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  He looked at her for a moment, probably waiting to see whether she’d crack under the pressure of his gaze and pour out her problems. Fat chance. She waited, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, until he relented and opened the carton.

  He pulled out a heavily Bubble-Wrapped item, freed it from its protective layers, and held it out to show Gen. He held a large, shallow bowl in shades of orange, streaked with graceful, dark lines that suggested the branches of a late-fall tree that had been stripped of its foliage.

  Gen cooed appreciatively. “That’s nice,” she said. “Really nice. Mrs. Freeman is going to love it. She’s been asking me when you were going to bring in some new pieces.” Adele Freeman, a wealthy older woman with a summer home in Cambria, was Daniel’s most reliable collector.

  Daniel nodded. “I made it with her in mind. She was telling me last month how much she misses the seasons since she moved here from the East Coast. Said she loves fall. So, I thought of this. But this kind of evokes the stark, harsh, it’s-almost-winter fall. Maybe I should have gone with foliage.”

  “No. Don’t second-guess yourself. I love this. If Mrs. Freeman doesn’t take it, someone else will.” Daniel’s work was always a top seller in her gallery. She’d tried to convince him to show his stuff in Los Angeles or San Francisco—she felt certain he could do well in a bigger art market—but he’d balked every time. Once or twice she’d raised the subject of what the self-help gurus would call Daniel’s “success blocks,” but he’d shut her down, much the way she’d shut him down on the subject of what had made her drink so much the night before.

  Maybe they both had issues they weren’t ready to explore.

  After Daniel left, Gen went into the back room and made a pot of coffee to clear the remaining dust bunnies the hangover had left in her head. She hadn’t had her morning run, and that had put her in a bad mood. She hated to miss her morning run, and whenever she did, it made her feel sluggish and out of sorts for the rest of the day. Maybe she’d get to the gym after work. If she could get the nagging ache in her head to go away.

  When she had a mug of hot, black coffee in her hand, she sat at her desk in the rear of the main room of the gallery and sighed. The place was pretty much deserted, but that was no surprise on a late morning in January. Here in Cambria, foot traffic peaked during the summer tourist season, with another good bump in December when visitors came for the holidays. Sometimes people with families came during spring break. Other than that, Cambria was a sleepy town with little activity on Main Street.

  Gen couldn’t keep a business like this running with foot traffic. The tourists weren’t the ones who brought in the real money, anyway. They bought the seascapes, the ceramic mugs, the handmade moonstone jewelry. That was a good and essential part of Gen’s business, but they were lower-ticket items. Her real income came from the things she did behind the scenes, the matchmaking between artists and collectors. The best artworks that came through her hands never made it to the gallery walls—or, at least, not with a price tag on them. The best stuff was promised to deep-pocket buyers before the public ever saw it.

  So much of what she did was schmoozing and socializing. Today she had a lunch with a wealthy couple who kept a weekend place down in the exclusive Sea Clift Estates neighborhood. He’d made a fortune in the pharmaceuticals business, and she had old family money. Their “weekend place” was more like a palace, with a back yard perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Justin and Colleen McCabe collected art not because they loved art, but because they believed it was what cultured people did. Knowing that they, themselves, didn’t have a feel for quality—or for what might increase in value over time—they relied on Gen’s tastes to guide them. She’d placed a number of excellent abstracts with them over the years, sales for which she took a hefty forty percent commission. That was how the doors of the Porter Gallery stayed open—the deals she made with the McCabes and others like them.

  She’d prepared for today’s lunch by speaking with a number of artists whose work she thought would be suitable for the McCabes, to see what they were working on and what might be available. But even that wasn’t straightforward. The artists who believed their work was hot—and Gen wouldn’t be talking to them about the McCabes if it wasn’t—usually hemmed and hawed about how they worked with a New York dealer and not with a nobody from Cambria, or about how the McCabes weren’t the kinds of collectors who would build the artist’s reputation, or about how they’d promised their best work for a solo show in Los Angeles.

