It would have been so tempting to scrap this whole date business and just pull him inside and tear his clothes off, but, with some variation, that’s what they’d done last time. This time they were going to have a real date, by God, one not interrupted by drunk artists or made somehow lesser by the suggestion that someone was thanking someone for something.
And, she wanted to know what the big secret was.
“So? Spill. Where are we going?” Gen asked as soon as she got him through the door.
“It’s a surprise,” he said with that sexy grin.
“Well, jeez. At least tell me if I’m dressed okay.”
“You’re perfect,” he said, and she had an idea that he might have meant something more than her clothes.
As they drove north on Highway 1, the Cooper House appeared atop a rolling hill that was carpeted in green grass. It was early evening, but the sun was still fairly high in the blue, cloudless sky. They turned into the driveway in Ryan’s truck, and Gen wiggled in her seat in curiosity and excitement.
“What are we doing here?”
“We’re having our date.”
“At the Cooper House?”
“Yeah.” He shot her a look and grinned at her.
Gen tried, for a moment, to make sense of it, and then she realized what was going on. “Wait. Will Bachman works here, right? That friend of yours who was at Kate’s party?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Will’s the caretaker. Christopher Mills is a friend of his from college. Will arranged for us to use the house for the evening.”
Gen squealed. “That is so cool. What are we going to do up there?”
Ryan shrugged. “I brought some food that Jackson made for us. Some wine. We’ll just get up there and see what happens.”
Gen drummed her feet against the floor of the truck in excitement. “This is so much better than dinner and a movie.”
“I’d hoped you would think so.”
The driveway was a long and meandering affair that went past a stand of pine trees, over a low hill, and past a creek before leading them to a tall, wrought-iron gate. Ryan stopped at the gate, leaned out the window, and pushed a security code into the keypad. The gate slowly rolled open.
“You’ve got the security code?” Gen wanted to know.
“Will gave it to me.”
“So you could just drive in here anytime you feel like it? You could burgle the place if you wanted?”
Ryan laughed. “Nah. Will recodes the gate every week or so.”
Gen nodded sagely. “Me too. I recode my gate every week or so. It’s one of the burdens of wealth.”
The flavor of the place changed once they were inside the gate. Manicured lawns stretched for what appeared to be acres. A formal garden stood to the right, with a marble fountain, rose bushes, and towering trees that bathed it all in shade. Off to the left and down the hill a short distance were two fenced tennis courts with a lighting setup that looked like it belonged on a Major League Baseball field. A little farther up, they passed a cottage that Ryan identified as Will’s guest house before they came to rest in a big circular driveway in front of the main house.
Gen had seen the Cooper House in magazines and on the Internet, and of course she’d seen it from Highway 1 as she’d passed on the way to Hearst Castle or Big Sur. But seeing it in pictures or from a distance was very different from seeing it in person.
The house was a hulking, three-story Victorian with gables set into a steep roofline, a large, wrap-around porch, gingerbread trim in shades of blue and red, and a circular turret topped with a roof shaped like an onion dome. The highest point of the third-floor roof was crowned with a widow’s walk, its iron railing pointing to the heavens.
Stepping out of Ryan’s truck, Gen craned her neck to look up at the house. “There should be a horror movie set here.”
“You think?” Ryan came to stand beside her. “I kind of like it.”
“Oh, I do, too,” Gen said. “I just think a horror movie would up the cool factor. Which is already pretty high.”
Ryan retrieved the key he’d gotten from Will and let them in the front door. In anticipation of their arrival, Will had already disarmed the security system.
Gen wanted to take a tour before doing anything else, so they roamed around the house for a while, through the oak-paneled foyer that led to a grand staircase; into a formal dining room with a marble fireplace; through a library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with books of every description; into the parlor that was situated inside the turret, arching bay windows reaching out toward the porch and the landscape beyond.
They peeked out into the backyard and found more gardens and a mammoth swimming pool. Upstairs were innumerable bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms—one including an enormous claw-foot bathtub that had Gen aching to take a hot, bubbly bath.
They found the action figure collection in the third bedroom they checked. In a glass case that filled one wall, tiny superheroes amassed for the coming showdown with the forces of evil.
Naturally, Gen recognized some of the characters. Everybody knew Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Iron Man. But the array of figures was so vast and varied that she found it remarkable that anyone, other than their creator, could possibly name them all.
“Who’s this?” Gen pointed toward a figure in shades of orange and red, his hair rising upward in frozen plastic flames, licks of fire emerging from his wrists and feet.
“That’s the Human Torch,” Ryan answered without hesitation. “He’s part of the Fantastic Four.”
She looked at Ryan with interest. “You know comic books?”
He shrugged. “Sure. I used to read them when I was a kid. I wasn’t into it like some people, but … yeah. I liked them.”
Gen had an image of Ryan at nine or ten years old, lying on his belly on his bed at the ranch, poring over comic books, his hair askew, his room and explosion of toys and clothes. The idea made her smile. Quite unexpectedly, she wondered if that was how their son would look. She was shocked by the thought—it was far, far too soon to be thinking such things—and she pushed it out of her head.
“You getting hungry?” Ryan asked. Grateful to have been pulled out of her kids-with-Ryan reverie, she smiled and nodded.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Great. I’ll go out to the truck and bring in the food Jackson packed for us, and we’ll figure out the best spot to set up. Daniel said we should eat by the pool.”
She peered up at him. “You talked to Daniel about our date?”
“Well, yeah.” He shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable. “Does that bother you?”
“No, no. I just didn’t think guys did that. I thought when guys talked about their dates, it was usually bragging. You know, after the fact.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what other guys do, but I find bragging—after the fact—to be ungentlemanly.”
The sweetness of that—the rightness of it—made her feel warm inside. “You would, wouldn’t you?”
He shrugged again and his face colored slightly. “Let’s go set up for dinner.”