“It’s an amazing company. It’s my dream job. Honestly, Montgomery is probably every new grad’s hope for future employment. You’ve made such enormous strides in protecting the environment during the mining process, and you’ve done it through technology, research, and ingenuity. Your lab is mind-boggling. I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend there with Harlow.”
I grimaced. “She resigned, but I plan on convincing her to stay with Montgomery.”
Taylor’s eyes widened. “She did? Oh, God, she can’t leave. I know she’s probably upset, but she can’t blame herself for any of this, and she has a lot of important research going on in the lab.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” I assured her, hating the fact that I’d told Taylor about anything that would upset her right now. “I’ll convince her to stay. Or better yet, I’ll send Jax to do it. He’s a hell of a lot more charming than I am. We’ll keep her at Montgomery. None of this is her fault.”
My brother had a way with women, which was probably why he was always surrounded by a lot of them, and I…didn’t possess his easy charm.
“It’s not yours, either. It’s nobody’s fault, Hudson,” she said gently. “It’s not like anyone sent any of us into something obviously dangerous. We’re geologists, and it should have been fine. We were there to look at samples, not to fight a war. We just happened to be there at the same time as a bunch of crazy people. Every location in the world has mentally-unbalanced people in it. There’s no way anybody could have predicted what happened.”
Fuck! I found it totally surreal that she was trying to make me feel better after what she’d been through. “It will all be thoroughly investigated to see exactly where the fault lies,” I informed her. “And if something happens while any employee is doing something for my company, it is my goddamn fault!”
“Really?” she answered drily. “I had no idea you were that powerful, Mr. Montgomery. I mean, I know you’re filthy rich, mentally gifted and all, but I didn’t know you were capable of predicting a future freak incident before it happens.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm by the end of her statement.
I glared at her. Was she actually…making fun of me?
I couldn’t remember the last woman who had gotten this sassy and sarcastic with me.
Come to think of it…well, no one ever had, male or female.
In my world, my employees said, “Yes, Mr. Montgomery.” Or, “I’ll get on that right away, Mr. Montgomery.”
The women I’d dated in the past never would have rocked the boat. All they’d ever been interested in was my money, the Montgomery name and the power it carried. They’d been awed by the very idea of changing their last name to Montgomery. They sure as hell had never made fun of it, even if I’d never been on board with changing any of their last names to mine. None of my past relationships had ever gotten that far.
I was pretty much an all business, all the time, kind of guy. The only time I wasn’t like that was when I was with family or a close friend, and I didn’t have all that many friends I could completely trust.
My business associates respected me, so I never got anything except compliance in that arena, either.
And I pretty much liked it that way.
I lifted a brow as I glared at Taylor. “Are you messing with me?”
“Probably,” she confessed. “Don’t you know?”
“No,” I answered unhappily.
“You just seem like the kind of guy who really needs somebody to mess with him once in a while,” she informed me. “I get that you’ve had a lot of responsibility your entire life, and that you can handle that, but I think you need to cut yourself a break. You saved my life after the unthinkable happened, with no real thought about the risk to yourself. I find that incredible, yet you’re still blaming yourself for what happened in the first place, even though it was unavoidable. Nobody is that all-powerful, Mr. Montgomery. Not even you. You might be incredibly rich and ridiculously smart, but you’re still just one man. Even you can’t stop anything bad from happening if it’s a fluke incident.”
“I don’t know for sure that it was a fluke,” I rasped, uncomfortable, yet fascinated by the fact that she saw me as anything other than the head of Montgomery Mining. Most people didn’t, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the