  You’d think that, in the end, it would come down to price. That’s what the McCabes believed, and they didn’t see why it was sometimes an effort for Gen to acquire a desired work of art for them. But, in truth, it was about so much more than money. It was ego-stroking and reassurance and strategizing; it was promises made for future deals with people Gen hadn’t even met yet.

  It was exhausting.

  She loved it.

  She looked at the clock on her laptop and saw that she still had an hour before she had to leave to meet the McCabes. She looked over the images of the artworks she’d selected for them, emailed to her by the artists. For the McCabes, name recognition was key. They wanted to collect artists who were being talked about, whose work appeared in Art in America, who were profiled in The New Yorker. That was good for Gen, because it meant big-ticket sales that would keep the lease on the gallery space paid for months to come. But as profitable as such deals were, she saw them as short-sighted.

  She pulled up an image of an abstract work by a young artist from Chicago. The canvas was all reds and blacks and brilliant blues, with slashing brushwork that suggested a raging storm. This artist wasn’t being talked about—not yet—but looking at the painting, she had a nagging feeling that he was on the verge of something. Some kind of artistic breakthrough, some revelation that would transform his work from promising to brilliant. She sighed. She would show this to the McCabes, tell them her thoughts about this artist’s bright future. And, of course, she’d push hard her belief that buying his work now, before he became the darling of the premier galleries, would be an outstanding financial investment. But the McCabes would never go for it. They wanted to collect artists who were impressive now, not those who might be impressive ten years from now.

  She snapped the laptop shut.

  That was one of the frustrating things about her job: having the vision to spot true talent before others did, but being unable to persuade anyone to act on it.

  The lunch went the way Gen had expected. The McCabes had cooed over the artists she’d known they would. She had instructions from them to pursue a particular work that she may or may not be able to get for them; it likely would involve promises to also take lesser works that the artist hadn’t been able to move any other way. If she could swing it, the commission would provide her with a nice financial cushion.

  But the deal with the McCabes was just one thing to think about.

  She also had to think about how to get back to New York.

  Cambria was nice—you’d have to be blind not to love it—but it was a small town tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Her ambition to become a player in the art world wouldn’t happen here, no matter how many rich couples like the McCabes she cultivated, no matter how many artists she cooed to and pleaded with over the phone or on her occasional trips elsewhere.

  She had to go back to New York, but it wasn’t as simple as selling the gallery and packing her stuff. She had to develop a reputation first. She had to get some buzz, some gravitas, or she’d get eaten alive in New York.

  She needed a plan.

  Chapter Two

  Ryan Delaney was up early the morning after the party. He was up early every morning, before sunrise, regardless of what he’d done the night before. Running a cattle ranch didn’t allow for sleeping in.

  By five thirty, he was downstairs and in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of black coffee from the pot. His mother was already there, busy at the stove, frying eggs and bacon
for his father and his uncle.

  Coffee mug in hand, he kissed his mom’s cheek.

  “I’ve got some oatmeal going for you,” she said, giving him the usual morning side-eye. “Though my life would be a lot easier if you’d just eat the eggs and bacon like everybody else.”

  “You don’t have to cook for me, Mom,” he said. Like the side-eye, it was also part of their routine. “I’ve been a grown man for a while now. I can make my own oatmeal. You don’t need to trouble yourself.”

  She grunted. “I can’t very well cook for your father and your uncle and just ignore you, now can I?”

  Ryan had been a vegetarian for six years, and his family had yet to adjust to it. Having raised beef cattle for generations, the Delaney family could not make sense of the idea of foregoing steaks and burgers in favor of salads and brown rice. His mother viewed his dietary choices with suspicion, and his father and uncle simply scoffed at him as though not eating meat were comparable to announcing that he’d be wearing only blue from now on, or hopping from place to place on one foot. To them, it seemed frivolous and arbitrary. But to Ryan, it was the natural result of getting up close and personal with the eventual providers of the steaks and burgers.

