The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  “Ah. Manly.” Winona’s lips twitched as the glint became a full-on blaze. “So a manly, surly military type? Sounds like an erotic author’s wet dream to me.”

  Suzanne cringed at her friend’s word choice, reminding her how badly she’d run her mouth. He probably thought she was a ditz. Or some sexually depraved artiste from the city who painted abstract shapes of a vaguely sexual nature. Like her mother. But his brooding silence had made her feel too awkward to stay quiet.

  “Maybe you should take my bed at the boardinghouse,” Winona continued, her voice light and teasing. “And I’ll go live at the cottage.”

  No. The word reverberated around her skull, her muse jerking at the suggestion. She had no barometer for sarcasm. “I think I want to…paint him.”

  Even now, Suzanne’s muse twitched restlessly, like a tempest beneath her skin. Images and colors, light and shadow, flow and symmetry swirled through her mind in a kaleidoscope of sensation that was dizzying.

  That got Winona’s attention. “Oh really?”

  Suzanne nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That’s great, babe,” Winona enthused, her hands covering Suzanne’s.

  Winona, who had seen some of Suzanne’s aimless doodlings one day, had always championed Suzanne’s talent, convinced she was more than capable of being an artist in her own right. But Suzanne had been told a long time ago that she didn’t have the raw gift her mother possessed, and she’d known it was true.

  Sure, Suzanne could paint, she had talent, but a true artist needed more. Those mad scribblings she did late at night didn’t count; hell, they weren’t even art. They were just…exercise. All talent needed to be exercised. But her true calling was reproduction. Give her another artist’s painting, and she could study the colors and the brushwork and the techniques and reproduce it perfectly.

  Rembrandt. Gauguin. Turner. Monet. Kahlo. Van Gogh. Cassat. Picasso. She’d done them all and more and been paid very nicely both from private collectors as well as publicly funded museums, art galleries, and other places that displayed priceless paintings.

  Or copies of them anyway.

  And she loved it. She loved her job. Who’d have thought art forgery could ever be a legitimate profession?

  “I don’t know.” Suzanne withdrew her hands nervously. She didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself. It had been so long since she’d painted anything original, she didn’t know if she was even capable. And portraits were…tricky. It was best to stick to the landscape for now. “We’ll see. Don’t hold your breath.”

  Winona nodded, but she did an excited little squiggle in her chair anyway, and Suzanne laughed, grateful for the day they’d been introduced at one of her mother’s art exhibitions in Chicago a few years ago. Suzanne had been instantly drawn to the older woman, who was loud and irreverent and spoke her mind. Winona was the real deal, and for someone who dealt in fakes for a living, it had been a refreshing change.

  Suzanne usually headed to Chicago, to Winona’s, in between commissions to clear her head. And this time, at Winona’s urging, she’d come to Credence.

  “So…” Suzanne shoveled more pie into her mouth as she glanced out the window at the afternoon shadows lengthening down the main street. “You’re really going to stay here?”

  Winona smiled and nodded. “I really am.”

  “It seems so…”

  “So?”

  “So not you. You’ve always been so…Chicago.”

  Winona grinned. “I love it here. I didn’t expect to—I only came because I thought a bunch of bachelorettes coming to the ass-end of nowhere to hook up with a farmer would make a great plot for a book. But…” She shook her head. “It really crept up on me, and you should see the land I’ve bought at the lake. It’s…everything I never knew I wanted.”

  Suzanne returned the grin. How could she not? Winona’s was so infectious. “How long until the house is finished?”

  “Benji was hoping to get it done by Christmas and before the first snow of the season, but…there are disadvantages to living in a rural area.” She shrugged. “We’re aiming for spring.”

  “And you can write in the boardinghouse?”

  Winona had told her that several of the women who had chosen to make Credence home were still living at the boardinghouse that had been made available for them. “Mostly. Sometimes I go out to the lake and sit on the end of the pier if there’s no one there.” Her gaze drifted to the door, and Winona’s expression changed. “Oh hello, here’s trouble.”

