Say Please Mr Montgomery

1 I got hired to be the lifeline on a reality TV show about wealthy heirs for one simple reason: I had a PhD in being hopelessly broke. The premise of Trust Fund Survival was straightforward. I had thirty days to take three useless socialites and teach them how to keep themselves alive without a platinum card. When our biggest liability, Declan Montgomery, heard that his living allowance for the duration of the show was three hundred dollars, he was the first to rebel. ""Three hundred dollars a day? What is this, a joke?"" he scoffed. I looked him dead in the eye. ""For the month."" Declan went utterly silent. He turned, snatched a producer's cell phone, and dialed. ""Dad? Are we bankrupt?"" That afternoon, with the cameras rolling and the entire crew watching, he laid down the law. ""You want me to take orders from her? Not a chance,"" he declared, his voice dripping with inherited arrogance. ""I would rather starve to death than beg her for a single thing."" That night, at 11:00 PM, he knocked on my bedroom door. ""Coach. Let me borrow a bowl for this Cup Noodles."" I leaned against the doorframe. ""Beg me."" Declan turned on his heel and walked away. Five minutes later, he came back. ""Please."" From that moment on, he became my permanent shadow. Laundry? He came looking for me. Cooking? Looking for me. Power outage? Looking for me. This went on until a tearful heiress who had been harboring a lifelong crush on him stormed onto our closed set, pointed a trembling finger at him, and screamed, ""Don't let him fool you! He’s known how to cook since he was ten. He lived alone in Paris at twelve!"" I slowly turned my head toward the kitchen. Declan was holding a scorched frying pan, looking at me with the wide, innocent eyes of a golden retriever. ""Coach, do you think a Brillo pad will fix this?"" I stared at him in silence. What exactly was this guy playing at? … My name is Sierra Hayes. Because I have a wealth of experience in absolute poverty, the producers of Trust Fund Survival thought I’d make the perfect ""Life Coach."" The director offered me fifty thousand dollars to teach three children of the one percent how to do their own laundry and cook a hot meal, all within a month. That money was exactly enough to clear my family’s lingering medical debts and put down the first month’s rent on a small storefront I’d been eyeing. I didn't ask about the show's expected ratings. I didn't even ask who the celebrity guests were. I only confirmed one thing before signing. ""Room and board included?"" The director nodded. I signed on the dotted line. On the first day of filming, a fleet of black SUVs rolled up to the rustic farmhouse we’d be living in upstate. Sloane Kensington, a hotel heiress, stepped out of her car and reflexively stood completely still for thirty seconds. It wasn't until a PA gently blocked her assistant from intervening that Sloane sighed, accepting her grim reality, and dragged her own Rimowa suitcase up the gravel path. ""If they make these things so heavy, what is the point of the wheels?"" she complained to the sky. ""It’s not like it walks itself."" On the porch, Harrison Reed, the heir to a Silicon Valley tech empire, was analyzing the rusted padlock on the front door, seriously advising the producers to upgrade to a biometric smart lock. The last to step out was Declan. The only son of the Montgomery Group. Infamous for his lethal temper and untouchable status. When the director introduced me, Declan lowered his Tom Ford sunglasses. His gaze dragged over my face, lingering for a fraction of a second. But by the time I met his eyes, his expression had smoothed back into its default setting of careless boredom. ""This is the Life Coach?"" I nodded. ""I am."" Declan’s eyes flicked down to my fifteen-dollar clearance-rack Target hoodie, then to the thrifted digital kitchen scale sitting by my sneakers. ""If I quit right now, what's the breach of contract penalty?"" he asked. The director smiled politely. ""Five million dollars."" Declan looked back at me. His tone was suddenly much more polite. ""Hello, Coach."" Once inside, I placed three plain white envelopes on the battered oak dining table. ""This is your living allowance for the foreseeable future. Three hundred dollars each."" Sloane counted the crisp twenties twice, looking genuinely confused. ""Did they forget to add a zero?"" Declan picked up his envelope, doing the mental math. ""Three hundred. How do we divide that per day?"" ""Not per day,"" I corrected him, keeping my voice gentle. ""For the month."" The farmhouse went dead silent. That was when Declan borrowed the phone to ask his father if the Montgomery empire had crumbled. A two-second pause echoed through the speaker before a chillingly calm voice replied, ""Stay on that show for the full month, and listen to your Coach."" Declan frowned. ""And if I don't?"" ""I freeze the Black Card."" Click. I lowered my head and made a quick note in my ledger. Declan’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing. ""What are you writing?"" ""Personal phone call during production hours. Five-dollar deduction."" ""You're charging me for a phone call?"" ""The phone belongs to the crew. The electricity to charge it doesn't appear out of thin air."" Declan let out a dry, disbelieving laugh. He leaned back in his chair, looked dead into the camera lens, and made his