CHAPTER NINE

Twenty minutes later, Grady did have a nice buzz on. So did Suzanne, if he wasn’t very much mistaken. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was an interesting glitter in her eyes. They’d both had five shots, and the bottle was empty.

Twenty minutes.

“Well—” She upended her empty shot glass on the coffee table. “That’s that. And there’s still thirty minutes to go.”

Grady upended his glass beside hers. “I predict more wreaths and that they’re going to live happily ever after.”

She gave a half laugh, half snort, which made Grady laugh a little more as she said, “You don’t believe in happily ever afters?”

Grady most definitely did not. But even five shots of bourbon down, he knew a woman who cried at schmaltzy movies probably did. Hell, she probably even believed in love at first sight. And it was definitely best to steer this conversation in another direction altogether.

“I think somebody with that many wreaths is compensating for something not conducive to relationship longevity. Now, for the love of god, can we switch this off?”

“Oh but…they haven’t made any snow angels yet.”

“There were three dozen in the last movie.”

“There weren’t that many. Stop being dramatic.” She bumped him with her shoulder. “Besides, I love snow angels. My mom doesn’t approve of them; she thinks they’re a delivery device for pneumonia.”

A delivery device for pneumonia? Jesus, they were snow angels, not the plague! “So…you’ve never done one?”

“No, I’ve done them. Dad would take me to Central Park every year after it had snowed, and we’d spend hours making them. He thinks they’re art. My mom thinks if anybody can do it, it’s not art. We definitely have to get her to do a snow angel while she’s here. Even if we have to crash tackle her to the ground.”

Grady laughed. “I think I’ll leave the crash tackling to you.” Their gazes met for a moment, and they smiled at each other, the movie forgotten. The fact she was bribing him to be her fake rancher boyfriend—also forgotten.

Slowly, her smile faded, and she half turned toward him, grabbing her right leg and tucking it up under her so she was looking right at him. “I guess we should probably spend some time getting our stories straight.”

He mimicked her actions so he was also facing her, their bent knees about a foot apart, but somehow feeling closer now that he could look into her eyes without turning his head. “Our stories straight?”

“Yeah, you know. For when my parents ask you, So, Grady, tell us how you met our daughter.”

Okay. That made sense. “What have you told them already?”

“Very little, actually, so that’s something. They think Winona put us in touch and we’ve been talking online, but we didn’t actually meet face-to-face until I came to Credence. We could probably work on embellishing it.”

Considering he barely knew Winona and he didn’t talk or do anything else online with women, he was thankful for the heads-up. He sure as shit didn’t want to embellish it, though. “I think we should just stick to the basics.”

Embellishing lies made it hard to keep stories straight and, as he planned on talking to her parents as little as possible anyway, there didn’t seem to be much point. He wouldn’t be rude, but the reality was he’d be gone most days on the ranch, and he wasn’t exactly a night owl.

It was past his bedtime right now.

“Fine,” she conceded. “But I should know stuff about you. Like, where you were born and do you have any siblings and what are your parents’ names and…the name of your first dog and what you were like in school and about Burl and the ranch and a lot of other stuff.”

“Like whether I prefer chocolate or peanut M&M’s?” Grady said, deliberately keeping it light because he’d much rather talk candy than his family situation.

“Yes. And your credit card number,” she added with a sugary sweet smile.

Grady laughed. He may have initially thought Suzanne was here to find herself a husband, but he didn’t think she was after his money. “Maybe next time you get me drunk on bourbon, I’ll tell you that.”

He was far from drunk, because Grady didn’t do that, either, but the tension he’d felt whenever she got close was blissfully absent, and it felt good to not be so damn alert.

“Well, I think you should be drunk on bourbon more often,” she said. “I didn’t think you knew this many words.”

Grady hooted out a laugh, grabbing his chest as if she’d wounded him. “Did you just call me dumb, Suzanne St. Michelle?”

She gaped at him, her cheeks flushing bright red as it dawned on her how her observation sounded. “Oh no…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” Her hands fluttered in the air in agitation. “Please don’t think—”

“I know I’m just a plainspoken…cowpoke,” Grady interrupted, faking his best yokel accent. “I know I don’t got me much dictionary learnin’ but—”

Pressing his lips together to stop from smiling worked for about two seconds before he cracked, laughing at the horror on her face. She glared at him as she slowly realized he’d been teasing her.

“How long were you going to watch me squirm?”

He shrugged. “I hadn’t made up my mind.”

“Yeah, well, this is the last time I drink bourbon with you.”

