by Linda Seed
When he was in, he was all in.
But he also knew that the ranch was his home—always had been, always would be. And he didn’t hold any illusions about the idea of persuading Gen to stay. If he tried that, and it worked, she’d resent him—maybe not right away, but eventually. He couldn’t live that way.
He briefly wondered whether he should sabotage the whole Kendrick deal so she couldn’t go, but then laughed at himself, knowing that he’d never do such a thing.
The calf looked at him like he was an idiot. The calf was probably right.
“Well, shit,” he said.
Chapter Twenty
If he were a different kind of guy, he probably would have gone ahead and sabotaged the Kendrick deal to get Gen to stay. But he was Ryan—for better or for worse—and so he checked on Kendrick later that day to make sure he was doing okay.
It was around midmorning by the time he finished with the calf, met with some of the ranch hands to assign tasks for the day, and rode Annie to the guest cottage. When he got there, he knocked on the door, but Kendrick didn’t answer. Had Kendrick fled after all? And what would that mean to Gen? But then he remembered the old barn—the site of such happy recent memories—and found Kendrick there, bathed in the illumination of the skylight, doing something unidentifiable to a big, rectangular canvas.
“Mr. Kendrick,” Ryan said in greeting.
Kendrick looked up suddenly and blinked, as though waking from a sound sleep. “Oh. Hello.” His tone was not unfriendly, but he went right back to doing whatever it was he’d been doing with the paint.
“You’re working,” Ryan observed.
“I’m … Well, yes. I had an idea,” Kendrick said. He didn’t expand on the thought. He just went back to mixing paint on a palette and flinging it onto the canvas with the tip of his brush.
Ryan went outside, and when he judged that he was far enough away to be out of Kendrick’s earshot, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Gen.
“Ryan,” she said. She sounded pleased to hear from him, and that made him happier than he would have expected. A little bloom of warmth spread across his chest.
“Kendrick’s painting,” he said.
“He’s what?”
“I’m out here at the old barn. Thought I’d better check and see whether he took his crap and ran away during the night. And there he was, painting. At least, I think you’d call that painting. Didn’t look like anything but blobs of color to me.”
“Oh, thank God,” Gen said, the relief in her voice almost palpable. “Did he seem drunk?”
“No. Now that you mention it, he didn’t.”
“Okay. Okay, that’s really good news. I was going to come out there anyway, because I thought I’d have to talk him down again. As soon as Alex gets here to take over at the gallery, I’m on my way. I want to talk to Kendrick … see the lay of the land, so to speak.”
The thought that Gen was coming to the ranch—and coming soon—made Ryan stupidly happy. He chided himself. He had things to do—a lot of things. The ranch wasn’t going to run itself. He had a full day ahead of him, and would have had a full day, in fact, even if that day were far longer than twenty-four hours. And yet, here he was pondering how he could wait around for her without it seeming like he was waiting around for her.
His mother would laugh at him if she knew.
He considered his options. He could find something to work on at the guest cottage, so he’d be there when she arrived. Or he could find something to work on at the old barn. Or there were the various areas of the ranch within sight of the road she would use to drive in—he could just happen to be replacing a fence post near the gate that led to Kendrick’s place.
Then he realized that was stupid. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Gen again. When she picked up, he said, “Call me when you get here. I want to see you.”
“I will,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
“Good.”
He disconnected, shoved the phone back into his pocket, and nodded. There. Much easier than replacing a perfectly good fence post.
Gen made the drive to the Delaney Ranch feeling optimistic. Kendrick was painting. She was riding on a cloud of afterglow from last night’s impossibly good sex. And Ryan wanted to see her, making her wonder when that impossibly good sex might happen again.
She might even have been singing as she drove through the gate and up toward Kendrick’s guest cottage. Though she would never admit to such a thing, should anyone ask.
She parked her car by the cottage and got out. The sky was so blue it almost hurt her eyes to look at it, and she heard the murmur of crashing waves in the distance. A light breeze rippled the grass, and birds chattered over her in the trees.
Jesus, the only things missing were some animated birds and some Disney music.
She leaned against her car and pulled her phone out of her purse. She texted Ryan:
I’m here.
He texted back:
So I see.
She looked around her, and there he was, walking up the road with his phone in his hand, doing that sexy Ryan swagger, a lazy smile on his face.
Oh God, she thought. I am in so much trouble.
“Hey,” she called to him.
“Hey.”
“So, Kendrick’s painting?”
“He is.”
There was the thrill of seeing him, all dark-haired and tousled from work, his espresso-colored eyes roaming over her, taking her in. But there was also the awkwardness of having slept with him without really knowing the status of their relationship. What should she do? Should she run to him and throw herself into his arms, like she wanted to? Or should she play it cool, pretend last night never happened, and see where he went with it?
When he reached her, he ran one hand slowly down her arm, on a leisurely trip from her shoulder to her elbow. He looked down at her with a half-grin, his eyes crinkling at the corners in pleasure, and she simply melted. She tilted her face toward his, and he kissed her as easily as if they’d been doing it their whole lives.
