Always You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection Books 5-8)

by Brenna Jacobs

  “I’m Geoff, by the way.” He offered his hand. “Fellow Whitney admirer.”

  She took his hand for the briefest moment before turning back to her screen to examine the image of the painting. “I’m no admirer. He’s a hack.”

  Geoffrey sat back like her words had smacked him in the chest. Which they kind of had. Tobias Whitney wasn’t just his mentor, he was his friend. It was under his tutelage that Geoffrey had channeled his own creative drive into sculptures created from discarded metal and electronics. Tobias had given Geoffrey the courage, and the connections, to show his own pieces—under a pseudonym, obviously—in one of the best art galleries in Los Angeles.

  Of course, the show had been panned as boring and derivative, but that wasn’t his mentor’s fault. If anyone was the hack, it was Geoffrey.

  “A hack?” he asked, the word swirling around in his mouth like bad beer. “Why’s that?”

  The woman shot him a look that danced between annoyance and arrogance, then sighed and turned her computer toward him. “Where is the life? Where is the feeling? It’s just lines. There’s no story to it.”

  Geoffrey’s lip curved into a side grin. He knew the story behind the painting—could see it even before Tobias told it to him. He pointed to the left corner of the painting. “Look at the convergence of color there. Those aren’t lines; those are emotions. The materials he uses make up the story behind the painting.”

  “Oh, I know.” She repositioned the laptop so the screen faced her. “I’ve read everything about it. The divorce that inspired it. The loss of faith that accompanied it . . . blah, blah, blah.” She flicked her hand in the air as though she were waving away a fly. “Everything that’s been written or said about Tobias Whitney, I’ve read or heard. His art just doesn’t speak to me.” She shrugged and offered him the smallest and briefest of smiles. “But most contemporary stuff doesn’t.”

  If not for that semi-smile, Geoffrey probably would have been offended by her bluntness. Instead, he felt drawn to her quiet confidence and total disinterest in impressing him. She was completely wrong in her assessment of Tobias’s work, but her honesty was refreshing, and she obviously didn’t know who he was, or she might not have been quite so upfront with him.

  “What art does speak to you? You clearly know what you’re talking about.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he couldn’t be positive it was the dry air and not some nervousness on his part that caused it. He took a sip of his sparkling water, letting the burn of the bubbles push back the excitement working its way up his chest.

  She turned toward him, her eyes slowly blinking as she seemed to consider whether or not to answer his question. “You really want to know?” Her eyes darted to his Dodgers cap, then to his chin where they stayed long enough that he felt compelled to rub his hand over his beard.

  It itched. He’d have to shave when he got home, but it offered him just enough anonymity in LA that it was worth whatever discomfort it caused.

  “You don’t look like the kind of guy who’d like what I like,” she continued. “Most people don’t.”

  “Try me.” He leaned on the armrest between them, only partly because it was the only way to get comfortable.

  “Medieval, proto-Renaissance.” She tipped her head to the side in a challenge.

  “Duccio? Cimabue?” he asked, and her eyebrows lifted. “Or do you prefer someone more obscure like Hildegard of Bingen?”

  Now she smiled. “I did my dissertation on her.” She pushed her glasses onto her head and purposefully looked him in the eyes for the first time, sending a spark of electricity through him. “Most people have never heard of her.”

  “I’m not most people.” Geoffrey cringed almost as soon as the words came out, even before the woman did. People expected him to act in a certain way, and it wasn’t always easy to not act in that way, even when there wasn’t the expectation that he’d be a flirt.

  “I see that,” she answered before turning back to her computer. “I’ve really got a lot of work to do, and I’d like to get some sleep before we land. I’ve got a big presentation tomorrow.”

  “Of course . . .” He wanted to call her something. “I didn’t catch your name,” he said as she put in her AirPods and opened her PowerPoint.

  Geoffrey thought she’d heard him, but he could have been wrong since she didn’t answer him. Either way, her signal was clear; she wasn’t interested in further conversation with him. That stung.