“I’m sorry for poking fun.” But it had been fun to see her a little flustered.

“You have to admit, Grady, you’re a man of few words.”

“True. But not because I have the vocabulary of an ant.”

“Because you’re the strong, silent type?”

He shrugged. “The less you talk, the more you learn.”

She crossed her eyes at him, and it was so unexpected, Grady chuckled. “That what being a soldier taught you?” she asked.

“Yep.” Being in the military had taught Grady a lot of things, including shutting up and listening, which had suited a guy who was tired of people always wanting to talk. He’d been over talking about the tragedy that had forever altered the direction of his life.

“Did you like being a soldier?”

“Yes.” The familiar ache in his chest glowed warm and bright. Grady had loved it.

“You were deployed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, we’re down to one-word answers again, so I guess that means I’m getting a little personal.”

She was teasing, he could tell, but the muscles in his neck had cranked a notch or two tighter. “I don’t really talk about it.”

It was her turn to laugh. “No kidding? But don’t you think it’s something your girlfriend would probably know?”

Girlfriend. Right. Jesus… “Three tours,” he said, trying to keep the gruffness out of his voice. “One in Iraq, two in Afghanistan.”

Nodding slowly, she said, “That must have been…”

Grady swore he could see the shimmer of tears puddling in her baby blues before she blinked them away, and he shifted uncomfortably. “A long way from Seattle, yes,” he said, then winced internally at the flippancy in his voice.

“That’s where you grew up?”

“Yep.” Until the car accident had brought him to Credence.

“Burl said this is a bad time of year for you. Did something happen while you were deployed?”

He suppressed a snort. Lots of shit happened while he was deployed. But that wasn’t what Burl had meant, and he really wished his uncle hadn’t said anything. Sure, it had been vague enough, but Grady didn’t really like people up in his business. Too many people in Credence had known his business when he’d come here as an orphan at seventeen, and he’d vowed to never feel that exposed again.

A man had his pride, damn it.

Opening his mouth to answer, he halted as she leaned in a little, proving she was the touchy-feely type by sliding her hand onto his forearm. “Sorry, forget that—it’s really none of my business.”

Grady forced himself to concentrate on what she’d said as her hand slid away. She’d given him a get-out-of-jail-free card, and he’d take it. “What about you? Are you New York born and bred?”

“Yes, sir.” She gave him a little mock salute that would have seen her do pushups all day in basic training, but it did funny things to his breathing. Made him think about her in nothing but one of his old khaki army T-shirts, saluting him as she rode his dick.

Fucking hell. Not helping, Grady.

“And you’re an art forger,” he said conversationally, like she wasn’t still riding him somewhere in the recesses of his mind.

“Well, technically I’m a reproduction artist, but yeah…forging, faking, making copies of other people’s art is what I do.”

“And people actually pay you to do that?”

She smiled at him as she leaned closer in a conspiratorial fashion. “They do. They pay me a lot of money.”

Yeah, he remembered her mentioning that, but he lost his train of thought for a second as the V-neck of her sweater gaped a little and the creamy curve of her cleavage flashed like a neon sign in his peripheral vision. Her peach-cobbler scent combined with the bourbon on her breath to become an unholy turn-on.

“And who are these people?” he asked, yanking his brain out of his pants. “And why? People who can’t afford an original but like to pretend they can?”

“Sometimes. Some private collectors just want a reproduction to display as a talking point or a brag piece or to just be up close and personal with a revered piece of art even if it is a fake. But oftentimes it’s because they have the originals and want to protect them, have a substitute while the priceless piece stays under lock and key. The same goes for galleries and museums.”

“So it’s not illegal?”

“It’s illegal if I paint the Mona Lisa and sign it Leonardo da Vinci and sell it to a person pretending it’s a da Vinci original. That’s fraud. If they know they’re getting a reproduction, it’s perfectly legal.”

“And lucrative.”

She smiled again. “Very.”

Grady was fascinated despite himself. He didn’t want to find her fascinating, this woman who was here for one month and had manipulated him into helping her deceive her parents—even if it was for a good cause. But he did.

“Do you like it? Your job.”

“I do,” she said, but her smile dimmed. “Or at least I did, anyway.”

He frowned. “Not anymore?”

“I’ve been feeling more and more creatively…stymied.”

Her forehead furrowed into lines, her eyes clouded with uncertainty, her teeth dug into her lower lip. Her eyes—her face—were so damn expressive, and Grady was captivated. “And that means what?”