  Suzanne frowned, turning to find a police officer—a seriously hot police officer—entering Annie’s, taking off his Top Gun sunglasses to scan the diner. He removed his hat to reveal a buzz cut mostly black aside from the scattering of salt coming through the spikes of pepper. He had sharp cheekbones, and the fuzz on his head was mirrored by a five-o’clock shadow along the hard cut of his jaw as his gaze flicked over Suzanne, then zeroed in.

  It was the kind of gaze that compelled confession.

  He was tall and broad, his stride long and determined if just ever so slightly uneven as he headed in their direction. Holy RoboCop, Batman. “Who is that?” she asked, turning back to face Winona.

  “That is Arlo Pike.”

  Suzanne heard the tightness in her friend’s voice. “He an asshole?”

  “Nah. Just a stickler for the rules, which makes him a little too uptight for my liking.” Winona was more free love and artistic expression than laws and boundaries. She grinned suddenly. “And extra-special fun to rile.”

  “Something tells me he’s not a man who’s easily riled.”

  Winona shrugged. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”

  Suzanne suppressed a smile. Winona liked to toy with men, mostly because she did not suffer fools gladly and too many guys made sleazy assumptions about what she did or tried to denigrate it or both. “He’s a hottie.”

  Winona gave a brief nod, not bothering to deny the undisputable fact. “And he knows it.” She plastered a beguiling smile on her face and said, “Officer Pike,” as he stopped beside their booth.

  He nodded stiffly and, in a no-nonsense voice, said, “Winona.” He clearly had no desire to tangle with her today. He turned his attention to Suzanne. “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m assuming, as you’re the only person in here who’s not a local, that the lurid green…vehicle in the back parking lot belongs to you?”

  Suzanne bit down on a laugh at his clear distaste for her van. “Ethel? Yep, she’s mine.”

  The officer blinked. “You named your vehicle Ethel?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t she look like an Ethel to you?”

  “No, ma’am.” He looked like naming cars was a damn fool idea.

  “Last I checked, Officer,” Winona chimed in, “it isn’t against the law to give your car a name, is it?”

  “Nope, not illegal.” Although his tone left neither of them in any doubt he considered it stupid.

  “So this is a social call, then?”

  Ignoring Winona’s jibe, he met Suzanne’s gaze again. “Your left passenger tire is flat.”

  “Oh.” Suzanne sat up straighter. Shit… “I didn’t notice anything. It didn’t feel flat when I was driving.”

  “Might be a slow leak. If you give me your keys, I can change it for you and take it to the auto shop to be fixed.”

  If Suzanne’s muse hadn’t already fixated on a surly rancher, she might very well have swooned at this small-town hospitality. She couldn’t imagine a cop in New York offering to change her tire.

  “Slow day, Officer?” Winona dug some more. “No bad guys to catch?”

  He shot her a tight, aloof smile. “Bad guys fear me,” he said with a confidence that bordered on arrogance but, Suzanne had to admit, was kinda hot. He held out his hand to her. “Keys, ma’am?”

  “And what makes you think she can’t
change her own damn tire?” Winona inquired, arching her brow.

  Suzanne had never changed a tire in her life. She definitely did not want to change this one, and she didn’t care how un-feminist that made her. But Winona was on a roll, and Suzanne knew better than to interrupt.

  “I don’t know whether you got the memo or not, but women are perfectly capable of”—Winona lowered her voice and leaned closer to him—“looking after themselves.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” The angle of his jaw went white as it tightened. “I’ve been on your website.”

  Winona’s face lit up. “Really?” she purred.

  “There was a pornography complaint.” He smiled, obviously enjoying himself. “Just doing my job…ma’am.”

  Suzanne had never seen Winona speechless until now. For a second, her mouth just hung open before she laughed. “A pornography complaint? I hope you dismissed it.”

