After the Climb Read online

  Oh my.

  “Can I make spaghetti and meatballs?”

  “You can do whatever you want.”

  “I need to get showered and go ride with my girl, Bowie.”

  “I’ll let you go then. But Gen?”

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t our time before. This is our time. Don’t let outside shit fuck with your head. We’re us. We always connect. We’ve got this.”

  “You’re right, darling.”

  “I am, baby. Now go. See you in a few hours.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up and I instantly thought of Tom.

  Perhaps his jealous spate had not subsided.

  He would feel no joy if Team Tom won out.

  Because he’d know Duncan was the true winner.

  And Tom had held up a number of shiny trophies to the cheering crowds.

  So he was an excellent competitor.

  And a very sore loser.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Meal

  Duncan

  Duncan probably broke a record, by a long shot, getting out of his car and hauling his ass to the door to the kitchen after he’d pulled into his garage and saw Genny’s Cayenne there.

  Clearly, Bettina had seen to things as he’d asked, giving her a remote.

  He’d also instructed she give Genny a set of keys.

  He doubted she failed in this endeavor.

  He walked in and was accosted by dogs.

  And the smell of garlic.

  Last, his first vision of Genny, his old Genny, from back in the day, standing at his range.

  Bare feet. Jeans. And a River Rain tee Chloe had stolen and given her to wear riding so she didn’t sweat on her fancy duds.

  She’d changed when she came to meet him for lunch but had admitted then that her daughter had light fingers.

  He’d told her he’d already learned that, and he didn’t care.

  It was too big on her and she’d knotted it at the waist.

  She looked amazing in it.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but you told me it was an old one, and you could always get more, and sauce splashes—”

  She had not missed his eyes on her tee.

  She also didn’t finish what she said.

  Because it was hard to talk when your man was squeezing the breath out of you and had his tongue down your throat.

  When he broke their kiss, she stared fuzzily up at him and muttered, “I thought it was the little woman’s job to welcome the man home like that.”

  “I’m enlightened. Totally equal opportunity when it comes to kissing you fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?”

  “Baby, you can’t even focus.”

  “I can see you clearly, Bowie.”

  To make her laugh, but only for that, he took one arm from around her and held three fingers in front of her face.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  She took her arms from around his neck, pushed her hands between them, gave him a weak, totally-didn’t-mean-it shove, and said, “Shut up, Bowie.”

  But she did it laughing.

  He gave her a grin, a quick kiss, let her go and looked to the stove.

  Genny’s meatballs and red sauce.

  Fucking hell.

  He could almost convince himself he missed that more than he missed her.

  Okay, not almost.

  Not even close.

  But he loved her spaghetti and meatballs.

  Marilyn, Gen’s mom, was a dame, but Marilyn’s mom was Italian, and she’d taught Marilyn to cook.

  As well as Genny.

  Her meatballs were works of art.

  And her baked ziti should have its own religion.

  Thinking of Marilyn, and smelling his kitchen, and having Genny in it, cooking, Duncan couldn’t stop himself chuckling.

  “What’s funny now?” she asked.

  He grabbed the wooden spoon sitting on the spoon rest and looked at her.

  “I was thinking of your mom. When we were hanging out on your back porch, and I wondered out loud how you got that blonde hair and those blue eyes, when your mom is dark and half Italian, and her answer was, ‘My husband has superior sperm.’”

  Genny giggled and leaned a hip against the counter. “God, I remember that. I was so embarrassed.”

  “You were only sixteen. At sixteen, boy or girl, no one wants to think their dad has sperm.”

  She snatched up a towel and slapped it against his arm, stating, “I still don’t want to think of it, Bowie.”

  He shot her another grin and dipped the wooden spoon in the huge vat (Gen never skimped when she made her red sauce, but that made it better, because if, within a few days, a miracle had occurred and it wasn’t eaten, it went into the freezer to provide future good times).

  He brought the spoon to his lips, blew on it and then tasted.