That settled the issue of whether to pretend last night hadn’t happened; it sure as hell had. She felt as warm and languid as a cat napping in a patch of sunlight.
“Well, hi,” she said, her eyes fluttering open after the kiss.
“I’ve been thinking about you all morning. All night, too.”
There was that smile again. How was it that somebody so goddamned gorgeous had stayed single this long?
Time to get her head back in the game, though.
“So. Kendrick.” She said it less resolutely than she’d intended.
“Right,” Ryan said. “I don’t know if I’d call it painting, but he’s out there in the barn doing some damn thing with some paint and a canvas.”
She sighed deeply. “That’s so great. God. Really. I have to see.”
They walked together out to the old barn, holding hands. It felt right to have her hand in his. It felt like her hand was where it belonged.
When they got out to the barn, Gen could see what Ryan had meant about Kendrick doing some damn thing with paint and a canvas. Gen was experienced with art and artists, and even she wasn’t sure what Kendrick was doing. As she walked into the barn, he was holding a brush filled with drippy paint in front of his face and blowing on it, sending a fine spray of droplets onto the canvas in front of him. Because he was getting so close to the brush, and because the barn was somewhat breezy with the doors open, little drops of blue had gathered in the vicinity of Kendrick’s mouth. He didn’t seem to notice.
Considering Kendrick’s long period of inactivity, and considering his unusually delicate artistic temperament, Gen considered it prudent to stay silent rather than announcing her presence. While she stood there, he scowled, whisked the canvas off of its easel, tossed it aside, and put a fresh one in place.
After a moment, Gen and Ryan retreated.
“Well, that’s promising,” Gen said when they wer
e out of Kendrick’s earshot.
“If you say so.” Ryan sounded skeptical. “He didn’t seem too happy with it.”
“No, but he’s doing it. Which is more than I could say for him yesterday.”
They walked at a leisurely pace away from the barn and came to a stop under the leafy canopy of an oak tree. Ryan’s fingers were still entwined in hers.
“Seems kind of a shame you drove all the way out here just to look at Kendrick for two minutes,” Ryan observed.
“Well. I didn’t necessarily come out here just to see him,” she said.
Ryan’s eyebrows rose, and his mouth quirked into a grin. “Is that right?”
“There might have been other factors,” Gen said, grinning right back at him. He was so tall in comparison to her five-foot-two frame that she had to crane her neck to look at him. “Ow,” she said playfully. “You’re too tall. I’m gonna hurt my neck.”
“Come here, shorty,” he said. With no warning, he lifted her up into his arms and pressed her back against the trunk of the oak. She squealed with surprise. With nowhere else to put them, she wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling grateful that she was wearing slacks instead of a dress. Sandwiched between him and the tree, she was now pretty much level with him.
“That better?” he said.
“Much.”
He kissed her, and oh, God, her entire body came alive. The taste of his mouth, the feel of his body pressed against hers, the gentle brush of the breeze on the delicate flesh of her neck.
When he pulled away from her, just slightly, she sighed.
“Too bad the barn’s occupied,” she quipped.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” Gently, he set her back down onto the grassy ground.
“Well. Listen.” She was flustered, and she worked to make her voice sound calm and smooth. “As delightful as this was—and it really was—I’ll bet you have work to do. I don’t want to keep you from … herding cows or … or … whatever it is that you do.” She realized that she had, in fact, little to no idea of what he did.
“I can spare some time if you can,” he said.
“What did you have in mind?”
He peered down at her shoes—gallery shoes. Pointy-toed black pumps with slim three-inch heels.
“I was gonna say we could take a walk, but you’re not really dressed for it.”
“I’ve got other shoes in my car. Hang on.”
The car was about a hundred yards away, so with Ryan by her side, she picked her way back to it, walking carefully in her pumps so she wouldn’t turn her ankle or drive one of the spiky heels into the soft ground.
At the car, she opened the back door and plopped down on the back seat while she pulled off the pumps and put on a sturdy-looking pair of track shoes.
“You keep running shoes in your car?” he asked.
“Sometimes I go to the gym after work,” she told him. “I like to be prepared.”
The shoes weren’t the best fashion complement to the black slacks and scoop-necked black top she’d worn to the gallery that morning, but sometimes a girl had to be practical. She tucked her purse into the back seat of the car and closed the door.
“I’m ready.”
They held hands and walked up a path that led past the old barn, through a grove of oaks, and up onto a hill overlooking the ocean.
Little wildflowers dotted the grass on either side of the path, and butterflies alighted on the blooms.
“It’s incredibly beautiful here,” Gen said, and realized she was stating the obvious. “I’m surprised some developer hasn’t come in and bulldozed the whole thing, putting up rows and rows of identical stucco houses. That’s what they do here in California, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they’d like to do,” Ryan agreed. “We’ve had offers. Big offers.”
“I’ll bet. But this …” She gestured to encompass the grass, the trees, the air, and the world around them. “Covering this up would have been a crime.”