  “The Credence Police Department investigates all complaints thoroughly.”

  He sounded like a public service announcement, but Winona clearly had his measure. “I hope it was educational.”

  Suzanne swore she saw the faint twitch of Arlo’s lips before he turned back to her and the original reason for his stopping. “Keys, ma’am?”

  Fishing around in her bag, Suzanne handed them over. “Thank you, Officer.”

  Arlo’s hand closed around them. “Ma’am,” he said and took his leave.

  Suzanne watched him go. Officer Hottie’s back view was as delectable as the front. So why was it Joshua Grady’s ass and how soon she might be able to see it again, the only thing she was thinking about right now?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Suzanne woke the next morning from a night of disturbingly vivid dreams about her new neighbor and the compulsion to paint riding her hard. Normally her day didn’t start until nine or ten and involved a lot of lazing with coffee and her favorite blueberry bagels, then a leisurely Uber to the loft studio her parents had bought for her in Greenwich. She painted until the light faded, then went home.

  Next day the same. Rinse and repeat.

  A commissioned piece of art could take her anywhere from a week to three months to complete, depending on the size and the purpose of the project, because Suzanne was damn good at what she did. She was careful and methodical, taking pride in every brushstroke, every color match, every subtle nuance of the original work.

  Rushing wasn’t an option. You rushed an artist, you got rotten art.

  This was nothing like that. This was a wild frenzy in her blood. A jungle drum. A siren’s call. She had to paint. Now. No lazing, no coffee, no bagels. No waiting for the sun to rise enough to create the perfect light conditions. She just had to put paint on brush, thanking God she’d decided to prep some canvases last night as she’d set the cottage up to her liking.

  The subject? Joshua Grady.

  Except Suzanne couldn’t go there—she just couldn’t. He may be what her muse wanted Suzanne to paint, but her head and her heart did not. Could not. She’d come to Credence to tempt her muse with the kind of vastness she could see outside her windows. The faded wintery green of the grass in the field, the stark bare branches of the trees lining the drive, the lazy graze of animals, the arc of blue sky. The vista she’d been so enamored with yesterday as she’d slid out of Ethel.

  She hadn’t come to paint a…rancher. She certainly hadn’t expected the whispers of a muse far more enamored with Grady than the starkly beautiful landscape. But she was the one in control here, damn it. She was in charge. And she would channel this sudden flush of creativity into bringing the landscape to life. Not Joshua Grady.

  She would bend it to her will.

  Because painting people—portraits—was difficult and, oddly, Suzanne felt like she had her training wheels on again. Sure, she’d copied portraits over the years, but that was easy—that was copying the artist’s color palette and brushstrokes, not painting the subject. Because painting another person, re-creating their presence and their personality and that special thing that made them an individual was a real skill. One she didn’t think she possessed anymore.

  If she ever had.

  One that required deep study of the subject. An intimacy that usually only grew from hours of sittings and close observation. She’d known Grady for less than a day. And just because he appeared to be imprinted on her retinas and her fevered nighttime imaginings were remarkably detailed didn’t mean she was capable of doing him justice on canvas.

  So she was not going to paint him. She was going to go back to basics. She was going to stand in front of this window, and she was going to paint what she saw. Landscapes were far easier to portray, and she was going to paint the hell out of one—paint until her fingers bled.

  Her hand poised above the large canvas, Suzanne stopped. It was quiet. Too damn quiet. She crossed to the CD player and flicked through the offerings. Mostly she listened to different styles of classical music because her work usually involved pieces from a few hundred years ago, and the power and passion of Mozart or Rachmaninoff fit the times and the emotion of the works. Today she chose Gregorian chants because there was a freeness to the rhythms that was very reflective of the openness of the scenery outside the window. There was also a meditative quality that seemed to fit the majesty and mood of the landscape.