vow. ""Take orders from her? Not a chance. I would rather starve to death than beg her for a single thing."" I nodded, opened the ledger, and made another note. ""Disrupting the classroom environment. Ten-dollar deduction."" His smirk froze. I snapped the ledger shut and announced the first task of the day. ""You’ll rotate cooking duties. Tonight, we start with Declan."" Declan glanced at the modest kitchen. He looked entirely unfazed. ""It's just cooking. How hard could it be?"" Half an hour later, Sloane’s panicked voice rang out from the kitchen. ""Declan, are you absolutely sure the onions go in after the eggs?"" 2 For his culinary debut, Declan opted for a classic American diner scramble—eggs, bell peppers, and onions. He didn't make any catastrophic, burn-the-house-down mistakes, but he stopped to ask me a question at every conceivable micro-step. ""How big do I chop the peppers?"" ""How many eggs?"" ""How hot should the oil be?"" ""The recipe says 'salt to taste.' Whose taste?"" I stood in the doorway, my arms crossed. After answering his fourth question, I finally broke. ""Mr. Montgomery, are you cooking this, or am I?"" He held the spatula like a scepter, his face a mask of pure innocence. ""You’re the Coach. Coaching is literally your job description."" It was a solid argument. Except for the fact that his eyes weren't on the pan; they were locked entirely on me. I walked over and reached past him to turn the burner down. ""Dice the peppers small. Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl first. Go light on the salt—you can always add more, but if you over-salt it, it’s ruined."" Declan stared down at the sizzling pan, giving a slow nod as if absorbing ancient wisdom. Five minutes later, the scramble was plated. It looked acceptable, but the peppers were raw, the onions were scorched, and the eggs were so salty they were practically bitter. Sloane took one polite bite and immediately lunged for her water glass. Harrison carefully set his fork down. ""Consuming this level of sodium will severely elevate our renal metabolic load."" Declan looked at me across the table. ""You try it."" ""The chef always tastes his work first."" He picked up a forkful, put it in his mouth, and his expression went completely blank for a second. Then, with superhuman composure, he swallowed. ""It's fine."" I slid a glass of tap water toward him. ""You’re literally tearing up. Don't be a hero."" Dinner was a bust. I used a fraction of our communal budget to buy a loaf of cheap white bread, pulled a jar of generic peanut butter from my own stash, and we made do. Declan refused. He sat at the table, his posture rigid, watching the rest of us eat our sad sandwiches. His face was a mask of icy indifference. ""I’m not hungry."" A second later, his stomach growled. Loudly. I informed him that the production crew had an emergency stash of Cup Noodles. Ten dollars a pop. They retailed for about eighty-nine cents, meaning the markup was an idiot tax. Declan scoffed. ""I’d rather starve."" By 11:00 PM, per the show's rules, the main kitchen was padlocked. I had just finished writing out the chore chart for the next day when three sharp knocks hit my bedroom door. Declan was standing in the hallway hallway, holding a styrofoam cup of ramen. His hair was damp from a shower, falling over his forehead, and his face lacked any of the humility required for begging. ""Coach. Borrowing a bowl for hot water."" I glanced at the dry noodles in his hand. ""The kitchen locked at ten. Did you not think about how you were going to boil water when you bought that?"" ""Slipped my mind."" I stared at him for a long moment. The producers had definitely cast the right people for this trainwreck. ""Why should I give you hot water?"" Declan waved the cup. ""I'll pay you."" ""I don't need ten dollars."" ""Then what do you need?"" I leaned against the doorframe, crossing my arms. ""A magic word."" He realized what I was asking. His jaw tightened, and he spun on his heel, walking away like I’d just insulted his ancestors. Five minutes later, the knocking returned. Declan stood in the exact same spot. He had gripped the styrofoam cup so hard it was dented. He turned his face away, refusing to meet my eyes, and forced the words through gritted teeth. ""Coach."" ""Please."" Satisfied, I let him use my electric kettle. I still charged him five bucks for the electricity. Once the water was poured, he sat down on the wooden steps of the back porch to wait for the noodles to soften. The night air was damp and cool. Out of nowhere, he spoke. ""Did you eat this kind of stuff a lot?"" ""When things were at their worst, I’d split one of those cups into two meals."" His hands stopped moving. I braced myself for some tone-deaf, rich-boy observation about the tragedy of the lower classes. But instead, his voice went incredibly soft. ""You shouldn't eat it too often. It’s hard on the stomach."" He looked down, quietly eating his cheap noodles in the dark. A few minutes passed. The quiet stretched between us, thick but surprisingly peaceful. ""Sierra."" It was the first time he hadn't called me Coach. I looked at him. But Declan had already looked away, and when he spoke again, his tone was back to its usual, drawling arrogance. ""I won't be begging you for anything tomorrow."" I nodded, standing up to go inside. ""Tomorrow is laundry day."" His plastic fork paused mid-air. ""How much detergent do I use?"" I closed the screen door between us. ""Ask me tomorrow."" 