“There isn’t going to be a next time.”
He reached up and laid his hand against her cheek. Considering how close their bodies had been only moments before, it barely counted as a touch. But the way she turned into it, a sunflower following the sun, made him feel as if all wasn’t lost.
Please don’t let it all be lost.
“I wish you’d have told me I only had one shot,” he said. “I would have pulled out some of my more creative moves.”
She was startled into a laugh, and when she looked up at him, her expression had softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you—I should have been clearer about how much of a lost cause I am where this sort of thing is concerned. Thank you for trying. It means a lot to me that you were willing to give it a go.”
“So that’s it? I know it’s probably not proper etiquette to press my case, but I honestly believe we might have better luck next time.” Now that he thought about it, he’d rarely had a stellar performance with any woman the first few times. Like most things worth doing, sex took work, diligence and regular practice to do it really well.
At least, that was what he’d always believed. It was the Montgomery way. If at first you don’t succeed, get up two hours early and try again tomorrow.
“It takes time to get to know someone else’s body,” he said. “What works, what doesn’t work. What makes you scream, what makes you laugh, what makes you get a leg cramp.” His joke fell sadly flat, as they so often did.
“I don’t think I can. Once was weird enough. I work at Montgomery Manor, you’ve seen me naked, I know your fetish for rubber footwear...”
Her joke hit perfectly, and his amusement compelled him to lean down and place a kiss on her startled lips. “I also work at Montgomery Manor, you’ve seen me naked, and I don’t have a fetish. Yellow or red boots wouldn’t do it for me—it’s that particular pair and the woman who fills them.”
Her lips remained startled.
“You don’t have to answer right away,” he said as he rose from the bed. This had to mark the first time in his life he had the upper hand over someone in conversation, and he intended to use it to his advantage. He’d flee before she had a chance to turn him down flat—it wasn’t cowardice when it could be considered strategy. “But I would like to give this another try. I’ve never been a quitter, and you never struck me as one either.”
“Accepting the inevitable isn’t the same as quitting,” she said, her voice sullen.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “It looks an awful lot like quitting to me.”
He scooped up his clothes and ran for the bathroom before she could grab the wrench on the bedside table to throw at him. He made it in time.
Thunk.
But just barely.
Chapter Nine
“I’m going to fuck you like an animal. Spread it wide for me. I’d like to lick your glorious—” Monty’s voice dropped to indistinguishable levels, “—cunt.”
He clicked the record function on his phone and tossed it to the desk, feeling as foolish as he was sure he sounded. Taping himself and playing back the recording had seemed like a good enough idea at the time. He’d done the same thing a few years ago on the recommendation of his family’s publicist when he had to give a series of speeches to drum up donor interest.
But this wasn’t too-long pauses over shuffled note cards or a meeting full of people he couldn’t picture naked even if he wanted to. He was attempting to seduce an empty room here.
The room didn’t much care for it. The room was as dry as the Sahara.
“Come on,” he growled, and reached for the phone again. This time, he also grabbed a notepad and the earbuds he normally kept plugged into his iPod for workouts. “How hard can this possibly be? Other men do it all the time.”
He forced his eyes closed as he played back what he had so far. Even he had to admit there was something particularly unsettling about the way he paused and cleared his throat before any of the words Georgia had recommended—the ones containing four letters and harsh syllables and a wealth of crude meanings. It was like listening to a parent give the worst birds-and-bees talk of all time. “Okay now, Georgia. This is what we call the...” Snicker. Pause. Hesitate. Avoid eye contact. “Penis.”
It was that bad. Twelve-year-olds would flee in fear.
Practice swearing more, he scrawled in his neat hand. It would be a challenge—he’d never been particularly good at it the way other boys were, the way he imagined Georgia’s brothers were. It was the sort of thing that arose from tussles in fields and scraped knees and the constant one-upmanship that resulted from high spirits and not enough adult supervision. In other words, all those things Monty had never enjoyed.
Look up synonyms for vagina, he added as he heard himself struggle over a particularly painful mention of Georgia’s pussy. He hated that word. Their cook growing up—Patrick, a man as cheerful as he’d been clueless—had always used pussy when talking about the beloved tabby he’d rescued from a local shelter. Jake used to ask him pointed questions about the cat just to see how many times he could get Patrick to say the word in one sitting.
Hmm. Maybe he should ask Jake about this. Jake was probably excellent at coming up with crude yet sophisticated ways to talk to women. Jake was the epitome of crude sophistication.
Call Jake, he wrote at the bottom of his list. That would be the most difficult of the bunch. If there was one thing his brother liked most in this world, it was humiliating Monty. Admitting he needed help in the seduction department would give his brother fodder for the rest of their lives.
He switched over to the voice function. “Well, it’s too damn bad.” There. He got that one out okay. “I’ll master the art of verbal foreplay even if I have to lower myself to ask my younger brother for help to accomplish it.”
“I’m sorry, John—am I interrupting something?”
