Chapter Nine

Ryan should have felt annoyed. He should have felt irritated. This little trail ride was taking time away from all of the things he had to do. They were heading into calving season, and he needed to check the pregnant cows to see which ones might deliver soon, make sure the calving pens were clean and ready to go. He had to check his equipment, do some work with the newer hands he’d hired for the season to make sure they’d know what to do. He didn’t have time to give tours.

But as much as he knew he should be rebelling against this thing his family had pressured him into doing, he found himself feeling relaxed and happy. It was a pretty day. He liked being out here, away from his day-to-day tasks, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. He liked taking the time to just breathe.

And he liked being here with Gen.

Something about seeing her outside of her native environment—out of the little black dresses and the high heels and onto the back of a horse—made him feel good. Nature agreed with her. He liked her nervousness about riding, liked the way she gamely pressed forward despite her fear and awkwardness.

Truth was, she wasn’t bad at riding for a first-timer. He’d seen much worse. He could tell from the way she sat the horse, the way she carried herself, that she had a natural aptitude. Shame that it had never been nurtured.

They walked together toward the creek, and Gen appraised her surroundings, looking around her and above her, before turning to Ryan. “This spot would be great for plein air painting. Look at the light.” She nodded her head in appreciation.

“Is that the kind of painting this guy does? Landscapes, that sort of thing?”

Gen laughed. It was a nice sound. “God, no. He does abstracts. Bold colors. Big, slashing brushstrokes. Some of them look like the paint’s been shot out of a cannon. He’d scoff at landscapes.”

Ryan took off his hat and scratched at his head. “Why’d you bring him to Cambria, then? Seems like he could do that kind of thing anywhere.”

“He could.” She turned to him, her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans. “But environment influences an artist’s work—even abstract work—in ways you can’t predict. Everything he experiences—sights, sounds, the argument he had with his ex-wife—it all goes into this big blender and comes out as the artwork. You want to change the artwork …”

“You change what you put into the blender,” Ryan finished for her.

She nodded and smiled. “Right.”

He walked over to the creek and sat down on a big boulder. “So, are you setting out to change this guy’s artwork?”

“Sort of.” She sat beside him. “He’s good. He’s very good. But he hasn’t had a breakthrough yet. I think he’s going to. He just needs to shake things up a bit. Put some different stuff in the blender, see what comes out.”

Ryan considered her. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “That’s gonna be good for you, he has his big breakthrough while he’s here.”

“That’s the idea.”

They sat side by side on the boulder for a while, listening to the birds and the rushing water. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead. Nearby, a dragonfly circled lazily over a still pool of water and then lowered itself to the surface.

Gen’s hair was twisted into a bun at the back of her neck, but a few tendrils of red hair had come loose, and they curled around her face. Ryan wanted to pull her hair out of the bun and set it free.

“So, have you talked to Lacy?” Gen asked.

Lacy. He hadn’t been thinking about Lacy, not at all.

“Not lately. Why do you ask?”

“Oh.” She shrugged and avoided his gaze. “I just wondered. That time at Kate and Jackson’s party, it seemed like you really wanted to go out with her. I wondered if you’d asked her yet.”

“Nah.” He shook his head, feeling uncomfortable.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think she’d be amenable.”

“Really.” The really came out as a statement of fact rather than a question.

“I get a certain vibe from her that’s … I don’t know what it is.” He shook his head.

“A vibe?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of, Oh, look how cute Ryan is, I’ll try to let him down easy. That kind of vibe.”

“Ah.”

He peered at her. “I take it I’m not wrong.”

She looked at him tentatively, probably trying to gauge whether her response would hurt his feelings. “No. You’re not wrong.”

He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

Gen was silent for a few minutes, and Ryan wondered what unfathomable thoughts were going on in her head.

“I don’t want to talk about Lacy right now,” he said.

 

He gave her the full tour—all of the sights his family had recommended, and then a few he added in himself—and had her back to the main house by late morning. She was late to open the gallery—she’d wanted to be there by ten, and it was well after that already—but she didn’t seem concerned about it. In the spring and summer, when the tourist traffic started to pick up, Gen had an assistant working with her at the gallery. When the tour hadn’t wrapped up by nine thirty, she’d called him—a guy named Alex who Ryan knew a little bit—and asked him to open for her. Ryan had offered to cut off the ride and get her back, but she’d said that Alex would be fine and that she was enjoying herself too much to quit.

And she did seem to be enjoying herself. By the time they got back to the house, her face was pink with sun and exertion, and her hair was askew in a way that he found pleasantly distracting. She was smiling, looking healthy and vibrant and pleased with the events of her day.

The house was unusually quiet, with the boys off at school and Breanna running errands in town.

