CHAPTER SIX

Suzanne woke late the next day not in a lather of excitement about what she was going to paint but with a lump of dread feeling like a cement block tied to her feet. Her muse was nowhere to be found. Just as she had been nowhere yesterday after Grady had slammed out of the cottage.

His disapproval had hung like a big storm cloud over her head, sapping all her creative energy. After her five-day burst of productivity, it felt like death.

So she’d gone back to bed—the cold, dull weather perfect for such denial—crawled under the covers, and binge-watched the last season of Portrait Artist of The Year, a British television show to which she was addicted. She followed it up with reruns of Antiques Roadshow because some of the art that people brought along was amazing.

Her favorite had been a young woman whose grandmother had recently died and left her a painting she’d bought in a garage sale for ten dollars more than twenty-five years ago. Everybody who’d ever seen the painting had hated it except for the woman and her granny. It turned out to be an early Gainsborough worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Suzanne had almost peed her panties, she’d been so excited.

Glancing down the bed, over her body and the jut of her toes, the paintings of Grady stared back at her. The sum total of her work. Her work. Five lousy paintings. What if this was all she had? What if this feeling she had today persisted, and she only ever had this one week of creative magic?

Suzanne shut her eyes against a wave of emotion that felt very much like loss, which was absurd. How could she mourn something that had only been fleeting?

Dragging the covers over her head, she pulled her knees to her chest and lay in a fetal ball for several minutes. It was cocoon-like but empty, which was how it felt inside her body at the moment—a big black hole, a yawning empty well.

Her cell rang, and Suzanne didn’t even bother emerging from the covers, just groped for the phone on the bedside table and pulled it under the covers with her. She didn’t look at the display as she hit the Answer button. She knew it would be Winona, who’d called several times last night.

“Hello.”

“Suzanne, darling…is that you? Are you sick?”

Suzanne blinked at her mother’s cultured accent, the shock of hearing her voice profound. Her mother had not been impressed about Suzanne up and leaving for Credence. And when her mother was annoyed, she tended to freeze people out for a while.

Displacing the covers, Suzanne sat bolt upright. “Mom?”

“You sound all muffled and stuffy. I told you that you’d catch something going all the way out to eastern Colorado. It blizzards there.”

Suzanne was too speechless to ask bigger questions at the moment. “It blizzards in New York, too, Mom.”

“Yes, but at least there’s a Duane Reade on every corner, darling. Do you have tea? I’ll make sure there’s plenty for when you come home next week.”

There followed a thirty-second monologue on the merits of different kinds of tea, but it took Suzanne only five seconds to zero in on the most salient part of the conversation thus far.

When you come home next week. Yeah…about that…

She had told her parents she’d come home for a few days over Christmas. They’d been so set against her going to Credence it had been a concession she’d been willing to make to get them off her back about her Colorado plans. Not that she needed their approval or permission to leave—she was a grown-ass woman who left home regularly for painting gigs all around the country.

She’d just been tired of the constant conversations they’d had about it, and frankly, Suzanne wasn’t the kind of person who liked to cause her parents angst. She’d been primed from a young age that it wasn’t good for her mom’s creative process.

But, even as she’d made the concession, she’d had absolutely no intention of following through with it. Part of the reason she’d chosen to travel to Credence when she had was so she didn’t have to spend another soulless Christmas with her parents. She loved them dearly, but they just didn’t do Christmas.

Not the way she’d always yearned for. Not the way all her friends’ parents had, the way the rest of the country seemed to, the way Winona had promised she would. Not in that big, fat Hallmark way with miles of garland and tinsel and mistletoe and a huge fuck-off tree bursting with baubles and lights and looking so damn pretty, a person couldn’t help but sigh every time they gazed upon its glory.

Simone St. Michelle’s idea of a tree was a minimalist structure from the latest name in the art world made out of bent wire coat hangers she’d bought at a gallery twenty years ago. It had a single ice-blue light at the top, twisted within the wire like it was in some kind of prison. Apparently, it was a statement about the commercialization of the season.

There wasn’t a piece of holly, a single candy cane, or a carol to be heard at the brownstone.

Suzanne had complained bitterly about her parents’ lack of Christmas cheer over the years to no avail. She’d been so jealous of school friends’ houses that had glowed—inside and out—with seasonal joy. One of her favorite things to do in December was to go with her friends to check out the window displays at Bloomingdale’s and Barneys and Saks Fifth Avenue, then finish up at Rockefeller Center to ice skate beneath the massive Christmas tree.

That ice rink was her Christmas happy place and made it bearable going home to a wire tree with a solitary blue light. And this year, her happy place was with Winona. It wasn’t at Winona’s house on the lake as they’d hoped, but the boardinghouse in town was going the full Christmas with garlands and a real tree and carols and homemade eggnog.

