Like That Endless Cambria Sky

by Linda Seed

  She couldn’t get enough of him. It was as though she were starved for him, desperate for something only he could give her. When his mouth lowered to cover her breast, she threw back her head and gasped in delight.

  She wasn’t inexperienced when it came to sex. There had been men. But never like this. There had always been a self-consciousness, a calculation to the giving and receiving of pleasure. But this was pure instinct, a warm river of bliss running through the center of her, and she didn’t think, didn’t know, only felt.

  He held her against him as one hand roamed lower, until he found her warm, wet core. He eased a finger into her and caressed her firm little button with his thumb. She let out an animal sound and pressed herself closer to him, closer to the magic he was performing on her. Her pleasure was climbing higher, higher, the pressure rising.

  Too soon.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. She didn’t want this euphoria to end.

  He withdrew his hand and she breathed, bringing herself back to the center, before focusing on him. She wrapped her hand around him, and he let out a growl. She caressed him, stroked him, kissing the firm planes of his jaw.

  She wanted to know all of him, wanted to taste him, so she lowered herself to take him into her mouth. His fingers plunged into the tangles of her wet hair and he gasped. “Oh God. … Gen …”

  She tasted, explored, licked, bringing sounds from him that made her feel powerful, desirable, until finally he gently pulled her away from him.

  “I need you now. Please,” he murmured.

  “Yes. God, yes.”

  He pulled her up toward him and turned her, leaning her over the low table that stood in front of the sofa. She heard him rustling around in the pile of clothing they’d discarded, heard him tearing open a condom wrapper.

  “Hurry,” she said. “Now, Ryan. Oh …”

  He moved behind her and brought his hands around to caress the weight of her breasts. Then he reached around between her legs to caress her there until she thought she’d scream with need.

  When he pressed into her, when she felt the delicious sensation of him inside her, she lost all ability to think. She bucked back against him with his rhythm, driving her own pleasure, the pressure inside her building with each glorious thrust.

  “I … Oh.” She grasped at the edges of the table for purchase as he sped his rhythm. Once more he reached around and caressed her nub with his fingers. Her body tightened, tightened—and then exploded. She cried out once, twice, as her body pulsed with satisfaction.

  He moved his hands back to her breasts and sped his pace, increasing in intensity before he stilled and trembled with his own release.

  Sated, he rubbed his hands over her back, her sides, her ass. Finally, he separated from her.

  She lay limp against the table. She could hear him moving around, removing the condom, but she couldn’t move. She’d be perfectly happy never to move again.

  She was pleased to still be alive, still breathing.

  In a moment he came to her with a blanket he’d found tossed over the back of the sofa. He wrapped her in it and pulled her into his arms.

  “Oh, holy … Wow,” she said. “I thought the barn sex was good, but this …”

  He laughed his sexy, low laugh and pulled her closer to him, holding her in front of the fire. He kissed her earlobe gently, softly.

  “Maybe sometime we’ll try doing this in a bed,” he said.

  “What for? Why mess with success?”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  She wanted to stay there forever in his arms.

  “This was Will’s idea, you know,” Ryan said. “Coming to the Cooper House. I probably would have taken you to The Sandpiper.”

  “Was it? I’ll have to thank Will. And Jackson. Come to think of it, I’ve got a lot of people to thank.” She kissed him. “Especially you.”

  “I think you already thanked me just a few minutes ago.”

  She smacked his arm and giggled.

  Later, when they’d relaxed in front of the fire for a while, they showered in the big master bathroom, got dressed, and then climbed up to the third floor to check out the observatory. Will had given Ryan some basic instructions on how to open the roof and how to use the telescope, so it only took him a little bit of fumbling around before a panel in the ceiling slid open, leaving them blinking and exposed beneath a blanket of stars.

  “This is amazing,” Gen said. “I can’t believe he’s got this in his house.”