  He tried to soothe the sting by ordering a drink, then gulping it in one swallow. When that didn’t work, he reminded himself what his therapist had cautioned him against. There was very little Geoffrey couldn’t have, so he had a bad habit of chasing wildly after anything out of his reach, only to find that once he’d caught it, he didn’t really want it at all. It was the thrill of pursuit he wanted.

  Geoffrey took a deep breath to settle the nerves that were bouncing up and down in anticipation of a possible chase. He leaned back in his seat and was about to close his eyes but hazarded a glance at the woman’s computer instead. A name on her screen caught his eye.

  His name.

  Or, rather, his family’s name.

  He nearly gasped, but when she forwarded to the next slide and he saw the picture on it, a smile slid across his face instead.

  She didn’t need to tell him her name. He already knew it. And he’d be seeing her again once they got to London, whether she liked it or not.

  Chapter Two

  Alice wasn’t sure where the barfing pregnant woman had been reseated, but she was sure she didn’t have time to talk to the scruffy Englishman who took her place. Maybe if she hadn’t needed to perfect her presentation, she would have enjoyed making conversation with him; it was a ten-hour flight, after all. And he seemed sort of interesting, unlike most of the guys who tried to pick her up. He knew about art, and he wasn’t terrible looking—although she could have done without the beard. It was just shaggy enough to remind her of her dad, except her dad’s beard wasn’t a cultivated shaggy. Dad’s shagginess had been earned through years of hard work and hard drinking.

  So maybe it was Jack’s—or had he said his name was Jeff?—beard that had made it so easy for her to put in her AirPods and block him out.

  Most likely, however, it was her desire to get hired as the curator of the Grey family’s collection of medieval art that drove her to ignore him. She’d been working at the Fairfax Gallery for over a year curating exhibits of new artists, but what she really wanted to do was curate medieval works of art for museums. She’d only taken the gallery job because it was in LA, which had put her in close proximity to her mom and brother at a time when they both had needed her.

  But now the Grey family needed a curator for exactly the kind of exhibit she wanted to be part of. They wanted to make their collection of largely medieval art available for public viewing for the first time since they’d started collecting the pieces hundreds of years before. Rumors had surrounded the collection for centuries, including tales of illuminated manuscript pages that could be the work of Hildegard of Bingen. The Greys had never allowed anyone to closely examine the pieces for anything other than insurance purposes. And those examinations included nondisclosure agreements for the assessors. The family guarded their art treasures as closely as any medieval dragon would have.

  No one, not even Alice’s colleagues, knew just how obsessed she’d been with the idea of seeing the Grey collection. During her years as a grad student working on two degrees, Alice had spent her spare time dreaming of analyzing the collection. And now, by some miracle, she had the chance. Not only that, but her experience at the gallery made her the perfect person for the job—in her humble opinion. The family wanted to exhibit their pieces alongside contemporary works of art, which is what she’d been working with for over a year. So even though she didn’t love the idea of combining medieval and contemporary, she had the expertise in the first and experience with the second. And with her family needing less help than they’d ne
eded a year ago, the stars seemed to be in alignment for her to get this job.

  Alice pulled up the Spotify playlist she’d labeled Grey’s Art. It was all English artists—Adele, Coldplay, the Beatles (obviously)—with the exception of Lady Gaga’s “Highway Unicorn.” The last song was a sort of good-luck charm she’d thrown in with the hope that one of the pieces would have a unicorn in it. The unicorn had been an important, if little-used, symbol of Christ and chastity and was believed to only appear to virgins. Not many pieces depicting the mystical beast had survived past the middle ages, but the Greys were more likely than most collectors to have one.

  Once her playlist started, Alice turned her attention back to her PowerPoint. She stared at the introductory slide while chewing on the inside of her already raw bottom lip. She’d looked at it at least a million times, but there was nothing wrong with being thorough. Thorough is what had made her an expert in medieval art.