  Fucking heaven.

  “Does it pass inspection?” she asked.

  “Can we eat now?” he asked back.

  She looked horrified. “We have at least twenty more minutes of simmering.”

  “Sorry, out of practice,” he teased.

  She rolled her eyes.

  Now there…

  That she gave to Chloe.

  “You need to greet your dogs and give Cookie your stamp of approval,” she ordered.

  He bent to the animals gathered around his legs to do that, asking, “Is Cookie settling in okay?”

  “Apparently, I can take her on my jet-set travels. She settled in swimmingly. But I’m not sure Tuck is a fan. I haven’t seen him since she claimed the great room.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Duncan muttered, finishing with Shasta and Rocco, he straightened with Killer in his arms.

  And Tuck would have to, since Gen was moving up there.

  At least, she’d be there part time. When they weren’t in Phoenix.

  And if he got his way, that would be most-of-the-time part time.

  “Beer?” she asked, heading to the fridge.

  He looked around, saw she had a glass of wine on the counter, so he answered, “Yeah.”

  She ducked in the fridge.

  He let Killer go, went in search of Cookie, and did this sharing, “Just to say, for the first time, Gage figured out a couple of days ago that his dad has sperm. He’s entirely grossed out by this concept, but he figured it out because he further figured out it’s been in you, it’s gonna be in you again, and he’s currently strategizing how he’s going to handle all of his friends knowing this same thing.”

  By the time he found Cookie, who was curled up on the back of the couch (though she was a sweet kitty, and thus she uncurled to stretch and reach for some scratches from his hand), he turned and saw Gen was standing in his open fridge with a bottle of beer in her hand, staring at him in dismay.

  “Further heads up on that my son has yet to clue into the basics of appropriate social discourse, and in some cases behavior, no matter how much his mother and I drilled it into him. So I take no responsibility for what comes out of his mouth, or noises from other orifices in his body,” he finished.

  Her eyes crinkled before her smile came and she was shaking her head as she shut the door on the refrigerator and went right to the drawer that held his bottle opener.

  She’d familiarized herself with his kitchen.

  He fucking loved that.

  Having given Cookie his stamp of approval, or more to the point, having received the message she was done with it and she was jumping away, he returned to the island and slid onto a stool just as Genny slid the beer across to him.

  She nabbed her wine and asked, “How was your day?”

  “Lowkey, which is good. I had a shit-ton to catch up on. Email is like tribbles.”

  She laughed softly.

  “Yours?” he queried.

  “Well, um…” She turned from him and her wine to go to the stove and stir.

  “Well, um, what?” he prompted, perplexed at her hesitancy.


  They didn’t have a lot of time in with their reunion, but unless she was being bashful, an obstacle it appeared she’d leaped right over, she’d always seemed totally open.

  “Okay, there are things I didn’t share at lunch,” she told the pot.

  Lunch was good. Light. What they’d had the day before when it was about them and they didn’t let other shit drag on it.

  He wasn’t big on there being something dragging on her that she didn’t share.

  “Like what?” he asked, feeling a tenseness hit his neck, because they didn’t have a lot of time in with their reunion, and although it seemed to be going great, at this juncture, it was very new.

  Anything could fuck it up.

  And that was something he couldn’t let happen.

  Not again.

  She put the spoon on the rest, and returned to her wine, and him.

  “Okay, well, the man who created Rita’s Way is developing another series and he wants me for it.”

  The tension left and he smiled. “That’s awesome.”

  She studied him. “Duncan, being a principle on a series is a lot of work.”

  “So?”

  “He says, if I’m interested, and it’s picked up, he’ll film in Phoenix.”

  “Even better.”

  She studied him closer. “You really have no issue with this?”

  Duncan was feeling something creeping up in him, and he didn’t like it.

  This being irritation.

  “Why would I have an issue with it?”

