Because of the hangover—and the fact that she’d overslept—she was opening the gallery a little late today. It was 10:25 by the time she flipped the sign on her door to OPEN. Sure, one of the benefits of having her own place was that she could open whenever she wanted. But arriving late was just a bad business practice.
She was dressed in a close-fitting, sleeveless black sheath dress and black pumps with three-inch heels, her curly red hair pulled up into a chignon with a few stray curls dangling beside her face. The look was standard New York. Here in Cambria, the shop owners were more likely to wear a flowing, hand-woven shawl or a maxi dress with a painted silk scarf, but Gen had never quite been ready to go native. She’d been a New York girl once, and she planned to be one again. It was best to act like it, so the transition would be easier when it was finally time to go home.
Home.
With Davis MacIntyre gone, and with him all of the obstacles he’d placed in her path, the idea of returning was a possibility once more. But she couldn’t simply show up on 57th Street and announce she was back. While Davis MacIntyre would no longer be spreading hurtful rumors about her, that also meant that everyone had probably forgotten who she was.
She needed a plan.
She was thinking about that when Daniel Reed came in the front door toting a carton the size of a mini refrigerator.
Daniel was tall, dark, and gorgeous, all rugged masculinity with his faded jeans and his close-fitting T-shirt—just the kind of man she was usually attracted to. Too bad she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him. There was no accounting for it. On paper, they’d have made the perfect couple. She was a gallery owner, he was an artist. She was single, he was single. She was delighted by his company, and he by hers. But there simply was no chemistry. After more than a year of working with him, he seemed more like a brother. Life could be unfair sometimes.
“Hey, Gen,” he said jovially.
“Ugh,” she answered.
He put down his carton, put his hands on his hips, and looked at her with his head cocked. “You don’t look so good.”
“That’s funny, because I feel … like hell.”
“Last night around the time you took your third tequila shot, I said to myself, ‘Daniel, that girl’s going to have a rough day tomorrow.’ And look how right I was.”
“But at least you aren’t smug at all, so that’s something,” Gen said.
“Something bothering you last night?” His tone was casual, but the invitation was there for a heart-to-heart, something she might have welcomed on another occasion, but that she just couldn’t deal with right now.
“What’s in the carton?” Gen said.
“You’re changing the subject,” Daniel observed.
“Imagine that. What’s in the carton?”
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.