“No. No, Genevieve.” He took the paper from her. “This … is dog excrement.” He crumpled it again and threw it back onto the pile on the table.
Uh-oh. That was just what she needed. To bring an artist out here and have him suffer a complete collapse of confidence. She sighed.
“Have you been working?” she said. “I mean … beyond the sketches?”
He looked at her wearily. “It’s not as easy as just throwing paint on a canvas, you know.”
“I do know that. Yes,” she reassured him.
Gen took a mental inventory of what she was dealing with. She’d spent thousands of dollars of her own money and the McCabes’ money to bring an artist to Cambria who appeared to be a drunk in the middle of an epic personal crisis. Unless he was always like this, which she supposed was possible.
“My muse …” he began, then trailed off, looking vaguely into the distance.
Gen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had a tendency to immediately dismiss any creative person who uttered the word muse, but that wouldn’t do this time. She’d hitched her wagon to this guy, and there would be no unhitching it now. If he didn’t produce while he was here—or if he did produce, and what he came up with was crap—then her investment would be for nothing. As much as she hated the idea of babysitting an egotistical, puffed-up, maladjusted whiner with a drinking problem, she didn’t see where she had much choice.
“Gordon, is there anything I can do? Anything that might help you to …” She inwardly winced. “… to awaken the muse?”
He rubbed at his forehead again. The fogginess with which he spoke suggested that he was either drunk or was battling a hangover of disastrous proportions.
“Well, I …” He trailed off again.
“Please. Just tell me,” she prompted.
“It would be so much better if I didn’t have to worry about the day-to-day things, like cooking, and …” He waved a hand to encompass the destruction that had fallen upon the defenseless little house.
“And cleaning,” she finished for him, groaning inside.
“Yes. And the barn. The light is simply dreadful.”
“The light,” she said.
“It’s gray.”
“The light in the barn is gray,” she repeated, just to be sure she had it straight.
“This is an impossible situation,” he said in a tone that suggested poverty, war, famine, and possibly pestilence.
“We’ll work it out,” Gen said. “We’ll make this work. Don’t worry.”
Out on the front porch of the guest house—where Kendrick couldn’t hear—Gen pulled out her cell phone. First, she called Alex. It was almost time to close the gallery for the evening, and she told him to go ahead and do it without her. Then, she called Edward Dietrich, the Chicago-based art dealer who’d produced Kendrick’s most recent gallery show, and explained the situation.
“Is he always like this, or is he having some kind of breakdown?” she asked, hearing the desperation in her own voice.
She heard a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Sounds like typical Gordon Kendrick to me.”
Gen let out a puff of air in exasperation. “I talked to you months ago about bringing him out here. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” Dietrich said.
“Well … Well, what am I supposed to do now? He’s drinking, he’s trashed the house where I’m putting him up, he’s not painting …”
“You’ve got to hold his hand,” Dietrich said.
“What?”
“Think of him as a toddler on a playground. If you take your eye off of him for a second, he’s going to fall off the jungle gym.”
“I … I … Oh, Jesus.”
“Indeed. Good luck, Genevieve.” She heard him laughing lightly as he hung up.
She stared at the phone for a moment before replacing it in the pocket of her sleek black trousers. She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, and went back into the cottage to begin cleaning up.
Chapter Twelve
Gen had to reassess her situation in light of this new information. She considered reassigning Alex to babysitting duty, but figured it would be only a short time before Alex decked the guy. After all, Gen wanted to, and she was the more patient of the two of them.
She considered hiring someone else—a housekeeper and personal assistant for Kendrick—but she’d spent so much bringing him out here, renting the house, hiring limousines, and buying $250 sheets that she didn’t have the budget for it.
And even if she could afford it, she had too much riding on this. He had to work. He had to produce artwork that was, if not a breakthrough, then at least up to the standard he’d set so far. If he didn’t, she couldn’t repay the McCabes with a painting, as she’d promised them in their contract. She couldn’t present a gallery show of Kendrick’s work at the end of his residency. She wouldn’t have the artwork that had been promised to her in the contract Kendrick had signed. And most importantly, the horse she’d bet on to win or at least place would never get out of the starting gate.
Gen grumbled to herself and wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into as she washed dishes, wiped counters, and swept floors in the little cottage. At least the size of the place meant it wouldn’t take her long to put things in order. She put a load of dirty laundry into the stacked washer and dryer unit that was tucked away in a closet off the bedroom. As she added detergent and started the load, she thought with distaste about men’s dirty underwear. Here she was washing Gordon Kendrick’s boxers. She’d never washed the underwear of a man she was having sex with, let alone one she wasn’t. It seemed a shame that she was putting in the effort of maintaining a man without the benefit of regular orgasms.
When the cottage was in a respectable state, she ordered Kendrick into the shower. He protested, but then shuffled off into the little bathroom. He really was like a toddler. Once he was in there, she went into the kitchen and picked up the partial bottle of Jack Daniels. Funny, he couldn’t manage to get his own yogurt or his own sheets, but he had no problem procuring alcohol. Priorities, she thought.
She sighed heavily and considered pouring out the whiskey. He’d gotten this bottle somehow; he’d get another. If she dumped it, that might slow down his drinking. On the other hand, if he was busy finding a way into town to buy more, then that was time he wouldn’t be painting.
In the end, she decided he was an adult—though he didn’t behave like one—and it wasn’t her job to monitor his Jack Daniels intake. Still, she stuck the bottle into the back of the cupboard behind the bran flakes and the herbal tea. No reason to make it easy.
Gen made a pot of strong coffee and had it ready when Kendrick came out of the shower wearing a pair of sweatpants and the same T-shirt he’d put on when she’d arrived. His wet hair, now freed of the man bun, was mussed and hung limply to his shoulders.