At first Ryan had thought he would be able to avoid putting Gen through a grilling from his mother, as it looked as though no one was home. But a few minutes after they came in the door, he heard Sandra scuffing down the stairs in the fuzzy slippers she always wore inside the house, calling to him.

“Ryan? That you?” She sounded less irritated than usual, a happy state of affairs.

“Yeah, Mom. I’ve got Gen Porter with me. Just finished showing her around.”

“Well, what did you think?” Sandra came to the foot of the stairs and planted her hands on her hips, addressing Gen as though in challenge.

“Your property is gorgeous,” Gen said, her face and her voice full of enthusiasm. “I wasn’t sure about the whole idea of riding a horse—I’d never done it, and they’re really big. But Ryan taught me a few things, and I think it went okay.” Gen looked exhilarated, actually, all pretty and pink-cheeked.

Sandra squinted at Gen in that way she had, as though she were using laser vision to X-ray someone and inspect for internal injuries. Then her face broke into a grin. “He take you on Bailey?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan confirmed.

“Good. That’s about as gentle a horse as you’re likely to find. If you can’t ride Bailey, you can’t ride, period.” She nodded. “You think your artist is going to like the place?” Sandra asked.

“I don’t see how he couldn’t. Or, wait. Yes I do. Because he’s kind of ... well. Kind of socially challenged.” She looked embarrassed to have said it. “But this place, it’s lovely. It’s inspiring. It’s the perfect place to bring an artist. Even him.”

“Is ‘socially challenged’ code for asshole?” Sandra inquired.

Gen hesitated. “In this case, yes, ma’am, it is.”

Sandra let out a belly laugh that made Ryan blink. Laughing was not something that came naturally to Sandra Delaney, nor was smiling, for that matter. And here he’d seen her smile and laugh, both, within the space of a few minutes. It was puzzling, but not entirely unwelcome.

Sandra waved Gen toward the kitchen. “Come on in here and we’ll have coffee.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Gen said. “I know Ryan must be busy. I’ve already taken up too much of his time.”

“Ryan’s busy, all right. That’s why I’m inviting you, and not him.” Sandra made a shooing motion toward Ryan.

Was that how a mother was supposed to treat her son? “Well, now, I’m not that busy ... and I like coffee,” he said.

“You better go check on your father, give him a hand in the barn,” Sandra told him. “You know he’s not as young as he used to be.”

Ryan left the house reluctantly, bothered by the nagging sense that something had been plotted without his knowledge, something clear and obvious to the women but inaccessible to him. He had the sense that his mother had taken something important out of his hands, something fragile, like a newly hatched bird stretching its tiny wings, its eyes closed tight against the sun.

 

“Can I help?” Gen asked as Sandra led her into the kitchen and started getting out coffee filters and beans.

“I think I know how to make coffee by myself,” Sandra groused at her. “Been doing it for a good forty years. It’s good that you offered, though.” She nodded. “Shows manners. I’ve got no patience for people who don’t have manners.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gen said, feeling like a Catholic school girl who’d narrowly escaped getting her knuckles rapped by the Mother Superior. “Have you lived on the ranch long?”

Sandra chuckled—a low and rough heh-heh sound. “Well, let’s see. I married Orin Delaney thirty-five years ago, and I moved to the ranch the day of the ceremony. So, I guess you could say I’ve been here a while.”

Gen sat at the kitchen table—a long, rectangular, solid-wood affair that was exactly what you’d expect to see in a farmhouse—and leaned forward on her elbows as Sandra turned on the coffee pot and started gathering cups, spoons, sugar, and milk.

“You don’t see a lot of cattle ranches in Manhattan,” Gen said.

“I guess not,” Sandra said. “You miss it?”

Gen thought about it. “I do. Everything is just so … busy in New York. There’s a sense of energy, a sense of importance. This feeling that you’re at the center of the world. But when I go back, I think I’ll miss this, too.”

Sandra turned to Gen and raised her eyebrows in question. “You’re going back to New York, are you?”

“Not right away. I’m not sure when. I need to work out some things first.”

Sandra carried a mug of hot coffee to the table and put it in front of Gen with a plate of big, puffy muffins. She sat across from Gen. “Now, me, you couldn’t pay me to live in a city. Just not how I’m built. Stick me in a tiny apartment in a twenty-story building, people all stacked up like books on a shelf?” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it.”

Gen sipped at her truly excellent coffee and considered that. “I can understand feeling that way, if you’re used to this.” She gestured to include the house, the ranch, the land beyond. “There’s a kind of magic to being around all this nature.”

Sandra nodded approvingly. “A lot of people don’t get that.”

“I wouldn’t have before I moved here,” Gen said. “Cambria is special.”

“It is at that. Here, have one of these muffins. Breanna made them.”

“Mmm.” Banana walnut. Gen’s favorite.