  He couldn’t eat them when he’d raised them and sometimes even bottle-fed them. It surprised him that the rest of his family could.

  Sandra Delaney, a woman in her midfifties with dark brown hair now starting to gray, fussed around at the stove, deftly managing the eggs, the bacon, and the oatmeal at the same time, an apron wrapped around her middle, fuzzy slippers on her feet. She wore Levi’s and a San Francisco 49ers T-shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Sandra was trim and small but strong and wiry, the result of a lifetime of hard work outdoors.

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Grab a bowl,” she said.

  Ryan grinned as he opened a cupboard over the counter and took out a bowl. His mother’s perpetual ill humor amused and comforted him for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand. Sandra was Sandra, and if she ever stopped being Sandra—if, say, she ever became warm and nurturing, with a kind word and an easy smile—he’d take it as a sign of the impending apocalypse. She was a deeply loving woman, but that deep love was buried beneath a layer of porcupine quills. Her constancy, her predictability, was north on the compass of his life.

  He poured oatmeal into his bowl from the saucepan on the stove, bustled around adding butter, milk (he had no philosophical problem with butter or milk), and brown sugar, then carried the steaming bowl to the kitchen table. The world beyond the windows was still black, with sunrise more than an hour away.

  Ryan’s brain was a little foggy after staying late at Jackson and Kate’s party the night before. He didn’t drink much, knowing he had an early morning and a long workday ahead, but he did stay into the early hours, and he’d had to hit his snooze alarm three or four times this morning before he’d been able to drag himself out of bed.

  He would never mention such a thing to Sandra, who wouldn’t tolerate nonsense like sleeping in. Parties were fine, staying out late was fine, hell, even getting drunk off your ass was fine on occasion. But that ass had better be up and seated at the breakfast table no later than six a.m.—five thirty was better—unless you were sick or dead.

  Ryan was on his second cup of coffee, halfway into his breakfast, when his father came into the kitchen, dressed and ready for his day. Orin Delaney was an ox of a man even into his early sixties, tall and broad, with hair that was once dark brown, near black, but was now thinning to such an extent that the main color to reach one’s eye was the pink of his scalp. Now, the older man pulled a mug from the cupboard over the coffee pot and poured himself a cup, which he drank black. He took a seat at the table next to Ryan and peered into Ryan’s bowl.

  “Why the hell would you want to eat horse food?” Orin asked, looking pained.

  Sandra came to the table and set a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of Orin.

  “Why the hell would you want to eat dead pigs?” Ryan retorted.

  Ryan’s uncle Redmond came in just as Sandra was placing his plate on the table. Similar in appearance to Orin—tall and broad, with a powerful build—Redmond had shrunk some with age. A good ten years older than Orin, Redmond had retired from actively working the ranch about five years before, but a lifetime of rising before the sun had made him incapable of sleeping in, even in what were supposed to be his leisure years.

  “Morning, Uncle Redmond,” Ryan said as he got up from the table to take his empty bowl to the sink.

  “Morning,” Redmond replied.

  “How’s your back doing this morning?” Sandra inquired.

  Redmond grunted as he lowered himself into his chair. “Been better.” As always, Redmond was a master of brevity.

  The Delaney Ranch had been in operation for seven generations, since one of Ryan’s ancestors—an immigrant from Ireland—had received the acreage as part of a Mexican land grant in 1846. The original buildings weren’t standing anymore, except for the ruins of an old cabin on the eastern edge of the ranch. The modern buildings—main house, old barn, stables, guest house, and bunkhouse—were built in the 1950s, except for the new barn, which was built ten years ago. Most of the structures showed significant wear, but the house was in good shape, and it was big enough for Orin and Sandra, Redmond, Ryan, Ryan’s sister, Breanna, and Breanna’s two boys, ages five and seven. Breanna had moved back to the ranch a few years ago after her husband, a Marine, had been killed in the Middle East. It wasn’t an ideal situation for her, but she’d been grateful to have the family home to return to. At least here, she didn’t have to raise her boys alone.

