The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  “Sated?” Grady didn’t know how he looked, but he knew how he felt.

  A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Exactly.”

  Exactly. Grady couldn’t ever remember a time when he was so damn replete. There was a blizzard outside for God’s sake, and while there wasn’t anything he could do until it blew over, he could still be pacing the floor and looking out the window every ten minutes for some kind of break in the weather. He could be tuning in to the radio and strategizing the cleanup.

  Instead of lying here letting her ogle him like one of his prize bulls. But man…he liked being ogled. He liked how she ogled.

  He glanced down at his burgeoning cock. “Will it be anatomically correct this time?”

  Her eyes drifted to his crotch, which did not help with his swelling problem. “Oh yes.”

  Grady regarded her, seriously tempted and completely unable to fathom why. Vanity didn’t seem to be a very good reason to consent to something that had gotten them into this predicament in the first place. She must have taken his silence as a precursor to a no and quickly jumped in with a “Or I could make it bigger if you like?”

  A chuckle rose in his throat. “Why?” he asked, rolling up onto his elbow. “Why do you want to paint me when you have all that”—he gestured with his free hand to the winter wonderland outside the window—“out there to inspire you?”

  She sighed. “Because for some reason, my muse has a thing for surly rancher dudes. And the muse wants what the muse wants.”

  He laughed at the note of frustration in her voice. “That’s inconvenient.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Oh, he did. He really did. Having Suzanne here had been extremely inconvenient to the strict confines of his life. And yet here he was, contemplating letting her paint him in his birthday suit. “And the muse always gets what the muse wants?”

  She nodded. “It’s kinda the way it works.”

  “Inconvenient,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, but…” Suzanne’s eyes met his, sincere and earnest. “She’s been missing for so long now. To have her back…” She pressed her hand to her chest. “It makes me feel whole again.”

  The soft catch in Suzanne’s voice slugged Grady hard. She really meant it. “Who will it be for?”

  “For me. Only me.” She patted her chest for emphasis. “My first true piece of art that’s all my own. Not a replica. Not a caricature. My own work. If you’ll allow me to take it home with me?”

  Home. Grady knew from bitter experience that one word could have a massive impact on a life. Accident. Dead. Orphan. Credence. Bomb. Shrapnel. He’d just never considered home would be one of them. But…I’m a New Yorker. That’s what she’d said that very first day. And he was a cowpoke, and she was leaving, and that was fine because he didn’t need anybody no matter what the sudden niggle in his chest said.

  This thing that was happening now was an aberration—like the weather—and it’d be over just as quickly. He’d been alone before; he could be alone again.

  “What do you think?” she prompted.

  Grady pulled his clashing thoughts into some order. They were for the future. “I…think it’s nice to be asked this time.”

  “Yeah.” She shot him a sheepish smile, her cheeks tingeing pink. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  The niggle in Grady’s chest became an ache, and a warning signal went off in his head. It would be easy to forget in this cozy little sexed-up bubble that they were only here because of the predicament Suzy had landed them in. And soon the blizzard would be over.

  He needed to remember—for them both to remember—that nothing here was real. “I want the last painting.”

  If he thought he’d felt bad being all hardass over the fourth painting, it was nothing on the way he felt now with those big blue eyes staring him down and the bob of her throat as she visibly swallowed. He instantly regretted the request. Sure, he knew the whole fake rancher boyfriend thing wasn’t over just because he’d have all the paintings in his possession. They were only ever supposed to be a reward for his help once her parents had gone back to New York. But, symbolically, it felt like an ending.

  Which was what he wanted, damn it. So why was part of him tempted to call back the request and hope she told him to go to hell?

  She didn’t. After what seemed like forever, she took a deep breath and said a quiet “Okay.”

  Grady blinked, not expecting such easy capitulation. “I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

  “If you think letting go of the last painting doesn’t hurt, you’re wrong. Those paintings might be frivolous to you, but they mean something to me. Right now, though, I need to do this painting. Of you. I need it in here.” She tapped her chest. “I need it like I need oxygen. Nothing else matters as much as that.”

  It was Grady’s turn to swallow, the conviction in her voice so compelling that it was almost as if he could see her need. It didn’t make him feel any better about the price he’d demanded, but the fact she was willing, no matter how reluctantly, to sacrifice the painting to a greater cause helped.

  And he could no more deny her her oxygen than he could deny his own.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  …

  Half an hour later, after having the last of the brownies soaked in bourbon for breakfast—end of the world adulting 101—Suzanne had a five-foot canvas set up landscape style on her easel. The light from the window behind her was good, and Grady had given her one of his old plaid shirts on the proviso she didn’t wear anything underneath, so she wasn’t.

  The sand in the hourglass was running out in this bubble of theirs, and she wanted to wring every sexy, lighthearted moment she could from it. If that included him getting off on catching an occasional glimpse of her bare ass, then fair enough, considering he was lying buck naked on the rug amid a nest of duvets, pillows, and blankets.

