Some Like It Ruthless (A Temporary Engagement)
About
Some Like It Ruthless
Margaret Caldwell would do anything to save her family’s business. Anything but beg. Especially to the one man who could actually save them. The one man who has already betrayed her.
But when Cole Montgomery gets a chance at redemption, he takes it. He’ll do anything for the one woman he can’t forget. And all he wants in return is everything.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Cole Montgomery had come to beg.
And it sat in his gut like lead. Went well with the ulcerous hole the threat of bankruptcy was causing. But he couldn’t see any way out but going under.
Either under water or under the heel of a too tall, too skinny, too beautiful woman who hated him with every fiber of her being.
That she had good cause to hate him didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
He looked at the cool blond with eyes the color of a melting glacier and thought if he hadn’t been such a stupid shit six years ago, it would’ve been a whole lot easier to talk her into helping him.
He said, “I don’t need your money, just your name. The time your name can give me.”
Margaret Caldwell pushed her chair back from the desk, crossed a long leg, and steepled her fingers. “You want to marry me.”
Cole resisted the urge to rub his stomach. “I’m proposing a merger. Agree to play my fiance, give a few smiles to my creditors. Let them think that we’ll be combining our land, our businesses, and they’ll get off my back long enough for me to crawl out of this hole I’ve dug for myself.”
She didn’t smile when she said, “There are quite a few holes you’ve dug for yourself around here.”
He leaned forward. “I know it. I think it shows how deep the shit is if I’m coming to a Caldwell for a shovel.”
Her lips twitched. “You’ve always had a way with words, Cole.”
He felt a ray of hope. “I’ll give you anything if you play along with this. Let you publicly castrate me at the end of it.”
Maggie looked mildly interested, the first interest he’d seen in her eyes since he’d walked through the thick mahogany doors of her office, and her eyes flicked down to his crotch. She said, “Tempting. But I think bankruptcy will do that for me.”
It would. It would leave him with nothing, including his balls.
There were a fortunate few who could survive in Dallas society after a bankruptcy. Maggie was one of them, but Cole Montgomery wasn’t anywhere close. He didn’t have friends in high places to ease the way. He didn’t have a name as old as the city itself or have a goddamned street named after an ancestor of his.
Although it might as well have been. With views of the railroad tracks and home to semi-trailers, Montgomery Street epitomized what Dallas society thought of Cole and his father.
The son of a ruthless upstart wouldn’t get a second chance, a second thought, if his budding empire fell apart. Maybe after a few more generations the Montgomerys would have been accepted. Or after a hell of a lot more money.
He knew his current predicament had come from pushing too hard, risking too much to get those golden gates opened to him. He’d wanted to be part of the club. Now he could see, too late, how stupid that was.
He should just have “stupid shit” branded on his ass.
Because all Cole Montgomery had was a long line of enemies who would love nothing more than to tear apart everything he, and his father before him, had taken from them.
He knew he should include Maggie on that list of enemies. But despite their long and rocky past, she’d always come to his rescue when he’d gotten in over his head. The first eight years he’d known Maggie, she’d sauntered in front of his raised fists more times than he cared to count.
No one, but
no one
, would dare harm a Caldwell. Even the stupidest teenage boy would back away for fear of accidentally hurting her. Because if you dared hurt a Caldwell, the golden gates closed against you and yours. Loans were rescinded, money dried up, and you could kiss Texas goodbye.
He could only hope that the first eight years meant more to her than the last six.
Maggie said, “I’m not going to help you, Cole. We’re competitors, rivals. If I can buy your distressed property for pennies on the dollar after your bankruptcy, I will dance a jig on that watering hole your father swindled out of mine.”
“You can have the watering hole. I’ll even dance a jig with you– clothes optional.”
He looked at her, trying to see any emotion on her face that didn’t give him shivers. He would never know how a woman raised in the hot Texas sun could learn to freeze a man with her gaze.
Cole said, “We’re more than players in a petty feud, Maggie. More than a flickering flame left over from our fathers’ war. We’re neighbors. Friends.”
Friends might have been pushing it. Maggie had told him once that they were frenemies. That they might have liked each other if their families hadn’t hated each other. Might have liked each other if their fathers hadn’t spent years trying to break the other one.
Might have been lovers still if he hadn’t gone for the kill at the first provocation.
Maggie said, “We’re neighbors only because your father was a cheat and a bastard. And we’re not friends.”
He didn’t disagree about his father. Look up cheat or bastard in any dictionary in Texas and Rich Montgomery’s picture would be glued there. Even after the man had been dead for three years.
He said, “We
were
friends. More than friends at one time.”