He glanced up, nearly hurtling the phone through the nearest window, to find his dad poking his head into the office. The older man’s brows were drawn tight as if he was working over a question in his mind—something along the lines of whether or not he’d remembered to take his blood pressure medication that morning, or if foreign relations with Russia would impact his hotel chain’s expansion, or if his oldest son was possibly nearing an emotional break.
“No, Dad. It’s fine. Come in.”
He did, and with a greater agility than Monty anticipated. “Who were you talking to just now?” he asked.
“No one. It’s nothing.” In his flustered state, Monty tugged the earbuds out and shoved the entire package—phone and notepad and all—into the top drawer of his desk. His fingers hit the screen while he did, and he noticed an arrow move across the screen before he managed to close the drawer all the way.
What was that arrow? His heart pounded as he mentally scanned all the functions of the voice recording app he’d downloaded earlier that morning. Record and playback. Store and delete. He really hoped that arrow meant delete.
His dad stared at him for a long, thoughtful moment before finally speaking. “You’ve been acting strange lately.”
Monty disagreed, albeit silently. This was probably the least strange he’d ever acted in his life—especially when compared to the rest of the world’s population. So he had a secret lover and took an entire weekend off of work to swagger around with a hammer. So he turned to Google for advice in pleasing women. If the answers that popped up in the search bar were any indication, he was far from the first—or the most disturbed—man to try that.
Perhaps it was all the fresh air and socialization clouding his brain, but those things seemed far more ordinary to him right now than a lifetime spent shackled to his duties. And his dad, he suspected, knew it.
It was dangerous, this freedom thing. Once you gave your prisoner a taste of the real world, he star
ted to get all kinds of ideas.
Prisoners and shackles. Hmm. Maybe that was what Georgia liked.
His father cleared his throat over the course of twenty painful seconds before extracting an envelope from his interior pocket. He held it just out of Monty’s reach—a tactic he often used when the document was a particularly distasteful one.
“Is that for me?” he asked, playing his father’s game as one born to the rules.
“Since you don’t seem to be making any steps toward finding a date to the Bridgerton wedding, I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a short list.”
“A short list?”
“Now, I don’t want you to think I’ve exhausted all my resources yet. These are my top picks—women I know you’ll be comfortable with, and who will lend enough authenticity to show your genuine happiness for Ashleigh and her betrothed.”
“Martin.”
“Excuse me?”
“Her betrothed’s name is Martin. They met in Nepal.”
“I know they met in Nepal. What does that have to say to anything?”
“I’ve never been to Nepal.” Monty pushed back from his desk and strode to the window overlooking the back of the grounds. He normally loved this view, enjoyed the way the entire family legacy spread out before his eyes. The formal gardens gave way to the rolling hills of the surrounding countryside in a seamless line of green, and even though it was nothing to some of the estates he’d seen in England or Italy, Montgomery Manor had one advantage none of the others could touch—of being home.
He loved it here. His work was here. His life was here. But in that moment, he would have traded it all for a chance at finding love in Nepal.
“You wouldn’t like it. It’s teeming with tourists.”
Monty clasped his hands behind his back and didn’t bother turning around, though he’d stopped seeing much beyond his own wavering reflection in the windowpane. “I’ve also never been to Iceland or Tahiti or South Dakota.”
“You want to go to South Dakota?”
“Not particularly, no. But if I did—so what? It’s not as if it would happen. In all the years you’ve had me working by your side, I’ve never traveled anywhere that wasn’t part of a business trip.”
“Then we’ll open a hotel in South Dakota for you so you have a reason to go. Will that make you happy?”
“Probably not.” Monty sighed. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for anyway. Two weeks away so he could visit a monument to four dead presidents all by himself was hardly the stuff of fantasies. At least here at the Manor, he got to enjoy the novelty of being the only stony face. “Let’s see the list.”
His dad handed it over with some reluctance. “Like I said, I can come up with another ten if none of these suit you.”
Monty sliced the envelope with the letter opener on his desk and extracted the document, neatly typed on monogrammed paper, which meant it had also passed through the hands of Katie. Wonderful. By now, the entire staff would know he was being set up by his father—the information would probably even reach Georgia before the week was through.
No worries. He was just a grown man who couldn’t get a woman off or find his own dates. Somewhere, on this planet of seven billion people, there was a sadder specimen than he. Though probably not any who vacationed in Nepal.
“Willa Trentwood?” He stopped and blinked. “She’s sixty years old, Dad. And didn’t Lupita Hall’s husband die just last month?”
He shoved the list back toward his father, too traumatized to keep going. If these were his top picks, Monty had no desire to see what kind of alternatives he’d come up with.
“Willa has always been remarkably well-preserved for her age, and she loves early British history. And, yes, maybe it’s a bit too soon for romance with Lupita, but she doesn’t have any children, so I assumed she’d be preferable to Maddie Balmore.”
Monty’s head spun—and not only because his dad was an alarmingly well-informed matchmaker. “Early British history?”
