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Apparently that had really gotten to him. She hadn’t meant it as a jab, to her it was just simple fact. Uncomfortable, she tossed off the first explanation she could think of.

“Who else could it be, there with him like that?”

“And the drawing of just you?”

She thought of that image, a woman as lovely as…perhaps her mother, at a younger age, before the booze had done its damage to her looks. Yet gentler, kinder than her mother could ever be. Lovely on the inside, too, so much that it shone through.

A woman she would never be.

“I didn’t show it to him. That’s no more me than some portrait of a royal by an artist currying favor.”

“So that’s what I am now? A sycophant?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?”

She was breathing again. This, she could do. Much easier than delving into that portrait he’d done. “You keep saying you’re not an artist at all. Why?” Steadier now, she added firmly, “And ‘I’m a craftsman’ is not an acceptable answer.”

He gave her an irritated glance. “But it is the answer.”

“Why?” she said again. “Why would you deny what’s so obvious? Anybody who looked at those drawings would call you an artist.”

“I don’t care what anybody else calls me.”

She was getting to him, she could tell; that had come out rather clipped. But to get what she wanted out of him, she was going to have to push harder, because this was buried deep. “So no one knows what an artist is except you?”

“No one knows what I am except me.” That came out even sharper.

“Let’s ask the expert on it, then. Obviously you have a criteria in mind. So who do you think of first, when you think of an artist?”

“My father was an artist.”

And there it was, the opening she’d been after. “Yes. Yes he was. And of a rare caliber.”

“Yes.” His tone had softened then, with that touch of pain she heard in all their voices when they spoke of the man.

“Then tell me, Rylan,” she said, very softly, “isn’t denying you are also an artist in essence denying you inherited your talent from him? And in a way, denying him?”

He didn’t look at her, not even a quick glance. He stared down the interstate as if it was a runway and he was at the controls of a fighter jet. Only the jump of the muscle in his jaw and the tightness of his grip on the wheel betrayed that her words had stabbed home.

He was silent for so long she thought she might have accomplished two things. She’d learned she was right on target with her observation. But she’d also made him so mad that it was entirely possible he’d never speak to her again. Which might let her escape from the apology she knew came next. And unlike the casual ones she had gotten into the habit of tossing out too frequently—as he had repeatedly pointed out—this one she needed to make.

The apology for thinking even for a moment that a man like him would want a woman like her in the way she’d accused him of.

She’d probably been more wrong in her life, but she couldn’t think of when.

Chapter Twenty-Six

By the timethey hit Georgetown heading south, he’d had enough of over-civilization. He bailed off the interstate onto State Route 29 and headed west. It would take longer, but he needed to think. And besides, he felt much better on the smaller, lesser traveled road. He didn’t want to have the rest of this discussion and try and focus on freeway traffic at the same time, even on Sunday.

Especially after she’d already blown him to bits with that little observation of hers.

He’d known, deep down, for a long time, that his father was the reason he turned his back on being called an artist. Some part of him simply and firmly insisted he was not and could not be what his father had so clearly been. A genius-level artist. And so he’d clung to the wordcraftsmanas if it were a shield. He was good at what he did, but what he did was not of the same caliber as the man who’d done the paintings they held so dear.

He just hadn’t expected anyone else—especially someone he’d just met—to get it. He suspected Mom knew, on some level, but she’d never broached the subject. And she certainly hadn’t fired a broadside at him the way Kaitlyn had.

Isn’t denying you are also an artist in essence denying you inherited your talent from him? And in a way, denying him?