She raised one eyebrow at him, that was it, and he knew he’d lost. He’d misstepped by bringing up their ill-fated relationship. His only consolation was there had been little hope she would’ve gone along with his plan to begin with.
She got up, her heels clicking methodically across the cool marble as she headed for the door.
Cole said softly, “Please. Please, Maggie.”
She had to know he would only come to her if he had no other option. No hope. But he’d say the words for her. Give her that, and hope she liked the thought of lording it over him enough to put the past behind them.
She turned, her hand on the doorknob and a cold, cruel smile on her face. “I’ve always wanted to hear a Montgomery beg. Outside of the bedroom.”
Cole closed his eyes, acknowledging his words being thrown back at him. The disgusting words of an eighteen-year-old boy.
It had been too much to hope she’d forgotten. Forgiven.
He nodded his head and didn’t bother to open his eyes when the door opened and his salvation walked out of it.
He heard her say to her assistant, “Get him out of my office,” and wondered if there was any way down that would end with him splattering on the hot cement below. Fast and messy had to be better than this long drawn-out hell.
Cole didn’t look for Maggie as security escorted him out and to the elevators. Didn’t want to see the glee he’d find in her eyes.
Didn’t want to see what a Caldwell looked like when she finally broke a Montgomery.
One
Six years later
Maggie set her drink down with a thud and glared at her sister. “It’s not happening. Ever.”
“You want to put Daddy in a home? And Mother? Should we just dig her up and move her to the cemetery?”
Maggie rubbed her forehead. She wanted to say that Mother was dead, Daddy was good as. It would be kinder to him if he was.
She said, “I am not asking
Cole Montgomery
to bail me out of bankruptcy. End of story.”
Maggie didn’t bother saying she had a better chance of winning the lottery than of getting him to help. Her sister must have had three drinks too many to even think it was a possibility.
Ginny said, “He asked you to help him when bankruptcy was breathing down his neck.”
Maggie laughed humorlessly. “And I said no. Remember?”
“But he asked. Now that the situations are reversed, it would almost be rude not to ask him.”
Maggie shook her head, pushing her fist into the ache in her stomach. She kept forgetting that alcohol was not her friend anymore.
Maggie said, “I didn’t realize there was etiquette involved when begging for favors.”
“He gave you the opportunity to be the bigger man. To let bygones be bygones. It’s not his fault you didn’t take it.”
Maggie sometimes hated her sister. She had plenty of reasons to. Where Margaret was tall enough to be intimidating, Virginia was just tall enough to be statuesque. Where Margaret’s blond was ashy, nearly silver even, Virginia’s blond was the color of golden honey. Where Margaret made people run into doors, Virginia made people run to open doors.
Maggie was beautiful, except when she was next to her sister. Next to her sister she was just a little too much to be beautiful.
But Maggie had one thing Ginny didn’t. Where Ginny was sweet and lovely and loved by everyone who knew her, Maggie was ruthless. She got what she wanted. And she protected what was hers.
She sacrificed for what was hers.
Maggie took a long, long look at her drink and wished looking could give the same kind of relief.
Ginny said, “Asking won’t hurt.”
Yes, it would. It would quite possibly be the most painful thing Maggie had ever had to endure because of Cole Montgomery. And there was already a long list to choose from.
Maggie looked at the sister she loved and hated. She listened to the endless beeping from her father’s machine, faint but steady. No matter where she was in the ranch house she could hear it. She could hear it in quiet moments even in Dallas, as if when her father had patted her hand and wheezed at her to look after things, he’d passed unbreakable strings connecting her to every member of the family.
Unbreakable and loud. All their problems throbbing in her head. In her stomach.
All of this was her responsibility.
And sometimes she felt her father was sticking around just to see how she would do with it.
So far she’d made a giant fuck-up of it.
Maggie said the word no lady should ever say out loud and Ginny smiled at her. “Just think of it as Cole Montgomery bailing
us
out of bankruptcy. Not you. Us.”
“He wouldn’t help any of us for any reason. I’ll just think of it as something to say ‘I told you so’ over.”
“Maybe he’ll surprise you.”
Maggie snorted, dumping amber liquid down the drain. “Cole Montgomery will never surprise me again.”
Tanner wandered in just as the last bit of liquid left her glass. “Waste the last of the fine scotch, would you?”
He pecked Ginny on the lips, wrapping his arm around her waist and sipping from her Baileys.
Ginny smiled into his eyes and Maggie turned away from one more problem beating a swift tempo in her stomach.
She gripped the edge of the sink, looking down into the black drain, and wished she could pour herself down it.
