She wondered if that last part might have taken it too far, but Kendrick nodded at her, and she felt buoyed.
“Okay, then,” Gen said. She gave her thighs a prim little pat, as though she were a first-grade teacher saying it was time for recess. “Let’s just get you unpacked.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gen and Ryan unpacked and put away Kendrick’s things and got the cottage back in order while Kendrick lolled around on the sofa, looking frazzled and depressed but more or less resigned to staying. When they were done, Gen coaxed Kendrick up from the sofa and shooed him into the bedroom to get ready for bed. It was early still—not quite nine p.m.—but Kendrick needed to sleep off the alcohol and the self-doubt so he could start fresh the next day.
Once Kendrick was asleep—he was snoring loudly less than fifteen minutes after being nudged into the bedroom—Gen leaned limply against the back of the bedroom door and sighed.
“That was a close one,” she said.
Ryan was leaning his hip against the kitchen counter, his arms folded over his chest, in the position he’d adopted since arriving here earlier this evening. “Is it true all that stuff you said about artists having a crisis before a big breakthrough?”
“I have no idea.” Gen ran a hand through her loose curls. “It could be. It sounded true.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Nice improvisation.”
Gen went into the tiny kitchen and picked up the partial bottle of bourbon that was sitting on the counter. “I guess this has to go.” She opened the bottle and started pouring the remainder of the bourbon into the sink. A second or two into it, she stopped pouring.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
She opened a cabinet and rooted around, then brought out a couple of glasses. She poured two fingers of bourbon for herself, then looked questioningly at Ryan. At his nod, she poured some for him as well.
She held up her glass and clinked it against his, then took a sip and felt the liquid burn down the back of her throat.
“Jesus,” she said, scowling at the bedroom door and Kendrick behind it. “After all this, he’s probably just going to leave tomorrow when he sobers up.”
Ryan shrugged. “Well. You can’t exactly keep him here against his will.”
“I know.” She went over to the sofa and slumped down onto it with her glass in her hand. “I just really wanted this to work.”
“So you can go back to New York?” He brought his drink to the sofa and sat down next to her.
“Not even that,” she said. “I just wanted to achieve something. In the art world, I mean. I wanted to redeem myself, I guess.”
“Redeem yourself from what?” He stretched out on the sofa and looked at her with interest.
“That’s right. You haven’t heard the full story.”
So she told him about Davis MacIntyre, about the sexual harassment and the fraud, and how she’d fled the city with a payoff from MacIntyre and a black mark against her name in every gallery in the city.
She shook her head and polished off what was left in her glass. “I guess I just wanted to prove something.”
Ryan took the last sip of his bourbon and put the glass down on the coffee table. “I guess I don’t see why you want to prove something to people who treated you so badly in the first place.”
She regarded him. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged. “You just seem so confident. So self-assured. You know your place in the world. I can’t imagine you feeling like you need to prove anything to anyone.”
Ryan let out a low laugh and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “That’s because you don’t know Sandra Delaney.”
“Your mom? I know your mom.”
“You know her,” Ryan said, “but you don’t know her.”
Gen considered that. The bourbon was seeping into her system, and she was beginning to feel warm and relaxed.
“I can see that she’s a little … rigid, maybe,” Gen allowed.
Ryan nodded slowly. “She is that. Look, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. She’s a great mom. As steady and constant as the earth. Always there for me and my brothers and sister.”
“But?” Gen prompted.
“But, there was always that feeling that if you weren’t doing things the Sandra Delaney way, you were a disappointment. And the Sandra Delaney way is never the easy way.” He gave her a wry smile.
She regarded him, all tall and strong and at ease with himself. “I seriously doubt you’re a disappointment.”
“No, I don’t think I am,” he said. “But there’s always that worry, that fear of not quite measuring up.”
She shifted on the sofa, turning to face him more fully. “Look, Ryan. About that time at Kate and Jackson’s party, when I got so drunk …”
He grinned. “That was months ago.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed.” He shrugged. “People get drunk sometimes. It happens. I’ve been known to do it once or twice myself.”
“Yeah. But …”
“But what?”
Her pulse sped as she weighed whether she should go ahead with what she was about to tell him. Part of her said she should keep the walls she’d erected intact, keep him at a safe distance, protect her heart. But another part of her said that nothing was ever gained without risk. Especially when it came to love.
“But, I never told you why I got drunk.”
He waited, and she plunged forward with the heady, reckless abandon of a gambler laying all of her chips on a soft seventeen.
“Part of it was because of Davis MacIntyre dying, and what that meant to my future, my career. And part of it was about Kate moving in with Jackson, which I thought meant she didn’t need me anymore. But the rest of it …”
He raised his eyebrows, listening, waiting.
“You couldn’t stop talking about Lacy that night. About how much you wanted to be with her. You kept asking me about her, what she liked, what she didn’t like, what kind of men she dates.” Gen swallowed hard. “And I was jealous. I wanted you to want me.”
The tension filled the air between them like a gathering storm.
He eased closer to her on the sofa. He put his palm against her cheek and ran his thumb over her skin. Then he leaned in and gently touched his lips to hers. She closed her eyes and felt a pure, crystalline rush of happiness and need.
She put her arms around him and deepened the kiss. Her blood rushed faster and her senses were heightened, as though this moment were more real, more present, than those that had gone before.
She knew she should hold back; this wasn’t the place for this, and whatever existed between them was so new. But the longer they kissed, the greater the urgency she felt as she pulled him to her and ran her hands over his back, his arms, before entwining her fingers in his hair.
“Gen.” His voice was husky and rough.
She pulled back just a little, her mouth a hair’s breadth from his. “Ryan. I want this. I really want this. But I can’t do this if …”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t do this if Lacy is the one you really want.”