“I don’t know my own…style. I’ve been mimicking other people’s for such a long time, I don’t know what kind of painter I am. I used to always paint my own stuff, when I was first starting out. But it was…never good enough—”

“Says who?” Grady may have disliked the fact that his face stared back at him from her canvases, but she could clearly paint. To a guy who couldn’t even draw a stick figure, her paintings seemed pretty damn good.

“A lot of people,” she said with a quick dismissive shake of her head. “And they were right. You could give me a bowl of fruit or an eastern Colorado landscape and tell me to paint what I see, and I can reproduce it faithfully. But there’s never any…life to it.”

Grady’s face screwed into a puzzled expression. “Does a bowl of fruit have life?”

She shot him a rueful smile. “Yes, actually, it does. It’s supposed to look and feel three-dimensional, like you can almost see the sun rising in the sky reflected on the skin of the apple through the window in the background. Like you could reach over and pluck it out of the bowl.” She mimicked the action. “So eventually I…stuck with what I was good at, and that’s been fine—I love my job, and it pays much better than what a lot of my artist friends make. But then Winona suggested coming here, and I desperately needed a change of scene, needed to get away from the familiar to explore this growing need I had to be me, to see if I could find myself as an artist again. And then I got here and…”

Her gaze took on a distant look, as if she was trying to find the right words somewhere out there in the universe or maybe inside her head. She was still looking at him, but she’d gone somewhere else entirely.

“The landscape here is so vast and raw, and it stirred something inside me, and I knew I could paint here, that my fingers were itching to paint. I realized I used to have that feeling all the time. That…urge, that…stimulus.” Her gaze came back from far away, her focus now entirely on him. “You know what I mean?”

Oh yeah. Grady knew what she meant. He was fairly certain Suzanne hadn’t chosen those words to taunt him. But he was taunted. Since she’d come to Credence and ruined his peace of mind, he’d been really fucking stimulated. “I do.”

She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “God…sorry, artsy bullshit. Ignore me.”

Except Grady wanted to know more. Like why she hadn’t painted the landscape. Why she’d painted him instead. And if that wasn’t a big red flag, he didn’t know what was. He didn’t need to know any of this for his fake rancher boyfriend role. He had his own psychological bullcrap to deal with; he didn’t need hers inside his head as well.

Ignoring was a very good suggestion.

“Let’s just watch the rest of the movie.”

She turned her head toward the television, as did Grady, just in time for the couple to indulge in a very, very hot kiss. Back-her-against-the-door-and-kiss-her hot, shirt-scrunching, ass-grabbing hot. Fuck. It was so hot, he barely even registered there was a wreath right near their heads.

“Okay,” she said, turning toward him again. “Maybe not.”

And they both laughed, but Grady could hear the nervous quality of her laughter, and he was pretty sure there was a husky catch in his. And while they may not be looking at the television anymore, Grady was still thinking about that ass-grabbing kiss.

And the one from last night.

“Um…” he said, searching around valiantly inside his head for something to distract them that wasn’t anything too deep. “What about distinguishing marks?”

She blinked at him. Grady blinked back. Yeah…that was dumbass. He could have asked her favorite color or her favorite ice cream flavor or, hell, the name of her grade school art teacher. But his brain had given him distinguishing marks.

Like he was some kind of perv. Or filling out a fucking police report.

“I…have a birthmark.”

Oh fuck. No, no, no. He did not need to know this. But it was too late. Why? Why had he asked that? Now he knew she had a birthmark, he couldn’t unknow it. And all he could think about was what and where. And how a boyfriend would know those things.

He cleared his throat. “Where?”

“My right upper thigh.”

Her hand traveled up her leg and pointed at the spot. Grady told himself not to look; it wasn’t as if he could see through her jeans. But he looked, zeroing in on her finger resting on her inner thigh about an inch from where it met her groin.

Good Christ.

He didn’t know if he was imagining it, but he swore he could hear the rough exhalation of air from her mouth and smell the intoxicating aroma of bourbon on her breath.

“It’s light brown, about the size of a nickel, shaped a bit like Texas.”

Grady let out a strangled laugh. Texas? Fuck. Now he really wanted to see it. But instead of going there, he nodded and said, “Check. Texas birthmark, right upper thigh.”

“What about you?” she asked as her hand returned to her knee.

He dragged his gaze back to her face. “I have a tattoo on my left shoulder blade.”

“What is it?”

“An American eagle with This We’ll Defend underneath.”

“Oooh. Can I see?”