And Suzanne wasn’t going to trade that for a wire tree and a posh restaurant that specialized in deconstructed festive menus. Seriously, who did that? Wasn’t that a sin against Jesus?

Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet thought of an excuse to give to her parents for not returning to New York. Frankly, she’d been hoping the Colorado weather would come to the party and she could use unsafe travel conditions as a valid excuse. With snow predicted next week, her chances had been looking up but, apparently, this conversation was happening now.

Suzanne took a steadying breath and bit the bullet. “Mom…I’m not coming home for Christmas.”

There was a long pause down the line. “What? But…we’ve never spent a Christmas apart.”

The quietness of her mother’s voice was more effective than any other tone she could have adopted. If she’d yelled or scolded or even cried, Suzanne could have rallied against it, but her mother’s disappointed voice was the hardest to take.

Suzanne just didn’t disappoint her parents.

Shit. How did a person tell her mother she didn’t want to see her at Christmas without being disappointing? Winona’s mother had passed away three years ago, and Suzanne knew that Winona would give anything to have one more Christmas with her mom. And here Suzanne was trying to weasel out of this one with her mom.

It was ridiculous; her parents didn’t even believe in Christmas. Not like other people did anyway. Why was it so important that she be there? Sure, it would be the first time in twenty-nine years they had Christmas apart, but…it had to happen sooner or later.

Casting frantically around in her brain for a suitable excuse—something compelling—she grabbed hold of the first thing that sprang forth. “I’ve met someone. I’m spending Christmas with him.”

Suzanne wasn’t sure who was more stunned at the blurted admission—her mother or herself. Met someone? That’s what she’d chosen? That was a degree of stupid she hadn’t even realized existed until now. An image of Grady stripped to his chest in the mudroom appeared unbidden, and she quashed it.

Shit.

“But, darling…you’ve not even been gone for two weeks.”

“No…I met him before that. Through Winona. We’ve been keeping in touch online.”

And just like that, she was off to the races…building this lie instead of trying to walk it back, which made her feel lower than a snake’s belly. But despite her initial panic, it was a good ruse. Her mother had always fretted about Suzanne’s lack of romantic entanglements.

Artists need to love, darling.

“He lives in Credence?” Her mother said Credence in much the same way she said street art.

“Yes, here, at the ranch. He’s a…rancher.” She swallowed as she dug the hole a little deeper. But if Suzanne was going to successfully pull off this lie, she was going to have to be convincing, and at least she could talk about Grady with conviction.

It wasn’t like he was ever going to know. She’d be back in New York in a few weeks with their relationship over and neither he nor her parents need ever know the truth.

“The…rancher?”

“Yes.” Suzanne crossed her fingers behind her back.

“So you’re staying at his place? There’s not a cottage?”

Suzanne thunked her forehead against her drawn-up knees and shut her eyes as the hole deepened. “There is a cottage.” The most convincing lies always held as much truth as possible, right? “I was in the cottage. But I’m…not now, no.”

She needed her mother to believe it was serious. Serious enough to not come home for Christmas. Suzanne shacking up with a rancher in rural Colorado ought to do it.

“Oh…well…that’s… Why didn’t you tell us you were going to be with a man, Suzanne?”

Good question, Suzanne, why didn’t you? “It’s…still new, and I didn’t want to jinx it.” Dig. Dig. Dig. Crap…she was digging herself all the way to hell.

A long pause followed, and Suzanne was happy to let it stretch. At least while they weren’t talking, she wasn’t lying. “Well…okay, then,” her mother finally said. “That’s fine…we’ll come to you.”

Suzanne’s head snapped up, her eyes goggling wide open. What the? If somebody had put a gun to her head and asked Suzanne to guess what her mother would say next, Fine, we’ll come to you wouldn’t even have been in her top one hundred choices.

Her mom and dad coming to Credence? For Christmas? Ah…no.

Big. Fat. No.

And not just because her mom thought she had a rancher boyfriend now, which she very obviously did not, but because she didn’t want them ruining her first-ever real Christmas with all their bah humbug ways. But even more than that was the issue of her paintings. If her mother came, she’d want to see what Suzanne was working on, and Suzanne wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not when she didn’t even know where it was going yet.

Her mother’s tutelage over the years had been the kind of stuff that art students could only dream of, and it had been formative but also…stultifying. Criticism may well have been insightful and well meaning but also unhelpful for the creative process. What Suzanne was creating now was too new for any kind of critical eye.

Grady’s had been bad enough.