  Suzanne cranked them up. It probably wasn’t the kind of music people listened to at high decibel ranges, but as the chanting swelled around her and filled her head, it blocked out all the white noise of her doubts and insecurities and the furious whispers of her muse. It helped her find her center, to tap into the frenzy washing through her blood, to look out the window and let the frenzy guide her brush.

  And, by the end of the day, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent, she’d have something that was hers. A Suzanne St. Michelle original.

  She took a deep breath and dipped her brush into the paint.

  …

  Grady barely felt the chill as he stripped off his freezing, sodden shirt in the equally freezing concrete shell of the mudroom. The silence was distracting. Too distracting, and he could think of little else. The last three mornings, he’d gone about his chores serenaded by chanting monks. Which was strange but…whatever. It didn’t bother him or the animals, and it gave his ranch hands something to laugh about.

  Except now there was no music. And that was bothering him, because he suddenly realized he was thinking about her—something he’d been trying not to do. Had her power gone out? Was she sick? Had she fallen in the cottage and smacked her head on the stone floor? Had some kind of seizure? Was she unconscious? Had she decided to up and leave?

  Yeah, right…he should be so lucky.

  Grady shook his head, growling to himself as he flicked off the running faucet and plunged his hands into the steaming-hot sink of water, washing off the caked-on muck from his hands and arms and chest courtesy of a calf that had gotten itself bogged in a freezing quagmire caused by recent rain and melting almost-frozen ground.

  He’d managed to rope it out with the help of two of his hands, its plaintive mooing and the distress of its mother keeping everyone focused on the job, but somehow, when they were almost there, he’d managed to lose his balance and fall into the frigid mud.

  His hands had laughed their asses off as they’d dragged his out of the muck.

  The hot water felt good on his chilled skin as he picked up the cake of soap and lathered his arms and chest and neck. He needed a real shower, of course, but he’d learned a long time ago to wash up before he went inside. The plumbing in the mudroom was way more forgiving than the more delicate pipes inside the cabin.

  Thankfully his jeans weren’t as mucky. Ordinarily he’d have stripped them off in the mudroom, too, and walked from the barn to the cabin in his underwear—isolated living did have its advantages—but he wasn’t about to do that with Suzanne St. Michelle nearby.
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br />   And great…just great. He was thinking about her again.

  He obviously wasn’t getting laid enough. Just how long had it been since he’d been with a woman? Well over a year ago. Probably closer to two. Because that had to be it, that had to be the reason he couldn’t stop thinking about the curvy New Yorker even though she’d stayed on her turf exactly as he had demanded.

  Reaching with one hand for the fresh towel that hung over the hook above the sink, he pulled the plug with the other, then proceeded to towel dry. At least up until he heard a faint gasp and spun around to find the woman on his mind standing just inside the doorway, her curves hidden in a huge red coat, that green knitted cap pulled down low over her forehead and ears.

  His hands paused mid drying the back of his neck. The room wasn’t big, maybe five feet by five feet, which meant she was way closer to him than he was comfortable with, given his state of undress.

  “Oh…I’m…sorry.” Her breath misted into the frigid air as her voice faltered. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  Her eyes fell to his chest, zeroed in on the nickel-size scar just beneath his right collarbone courtesy of some shrapnel, before straying to his pecs and abs for what seemed like forever, the awkward silence stretching. Normally Grady wouldn’t bother filling it because silences were where he felt most comfortable and the other person generally rushed in to fill them up. But Suzanne wasn’t bothering, either.

  At least not with her mouth anyway.

  Her eyes were a different story. They were having an entire conversation as they roved all over his chest. She was looking at him like he was a slice of one of Annie’s pies, and Christ if that wasn’t like a bullet straight to his dick. The kind of friendly fire he could do without.

  Fucking hell. He didn’t want to be pie. Not this woman’s. Not any woman’s. He wanted to be…tofu. Nobody lusted after tofu.

  “Had some trouble with a calf.” Grady felt like an explanation might help the situation, but he still felt like an idiot making small talk.