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.”