“She’s written some incredible papers on the Roman aqueducts. You love aqueducts.”
No. He had loved aqueducts. When he was seventeen. For a whole two weeks there, he’d even considered majoring in something like engineering or history in hopes of increasing his love affair with the principles of irrigation. But that, like all manifestations of independence, had been swiftly quashed under the wheels of the hospitality trade.
“And Lupita’s childless state?”
“I know how uncomfortable you get around children. You visibly cringe whenever Lily and Evan enter the room.”
“I do?” As far as he was aware, he was rarely in the same room with his half siblings in the first place. Like most adults, they found his company stilting, and therefore avoided it whenever possible.
“Hold on to the list. Think it over.” His dad began backing toward the door, his hands up to keep Monty from making any sudden movements. “I think you’ll like some of the options I came up with. Nice and well-connected women, but not overpowering ones. They won’t pull you away from your work, but could still be pleasant company.”
Monty didn’t trust himself to speak as his dad continued his retreat, waiting only until the door clicked shut before wadding the paper into a ball and dropping it in the wastebasket under his desk. It was too close to his feet there, though, and he could feel the names marching close to his toes.
He didn’t like those names. They were the names of serious women, intent women, women he’d choose for a man whose interests ran to the dreary and desiccated.
This was how his father saw him. A man so far gone he needed to take a grandmother or a new widow to an ex’s wedding. A man whose love of aqueducts eighteen years ago was the most memorable thing about him. A man who could only date women who didn’t get in the way of his duty.
Never mind that all those things were technically true. Truth had an uncomfortable way of stripping a man down to his barest parts—and Monty’s barest parts were pretty grim.
With a growl of frustration, he reached again for the phone in his desk. “Fuck him, fuck his list and fuck that wedding,” he said, the curse words practically tripping off his tongue. He was going to channel his anger into something productive, like coming up with inventive ways to tell a woman how it felt to be inside her.
But the moment his hand grasped the phone, he remembered that ominous arrow, and it was with less rage and more fear that he scrolled down. Next to the wav file he’d created, he noticed a cheerful green check mark and Georgia’s name, as well as a message that his recording had been sent to her number.
It wasn’t possible. He’d never asked Georgia for her number. He’d just showed up at her house and her job site, slowly taking over her life because he didn’t have one of his own.
Except you had Katie sync all the Montgomery Manor records after you updated the system last month. Don’t forget how painfully efficient you are when it comes to things like this.
Painful was right. Unless he was very much mistaken, he’d just sent the entire thirty-seven minutes of him belaboring over cocks and cunts to the woman he was trying to impress with them.
Oh, fuck. Maybe he’d end up relocating to South Dakota after all.
Chapter Ten
“Georgia, can I see you in the living room for a minute?”
Georgia froze, a milk carton pressed to her lips as she stood near the open refrigerator door. That woman had eyes like a radioactive eagle. “I was going to put it in a glass, Mom—I swear.”
Silence filled the house, and she tucked the milk guiltily back into its place on the top shelf. She was always ravenous after softball practice, but her own fridge contained nothing but Chinese takeout of indeterminable age and origin. A slight detour to her favorite restaurant—Chez Mom—was necessary before she snuck out to the build site to lay som
e off-the-clock kitchen flooring.
“There’s a package of Girl Scout cookies hiding under the lettuce.” This time, her mom’s voice sounded at her back. “The coconut ones. Don’t tell Danny.”
“I could have sworn I looked under there!” Georgia pulled the crisper drawer open and probed deeper. Sure enough, the familiar purple box was neatly tucked away behind an array of untouched leafy greens.
She ripped open the package and grabbed two cookies before offering the box to her mom, the pair of them bonding over a moment of nostalgic triumph. It probably wasn’t necessary to use such clandestine cookie measures anymore, but old habits died hard. Growing up, Georgia used to hide her favorite snacks in empty tampon boxes under the bathroom sink. She and her mom had shared many a secret Toblerone that way.
Unfortunately, their system had only worked until the day Charlie took a football to the nose and landed on the brilliant idea to shove tampons up his nostrils to stop the bleeding. He’d discovered her treasure trove of contraband junk food, and she’d had a hard time even holding on to maxi pads after that.
“One of these days, you’re going to have to learn how to shop and cook for yourself.” Her mom took a seat at the retro table and chairs that had been stationed in the kitchen for as long as she could remember. “Either that or marry rich.”
Georgia almost crushed the cookie in her hand. “Marry rich?”
Her mom’s expression, always serene, gave nothing away. “How’d it go this weekend with your brothers?”
Aware that the conversation about to take place was unavoidable, Georgia fell to the chair opposite her mom, working her cleats off her feet and peeling away her knee-high socks—which they both knew full well she wouldn’t be washing for herself later. Georgia was useless both as a woman and as an adult. Domesticity made her twitch.
Because I Can (Montgomery Manor) Page 13