“You’re not going to get a view like this in Manhattan,” he commented.
He was aware that he was treading on delicate territory. They’d gone out once, slept together once, and so it was way out of line for him to suggest—even obliquely—that she should abandon her plans to return to New York. He didn’t want to be clingy and possessive just because they’d had sex. Even if it was really great sex.
But it was more than the sex. It was the way her copper-colored hair spread out around her in the breeze, catching the sunlight and gleaming. It was the way her firm, compact body fit in his arms. It was the way she smiled when she saw him, like a light had been turned on inside her, brightening everything around her. It was all of that, and other things he couldn’t name, things he wasn’t sure he could live without now that he’d found them.
Knowing that she ultimately planned to leave—knowing that she didn’t intend to make a life here in Cambria—he never should have gotten involved, never should have become attached to this idea of her, this idea of the two of them together. But it was too late for that now. He supposed it was possible she’d change her mind and stay. He wasn’t self-centered enough to believe she’d stay just because of him—not this soon into something that couldn’t even be called a relationship—but maybe because of everything. She had friends here, good friends. And now she had him, too, and he hoped that would add another weight onto this side of the scale.
He knew what it was to be a man. He knew men were not supposed to make themselves vulnerable, to leave themselves open for heartbreak. But he had an idea that maybe part of what it was to be a man was to love fearlessly, to have that kind of courage. He hoped he was up to that challenge.
“Tell me about it,” he said after a while. “About New York. What was your life like there?”
She squeezed his hand and then paused, as though the subject were too large for her to approach without steeling herself first.
“New York,” she said finally. “Well. It’s so different from here. Have you visited there?”
“Once, when I was in college. A friend and I took a trip out there for a week during winter break. See the Statue of Liberty, go to the top of the Empire State Building. That kind of thing.”
She nodded. “Okay, then you have some idea. There’s a power, there’s a—oh, I don’t know—a life force pumping through everything. Like you really are at the center of the universe. That thing about it being the city that never sleeps—that’s so true. There was always somewhere to go, always something to do. I used to stay out until four a.m. and then work at the gallery all day.” She smiled and shook her head at the memory. “Looking back, I don’t know where I got that kind of energy.”
He considered that. “Being that busy, staying out all night … did you enjoy that kind of thing?”
“I did.” Then she seemed to reconsider. “Well. Sometimes I did. But there were other times when it seemed really … exhausting.”
“I can imagine.” What she was describing was a life so foreign to his own that the very thought of it tired him. He was no stranger to staying up all night, but it was usually to nurse a sick calf or to help a cow give birth. Bars and nightclubs, parties … he’d done some of that in college, but it had grown old fast.
“What about friends?” he asked.
She frowned. “I had a lot of people I knew. A lot of acquaintances. And I thought I had a lot of friends. But not like this. Not like I have here.”
That was what he’d hoped she would say—he’d hoped to remind her that she had good, close friendships here—but now he felt manipulative having led her there. And being manipulative made him feel like a dick.
“Look, Gen.” They paused on top of a ridge with a view of swaying grass and a horizon of blue water. Some birds flew overhead that might have been sandpipers. “I’ve got to admit something. I asked about friends because I don’t want you to leave. I thought if I reminded you about your friends here in Cambria …”
She looked up at him
and gave him a half grin that made him feel soft inside. “You don’t want me to leave?”
“Well, no.”
She turned to fully face him. “That’s interesting.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I know we don’t have a relationship yet, not really, but I hope we will, and if we do, and then you decide to go …”
He left it hanging there. If she decided to go, then what? He’d be hurt. He’d miss her. Or perhaps he’d leave the only life he’d ever known to build a new one three thousand miles away. The fact that he was even thinking that way left him confused and worried. Okay, scared. Screw it. He could admit that.
She put her hands on his shoulders, went up on the tips of her toes, and pressed a quick kiss to his lips.
“It’s not a sure thing, me leaving. And if I go, it won’t be for a while,” she said.
“All right.”
“And in the meantime … you’re hoping this will be a relationship?”
He’d said those words, there was no point in taking them back now. “Well … yeah. I don’t want to rush anything, but … yeah.”
She grinned at him and lowered herself back onto her heels. “I’m so glad we’re not still talking about Lacy.”
He pulled her into his arms so suddenly that she gasped.
“Lacy who?” he said, and then silenced her with a long, deep kiss.
Chapter Twenty-One
Since their date hadn’t worked out—or, more precisely, it had worked out so well that they hadn’t actually gone anywhere—they rescheduled for that weekend.
They’d already been to Neptune, and Ryan wasn’t sure where to take her this time. He wanted to do something special, though, something fun. He was still pondering it when he, Jackson, Will, and Daniel gathered at Shamel Park, down by the beach, for a pickup basketball game. They hadn’t played in months, and Ryan worried that his skills would be lacking from disuse. He worried that he would embarrass himself.
He did embarrass himself, but not because of his basketball ability. It was more because he was so distracted by thoughts of seeing Gen again that he wouldn’t have noticed if the ball had smacked him square in the face.