  Ryan had two brothers—Liam, who ran a ranch in Montana, and Colin, who was a lawyer in San Diego. With Redmond retired and Orin getting older, they were all looking to Ryan to take over the operation of the ranch. That was fine with him; it had always been his intention to manage the ranch when his father and uncle were no longer willing or able to do so. He’d gotten his degree in farm and ranch management from Iowa State with just such a goal in mind.

  He had a different idea of how to do it than they did, but that was okay; he’d ease them along, and eventually they’d accept the changes he was planning to make.

  When Ryan had announced his intention of taking the ranch organic—for the good of the land, for the benefit of the cattle, and for the increased prices organic beef brought over conventional—his family had looked at him the same way they had when he’d sworn off eating meat. True, raising cattle organically was more cumbersome and more costly, but he believed the benefits would outweigh the trouble and the expense.

  Orin had been reluctant to accept the idea, but bit by bit, he was coming around.

  Ryan had been less successful at persuading his father to invest money in upgrading the various buildings on the ranch. The money wasn’t the issue; Orin’s lifelong resistance to change was the problem. If something was still working, why fix it? If the house was still keeping the rain off their heads, why renovate it? Here it was ten years later, and Orin was still grousing about how they hadn’t really needed to build the new barn. But Ryan had plans for the ranch, plans to put his mark on things and make the place his own.

  His parents and his uncle would just have to learn to roll with it.

  By sunrise, Ryan had finished with his morning barn chores and was on his way out to check the fences in the northeast pasture. He’d be moving the herd there in the coming week, and he had to make sure they would be secure. Checking fences was a job that never seemed to end, especially on a ranch as large as this one. One broken fence and you’d be busting your ass to retrieve your herd from a neighbor’s land, and that was a dicey operation at best, especially this time of year, when the amount of hired help was minimal.

  For many jobs, Ryan preferred his four-wheel-drive truck over the four-hooved variety of transportation. But for checking fences, it was horseback or nothing. He rode Annie, a five-year-old mare, through the heavy ear
ly morning fog as daylight began to brighten the gauzy world around him.

  He loved this time of day, loved this time of year, when the air was cool and the world was softened by the mist at first light. Being out here by himself—just him and the powerful animal moving beneath him—gave him time to think, to reflect, to plan and prioritize.

  He thought about the work he had ahead of him today, about his long-term plans for the ranch, about friends and women and his place in the world.

  He thought about Lacy Jordan.

  Ah, Lacy. He had long been an admirer of her beauty, her gentleness, her effortless grace. He’d found himself unable to approach her, and he was beginning to understand why. It was because, on some level, he knew that she did not return his interest. If he were to ask her out, she would be too kind to shut him down the way another woman might. Her efforts not to hurt his feelings would likely result in false encouragement, which would draw out his eventual failure with her to uncomfortable lengths. Ryan, with his good instincts for people, somehow knew that, and that was what had prevented him from making a move.

  It should have worked between them, though. It should have been right. Lacy was gorgeous—no question about that—but she was also perfect for him. She’d lived in Cambria her whole life, like he had. She valued family relationships, like he did. She wanted a solid home life, a house full of noise and kids, just like he did. At least, that was what he’d heard from friends—both his and hers—in his inquiries about her. He hadn’t been bold enough to ask her himself.

  But in the times he’d approached her for a tentative conversation, something had been missing. Some undefinable element, some spark that would be needed if they were to eventually ignite a flame. He stubbornly continued to believe he could get that spark going, though. He just hadn’t rubbed enough rocks together yet.

  As he thought about exactly which rocks he might rub together, and how, his thoughts drifted to Gen Porter. He’d spent some time talking to her at the party last night, mostly hoping to get some insight into Lacy. Gen had seemed sad, irritated, keyed up. She’d been drinking a lot. He’d known her, casually, for a while now, and he’d never known her to be a drinker, at least not to any noticeable extent.