  “Just … hang on a minute. Let me see if I can get this going.” He entered something into a screen, and the short, squat telescope moved a fraction up and to the left. Ryan peered into the eyepiece, and then stepped back so she could look. “There.”

  She looked, and she gasped at a view of the moon that was so sharp, so crisp, that she could count the craters in its surface. “Oh, wow.”

  She stepped back. He thought for a minute, entered something else into the display, and the telescope shifted its position again. He looked, and saw a group of stars like a pentagon with a long tail. “Try this.”

  Gen peered into the eyepiece. “What is it?”

  “Pisces. The fish.”

  “Are you interested in astrology?” she asked.

  “Nah. But it does happen to be my sign. March 17.”

  “Oh.” She backed away from the telescope. “I just missed your birthday. It happened before we started seeing each other.”

  “Ah, well. You’ll make it up to me next year.” The thought that she might be here next year, that they might still be together, pleased him and made him feel a gentle peace at the center of his soul.

  “Maybe I will. Can you find Aquarius?”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. January 21.”

  “Hmm. Let’s see.” He fiddled with the screen. “Yeah. Hey, look at that. They’re right next to each other.”

  “Yeah.” She slid a look at him and gave him a slow smile. “Look at that.”

  The thought of them together in that limitless sky seemed right to him somehow. When the world ended some day, however it would end—in a fiery explosion or in a slow, cold, final exhale—they’d still be up there, the two of them, side by side in the heavens.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Did you know Ryan was rich?” Gen was standing at the counter at Jitters the next morning, waiting for her skinny vanilla latte. Lacy was bustling around behind the counter, making espresso and steaming milk. The crowd was light this morning, just a few locals chatting over muffins and cappuccinos.

  “Sure,” Lacy said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

  “You knew?! Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Lacy shrugged. “I didn’t think of it.”

  “You didn’t think of it? How does one not think of something like that?!”

  Lacy paused in her work and cocked her hip, one fist planted on it. “I guess I just don’t think of him as this rich guy. I think of him as … as a guy I went to high school with. I think of him as this nice guy who’s good at algebra but crap at chemistry.”

  “I wouldn’t say he’s crap at chemistry,” Gen mused. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “Ooh.” Lacy waggled her eyebrows at Gen. “So you had a good time last night?”

  “I had a very good time last night. I had such a good time that …”

  “That what?”

  “ … That it might … God.” She blew a lock of hair away from her eyes. “It might change everything.”

  Lacy stopped what she was doing and focused all of her attention on Gen.

  “What kind of everything?”

  “Just … everything!”

  “You’re talking about the move back East, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Gen said miserably. “Maybe.”

  Lacy finished making Gen’s drink and then, latte cup in hand, she came out into the seating area, took Gen by the arm, and led her to a table. They sat, and Lacy leaned in
close to Gen and spoke in a lower voice to avoid being overheard by the other customers.

  “You can’t change your career plans for a man,” Lacy said. “Especially Ryan Delaney.”

  “What do you mean, especially Ryan? I thought you liked him.”

  “I do. He’s sweet, he’s good-looking, he’s nice to his mother. I mean, he wasn’t for me, but he’s great.”

  “Then what?” Gen heard the whiny quality in her own voice, but she couldn’t help it. Why especially Ryan?

  Lacy clutched Gen’s forearm and leaned toward her. “It’s just … the money.”

  Gen pulled her arm out of Lacy’s grasp. “What about the money?”

  Lacy got a look on her face that suggested that Gen was either dense or deliberately obtuse. “You have a lot of plans for your career. Plans you’ve gone to great lengths to realize by bringing the artist here. Then you start dating Ryan, and he’s part of the Delaney family.” She said the last part with air quotes. “You think people are going to say, ‘Oh, she changed her plans for the sake of true love’?” She looked at Gen pointedly.

  “They’re going to say I abandoned my plans for a shot at the Delaney fortune,” Gen said as the truth of it dawned on her.