3 The next morning, Declan found me on the porch, carrying a massive woven basket overflowing with designer clothes. ""Coach. How much detergent?"" ""Depends on the load size."" ""Half a basket."" ""One cap."" ""Can I wash the white linen shirts with the black denim?"" I peered into the basket. ""Only if your goal is to own a lot of gray linen shirts."" Declan carefully picked the black jeans out of the pile. ""What's the difference between normal wash and delicates?"" ""Are you always this full of questions?"" Declan didn't miss a beat. ""A good student is never afraid to ask."" I pressed the 'Normal' button on the machine and walked away. Over the next few days, he weaponized the concept of 'being a good student.' Not enough hangers? He came to me. Bed sheets wrinkled? He came to me. Even when his drug-store shampoo didn't lather enough, he tracked me down to ask if the production crew had bought counterfeits. I strongly suspected he was doing this on purpose, but I couldn't prove it. At noon, the producers dropped our first major supply run task. Between the three guests, the remaining budget was about $860. The director carved out forty dollars and tasked us with buying enough groceries to feed the house for three full days. The moment we walked into the local supermarket, Sloane picked up a tiny plastic clamshell of artisanal white strawberries. ""Twenty dollars. That's perfect for a snack for the three of us."" I gently took the plastic box from her hands and put it back. ""It's perfect. And after you eat them, you can enjoy starving for the next seventy-two hours."" A few aisles over, Harrison was deeply analyzing the nutritional labels on two bags of rice. He held up a bag of imported Japanese short-grain that cost three times as much as the generic brand. ""The vacuum-seal technology on this packaging minimizes oxidation, preserving the integrity of the grain."" I took that from him, too. ""We only need rice for three days. It won't have time to oxidize."" By the end of the trip, I had a cart containing potatoes, onions, eggs, flour, and a heavily discounted family pack of beef chuck roast. The total came to $38.75. With the remaining $1.25, I bought a bundle of slightly wilted scallions. Sloane and Harrison stared at the two overflowing grocery bags as if I had just performed a magic trick. Declan stood off to the side, his eyes dark and thoughtful as he watched me smooth out the long, printed receipt. ""Do you always calculate things down to the penny?"" he asked. ""If I didn't, I wouldn't make rent at the end of the month."" ""Have you lived like that for a long time?"" ""I've lived much tighter than this."" I folded the receipt into my ledger and let the conversation die. Declan didn't push. Instead, without a word, he reached down and picked up the heaviest grocery bag. That night, a severe thunderstorm rolled in, knocking out the power to the farmhouse. The producers claimed it was a surprise test of our crisis-management skills. Sloane panicked in the dark, frantically feeling for her phone. Harrison went for the toolkit, muttering about circuit diagrams. I stopped them both, grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight, and headed out into the rain to check the breaker box on the side of the house. The flagstones were slick with rain. I had barely taken three steps when a warm hand wrapped firmly around my wrist. Declan materialized in the shadows behind me. ""I'm coming with you."" ""You don't need to."" ""It's slippery."" ""I can see."" He didn't argue. He just slid his hand down, took the heavy flashlight from my grip, and stepped in front of me to light the path. When we reached the metal breaker box, I opened the panel. Rows of identical black switches lined the inside. I leaned in, squinting to read the faded labels, when Declan’s voice drifted over my shoulder. ""Isn't it the one on the far right?"" I froze. He was pointing directly at the main breaker. I slowly raised the beam of the flashlight, angling it to catch the sharp angles of his face in the dark. ""How did you know that?"" Declan’s eyes flicked to the switches, lingering for a heartbeat. ""Lucky guess."" I reached out and flipped the main breaker. The farmhouse instantly blazed with light, followed by the muffled cheers of Sloane and Harrison from the living room. Declan turned and started walking back. I followed him, watching the broad line of his shoulders as he carefully kept the flashlight angled down so I could see the wet stones. For the first time, a nagging suspicion began to take root in the back of my mind. Something about him wasn't adding up. 4 On the seventh day of filming, the director announced a practical skills exam. Sloane pulled the card for 'Making a Bed.' She wrestled with the duvet cover for ten agonizing minutes. By the time she managed to button it up, the actual comforter was entirely bunched up in the dead center, leaving the edges completely flat and empty. She wiped sweat from her forehead. ""Let's just leave it. If you sleep right in the middle, it technically counts as a blanket."" Harrison drew 'Speed Cleaning the Living Room.' He immediately pulled out a tape measure, calculated the square footage, and used a notepad to diagram the most energy-efficient sweeping route based on the room’s airflow. His theory