Gen returned to Cambria the next day in triumph. She was so excited about the sale that she’d considered driving home that night so she could share the good news with Kendrick in person. But then, realizing that she was exhausted, she’d settled for calling him instead. After that she’d called Ryan, because she realized her happiness would not be real unless she shared it with him.
“It was an amazing day, and I needed to tell you about it,” she’d told him, clutching her cell phone to her ear in the Sheraton Palo Alto.
“You’re amazing,” he’d answered in a voice so sexy it made her mentally relive their last intimate encounter.
He said something else, but she was so busy fantasizing she didn’t know what it was.
“So now what?” Kendrick asked Gen when she met with him at the guest house the day of her return.
“Now, we wait.” She explained to Kendrick that any acquisition to David Walker’s collection was big news in the art world, and that Walker’s latest purchase would hit social media soon—if it hadn’t already. Once that happened, people would start contacting them. If all went well, they could take their pick of New York galleries for Kendrick’s show.
Kendrick was so pleased that when Gen wrote him a check for the sale of the painting, he thanked her profusely and didn’t even complain about her forty percent.
Gen had been right about word spreading quickly on social media. Within twenty-four hours of the sale, Walker had posted the Kendrick painting on the “New Acquisitions” page of his website. Shortly after that, people began tweeting about Kendrick and his work. And shortly after that, Joan Whitley’s assistant called Gen, saying Ms. Whitley had reconsidered her earlier refusal, and now wanted to talk about having a show of Kendrick’s work.
By then, it was too late. Gen had already made a deal with someone else.
The show was scheduled for the end of September at the Archibald Bellini Gallery in SoHo. Archibald Bellini usually was booked a year in advance, but they’d bumped a show titled “Global Warming in Recent Abstractions” to get Kendrick in.
“God, I’m nervous,” Gen told Ryan in bed about a week after her return from Palo Alto, when the date for the gallery show had been confirmed. “Jeez. Kendrick’s not even nervous, but I can barely function.”
“Let’s see what we can do to relax you,” he said.
“Gen wants me to go to New York with her.”
Ryan was lining up a pool shot at Ted’s on a Thursday night after Jackson got off work at the restaurant. He and Jackson were playing, and Daniel and Will were standing around heckling them. The bar was mostly empty, as it often was on weeknights, but it still had the aroma of sweat, stale beer, and old carpet.
“For this gallery deal, or is she still talking about moving there?” Will asked.
“As far as I know, her moving there is still on the table. But for now, we’re just talking about the gallery deal.” He took his shot, and missed getting the six into the corner pocket by a fraction of an inch.
“You going?” Jackson asked.
His shot done, Ryan straightened and backed out of the way so Jackson could take his turn.
“Sure. This is a big thing for her. I want to be supportive.”
“Supportive’s good,” Daniel said.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed.
“But?” Daniel prompted him. Daniel was sitting on a barstool near the wall, a mug of beer in his hand.
“But,” Ryan said, “this is it, isn’t it? The idea was, she’d hit it big with Kendrick, then she’d have the juice to get back into the New York art scene, and then she could move back there. Well, she’s hit it big with Kendrick.”
“And you don’t want her to move,” Will said from the barstool next to Daniel’s.
“Well, no.”
Jackson lined up his shot and hit the ten into a side pocket.
“Nice shot,” Daniel observed.
“So? If she goes, what then?” Jackson asked. “Do you move with her? Or do you do a long-distance thing? Call it off? Or what?”
“Calling it off isn’t an option,” Ryan said. Just saying the words, just considering the idea of ending things, made him feel a little sick to his stomach.
“So it’s serious, then?” Will asked.
“It is for me. I hope it is for her,” Ryan said.
Jackson sank the twelve, and Ryan grumbled. They had ten dollars on the game.
“What if she does move? Would you consider going with her?” Daniel said.
“She hasn’t asked me to.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel said impatiently. “If she does.”
“It’s complicated,” Ryan answered. He took a long drink from his beer. “My parents and my uncle are getting old. One brother’s in Montana, and the other one has no interest in ranching. Everybody’s counting on me to run things out here. If I go … Well. We can hire someone, but it’s not the same. The ranch is a family business. We hire someone, that’s not family.”
Jackson took his next shot and missed. Ryan looked over the table, spotted his next move, and leaned down to line up his shot.
“And the long-distance thing,” he continued as he took his turn, “that’s complicated, too. Flying back and forth, being apart a lot of the time. I’m in a relationship, I want to be with the person. Plus, I’m not a big fan of airplanes.”
He hit the cue into the four and sank it into a corner pocket.
“Well, if calling it off isn’t an option, what’ll you do?” Daniel asked the question that had been keeping Ryan awake nights.
“Shit.” Ryan shook his head. “Shit. I guess I’m moving to New York. If she goes. And if she asks me to go with her.”
Jackson raised his eyebrows and whistled in admiration. “That’s a big fuckin’ deal, man.”
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed.
“You could ask her to stay,” Will observed.
“Nah,” Ryan said. “Then I’m the asshole who held her back, ruined her career. This matters to her. And if it’s important to her, it’s important to me.”
Jackson chuckled and smacked Ryan on the back. “You’re going to make someone a really great wife someday.”
“Ah, shut up,” Ryan said.
Taking a week off to go to New York wasn’t a simple matter. Sure, they had hired hands on the ranch, but nobody who was used to running the place in Ryan’s absence. Their best guy, the one who’d been there the longest, was off work with a back injury. That left Joe Barnes, a big hulk of a man who’d come to them about a year and a half ago from a ranch in Nebraska. Barnes was good—he had good instincts and a great work ethic—but he was young, and he’d never been trained to manage the operation. Of course, Ryan’s dad would be there, and so would Redmond, in case Barnes got into trouble. Still, Ryan felt shaky about leaving.
Of course, it was entirely possible that part of the shaky feeling had to do with the bigger issue of Gen and New York, rather than this one trip.
Surprisingly, every time he bitched about how he didn’t want to abandon the ranch even for a week, Sandra was the one who urged him to go.
“This ranch has been here for a hundred and seventy years, I imagine it’ll still be here when you get back in a week,” she pronounced, hands on her hips, fuzzy slippers on her feet. “I know you think you’re so important we’ll all just lay down and die if you take a vacation, but I guess we probably won’t.”