  Lacy sat back in her seat and raised her eyebrows.

  “Oh, hell,” Gen said. “You don’t think that, do you?”

  “Of course not.” She waved an arm to dismiss the idea. “I know you. I know you’d never be with a guy if you didn’t have honest feelings for him. I mean, jeez … I know you’ve had a thing for Ryan since long before you knew about the money. But … Look. Let’s forget about what people will think. Okay? What do you want? I thought what you wanted was to rebuild your career—in New York.”

  “It was. It is.”

  “Then you can’t just turn your back on that.”

  Gen looked down at the latte in her hands and blinked back tears.

  “But …”

  “But what?” Lacy’s voice was gentle now.

  Gen plucked a napkin out of the metal dispenser on the table and started shredding it with her fingers. “I’m going to sound like a cliché, but nobody’s ever made me feel like this before.”

  The look on Lacy’s face was one of surprise, and, Gen thought, maybe a little bit of jealousy. Not because Gen was with Ryan, surely—Lacy and Ryan had just never connected, had never clicked—but because Gen had found that thing, that spark, while Lacy was still looking.

  “I see,” Lacy said. “But, Gen, you’ve just started seeing him. You don’t know yet where it’s going to go.”

  That was true, Gen couldn’t deny that the relationship was in its infancy. But it felt like so much already. It felt so substantial, so real.

  “What if … What if it’s love?” Gen’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “If he loves you, he won’t stop you from building your career. If he loves you, he’ll go with you.” Lacy’s features were set, her voice determined.

  But would he? Knowing what Ryan had here in Cambria—his family, the ranch, the land that had been the Delaney home for generations—she wasn’t sure. And she wasn’t sure if she could even ask him to.

  Gen felt low for the rest of the day, which pissed her off, because a girl should not feel low after the best date—and the best sex—of her life. She thought that Lacy had a point about the money, and about how people would see her if she decided to stay in Cambria to be with Ryan. But who the hell cared what other people thought?

  She did, she realized. She cared what other people thought, and she especially cared what Ryan thought. Yes, she’d started dating him before she understood what it meant to be dating one of the Cambria Delaneys. But now that she did understand, would he think she was staying with him because of the family money?

  Ryan had admitted over dinner that women had feigned interest in him in the past just to get at the wealth he represented, and she could see that it had hurt him. She knew she wasn’t like that—she didn’t think she was capable of pretending to love a man she had no feelings for—but did he know that? And if he didn’t, how could she make him sure?

  She wondered if he was the type to make a woman sign a harsh and restrictive prenup. And if he asked her to, would she do it?

  That line of thought made her realize that she was pondering marriage only three dates into what couldn’t even be called a relationship yet. And that realization made her think that somebody really should slap some sense into her.

  Who better to do that than Rose?

  On her lunch break from the gallery, Gen walked over to De-Vine, where Rose was pouring two-ounce portions of wine for a pair of tourists who were tasting a selection of local offerings. The woman—who appeared to be in her early thirties—was making oohing and aahing noises over a chocolate wine, which, to Gen’s mind, wasn’t really wine at all. Gen knew that Rose agreed with her, but she also knew that the novelty wines—the chocolates, the flavor-infused sparkling wines—paid the bills at De-Vine with an efficiency a good oaky chardonnay never would.

  “Hey,” Rose greeted her when she came in. Today, Rose’s hair was hot pink with streaks of purple, and it was hanging loose in a blunt-cut bob.

  Gen sat on a barstool a few seats down from the tourists.

  “Get you anything?” Rose offered.

  “Just water, thanks.”

  Rose poured a wineglass full of water for Gen, told the thirty-something woman and her boyfriend about the origins of the port they were about to enjoy, and then came back to Gen.

  “So? How was the date?”

  “Ugh,” Gen said, and her upper body slumped down onto the counter.

  “That bad? Oh, sweetie. I’m surprised. I had high hopes for Ryan.”