  “Well, depending on how long a season runs, I’d need to be down in Phoenix a lot of the time, and probably in LA on some occasions, to film it. And that doesn’t include the travel I’d need to do to market it.”

  “Gen, I have seventy-five stores in fifty different cities and we’re in the planning stages to open up five more. I’m also the official spokesperson for two very active charities. I’m a hands-on CEO. And I give one hundred percent to any commitment I make. I don’t sit on my ass in Prescott watching TV when I’m not a drudge sitting behind a desk in the office.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “It’s just…different when it’s so public.”

  “So you’re saying Tom had an issue with you working and being out there.”

  “No, because Tom was a celebrity in his own right.”

  “So you’re saying I won’t get it ’cause I’m not famous.”

  “I’m saying it’s something to get used to as it is, but if it takes off, as Teddy’s shows have a tendency to do, it can get serious, invasive to life and stressful.”

  “And you don’t think I can handle that.”

  She shot straight and her face set.

  “What I think is I don’t know what to think, Duncan,” she snapped. “Don’t keep telling me what I’m saying. I started a discussion about a possible job that might come out of a script I haven’t even read yet. I’m not casting aspersions on you, your character, or your ability to handle life with me working. But we’re doing this.” She slapped a hand between them. “And as I’d expect a conversation from you if you were looking into taking on something that would take your time and especially take you away from me where you didn’t, say, sleep in bed beside me, I’m doing that right now with you.”

  He was not irritated in the slightest anymore.

  “Okay, Genny, you can cool it and thank you for that, and just to point out, if you wanna do this and it means something to you, I’ll deal, and we’ll deal. Dora’s a salesperson. She sells software. Her area is a quarter of the US. She’s good at it and she makes a load and she travels a lot. She started that job after we split and the boys were about ready to roll out. But she was in sales before that, she was successful then too, and to be that, you gotta work hard so she wasn’t always in the kitchen baking cookies. It might not be the same scale, but it’s not something I haven’t dealt with.”

  “Okay, fine,” she clipped.

  “And I’m sorry I got irritated, honey, but you talk a lot about being Imogen Swan and all that shit and it might not have been casting aspersions on my ability to handle it, but it was feeling like that and it was getting annoying.”

  “I can see that,” she bit off.

  He stared at her.

  And then he demanded, “Okay, what’s actually the matter?”

  She looked to her wine.

  Then she nabbed it and threw a whole lot back.

  She put it down and said, “Tom knows about us and I didn’t tell him. We had a deal, if one of us started dating, we’d warn the other, no matter how casual. Tom also knows about you and who you are to me, and as such, he realizes this is far from casual. And you might have found out only recently that Dora had an issue with me, when you emerged as the CEO of an up-and-coming and very popular, which means very successful store, Tom knew who you were and there were issues. I thought he worked through them, but even if he didn’t share the fullness of his feelings this morning, I got the drift and somehow he’s seeing this as a betrayal. And he’s very angry and Tom doesn’t get angry. Not at me.”

  “Was he a dick to you?”

  “Very much so, and that’s not Tom.”

  “Trying not to lose it here, baby,” he said softly in warning.

  “You can’t be mad. He’s right. I should have told him. It should have come from me.”

  “You’re divorced, he really does not get that, Gen.”

  She shook her head. “That isn’t who we are.”

  That tension in his neck came back and his words were careful when he suggested, “Maybe you should share who you are.”

  She went to the stove.

  Stirred the sauce.

  He waited, not very patiently.

  She came back to the island.

  She put her hands to it, leaned into them, her head bent.

  When she looked up at him, he knew to brace.

  So he did.

  And it was good he did.

  “Okay, you see, when I lost the last man I loved, I lost my best friend.”

  Fuck.

  “And when Tom cheated on me, and there was no question, because I smelled some perfume on one of his shirts that wasn’t mine, and I honest to God thought it was Chloe’s, but I teased him that he was stepping out on me, and he couldn’t lie and say it was his daughter’s. So he admitted it to me.”