was flawless. But when the timer buzzed, he had only just picked up the broom. When it was Declan’s turn, he drew 'Frying an Egg.' The director brought out a massive carton of thirty eggs. I raised an eyebrow. ""Is that really necessary?"" The director leaned in and whispered, ""Better safe than sorry."" Declan calmly rolled his crisp button-down sleeves up to his forearms and took his place at the stove. His movements were distinctly smoother than they had been on his first day. He cracked the egg perfectly. A few seconds later, the edges of the egg white began to sizzle and brown aggressively. Declan froze, lifting the spatula and turning to me with an utterly helpless expression. ""Coach, what do I do?"" I didn't move an inch. I just leaned against the counter, watching him. ""Haven't you been learning this for a week?"" ""I forgot."" ""You haven't retained a single cooking skill, but you've certainly mastered the art of playing the victim."" ""I had a great teacher."" He held my gaze for a few seconds before taking a dramatic step to the side. ""If you don't step in, this is going to be charcoal."" I let out a sigh, walked over, turned down the heat, and deftly flipped the egg. Declan stood right beside me. So close I could feel the heat radiating off his arm. His eyes weren't on the pan. They were tracing the line of my profile. I didn't look up. ""The stove is in front of you."" ""I'm watching."" ""You're watching me."" He went quiet for a second, his voice dropping an octave. ""You're blocking the pan."" I took a step to the side. He moved with me, closing the gap instantly. On the production monitors in the other room, the live stream chat was undoubtedly losing its collective mind. I caught the director looking at us with a gleam of pure, unadulterated reality-TV joy in his eyes. I shoved the spatula back into Declan’s hand and quickly put three feet of distance between us. ""Fry it yourself."" Ultimately, all three of them failed the exam. As punishment, they had to cook their own dinner that night using the groceries we’d bought. Sloane aggressively washed a head of cabbage five times. Harrison stood over a pot of water with a stopwatch, researching the molecular breakdown of beef chuck to determine the exact optimal boiling time. They were both trying very hard. But one of them had scrubbed the cabbage leaves into green confetti, and the other had researched so long that the water had completely boiled away before the beef ever hit the pot. I was too busy trying to salvage the ruined groceries to notice that Declan had vanished. Later that evening, a single warm light clicked on in the backyard. I caught a rich, savory scent drifting through the screen door. Following it out back, I found Declan crouched next to a small camping stove. On it sat a perfect, steaming bowl of handmade pasta. The broth was a rich, golden amber. Resting beautifully on top was a flawless, jammy soft-boiled egg, surrounded by scallions that had been julienned with Michelin-star precision. The cutting board next to him was already washed and drying. Declan was using a pair of tongs to carefully plate the noodles. His movements were fluid, professional, and entirely without hesitation. ""Declan."" My voice cut through the damp night air. His broad shoulders went rigid. ""Who made that?"" I asked quietly. He slowly turned his head. He stared at me, then looked at the bowl, and finally pointed a finger at a stray orange tabby cat sitting on the brick wall. ""He did."" The cat let out a loud meow. Declan didn't even blink. ""See? He confessed."" A laugh burst out of me, harsh and utterly disbelieving. I walked over and popped the lid off the makeshift spice rack. The salt, pepper, and olive oil were perfectly aligned. The workspace was immaculate. ""So, this stray cat not only knows how to emulsify a sauce, but he also adheres to strict health and safety protocols?"" ""He's a very clean animal."" ""Does he have good knife skills?"" ""A natural prodigy."" I stared dead into his eyes. ""Declan Montgomery. Do you know how to cook, or don't you?"" He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak, the screech of tires tore through the driveway. A young woman in a designer trench coat shoved past the production assistants and stormed straight into the backyard. The moment her eyes landed on Declan, they brimmed with furious tears. ""Declan, how long are you going to keep up this ridiculous charade?"" The color instantly drained from Declan’s face. ""Harper. Who the hell told you to come here?"" ""If I didn't come, were you just going to keep playing the fool for her?"" Harper whipped around and glared at me. ""Don't believe a word out of his mouth! He’s not some helpless trust fund baby! He’s known how to cook since he was a kid. He lived alone in Paris when he was fifteen! He can do everything!"" Her hands shook as she pulled a sleek phone from her Prada bag, pulling up a photo and aggressively shoving the screen into my face. It was a diploma. A professional certification from the Culinary Institute of America. The young man in the ID photo had the same sharp, cold eyes. The name was printed in stark black letters. Executive Chef — Declan Montgomery. I slowly looked up from the screen. Declan was standing under the yellow porch light. He was looking at me, and for the first time since we met, the lazy, arrogant smirk was entirely gone.