  He looked warm and comfortable and exceedingly sexy in the firelight and very at home in this cabin as rough-hewn as himself. Very…frontier man, lying so casually, unconcerned while the storm raged outside.

  Even naked and horizontal, the man was king of his domain.

  A thrill, the same thrill she felt when she’d first started painting him, gripped her as Suzanne made the first slash on the canvas. Magic tingled in her fingertips and tapped in her toes, and she knew that all the painting she’d done of Grady up till now had been leading to this moment.

  Suddenly the heaviness in her heart over losing those paintings lifted. They had meant a huge amount, but they’d merely been signposts in her journey to this painting. Signposts to the starting point of her career. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in her possession, because she would always carry them in her heart.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Suzanne glanced up from her palette. “Do?”

  “Yeah. Am I supposed to lay a certain way? Do you want me to…pose?” He turned on his side, with his top leg splayed wide, showing off his wares like a bad seventies porn star.

  She laughed. “This ain’t that kind of portrait.” He laughed, too, but she could see he was finding the whole experience a little discomfiting. “Just be yourself.”

  He snorted as he rolled onto his back again. “This is so far from myself, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Just lie like that for a while and talk to me.”

  “What if I need to scratch my nose? Or use the bathroom?”

  Suzanne rolled her eyes as she made the broad brushstrokes of his outline. “Then use the bathroom. If you need to scratch your nose or take a break, that’s fine; you don’t have to lie there not moving for hours.”

  “Good. I’m not someone who can just lie around for hours. In fact, I doubt I’ve been this inactive since…since before I came to Credence.”

  Since before his parents and girlfr
iend died and his life was shot to hell.

  He hadn’t said it or even implied it in his tone, but Suzanne couldn’t help wondering if he was back there right now, in that moment. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a smile, desperate to have him here with her, in this moment. “I wouldn’t say you’ve been inactive.”

  He laughed, and his heated gaze fanned across the tops of her thighs barely covered by his shirt. “That’s true.” He shoved his hands under his head. “So what shall we talk about?”

  Suzanne could think of a million things—his parents, Bethany, coming to Credence, his time in the military. Loss, grief, recovery. But she wanted him to relax and talk to her, not clam up. “Tell me about Bob Downey. He seems to have a lot of influence for an octogenarian who lives at the old folks’ home.”

  “God…” Grady gave a short, sharp half laugh. “This blizzard would need to rage for a year to tell it all. Let’s talk about you instead.”

  Suzanne glanced up sharply. “What about me?”

  “Tell me why your muse was missing all those years.”

  Jaysus. So he wanted to start with the easy stuff, then? She painted on for a minute, not answering, contemplating not answering at all but wanting, strangely, to tell him if only so she could figure it out herself.

  “That hard, huh?” he said as the silence stretched.

  She stopped painting, trying to find a way through the mental minefield. “I’m good at forging… At replicating. Like, really good. But it doesn’t require any…creative spark. I just literally copy what I see.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Well, no, the process is often long and laborious, but the act of copying has always come easily for me. Except it put my muse into hibernation, you know? Which isn’t good when you’re trying to paint originals.”

  “It’s like your mom said: The muse has to be exercised, right?”

  “Right. And also…”

  “Also?” he pushed after she’d been silent for a while.

  Suzanne shrugged. “I’ve been…scared, I guess.”

  “Of what?”

  “I…don’t know.” Suzanne put brush to canvas again. “Scared that I didn’t have it in me. That I wasn’t capable of something original.”

  “I think sticking my head on a cherub is pretty damn original.”

  She laughed. “I don’t mean that kind of original. That’s not art.”

  “It’s not?” He frowned. “Who says?”

  “Serious art people. Capital A Art People.”

  “Like your mom?”

  Suzanne was fast coming to recognize that Grady was no stereotypical, slow-off-the-mark cowpoke. He was sharp and missed nothing. “Yes.”

  “Is that why you haven’t told her what you’ve painted when she’s asked?”

  “Yeah. She wouldn’t understand.”

  “I guess it must be hard being Simone St. Michelle’s daughter.”

  “It can be.” Suzanne didn’t want to dwell on that, though. She’d grown up with enormous privilege thanks to her mother’s success—it was such a first-world problem.

  “You’re intimidated?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s just been easier to replicate other people’s art than create my own because I’m good at it and I love doing it. If I tried something different, there would be a lot of…expectation. There would be comparisons. And if I wanted to stand on my own, as an artist in my own right, which I do, I’d have to be…”

  “Better?”

  “No.” She gave another quick shake of her head. “We work in different mediums; it wouldn’t be about better. It’s about being…more.”

  “Sounds like a lot of pressure.”

  “Yeah. Hence the muse problem. I mean, what if it’s all crap and lifeless, like I’m still copying instead of creating? What if I’ll never be any good in my own right? What if I’ll always just have to stick with painting other people’s paintings? It’s why I jumped at Winona’s suggestion to come here.” She glanced up to find his warm gaze trained firmly on her face. “To get away from the art world and see what I could create without a bunch of people in my head. I thought I’d paint the landscape, but then my muse perked up when she saw you, and—”

  “The muse wants what the muse wants.”

