Technically, they weren’t even his employees. He didn’t own this house, and they weren’t hired to cater to his whims. He lived here and he labored here, but he drew a paycheck with the Montgomery name on it just like everyone else. At least the three other women had the option of leaving to go work somewhere else if they wanted. The thing about having your name on the wrought-iron gate leading in was that it worked an awful lot like a cattle brand. He’d always bear the marks.
“You’re right,” Holly said with a tight smile. “I’ve got lots of deep cleaning I could be getting done this morning.”
“And if I don’t go relieve the night nurse of her duties in the next five minutes, she might refuse to come in early the next time I beg,” Amy said.
Only Georgia didn’t seem to be in a hurry to jump when he barked, but that was probably because she hadn’t stopped working the entire time he’d been present. She leaped from the stove and brushed her hands on the seat of her coveralls.
“I’ll walk you out, shall I?” she said cheerfully. “I’m about to head to the garden shed to clean the gutters. The glamorous life of a handywoman never ends.”
He couldn’t think of a polite way to demur, so he waited while she gathered up her toolbox and provided some parting advice to Holly about changing the filters before accompanying her out the doors.
“I’m glad to catch you this morning,” Georgia said, as though there was nothing odd about the two of them chatting as they moved through the maze of hallways. Just two people, one of whom apparently harbored table-rocking sexual fantasies about the other, their footsteps so long they were practically running. What could be weird about that? “I wanted to ask you again whether you’d be willing to help out with Homeward Bound.”
“Homeward Bound?”
“Yeah.” When he didn’t say anything right away, she supplied more information. “The charity that builds houses for families in need? The one I’ve been volunteering for since I was eighteen? I got put in charge of the local Chapter last year when I finally got my contractor’s license.”
The name and premise were well-known enough to strike a chord, but that was where the familiarity ended. Thousands of grant applications crossed Monty’s desk every week, and it was impossible to keep track of all the organizations that needed funding and were turned down. Once upon a time, he’d tried to keep a more accurate personal count, but he’d learned that if he wanted to preserve his sanity, it was better to focus on the people he could help, rather than the ones he couldn’t.
“What is it you want?” he asked warily.
Her face fell, cheeks heavy with the weight of her disappointment. “Oh. You don’t remember our conversation?”
“No, I...” Shoot. There was no way to pretend he had any idea what she was talking about. It seemed that unless this woman was rating his sexual prowess, he didn’t pay attention to what she had to say. How charming of him. “I’m so sorry. It’s not ringing a bell.”
“Never mind. I figured getting you to participate would be a long shot anyway.” She waved him off with an attempt at a smile. “Forget I said anything. It’s not a problem.”
But it was a problem, and he felt that fact more keenly than he might have a few hours ago. Not only was it remiss of him to forget about Georgia’s charity work in the first place—his dad would never overlook that sort of detail about anyone on his staff—but he was in the bizarre position of wanting to impress her. This woman, a woman he rarely saw and barely knew, thought his personality sucked.
Well, it did suck, but he didn’t care for people to actually know that. Or discuss it amongst themselves in the family kitchens.
“Have you applied to the Montgomery Foundation through the traditional channels?” he asked. “It’s not exactly sanctioned, but I’m sure we could expedite the proposal given your years of service to the family.”
He passed a hand over his eyes, barely stifling a groan at the familiar drone of his voice. He was doing it again, speaking as if he’d swallowed a business report and was doomed to a lifetime of churning it out piece by piece. “If it’s something you’d like, that is,” he added lamely.
“Oh, no. We’re a local Chapter of a state organization, so the money’s already taken care of.” She spoke loudly—more so than usual, obviously hiding her disappointment. “It’s not a big deal. I always seem to be running short on able-bodied young men to do the heavy lifting, and you look like you know your way around the free weights. I thought you might be able to lend some muscle, that’s all.”
“You want me to help you build houses?” An oddly sweeping pleasure took over. Not only did Georgia think he was a ten in the looks department, but she also considered him a bastion of strength. His spine straightened, naturally puffing his chest out a few extra inches.
She promptly deflated it. “I’ve already hit up everyone else around here. Ryan and Alex stop by occasionally, but they’re busy most weekends.”
“I see,” he said dryly. “How gratifying.”
“I did ask you a few months ago,” she pointed out.
Again, he found himself at a loss. Chances were she was telling the truth, and her request, like so many others, had become part of the monument of missed opportunities that loomed over his day-to-day life. If only happiness could be measured in parties unattended, people unentertained, friendships untenanted. He’d be euphoric.
“I can understand why you might have blocked it out,” she said. “It’s a lot of hard work, and I think we’ve acquired a total of eighty-seven stitches all told.”
“How...tempting?”
“Well, since all the work we do is unpaid, we try to have a good time while we’re out there. Stitches are the price we pay, but it’s fun.”
Fun?
He must have done a poor job of hiding his disbelief, because she continued with that same deep-velvet laugh from before. “But it’s also a big commitment, and I know how busy you are. Some other time, maybe.”
