Some Like It Ruthless (A Temporary Engagement) (11 page)

Jackson Harwood had not been one of her brighter ideas. But when a girl wanted to erase the feel of someone’s arms, replace the image of a certain someone leaning over her in the dark, she was not always as picky as she should be.

Maggie resisted the urge to shift in her seat. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Really? Because you look. . . happy.”

“I thought I looked tired.”

Ginny nodded. “Tired and relaxed and happy. Did you spend the whole day together?”

Maggie remembered that the day had started at five. “Yes.” She smiled. “And it looks like it was pretty productive if it got Jackson Harwood here and drunk.”

“He hooked on to Tanner at the club and wouldn’t shake loose. I texted you.”

Maggie dug through her purse, finding her phone, remembering Cole had turned it off.

“Sorry. I would have told you to get rid of him.”

“Because you were busy?

“Playing video games.”

Ginny laughed. “Cole plays video games?
You
play video games?”

“It seems as unlikely as Cole and I getting engaged but it’s true nonetheless.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

Maggie smiled, wondering if anyone would believe they’d spent the evening shooting spies.

She said, “Thanks, but it won’t happen again.”

“Why not?”

“It was a nice break. But I have too much to do to spend an evening wasting it with video games.”

Ginny waved towards the door. “It wasn’t wasted, remember?”

Tanner came back in, heading straight for the liquor. He filled a tumbler half full and downed it. Then he refilled it and turned around.

He said, “I spent the whole day at the club. Jackson was the worst of them but everyone is running scared.”

Maggie smiled, imagining the club filled with hand-wringing men. There were a few of them who, if she was the vindictive kind, should be worried. But she’d always thought success was the best revenge.

Unless your name was Jackson Harwood.

“Thank you, Tanner.”

His soberness seemed even more noteworthy now. He’d spent the day at the club and he hadn’t had a drink? Spent the day at the club listening to men bitch and complain about her and Cole?

Well, maybe he’d had his own reward after all.

He said, “They don’t know what to make of you two. Except that this can’t be good. They want to know what you want. What will make you happy now that you’ve hooked yourself a big fish.”

Maggie pursed her lips. Unhappy that she hadn’t been enough on her own terms.

First she’d been her father’s daughter and now she was Cole’s woman. Not successful except when she was standing behind a man’s name.

She said, “What did you tell them?”

“That you want to save Caldwell. And Cole wants to smash.”

She nodded. “That was good thinking.”

Tanner took another sip, looking down into the glass. “Didn’t take a real genius to come up with that. I’m not even sure I was the one who did.”

Ginny said, “And they might not think Cole is the only one who wants to smash after they hear the deal you made with Jackson tonight.”’

“That kind of deal is reserved for him only. I couldn’t help myself.”

Although a one-year moratorium would really help.

Her debt was strangling her, and she might be loosening the noose a bit but survival was nowhere near guaranteed.

She was almost sorry there was only one Jackson Harwood she could browbeat.

Tanner said, “It won’t take much to convince everyone that Jackson gets his own special deal. I might even be able to spin it as you being willing to work with anyone if you’re willing to work with him.”

Maggie stared at Tanner, wondering if it was fair to use him, wondering what was in it for him. He saw her look and said, “They’ll listen to me. They think I hate Cole and that I’m on their side.”

Cole wasn’t the only one Tanner had reason to hate.

Maggie said, “Are they wrong?”

If she could have come up with any solution other than firing him, she would have. You don’t fire family. She still felt like she’d thrown him overboard, the first casualty of their sinking ship.

He downed the rest of his drink, sighing softly. “Oh, I hate Cole. And I would return the favor and destroy him if I could.”

Ginny went to him, sliding her arms around his waist. She said with conviction, “You wouldn’t. Not if it meant hurting us, too.”

He looked down at her and whispered, “Never.”

And no matter what Cole had done, no matter what Maggie had done, she knew that was true. Tanner would never do anything to hurt her sister. Never do anything to hurt Caldwell Holdings, on purpose.

The company belonged to Ginny just as much as Maggie. Even if both of them forgot it occasionally.

Tanner put his drink down, wrapping his arms around his wife and Maggie pretended not to see the shimmer of tears in Ginny’s eyes.

They said love was blind. Maggie’s had been. She’d loved, blind to Tanner’s faults.

But somewhere in the years since Ginny had married Tanner, Maggie had realized that real love, lasting love, wasn’t blind. It was wide-eyed and accepting. It was give and take. It weighed the good against the bad. It saw all the dark recesses and didn’t wither.

Lasting love was about balance, and Ginny and Tanner balanced each other.

Maggie rose, leaving them alone and heading for a shower. No longer needing a cold one, thanks to Jackson Harwood. And she again imagined kicking him in the teeth, and for good measure, Cole smashing in his face.

A one-year moratorium might not feel as good but hopefully it would hurt more in the end.

A two percent interest rate would be the gift that kept on giving.

And if she wished she could let Cole loose, watch him destroy the man. . . oh well. She could always picture the look on Jackson’s face when he realized that was what she wanted to do. That he really was going to have to pay to keep that from happening.

She smiled and thought she just might need a cold shower, after all.

Tanner refilled his glass again, taking it to the chair and sighing when he sat down.

Ginny followed to sit in his lap and when he snuggled into her, when he didn’t push her away, she almost cried.

He said, “I’ve got a few meetings lined up to discuss projects. In exchange for putting in a good word with Maggie. And Cole.”

She pulled her head off his shoulder and he grinned at her. He said, “I don’t know why they think Cole will listen to me but I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. And I know Maggie will be fair anyway.”