  “Yeah.” And the muse had wanted Grady. Even if Suzanne had fought her tooth and nail.

  “Well, then, maybe I should turn this way.” He rolled onto his hip, baring his ass to her view. “I’m told it’s my good side.”

  Suzanne laughed. It was a mighty fine side, complete with a shoulder blade tattoo, but the man didn’t have a bad one.

  He rolled back again, his face suddenly serious. “You’ve already painted the hardest part of me five times, and each time you managed to perfectly capture the exact thing I see in myself every time I look in the mirror. Now, I know jack about art, but I figure that’s something pretty damn special, Suzanne St. Michelle. Just like what you’re painting now will be.”

  Suzanne blinked, surprised and humbled by the utter sincerity of his compliment. She had no idea he’d done more than give her paintings a cursory glance. But to see what he’d seen, he had to have looked closer.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice husky.

  But she didn’t need him to tell her what she was painting was special. She’d known that from the very first brushstroke. It was going to be a keeper.

  Even if the real Joshua Grady wasn’t.

  …

  For the next few hours, she painted and they talked. Not about anything deep or meaningful, just daily life kinda stuff. He told her about a typical day for him, and she told him about a typical day for her. Grady made coffee and fixed them baked beans on toast by cooking the bread over the gas flame—all while naked. He kept the fire stoked and occasionally tried to convince her to let him take a peek at her progress, which she resisted.

  Like her mother, she never showed anybody her art before it was finished. The need to protect her process was paramount, and if she opened it up to opinion before it was done? Well, that could wreck her. It could certainly mess with her flow.

  At one point, he asked if she would mind if he did some work on his laptop, and when she shook her head, he’d sat in the buff, the computer on top of the blanket and balanced on his outstretched thighs and did just that. “What are you working on?” she asked, her gaze firmly trained on the canvas as she added definition to his abdomen.

  “Stock feed spreadsheets,” he murmured.

  Suzanne glanced up to find his concentration wholly focused on the screen. She almost laughed. Could they be any different? She was painting a nude portrait of him, and Grady was looking at numbers. But there was a homeyness to the scenario that was appealing on a level Suzanne didn’t dare let herself explore. Normally she needed music, loud music, to be productive, but not today. Today the crackle of the fire, the dull rub of brush against canvas, and the tippy-tap of keys were totally doing it for her.

  And the art was flowing.

  After twenty minutes, he put the laptop aside and reached for the radio, squirming down onto his back again, bending his elbow and shoving his right hand behind his head to prop it a little as he turned it on. The static almost drowned out the voice broadcasting the progress of the storm.

  “They’re still saying it’ll be midnight before it starts to ease,” he said.

  Suzanne nodded absently at the update, knowing it was a rhetorical statement not requiring her response but informative given she hadn’t really been listening to the report. She’d tuned in to the static instead, the scratchy white noise just the right pitch to sharpen her focus on the image of Grady coming to life on the canvas.

  She glanced up ten minutes later to find he’d fallen asleep, radio still on, and Suzanne’s heart gave a little squeeze at the sight. His head had lolled to
the side, his lips had slackened, and his left hand was resting low on his abdomen, perilously close to his junk. This was the essence of the man, and her muse lapped it up, the brush flying over the canvas as she rushed to capture his lazy masculine potency.

  An hour later, with only the static for company, Suzanne put her brush down and stretched out the muscles on either side of her neck. It was done. Oh, she had no doubt she’d tweak it a little over the days and weeks to come, but essentially she was finished. And it was good.

  So damn good, she almost cried.

  All that worry about not being able to create something original, about her art being stiff and two-dimensional, fell away as she stared at a painting so fluid, so full of life and vitality, it sucked her breath away.

  She was an artist, damn it. She was a portrait artist. That was her niche. That’s who she was.

  She realized something else, too, maybe even more startling. Something she hadn’t seen until now, until taking in the whole. It was full of love. Infused with it. They said a picture was worth a thousand words, but this one was worth only one. If she’d seen this painting hanging in a museum or a gallery, there’d be no doubt about what she was viewing—a portrait of a man painted by the person who loved him, every brushstroke a love letter.

  Tears blurred Suzanne’s eyes, and her ribs felt tight around her lungs. It couldn’t be—she couldn’t be in love with him—she’d known him three freaking weeks. Not that she knew him at all, really, which made this even more preposterous. How could she be in love with someone who kept himself so closed off? But it was no use trying to deny it when the truth of it was staring back at her from the canvas. The heart wants what the heart wants, and her damn fool heart had decided on Joshua Grady.

  What an idiot. To fall for a guy so emotionally unavailable that she might as well have fallen in love with a rock. Brilliant, Suzanne. Good job.

  Shit…what a mess.

  Suzanne started as she heard movement from behind the canvas, blinking rapidly to dispel the blur of tears, wishing she could blink her pulse back to normal. It skipped madly at her wrist as she tipped her head to the side and peered around the canvas to find Grady stretching languorously by the fire.