“But…but…it blizzards here.” Suzanne honestly did not know what else to say. Her brain had temporarily flatlined.

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed it doesn’t.”

Dear god, if Suzanne didn’t come up with a way to stop this, her parents would really make the trek. Her pulse tapped wildly at her temples. She couldn’t let it happen. “There’s no accommodation in Credence,” she said, panic begetting inspiration. The reason she was out here at the ranch in the first place was lack of paying places to stay.

Thank you, all the single ladies!

“But…we could just stay in the cottage, couldn’t we, as you’re not staying there anymore.”

Crap. The cottage. Damn it, the universe was already punishing her over the fake rancher boyfriend thing. Karma really was a bitch.

“It’s a ways out of town, Mom.”

“I’m sure we’ll cope.”

Yes, but would she? Suzanne’s pulse kicked up as she racked her brain for a suitable reason for them not to make the trip. Something that would put her mother off the idea of coming within a hundred miles of Credence.

Something worse than blizzards.

And then a light bulb flashed on over her head. “Trust me, Mom, you really wouldn’t like it here at all. Grady is a Christmas freak. Honestly, there’s enough tinsel strung about the cabin to go twice around Credence. It’s like…the North Pole exploded overhead. Grady just adores this time of year, and when he knew I was coming, he spent a week getting everything all tinseled up for me. He’s like whatever the opposite is of the Grinch. He’s…the Christmas fairy.”

Suzanne didn’t have to know much about Grady to know adoration was not in his range of emotions and fairies weren’t in his vocabulary, Christmas or otherwise.

“That sounds…” For a moment, Suzanne was sure her mom was going to say horribly redneck. “Lovely.”

Which roughly translated to horribly redneck in Simone St. Michelle speak. Suzanne seized on what might be a chink in her mother’s plans to travel to Credence.

“Did I mention the mistletoe? So. Much. Mistletoe. Grady says it’s so that wherever I am in the cabin, he can kiss me. Doesn’t that make you just want to swoon?” Her mother hated public displays of affection more than public displays of Christmas. “And boy, does he keep his promises, if you know what I mean. He’s so demonstrative, Mom, I’m just dizzy with it all.”

Suzanne forced out what she hoped was a deliriously happy sigh, feeling super lousy for her deception. God…she was a terrible person. But she couldn’t just roll over and let her parents ruin yet another Christmas. Was it so wrong to want to do her own thing just this once and protect her mother’s feelings?

“That’s…lovely.”

Suzanne almost laughed, but instead she said, “I really don’t think you and Dad will enjoy yourselves here. It’s not the kind of Christmas you’re used to, Mom. I’m sure you can do without me this once, and I’ll be back in New York to watch the ball drop with you both.”

“But…I was looking forward to meeting your rancher.”

Her mother sounded quiet again. A little…hurt, even, but also like she was reconsidering. Suzanne ignored the hot lash of alarm at the thought of her mom and Grady coming face-to-face and concentrated on soothing her mother’s worries. “You will, Mom.”

On the twelfth of never. They would certainly be over when she returned to New York.

God…Grady would probably murder her and bury her out in one of his fields if he knew what she was telling her mother right now.

“Please, Suzanne.” Her mom’s voice wobbled a little, and she cleared it.

Suzanne frowned, tuning in suddenly to the pleading uncertainty in her mother’s voice. Her mother never sounded unsure, and a prickle fanned up her nape. Please? Please what?

And she knew with sudden conviction that something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

“Mom?” Suzanne sat a little straighter. “What’s the matter?”

“Your father and I… Things aren’t so good between us and…I just want one last Christmas where we’re all together.”

Things aren’t so good between us? One last Christmas? What in the hell was her mom trying to say? That their marriage was in trouble? Since when had her parents’ marriage been in trouble? They might not be the most demonstrative of couples—they’d slept in separate bedrooms for as long as Suzanne could remember. But that was because her mom kept odd hours, particularly when she was working on a piece, and her father was a very light sleeper. There was still enormous affection and common interests binding them together.

They were a good team, the toast of the New York art world.

Albie, her father, was an agent and, along with a select list of New York’s elite artists, he had represented Simone for four decades. In fact, he had discovered her, and they had this perfect symbiosis between professional and personal that was the envy of the art world.

They got each other.

Sure, they fought. Her mother had an artistic temperament and often neglected everything in the midst of a project. But they’d always made up.

“What do you mean, aren’t so good?”

“I just…don’t know if we’ll be together next Christmas.”

Suzanne sucked in a breath. “Mom…no.” The thought that her parents might split up was…shocking. She knew it was none of her business. She wasn’t a kid any longer, and her parents were allowed to do what they wanted with their lives, but…separation?

