe his eyes, to slide that first bottle under his chair.
She slid her arms around his neck, leaned against his back and pressed her cheek against his. She murmured, “He’s gone.”
“For good?”
She shook her head. “He’s our only hope. You see that, right?”
It was like a fist to the stomach and he stood shakily.
She said, “I know what he did to your family. I know that you can’t ever forgive him. But we need him. He’s the biggest man in Texas now and all of our creditors will do whatever it takes to stay on his good side.”
“We don’t need him, Ginny. We have other options. I have ideas. Plans.”
She smiled, total trust in her eyes. “I know you do. And this will give us time for one of your ideas to start working.”
A tear slid down his cheek and she wiped it gently away.
He hated crying in front of her. Hated that even with his tears to prove it she couldn’t see what a loser he’d turned out to be.
Maggie saw. Maggie knew.
But never Ginny. She still looked at him the same way she’d looked at him years ago. Still loved him. Still thought he was everything she wanted. Still thought he would give her everything she deserved.
She was the only one who still believed it.
Maggie watched Cole’s taillights disappear down the drive.
He’d crowed to Tanner that they were engaged and Maggie thought maybe she knew why he was going along with this charade. For forgiveness? To tie his name to the Caldwells more like.
She hadn’t seen it coming.
He could still surprise her it seemed and she didn’t like it one bit.
Ginny had invited him to dinner and Cole had stayed. Flirting and telling stories of his oil wells that would make anyone think twice about eating their steak rare. Oil was dangerous business. Dangerous and profitable.
Tanner had stayed outside. Drinking.
Rosa had taken one look at Cole sitting at the table and had let out a stream of uncomplimentary Spanish. And when Maggie had told her they were engaged, Rosa had grabbed for the cross hanging around her neck. She’d stared at Maggie with her mouth hanging wide open and whispered, “Tu padre.”
If her father had been more than a heartbeat, if he’d been lucid enough to comprehend, it would have killed him. Sent him straight on to the hereafter.
And she could have only told him that Cole had taught her yet another lesson. Don’t offer a deal to the devil. Because even if you knew he wouldn’t take you up on it, he would.
Cole had merely sat there grinning, as if he’d known exactly what Rosa had said, what Maggie was thinking.
Maggie was getting tired of Cole’s lessons. Twelve years ago, she’d learned that if a contract wasn’t enforceable it wasn’t worth shit. And to always make sure that what you were trying to save was worth it.
Maggie turned away from Cole’s fading taillights and stared at her home.
Were wood and bricks worth fighting for? Now that she had a real chance at saving it, was it worth it?
She loved Dallas. Loved the hustle and bustle, the chaos. Missed her apartment in the city, missed living alone. She and Ginny and Tanner had rented out or sold all their properties and had come back to the ranch house to live. To share expenses, to cut costs.
They’d come back because Daddy was here, slowly dying, and they couldn’t bear to move him.
They’d come back because this was home. This was Maggie’s home. And she wasn’t ready to give it up yet. Maybe after her father died. Maybe after they buried him next to her mother, she could sell, move to the city for good. Leave her sister to clean up the mess that was her husband.
But she couldn’t do it yet. Not just yet.
Most likely Cole would make her rue the day she’d asked him to help her. But right now, he was all she had.
And if he was going to make her rue, by God she’d make it worth it.
Maggie arrived at Cole’s just as the sun peeked above the horizon. His truck was parked in front of the detached three-car garage and she breathed a sigh of relief that she didn’t have to drive out to Midland again. She knew he only came home on the weekends and was surprised he bothered at all. It made as much sense as Maggie coming home to the ranch house every night from the city, but most people were none too rational about home.
She rang the doorbell, not sorry at all about waking him so early.
When he didn’t answer, she rang again. And again. Then banged on the door.
“Cole!”
She made her way to the back, turning doorknobs, trying to lift windows, yelling his name. The place was locked up tight and if his truck hadn’t been there she’d have said it was deserted.
She headed back to the front door, perplexed and cranky, and saw Cole leaning against her car.
He was shirtless, his shorts hanging low on his hips, his arms folded, his black hair wild and mussed.
She stopped at the sight of him. Yesterday when he’d jumped in her pool in his briefs she’d thought that life sometimes was just not fair.
She remembered his eighteen-year-old body. Remembered wide shoulders and long limbs. He’d always had muscles, always had that lean fighter build.
But now he looked like a man. The lanky boy was all gone and he’d grown into his height. He was beautiful. Hard and beautiful.
Cole looked at her with blue eyes the color of sapphires and said, “It’s five fucking o’clock, Maggie.”
She put her nose in the air and held up her briefcase. “We have business. I didn’t want to chase you to Midland again.”
He closed his eyes, rubbing his palms up and down his face. He muttered, “You’d better be naked under that skirt.”
Maggie didn’t bother to reply.
He looked at the briefcase in one hand and her car keys in the other. “No coffee either?”
He pushed himself off her car and turned away, walking towards the back of the garage. He grumbled, “Only I would get myself engaged to a woman who would wake a man up at the fucking crack of dawn without coffee or sex.”
Maggie followed him, trying so hard not to stare at his back or at his slipping shorts
that she was halfway up the outside stairs before she realized where he was going.
“You live in the guest house?”
“Yeah.”
When he didn’t say anything else, she stopped. “Why?”
He made it to the top, opening the door for her. He blinked when he saw her halfway down the stairs.
He sneered. “Are you worried I won’t be able to help with your debts after all?”
Maggie was well acquainted with Cole’s sneers. He only did it when he was feeling self-conscious.
She tilted her head. “If I am going to pin all my hopes on you and this engagement, I need to know that you can deliver.”
Cole stomped back down the stairs, stopping on the step above her. He towered over her and said, “I live in the apartment because the house is a 10,000 square foot gilded monstrosity and I fucking hate it.”
His eyes flashed cold fire at her and she said calmly, “You could sell it.”
Maggie started up the stairs again, forcing him back on his step. He held his ground, wrapping his arm around her waist, holding her tight so she wouldn’t wobble on the step.
“I could. I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because it reminds me that I couldn’t sell it when I needed to. And now that I don’t need to, it reminds me that all that glitters is just a noose around my neck, slowly strangling me.”
She laughed. “That’s probably a good reason to get rid of it, Cole.”
He looked into her eyes, even with his own, and said softly, “You’re wearing those shoes again.”
She was pressed tight against him, she could tell he was happy to see her this morning. She wouldn’t take it personally. It was morning, he was Cole, and she’d practically dared him to try to get her naked again. And she was wearing those shoes again.
She said, “I prefer to be eye to eye with you.”
That was true. She also liked keeping him off balance and she’d noticed that he’d spent four of the five minutes she’d been in his office yesterday staring at her ankles.
Cole smiled slightly and pushed her up the stairs ahead of him. He said, “Then let me enjoy the view and I might forgive you for the no coffee.”
She let him enjoy the view, putting a little extra sway into her hips, knowing the small split in the back of her skirt would make him forget all about coffee. Make him forget just about everything.
