Chapter 1
brOOKLYN
I was a professional woman. An adult. And one who could control her urges.
I also wanted nothing to do with men, did not want to date, had no desire to be with anybody, and yet...
And yet Reece Fox kept wearing those damn jeans.
I knelt in the soil at the house next door to his current project, small shovel in hand, and did my best to continue to plant the hydrangeas that would be the focal point of the side of the house.
As a landscape designer, I knew how to get dirty.
I constantly had dirt under my fingernails, on my knees, and in my hair.
I never looked quite put together unless I scrubbed every inch of myself and did an everything shower twice over.
It had been a long time since I had done an everything shower.
A year to be precise. Only I didn’t want to think about those times. I couldn’t.
I swallowed hard, ignoring the grief in my gut that wouldn’t go away, and glared at the man next door.
Why did Reece have to look so good in denim?
It made zero sense. My cousins, brothers, and friends constantly wore jeans while working.
We wore blue-collar clothes for a reason.
Unless we were meeting with clients, we tended to wear jeans or cargos that could take dirt and scrapes and everything that had to do with remodeling or building homes and businesses from scratch.
I had dirt covering me up to my chest at this point, because I had been digging holes for literal trees, so I wasn’t looking my best. There was a tear at the knee of my jeans, one that hadn’t been placed there strategically by the manufacturer.
I didn’t want to toss this particular pair because I had worn them in perfectly.
I would probably just patch them up or ask my mom to do so.
She was much better with a needle and thread than I was.
Reece Fox didn’t have a single hole in his jeans.
The fact I had noticed how well he filled them out told me that I was probably dehydrated and needed to drink something.
I rolled my shoulders back and pulled off my ball cap, letting my hair fall past my shoulders.
I’d had it up in a ponytail earlier and had lost the elastic.
Now I was just using the back of the cap to create some form of ponytail that was way too loose, and that meant my hair kept sticking to the back of my neck.
I was the epitome of a gorgeous woman, a desirable one, that nobody could stay away from. I snorted at that, and once again pulled my gaze away from Reece’s ass.
He bent over, looking at something, and I needed to stop focusing on the way he stretched that denim. His thick thighs tended to do that anyway, since he was all corded muscle and strength. Why did I notice that? Because I was in a self-imposed drought and I was nearly delirious from lack of water.
I stood up, dusted the dirt off my pants, and put my hat back on so I could fix my hair.
I bent over, pulled up my water bottle, and chugged as much as I could.
Some of it dribbled down my chin onto my T-shirt, leaving wet spots, but it wasn’t as if I cared about how I looked at this point.
The clients weren’t on the property today, thank God, and that meant I could get my hands truly dirty, and put in as many of the perennials as possible.
I was one of the family owners of Montgomery Construction.
As a Montgomery, I could have gone my own way, found a different career path.
I didn’t have to go into landscaping like my aunt, but I had loved it.
From an early age I had strived in growing things.
I would go with my Aunt Meghan to different job sites and learn the real names and common names of different plants, how to dig a hole, and what to do if something wasn’t working.
I was usually one of the last people on the job site, because, well, because most people thought what I did was just the cosmetics.
My family didn’t agree. While my cousin Lex was the architect, and my other cousin Dash was our contractor and foreman, I was right alongside them, as a key element of this business.
And with my cousin Jamie moving to Wyoming to be with the new love of her life—a man I respected, liked, and kind of hated because he had taken my cousin from me—I was also the only woman in the office.
Yes, we employed over a dozen other women in various roles, but it was the three Montgomerys at the lead, and Reece and Cullen right beneath us. Cullen was our master plumber and journeyman—then there was Reece.
A former fireman turned restoration builder.
He was the expert in deciding what could be salvageable, safe, and worked with the most delicate of things.
He was brilliant when it came to working on buildings that had once dealt with fire, and had leaned into floods, weather damage, and countless other things.
He was an asset to Montgomery Construction, and I knew it. Honestly, he could have gone to work with any other company—including the two other Montgomery construction companies within the family. He could go anywhere in the U.S., with zero ties, and make top dollar.