  Alice moved on to the next slide and was struck by a better way to word the first sentence. She deleted what she had and went to type in the new words when Jack/Jeff’s knee bumped her tray table so hard that her computer nearly slid into her lap.

  “Pardon me,” he said as he pulled his legs back, trying to position them without kneeing the seat in front of him. “I can’t seem to get comfortable.”

  “No worries.” Alice repositioned her laptop, trying not to be annoyed. The words she’d had in her head were gone. She sighed and shot an inconspicuous glare at her neighbor. Her annoyance quickly disappeared, however, when she saw that the sleeping man in the aisle seat had stretched his legs into her seat mate’s space.

  “Not sure what I can do about that,” Jack/Jeff said to her and wagged his head toward his neighbor.

  Alice pulled out one of her AirPods. “Why don’t you ask him to move over?” That was the most obvious thing he could do. She had to do that frequently—to men in particular—who thought her petite size entitled them to some of the space she wasn’t occupying.

  He glanced at the man as though considering Alice’s idea, but then shook his head. “I don’t want to wake him.”

  Alice stared unbelieving at him, then blinked. “I guess it’s going to be a pretty cramped flight for you then.” If being polite was more important to him than being comfortable she couldn’t help him. But she moved a little closer to the window anyway.

  The thought crossed her mind that she could trade him places, but then she took another look at the man as he turned and curled the other direction so that now his rear-end was spilling into Jack/Jeff’s personal space.

  No, thank you.

  But as she glanced at her neighbor trying to make himself as small as possible in order not to encroach on his space, she couldn’t help but take pity on Jack/Jeff. (Or was it George?)

  Alice leaned across the Englishman and gently tapped his neighbor’s shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  The man snorted and shrugged off her hand.

  “It’s quite all right,” her neighbor said, but Alice set her jaw and tried again, this time shaking the man until he grunted and sat up.

  “Can you give this gentleman a little more room, please?” she said in her firmest voice.

  The man glared at her then glanced at her neighbor.

  “It is a bit crowded.” The Englishman stared down the man until he’d shifted all of his weight back into his own seat.

  “Thank you,” he said to Alice once he’d stretched out his legs.

  Alice nodded and put her AirPod back in, set up her laptop and turned on her music again. Before too long she was back into her work, oblivious once more to everyone and everything around her.

  An hour later her phone alarm went off, alerting her that she needed to take her sleeping pill if she wanted to get six hours of sleep. She glanced at Jack/Jeff. He was still awake and reading a book. She tipped her head to see the title: The Count of Monte Cristo. His eyes drifted in her direction, and Alice quickly sat back in her seat.

  Familiar with obscure art and he was a reader? An almost uncontrollable urge to ask him what he thought about the book rushed over her. It had been a long time since Alice had met a man who shared her interests, and she loved reading almost as much as she loved art.

  She checked her watch.

  Nope. If she was going to get the sleep she needed, she couldn’t take a chance that he’d want to talk for more than ten minutes. Instead of making conversation, Alice took her pill, replaced her glasses with her sleep mask, and waited for the wave of unconsciousness to wash over her. The only time she allowed herself to take anything to help her sleep was when she had to take a long flight. She hated being jet-lagged and exhausted after crossing time zones, and she needed to be fresh for her interview that was scheduled within eight hours of landing.

  Alice had been asleep for what seemed like only a matter of minutes when something shook her awake. As she woke, she realized her music wasn’t playing, and her sleep mask was askew, letting the bright lights of the cabin flood her eyes. As she blinked fully awake, she realized that the “something” shaking her was Jack/Jeff and the hard thing under her cheek was his shoulder. And she was horrified to discover that the wet feeling on her cheek was her spittle.

  Alice bolted upright, pushed the mask to the top of her head, and oulled out her AirPods. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the wet circle on her seatmate’s shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry!” Her face was already splotched red with embarrassment, she could feel it. “I’ve never done that before, I swear.” She yanked the sleep mask off her head and used it to blot at the spot she’d left on his shoulder.