Grady, who had barely yanked himself back from the tantalizing knowledge of that birthmark, sat back a little at her request. Now that he hadn’t expected. Her eyes glowed with interest not of a sexual nature, but that didn’t stop his heart or his dick from taking a sudden leap.

Maybe it was the bourbon loosening his inhibitions, because somehow he’d gone from keeping Suzanne St. Michelle at arm’s length to practically cuddling up on a couch with her and playing drinking games. Drinking games that had led to this.

Her looking at him with those big blue eyes, wanting to see his tattoo. Him contemplating showing her. Contemplating stripping her out of those goddamn jeans to find her little map of Texas.

And Jesus if that didn’t sound all kinds of dirty.

“God, sorry.” She swatted her hand in front of her face as if she were batting her request away. “That was…weird. Forget it.” Her cheeks went all rosy. “I don’t know where that came from. It was…very personal and not at all appropriate. You totally need to tell me if I overstep any boundaries. And definitely don’t ever give me bourbon again. We artists are bad enough with the concept of personal space without alcohol in the mix.”

Grady, realizing he wanted her up in his personal space badly, tuned out her words as his gaze zeroed in on her mouth, following the constant movement as she spoke, flashes of her tongue adding fuel to the fire building in his groin. She was doing that talking-through-her-embarrassment thing again, and Grady, who’d never thought he’d find words and talking so damn addictive, considering he did them as little as possible, had to admit she had a way with both.

“…my father said it took him years to realize that an exhibition at a gallery was like watching a mass artistic fornication without the sex or nudity—”

She stopped abruptly and clapped a hand over her mouth at the same time Grady realized it had been a bad time to tune back in again, because all he could think about now was fornicating.

God…if there was ever a word that sounded like what it actually was, it had to be fornicate.

“What did you put in that bourbon?” she demanded in a husky entreaty, her hand sliding from her mouth. Her delicious-looking mouth. “You really should tell me to shut up before I run off any more at the mouth.”

A buzzing started under his skin, his blood pounded thick and slow through his veins, and he couldn’t help but think her suggestion was excellent as his gaze zeroed in on her lips.

“Joshua?” she said, her voice all low and husky.

It was the Joshua that did it. That was the tipping point. The way she said it like a…balm? He wanted to suck her up. Eat her up. Absorb her into his soul.

So he shut her up. Not with words but with one swift swoop of his mouth across the small distance separating them, his hand sliding onto her cheek, his lips slanting over hers as he overstepped about a hundred boundaries.

God…she was dizzying, his heart was racing, the air in his lungs was hot, and she tasted like bourbon and smelled like peaches and he deepened the kiss for more. Who needed fancy perfume when cobbler and hard liquor were such a lethal mix? But it wasn’t enough. His hand slid up her leg to her hip, gripping it and un-gripping it as she moaned into his mouth. He tugged, needing her closer—so much closer.

Against him, above him, under him.

Then suddenly she was moving, rolling onto her knees, her hand gliding to his shoulder, her thigh sliding over his, and he straightened to accommodate the move, a hand on each of her hips as she straddled him, settling herself against the rampant hardness of his dick as she kissed him from above now, her hair falling all around them in a curtain, trapping them in a cocoon of heavy breathing, bourbon, and bad ideas.

But she was hot in his arms and her tongue was playing tag with his and she was moaning and rubbing herself against the bulge in his jeans and her name was the symphony in his blood, the surge in his groin, the ringing in his ears. Almost of their own volition, Grady’s hands slid up under her fluffy sweater, inching it up as he went, his hands straying to the front, traversing her ribs—up, up, up—until his trembling fingers brushed against the smooth satin of her bra and the soft mounds of her breasts filled his palms.

She gasped against his mouth as he squeezed, and she made a strangled kind of noise in the back of her throat as his thumbs brushed over the taut points pressing into the satin, shuddering as he did again and again and again. He wanted to fuck her like this.

Her over him, above him like this. He wanted to bury himself deep inside her and kiss up every moan and breathy little pant.

God, her mouth…it was addictive and it was ruining him. He couldn’t get enough. He was fast becoming obsessed. In fact, he was so hot for her mouth and the noises she was making that he didn’t even know her hands had strayed lower until she fumbled with his buckle, pulled at his belt. He groaned as her fingers brushed his erection through the denim, and in seconds the button was gone and his zipper was down and her hand was inside his boxers wrapping around his thickness and Grady’s eyes practically rolled back in his head it felt so fucking incredible.

For a beat or two, he gave himself up to the overwhelming sensation of her palming him and her lips devouring his and the way her breasts filled his hands and how it was perfect and how he wanted more, wanted it all.