  “Jesus, baby,” Duncan whispered.

  She nodded.

  “It was not good. And although there is a part of me, in the months that came after, the endless talks, the counseling, that understands that, when my career dwindled, the roles I was offered were less interesting, less challenging, and then eventually simply insulting, I turned in on myself. Which means I tuned out my marriage, and him, and our sex life. Which I will admit, regrettably and with not a small amount of guilt, became nonexistent for a good length of time. It still was not okay for him to go out and fuck someone that was not me.”

  “No,” Duncan said gently.

  “But he did. And I couldn’t get past that. I tried. But I couldn’t. It was frustrating for us both. And harming what we had left. Which was still based in love, and respect, and history, and our family, and for me, very importantly, he was my best friend.”

  Tears were brightening her eyes, and it took a lot for Duncan to keep his seat, but he did and said, “I get that.”

  “So we made a deal to cut our losses with the marriage, and keep hold of the friendship. And so far, it’s worked.”

  “And now there’s me.”

  She nodded again. “And now there’s you.”

  “And you don’t wanna lose him in the way you have him,” Duncan deduced.

  She shook her head and looked away.

  Now was the time.

  He got off his stool and moved to her.

  She didn’t fight him when he pulled her in his arms.

  Hers only loosely went around him and she shoved her face in his c
hest.

  And he was right.

  It was the time.

  Because she lost it.

  “I-I’m not c-crying because there’s something there. It just died, Bowie. He killed it and he didn’t mean to, but he did. I c-couldn’t be intimate with him anymore. It was in my head. Did he touch her like that? Did he kiss her there? They’d fucked two times, and it was only her, and I believe that with the mess he was in sharing it, knowing what it was doing to us, and knowing it could have been fifty women and thousands of times, or just one just once, and it wouldn’t matter. The damage was done.”

  She tipped her head back and her mascara was running a little.

  “But I’d lost you and you were gone. We had a lot of sex, but you listened when I had a bad day, or we laughed when my mom was being crazy, or you unloaded on me when your dad was a dick. You were my go-to and then Tom was my go-to. I couldn’t lose another go-to.”

  “Totally understandable,” he said soothingly.

  “And I can’t now, even if I have my other go-to back,” she admitted, then shoved her face in his chest again.

  “I’m not ever gonna ask that, Genny,” he assured, rubbing her back.

  He said it. He meant it.

  It was going to be tough, in the beginning.

  But if this guy could get a lock on whatever was fucking with his head that made him be a dick to her, Duncan was willing to do it.

  “Yeah,” she snuffled. “That’s how you get to be a go-to.”

  He grinned, bent, kissed the top of her head, and then asked, “So, he lost it with you this morning and what?”

  “I’ve texted and told him when he gets a handle on it, he can call me, and we’ll talk it out.” She tipped her head back again. “He has not called me.”

  “You need to give him the go-to speech, beautiful.”

  “Wh-what?” she asked, blinking up at him and lifting a hand to swipe her cheek.

  Mascara disaster.

  He didn’t say that.

  “Gen, if he’s the guy I think he is, and that’s just what I know with you wanting to keep him in your life, then he’ll hear the go-to speech and sort his shit. Give him time to get his head straight. And then call him. It’ll be okay.”

  “I’m not making excuses for him, I’m saying, you live, you learn, and although I found I couldn’t forgive Tom for sullying our marriage bed, Tom couldn’t forgive me for not only not being able to forgive him, but also not turning to him, which was what sent him searching. You see, Bowie, he knew he was my go-to and that meant a lot to him. And when I hit that crisis, I didn’t go to him. He saw that as a betrayal. The thing is, he turned right around and instigated the same thing, because honestly, he didn’t try too hard to reach me. So I get we both fucked up, though it isn’t immature to say his was a way huger fuckup. But we can’t do that, you and me. We can’t hit the skids and not talk about it. You can’t coast in a marriage, a relationship. You have to keep your eye on the ball all the time.”