  “It’s quite all right.” His voice held the hint of a laugh in it. “You were sleeping so soundly,” he added. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  She stopped patting his shoulder and dropped the mask in her lap. The spot was still there, and the only thing she’d succeeded in doing was making him smile.

  “Thank you.” Her eyes dropped to her watch, and she realized that, somehow, she’d slept more than the six hours she’d allotted herself, which meant she didn’t have time to review her presentation again.

  “We’ll be landing in a few minutes,” Jack/Jeff said, motioning toward the illuminated seat belt sign. “I was beginning to fear you might sleep through our disembarking. I’d hate for you to end up back in LA.”

  “Thank you,” she repeated while smoothing her hair. “I might have.”

  He grinned, and Alice allowed herself to enjoy it. His bottom teeth overlapped slightly in the front, and she liked it. She liked imperfection in people, even if it was only cosmetic. It reminded her that she didn’t have to be perfect. Sometimes she forgot.

  “Have you been to London before?” he asked a few minutes later as the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac.

  They both lurched forward as the pilot braked, and she grabbed his arm. She hated this part. Ninety-nine percent—or something like that—of all plane crashes happened on take-off or landing.

  “Never,” she answered and let go of his arm as the plane slowed. “I’ve always wanted to.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  The plane slowed, and Alice could breathe again. “I’m not sure. It depends on a few things.” She kept her answer vague on purpose, in case he was thinking about asking her out. To discourage him even more, she took her phone off airplane mode and waited for the texts she knew she’d have to appear. She had enough going on in her life right now. The last thing she needed was a man to distract her from her whole purpose for being in London: to curate the collection of her dreams.

  As she read her texts, however, she was reminded of how difficult it would be for her to be a continent and an ocean away from her mom and brother if she did get the job.

  “Would you like any tips about what to see or do?”

  She was so absorbed in the text from her mother that she almost missed his question. “Oh, yeah, that would be great,” Alice answered, tearing her eyes from her screen to meet his onl
y long enough to add, “I’m sorry. I’ve really got to answer this.”

  “Of course,” he mumbled. “Go right ahead.”

  A flicker of guilt for her rudeness traveled through her but was quickly forgotten as she re-read her mother’s text.

  Billy’s medicine more $$.

  Oh no! How much more? Alice texted back. Calling her mom would take less time than texting but would be more emotionally taxing, and Alice needed to stay focused on prepping for her interview. She didn’t let her mind wander to what the future would look like if she actually got the job and had to leave her family behind in Bakersfield.

  $100. What should I do?

  Get the medicine. I’ll put the money in your account. Alice sighed. Her brother’s unexpected medical bills had taken a toll on her bank account. Luckily, she had been able to count the trip to London as a work trip since she’d be looking for art to exhibit at the Fairfax, the LA gallery where she currently worked. If she hadn’t been so grossly underpaid for the hours she put in, Alice would have felt more guilty about squeezing in a job interview on her employer’s dime.

  She didn’t know exactly how much the Grey job paid, but the experience would open doors for her that could mean enough money between publishing and curating to quit worrying about the cost of Billy’s meds. She prayed she hadn’t flown across the world to chase a dream.

  I’m sorry, honey. Sure love you. Say hi to the queen for me. Show them what you got.

  Alice smiled as she read her mom’s text. Her words of encouragement swept away some of Alice’s fear, just like they always did. Brenda Donnelly didn’t really understand what her daughter did—or that she’d be interviewing with Miranda Grey-Chatsworth, Viscountess of Ashburn, not Queen Elizabeth—and had no interest in art herself, but she always cheered Alice on.

  The plane slowed to a stop and the seat belt sign turned off, but Alice didn’t notice they were at the gate until Jack/Jeff tapped her shoulder. “May I help you with a bag?”