But that was his body speaking. His head was telling him something different, a backbeat that had rumbled louder and louder. A backbeat he just couldn’t ignore anymore.

Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea.

Such a bad idea.

She cried in movies; he’d been dry-eyed since seventeen. She was New York; he was bumfuck Colorado. She was touchy-feely; he was all do-not-enter. She was on vacation from her life. This was his life. And it was perfectly fine.

God fucking damn it.

Grady tore his mouth from hers, dropped his hands from her breasts, making a grab for her hand creating the kind of havoc that was hard to forgo. He caught her around the wrist, stilling her maddeningly erotic action.

“Stop,” he said, his voice rough as he panted hard.

Blood throbbed through his temples and pounded through his chest and the large pulse in his abdomen. His head fell back against the couch as he tried to catch his breath, his heated gaze meeting her confused one.

Christ, he wanted to kiss that look away, kiss her until the heat came back.

She didn’t move for a moment or two, just sat, staring at him, her chest rising and falling quickly, her breathing loud. Her gaze dropped to his lap, to where his hand circled her wrist, to where her hand circled his dick, and Grady watched as realization dawned.

He hated that look.

“Shit,” she whispered as she pulled her hand away from his dick like it was a live wire. Given its state, it fucking felt like one right now, too.

She moved then, scrambling off his lap, trying to unwind limbs and get off him as fast as she could, stumbling a little in the process as she yanked her top down and walked away from the couch, shoving her hand through her hair.

Grady shut his eyes, opening them again on a sigh. Absently, he noticed that the movie was still going and that the hero and heroine were standing in the town square in a crowd all watching a giant Christmas wreath being mounted on the edifice of the town hall.

Of course.

Zipping his unimpressed erection back in his pants, Grady pushed to his feet on unsteady legs. He couldn’t believe how quickly things had escalated. How they’d been talking one moment and making out like it was their last night on the planet in the next. How a handful of days ago he’d told Suzanne to stay the hell away and tonight he’d had her boobs in his hands.

Grady couldn’t remember when he last made out with a woman. Probably with Bethany when he was seventeen. They’d spent hours fooling around and, after a year together, had been each other’s firsts. Sexual experiences since her death had been more about the destination than the journey.

Which had been perfectly fine by him and the women involved.

Turning around, he located Suzanne standing in front of the fire, her back to him, her arms wrapped around her body like she was cold. But after what happened on the couch, he doubted that was possible.

She turned suddenly and pinned him with a composed expression, her chin jutting a little in defiance. Like she hadn’t just had her hand wrapped around his dick. But her mouth couldn’t lie—those swollen lips still looked very well kissed. “That can’t happen again,” she announced.

Grady nodded. “I know.”

“I’m not interested in taking this from fake to real.”

He opened his mouth to say really? Because she’d been very fucking interested a minute ago. So had he. And that’s because, like it or not, he was attracted to her. He hadn’t felt this kind of pull in a very long time, and he’d bet the ranch she was attracted to him.

Which was seriously fucking inconvenient.

So maybe denial was better. Because he didn’t want a woman in his life—he didn’t need one, goddamn it—especially not this one who’d turned his house into a Christmas nightmare and given him an even greater aversion to wreaths.

“Neither am I.”

He may want to have sex with Suzanne St. Michelle more than any other woman he’d ever met, but that was the sum total of his interest in her, and he was an adult in control of his impulses. He was practically a monk as it was, and there was always his right hand.

She nodded stiffly. “Good. Let’s not cross that line, okay? It’s complicated enough.”

“Agreed.”

Clearing her throat, she said, “I’ll move my stuff into your spare room tomorrow morning. My parents should be here about two in the afternoon. Is it possible for you to be here when they arrive?”

Grady wanted that about as much as he wanted her in his house. Right now he’d rather be buried under a pile of Christmas wreaths than be a party to either. “I’ll try.”

If it worked out—fine. But he wasn’t going to neglect his ranching duties because Suzanne had gotten herself caught in a lie. Resentment flared anew at the predicament and warred with a body still clamoring to be back on the couch with her.

He had known she was going to be trouble. He just thought she’d be the kind of trouble he could resist. The universe, however, had other ideas.

“Thank you.” She dropped her arms, her gaze darting to the door and back again. “Well…I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Grady nodded. She didn’t wait to see if any words would follow the nod, just strode across the room and out the door. It clicked shut behind her, and Grady eased down onto the couch, cradling his head in his hands.

“Fuck.” What had he gotten himself into?