  “No. Not bad. Good. Earth-shakingly good. So good that the angels in the heavens wept with joy.”

  “That’s a good date,” the woman to Gen’s right said as she sipped her port.

  “I’ll say,” Rose agreed. “So what’s the problem?”

  “He’s rich.”

  “Horrors!” Rose said.

  “I’m serious, Rose.” Gen pulled herself up off the bar and took a drink of her water. “He’s really, really rich. Not just kind of rich, but … you know. Filthy.”

  “Well, this is getting interesting,” the tourist said.

  “I think I heard something about that.” Rose leaned against the bar. “About him being filthy rich.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?! Jeez! Lacy knew, too. You two are supposed to be my friends. You’d think somebody would have mentioned that the guy I’m dating is some kind of goddamned Bill Gates!”

  “I think Bill Gates has more,” Rose mused. “Quite a bit more.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  Rose crossed her arms over her chest. A tattoo of a rose peeked out from beneath the cap sleeve of her T-shirt. “Then what is the point?”

  “The point is …” Gen hesitated, because even she wasn’t sure. “The point is, now I’m that woman!”

  “What woman?”

  “That woman who dates a guy because he’s rich! God! Are you not following the conversation?”

  The tourist leaned toward Gen, wineglass in hand. She came off as a natural, granola-eating type with her flowing sundress and her long, straight hair. “But you started dating him before you knew.”

  “Right. Right. But people won’t know that.”

  “But the guy knows that, right?” The tourist’s boyfriend, a guy in his early forties wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, was getting into the conversation.

  “Yeah. He does. But what if he thinks I’m only staying in it because of the money? What if … What if he thinks that, yeah, I started seeing him when I thought he was just a guy, but I kept seeing him because … because …”

  “Because he’s Bill Gates,” the woman said.

  “Right!”

  “He’s not going to think that,” Rose said. “And who cares what other people think? If they have a problem w
ith it, it’s jealousy, pure and simple. I mean, what woman wouldn’t want to snag a hot, rich cowboy? It’s every girl’s fantasy from the time we hit puberty.”

  “A cowboy?” the woman tourist said. “A real one? Ooh.”

  “See?” Rose pointed at the woman, who had just proven her point. “What are you going to do? Give up the fantasy because somebody might gossip?”

  “It does sound kind of stupid when you put it that way,” Gen said.

  The man who’d come in with the hippie chick looked glumly into his wine. “I don’t see what’s such a big deal about a cowboy. Guy probably stinks, shoveling cow shit all day.”

  “Well, that’s just sour grapes,” Rose said. She looked at the wine bottle in her hand, and at the grape displays all over the store. “So to speak.”

  “You’re right,” the hippie chick said sarcastically. “Bank teller is a much sexier job than cowboy.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Hey. My job has good benefits,” the man said, his tone heating up.

  “Here. Try this port. It’s one of our best,” Rose said, pouring miniscule servings of the syrupy wine to forestall any further arguments.

  “You’re right,” Gen said when the tourists had been tended to. “I’m not going to stop seeing Ryan just because of the money, and what people will say. It’s just freaking me out, is all.”

  “That’s because you’re a good person,” Rose assured her. “If you weren’t, you’d be out looking at designer wedding dresses right about now.”

  “I guess.”

  “Donna Karan,” the hippie chick said.

  “What?” Gen asked.

  “If I were going to marry a gazillionaire cowboy, that’s what I’d wear. Donna Karan.”

  “Huh,” Gen said. It was something to keep in mind, if it ever came to that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kendrick moved his easel outside a couple of weeks later. The move followed an intense period of work inside the old barn, during which he splattered paint on canvases, discarded them, and then later covered them over to reuse later. To Gen’s eye, he was furiously doing a whole lot of nothing. But the lack of a completed painting was only part of the story. The other part was the fact that he was getting up early and working every day with an enthusiasm she hadn’t previously seen from him. And he wasn’t drinking.