They reached a breakaway point in the hall, two paths laid out so clearly they might as well have been memorialized in verse. Monty would head upstairs to once again pick up the reins of industry while Georgia journeyed outside, where birds chirped and the sun shone and manual labor was considered a source of entertainment rather than a means to an end.
Unaware of how deeply he felt the differences between them, Georgia stuck her hand out and held it inches from his own. Her palm bore every appearance of being strong and callused, an extension of a woman who could only be described with the exact same terms. “I wish there was something I could do,” he said, and since there didn’t seem any way around it, he slipped his palm into hers. Predictably, her skin was rough and coarse, but it was also hotter than expected, as if proximity to her hammer gave her excess energy, rendering her a Thor in blue coveralls. “Unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t leave me much room for extracurriculars.”
“I won’t mention it again.” She didn’t let go of his hand right away, and he had to wonder at what possessed her to keep it going so long.
He found out a few seconds later.
“We were just blowing off steam in there, by the way. I don’t know how much you overheard—that ventilation hood magnifies sound like whoa, damn—but we didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, snatching his hand back.
“You didn’t pick up on any of our conversation? Maybe a little something about numbers?”
“I was only a few steps ahead of Amy the whole time.”
“Okay.” She nodded, but the smirk lifting her lips marred what would have been an otherwise perfect getaway moment. “Then it’s probably safe for me to tell you I changed my mind. Plus one for being such a good sport about it.”
Despite his determination not to admit he’d overheard anything untoward, he smiled.
“Only one?”
“For now.” She winked. Like old men who smelled of licorice and sea captains everywhere, she was oddly able to pull it off. “Maybe you could swing by some time and earn a few more. We could admire your arms together.”
Admire my arms? He blinked. Surely she wasn’t suggesting what he thought she was suggesting. Despite her earlier revelations, there was nothing about this woman that belonged in the sexual portion of his thoughts. She worked for his father. She carried a hammer in her back pocket. And the most attractive thing about her was the fact that he didn’t find her the least bit attractive.
So why was he suddenly picturing her naked?
She waved and headed for the outer door, her not-naked form moving with a confident swagger, rendering him a fool. “See you around, Monty. Those gutters aren’t going to clean themselves.” She paused and winked again. “Bow-chicka-bow-wow.”
* * *
All of Georgia’s best Monty fantasies involved an apocryphal rescue of some sort.
Even though this part of Connecticut was protected from every natural disaster known to mankind—barring the occasional winter snowstorm—her imagination seethed with volcano eruptions, tornadoes and devastating floods that should have made her ashamed of herself. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t ashamed at all. She gleefully killed off everyone within a hundred-mile radius so that in the midst of the rubble and devastation, only two souls remained.
Her favorite scenario was an earthquake that trapped Monty inside his office, where he always had some sort of body part pinned and unable to get free. Through diligence and the use of her trusty hammer, Georgia broke through the giant pile of boards and rocks only to suffer an aftershock that buried them together.
She always got them out, of course, but only after they’d given up hope and decided to make the most of their last twenty minutes on earth. With sex. Lots of sex. Sex that was desperate and seedy and could only be the action of two people for all intents and purposes alone in the world.
Inside her head, Monty was exceptionally skilled at that kind of desperate, seedy sex.
Inside her head, so was she.
Georgia continued her assault on the minor ecosystem that had developed inside the garden shed gutter, lying prone on the roof as she basked in the double glow of the morning sun and her imagination. There weren’t many situations in which the unattractive, unkempt handywoman in coveralls was able to land the six-foot-two gorgeous mountain of a millionaire, and that she was required to concoct elaborate doomsday scenarios to make it happen would come as no surprise to anyone. In a doomsday scenario, it didn’t matter whether your underwear came in the form of tiny scraps of lace from Victoria’s Secret or enormous cotton briefs from the bargain bin at the grocery store.
In fact, giant bargain bin underwear was probably preferred. If it came down to it, they could turn the briefs into a slingshot and use them for hunting.
“And this is why we don’t proposition the man of the Manor, Georgia,” she muttered. “Because we probably could kill grouse with our panties, should the situation call for it.”
To convince herself that she wasn’t hurt by the day’s interaction—that rejection from a man like Monty wasn’t only likely, but carved in stone—she shoved her gloved hand deep in the gutter, scooping out slimy bits of decaying leaves and what looked like a slug colony. She heaved the handful into the plastic bucket propped next to her and scooped again, finding the repetitive motions soothing.
Although most people wrinkled their noses and looked down at her when she mentioned what she did for a living, she’d always found that manual labor had a way of bringing clarity, of stripping everything else away so she could just breathe. She’d tried to get the same kind of focus through yoga once, but it had been impossible to concentrate when her ass was in the air and the spandex pants she’d bought for the occasion were riding.
Some women might be skilled at daintily extracting fabric from between their butt cheeks, but Georgia Lennox wasn’t one of them. Which was fine. Whatever. She’d had her Girl Card taken away from her much too long ago to regret its loss.
