After the Climb (River Rain #1) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,66
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.”