We didn’t know why he was working with the Montgomerys.
Maybe just to annoy me.
Because he was always so damned arrogant when I was around. Overprotective, overbearing, and just plain rude. It didn’t matter that while I wasn’t technically his boss, I was in a higher place of command. He should show me respect.
There wasn’t that big of a difference in our ages. I wasn’t some little girl who couldn’t handle things. I was Brooklyn Montgomery. I knew what I was doing. And I was damn good at it.
“Miss. Miss.”
At that voice, I did my best not to clench my jaw. I couldn’t afford to break a tooth so I put on my best smile. How I wish I could only focus on the way Reece filled out his jeans, versus the person I now had to deal with.
“Hello, Mrs. Green. How are you today?”
“I would be better if you could follow a simple direction.”
I tilted my head and tried not to react how I desperately wanted to. “I don’t understand.”
“No. You just don’t listen to me.”
“What is it that you think is wrong?” I asked as I gestured towards the landscaping.
“We’re following the plans. Why don’t you talk to me over here so we can discuss it?
” I did not want to get yelled at in front of my employees.
I had four people on my team right now, all sweating and working their asses off to make sure Mrs. Green was happy.
However, based on the way this project had been going, I knew this woman would never be happy.
Ever.
She wore gray slacks and a white blouse with a soft pink bow of some sort on it.
She’d pinned her hair back aggressively, and overlined her lips so they looked even larger than natural.
And she had beautiful lips to begin with.
She wore high heels but didn’t step on the grass thankfully.
We hadn’t had to put down sod—something I refused to do during the high heat of summers—and we were taking our time to ensure that the grass that remained from the start was healthy.
Having high heels aerate it probably wasn’t the best.
“Look at that. It’s a pile of sticks. I want fullness. I want color. I want lushness. And you don’t seem to be taking any of my needs into account.”
“Mrs. Green—”
“Don’t Mrs. Green me, Ms. Montgomery. I need to speak to your supervisor.”
“I am my own supervisor. I’m one of the owners of Montgomery Construction. And if you’re unhappy with our work, we can discuss it. How about we meet at the office and we can go line by line?”
I didn’t have to listen to her berate me.
Sure, the customer was always right might be a slogan people leaned on, but not me.
I wouldn’t be put down in front of my team when I knew for a fact Mrs. Green only wanted to yell.
She notoriously did her best to get free things—something I wasn’t aware of until after we’d signed her on.
She narrowed her gaze at me. “Do you think I have time for this? I have to meet with the board, and I don’t have time to deal with some little girl who thinks she knows what she’s doing.
It isn’t just planting pansies. And if there’s a single pansy in this yard, I will be irate.
I will report you to the Better Business Bureau. ”
“Mrs. Green,” I said, my voice firmer. She narrowed her gaze at me, her eyes turning to slits.
“Everything that you see is in the middle of construction. As I’ve told you prior, you are welcome to visit in the middle of our project, but it won’t look like how you need it to look until the end.
Every single thing we are doing has been approved by you twice over.
If you have a problem, come to me, but do so at the office where we can go through things list by list. I am one of the owners of Montgomery Construction. And I’m not a little girl.”
“How dare you speak to me this way. I’m going to go speak to one of the men in charge.”
So she was one of those. Why not lean into the patriarchy because the patriarchy clearly has aided her in some way.
Who cares about a woman having a job or any type of autonomy when you could make sure that the man in charge knew what he was doing.
I knew for a fact that the board she spoke of was for a charity.
One that maybe held one gala a year to donate money.
The rest were just so they could pat themselves on the back and do lunch.
It was the same board my former fiancé’s mother was part of. Not that Mrs. Green knew that. In my dirty jeans, and dirtier hair, I did not look like the Brooklyn Montgomery who had once been on the arm of Duke. Duke Rochester. But I wasn’t that girl anymore anyway. She died right along with Duke.
“Do we have a problem here?”