Well, she didn’t regret it much. There were times—times that coincided with a chance encounter with the well-groomed, well-packed millionaire she’d somewhat unwisely chosen as her ideal physical specimen of man—when she wished she were better at being a woman.
As if to prove how far from femininity a human being could reside, a sleek black sports car pulled up the cobbled drive, coming to a stop a few feet below Georgia and her bucket o’ muck. The woman who emerged from the driver’s side door was exactly who belonged on the arm of a man like Monty. Even from a good ten feet above, Georgia could see the sleek lines of a pair of legs straight out of a forties film. Everything about her was Hollywood-glamour perfect. Bouncy hair, perfectly painted lips, the way you could tell she had a throaty laugh and drank alcoholic beverages inexplicably made with vegetables.
And Georgia couldn’t even find it in her to hate the woman, because when her perilously high heel lodged between two of the cobblestones, the woman let out a “for motherfucking Pete’s sake” like a real champ. She swore even louder when she lifted her foot only to keep the shoe and leave the heel behind.
Since this was as close to a rescue scenario as Georgia was going to get anytime soon, she set her bucket aside and rose to her feet. Skipping the hassle of climbing down the ladder set against the back side of the shed, she gripped the edge of the roof and swung herself down.
“Jesus H. Christ!” The woman screamed as Georgia fell in a neat crouch a few feet from where she stood. “Where did you come from?”
She pointed straight up. “I was doing maintenance.”
“In the sky?”
“Close. The roof.” She laughed. “Sorry to scare you like that. I should have called down first. I’m Georgia.”
She could feel the weight of the other woman’s scrutiny as she cast her initial judgments. It was a weight—a burden—Georgia knew well, and she didn’t take it amiss when the woman didn’t appear to be impressed with the outcome. It was cool. Few people were.
Still, as she stuck her hand out, waiting for the other woman to shake, she couldn’t help but note the differences between them. The woman’s hand was nicely formed, the sort of limb that could be described with phrases like soft and silky. Nothing about Georgia was silky. She spent so much time out of doors she was practically sheathed in leather.
But the woman took her hand anyway. “Ashleigh. Are you some sort of staff member? Perhaps you can help me. I seem to have broken my shoe on the walkway.”
Georgia reached down and plucked the rogue heel from between the flagstones. “Not a problem. I don’t suppose you have any superglue on you? Or chewing gum?” At Ashleigh’s blank stare, Georgia sighed. “I’m not surprised. No one does anymore. I blame four out of five dentists.”
She didn’t wait for Ashleigh to muster up a polite response—it was one of Georgia’s many curses to be unable to interact with the rich in any way that approached sanity—before she dipped into the tool belt strapped around her waist. Although her oversized white truck had a more comprehensive array of tools and fasteners, there was a double-sided nail in a side pouch that would do the trick. With a few efficient movements, she managed to wedge the nail into the heel portion. From there, she only had to flip the shoe over and jam the broken part in.
See? Easy-peasy. She didn’t even need to pull her hammer out.
“Voilà.” She gave the heel a wiggle before handing it over. “It’s not perfect, but it’ll hold.”
Ashleigh looked at the shoe and back at Georgia, her brows pulled together in obvious concern for her footwear. “Oh. Um. Thank you?”
“You’re welcome. It shouldn’t stab through to your foot, but if it does, you may want to hunt down some of that chewing gum after all. You can use it to pad y
our heel.”
Ashleigh gave a reluctant laugh, and Georgia couldn’t help but feel smug at the sound of it. She’d totally called it—that was the very definition of throaty.
“Do you really work here?” she asked.
“As in, am I a vetted professional, or am I the cheerful homeless lady who wanders the grounds? Strange though it may seem, it’s the first one.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“And I’m sorry if I scared you before,” Georgia added, interrupting Ashleigh before she bothered with a halfhearted attempt at backtracking. There was no need. Of all the insults Georgia had withstood in her lifetime, being looked upon as a cheerful homeless lady was quite nice. Because of her work with Homeward Bound, she’d known quite a few such women and counted them among her personal heroes. “I saw your heel break off and figured I could help. Can I point you where you need to go?”
“Oh, not me. I know my way.” Ashleigh turned her leg and slipped the heel back on, a smile curving her lips as she tested it with her weight. “Hey—that’s not bad. I can’t even tell it was broken. What did you say your name was again? I’ll be sure and tell Monty about your assistance. Maybe he can work you in a raise.”
Georgia felt a whoosh of air leave her lungs before she immediately sucked it all back in where it belonged. She was not wasting perfectly good oxygen on this situation. Of course this woman was here to see Monty—Georgia had surmised as much the second she’d seen those legs emerge from the car. And of course she looked at Georgia as the help.
Georgia might technically own her own company, but she was the help. The slightly eccentric, ungainly help. The slightly eccentric, ungainly help who harbored an unhealthy crush on the drop-dead-gorgeous scion of the household.
The chasm between the two of them couldn’t have been wider if it was the Grand Canyon.
Still... “My name is Holly,” she lied. “Holly Santos. I work in the kitchen.”
Because I Can (Montgomery Manor) Page 2