“Except if you piss her off like Jackson.”

“He has a talent. It takes a lot for Maggie to lose her temper.”

“He deserved it.”

Tanner nodded. “If she’d heard him at the club, she would have called Cole up herself and told him to have at it.”

“And you didn’t stand up for her?”

“Why would I? She doesn’t need me to protect her. She does just fine by herself.”

Ginny frowned at him and he ran his hand down her hair. He said softly, “And everyone thinks I hate her just as much as Cole.”

He should hate Ginny just as much as well. She’d known that Maggie was going to fire him, had known that the debt would have kept piling up if they didn’t and had been afraid that they would lose everything.

She put her head back down and squeezed him, holding him to her. The guilt eating her.

Tanner said, “I don’t hate her. She stepped on my pride, that’s all.”

Ginny squeezed him harder. “That’s all?”

He squeezed her back. “I’ll survive. That might be my special talent. To use whatever I have to survive.”

She was quiet at that, remembering how unhappy her father had been when they’d married, how he’d thought Tanner was just marrying her for money, for connections. But Daddy had been wrong.

Tanner hadn’t married her for any reason except he loved her.

He’d married her
then
because he’d needed her money and connections. And what good would it have done to wait, when he’d needed her then? They would have married eventually anyway; Ginny would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

But she preferred to stay in Texas.

Ginny said, “I’d like to come with you, when you go discuss your projects.”

“You would?”

She nodded, looking back up. “I’d like to know what you’re looking at, thinking of. Maybe we can be partners, bounce ideas off each other. Maybe start something together, just us.”

“Doesn’t Maggie need you?”

“She has Cole now.”

Tanner was quiet, took another long sip, and finally said, “You think she does?”

“What do you mean?”

“Cole is not. . . trustworthy. She should know that and I don’t know why she’s trusting him.”

“They were good friends for a long time.”

Tanner gave her a disbelieving look and she said, “Maybe he feels bad about that.”

“And maybe he’s just looking for a way to do the same to her as he did to my family.”

“I don’t think he is. Why would he help save Caldwell if all he wanted to do was destroy it?”

“Because he’s Cole Montgomery. How many times did his father make a contract only to turn around and break it? To use it to destroy? It’s in his blood.”

Ginny said, “We can’t judge him by his father.”

“No, we can judge him by what
he
did.”

“And what he hasn’t done again since?”

Tanner said, “He hasn’t been in a position to do it again since. He was working his way out of his own bankruptcy. Too busy with his wells. But now he has the time and the means. And the opportunity.”

She didn’t have an answer to that and Tanner said, “He hates me, Ginny. He’ll destroy anything that is connected to me.”

“It was a long time ago, Tanner.”

“You think either one of us has forgotten?”

Tanner hadn’t. Common sense would say Cole hadn’t either.

Ginny said, “And what if Cole does destroy Caldwell? It would have been lost without him anyway. If he wants to destroy it after saving it, is anything really lost?”

“You think it won’t matter to Maggie? To have hope again and then lose it? Lose it to someone who is supposed to be helping her?”

Ginny knew it would destroy her sister.

Maggie had been friends with Cole for years, had been sleeping with Cole when he’d bankrupted Tanner’s family, but that had been the end. Maggie hadn’t seen him again.

She’d become harder, more closed. Less trusting, more alone.

Maggie had been betrayed once. To trust again and then be betrayed again?

Who could survive that?

Ginny remembered how Maggie had looked tonight. Happy. Soft.

She said, “She has Cole right now. Whether or not he’s trustworthy, we’ll just have to see. I’d still like to be a part of what you’re doing. Still like to make something of us together.”

Tanner needed her, no maybe about it. If her sister needed her later, so be it. But right now, Maggie was okay

Tanner stood, carefully pushing her off his lap. He walked to the drinks and stared down.

He said softly, “I’m sorry, Ginny. Sorry that I can’t give you anything you want.”

Ginny closed her eyes.

Oh, how it hurt.

They didn’t talk about it but it lay there between them. A gaping black void they thought would be filled with children. Filled with a future, and now there was nothing.

They’d tried and they’d tried. And now there was no money to try anything else.

Ginny followed him, hugging his back. She laid her head against him and listened to his heart.

She said, “I have what I want. I wouldn’t choose anyone else for a dozen children.”

He laughed bitterly. “No children, no money. No job. You’d do better on your own.”

“If that was really true, I would have left you already.”

“You stay because of loyalty.”

“No. I stay because I love you. I stay because I like you. I stay because you’re mine.”

She crawled under his arm to look him in the eye. “I didn’t marry you because of the children you’d give me, I just assumed that would follow. I didn’t marry you for the fortune you want to make back. I married you because I love you. I married you because I like you.”

He shook his head. “There is nothing to like about a failure.”

“Tanner. . . you can’t help success. It’s luck. Whether something works out or not depends on outside factors. How many men came out the same time as our grandfathers, did the same things with no results? They were in the right place, at the right time. Their wealth was built on luck. You can’t judge yourself a failure if success is based on luck. You can only judge yourself against how hard you work. You have to be happy with that, no matter what the results are.”

“The results are we will be living in a cockroach-infested apartment with rags on our back.”

“I’d be happy living in that cockroach-infested apartment as long as it was with you. Because I know you will be working to get us out. Because you see what isn’t but what could be. Because you have hope in the future. That’s worth liking. That’s worth loving.”

“Even if we never get out?”

“Yes.”

He pushed her hair back from her face and said, “I’m not willing to leave it to luck.”