“You’ve always been the glue that held us together, darling. I’m very much afraid we can’t do it without you, and I can’t bear the thought of having to sit opposite your father on Christmas morning and not know what to say.”

Suzanne blinked. What the hell? She’d been the glue? That couldn’t be true, surely. But her mother sounded so…empty, so…lost, it was like a knife twisting in her heart. Whatever nonsense was going on with her parents, it wasn’t just some flash in the pan.

It was serious.

“Mom…” Suzanne didn’t know want to say. Her mother was always so authoritative, she wasn’t used to her sounding so small and helpless. “I’ll come home for Christmas.” Even as Suzanne said it, a ball of disappointment pulled tight in her gut. She’d been so looking forward to spending the day with Winona and the others at the boardinghouse. But there’d be other Christmases. “I’ll see what flights are available and call you back.”

“No.” Her mother’s voice went from soft to stridently vehement. “Absolutely not, darling. Of course you must spend your first Christmas with your rancher boyfriend. I absolutely insist.”

“Mom…” Suzanne sighed. “It’s fine. I’m sure he”—my fake rancher boyfriend—“can do without me for a few days.” Suzanne was pretty damn sure Joshua Grady would throw a party the day she left. “I’ll spend next Christmas with him.”

“I insist,” her mother continued. “Besides, I think it’ll do your father and me good to get out of our old routine, out of our comfort zone. I am set in my ways over certain things, and I think that’s starting to frustrate your dad, so we need a shake-up. While I wish Winona had decided to go to the Caribbean, eastern Colorado will do just fine. A change of scenery and some time away from New York is just what we need right now.”

Suzanne knew her mother was making sense. It was the kind of couple’s therapy a shrink might suggest, and had she not just fabricated a whole life here that didn’t exist, Suzanne would be all for it.

But she had. She now had a rancher boyfriend she was living with in what she’d pretty much painted as Santa’s freaking grotto.

“Mom, I don’t think—”

“Please, Suzanne,” her mother cut in, her voice equal parts urgent and desperate. “I promise I won’t disparage the way your rancher chooses to celebrate Christmas. I would never embarrass you like that, darling. Whatever he wants to do, I’ll be fully involved. I’m willing to try anything because we need this, and I…don’t know what else to do.”

God… Suzanne swallowed. How was she supposed to say no to that? This was her mom, who never asked her for anything. Her parents. Who loved each other. Were good for each other. Who belonged together.

It wasn’t her mother’s fault that Suzanne had dug herself a great big hole that couldn’t be refilled without getting a lot of mud in her face. Crap… There was no way she could say no to her mother when the stakes were so high. “Of course,” she said on a loud exhale of air. “Grady and I would love to have you.” Then she shut her eyes and waited for a lightning bolt to blast through the roof and fry her to a pulp.

None was forthcoming.

Her mother gave a little, rather undignified (for her) whoop, and Suzanne blinked. “I’ll book flights now and text you the details.”

The phone cut off in her ear, and Suzanne flopped back against the mattress, pulling the covers over her head again as she curled her legs into her chest and disappeared into her cocoon of what-the-fuckery to contemplate all the ways Grady could kill her out here where no one could hear her scream.

…

At just after five o’clock that night, Suzanne walked along the path that connected the cottage to the cabin. It was dark already, the sun having finally slipped below the horizon a half hour ago, and the air was frigid, a constant puff of steam misting into the air from her mouth. Thankfully it was lit enough by the moon to navigate the path without assistance from a flashlight.

In one hand, Suzanne carried a bottle of red wine—a nice one she’d brought with her from New York—in the other, a bowl containing the warm pasta dish she’d cooked earlier. Just because she mostly lived on two-minute noodles and Oreos when she was painting didn’t mean Suzanne couldn’t cook. In fact, she very much enjoyed the process as long as she had time on her hands, because cooking was a kind of art, too, and all art should be lingered over.

But today, with her muse rocking in a corner somewhere, she’d had plenty of time and the ingredients to make her penne arrabbiata or, as she’d coined it, Suzanne’s Ass-kissing Pasta. It was quick and simple and smelled delicious with the handfuls of basil leaves she’d thrown in, and her stomach grumbled as she stood on Grady’s back porch and knocked on the door.

She only hoped it worked, because there was some serious ass-kissing to do if she hoped to convince Grady to be her fake rancher boyfriend. Grady, who had already made it plain he was not a fan of her or her work and was probably still—rightly—pissed about the paintings. But, man, was Suzanne grateful to have those paintings in her possession now. She had a feeling she was going to need the leverage.

When she’d been in the throes of creating them, they’d flowed from the purest place inside her, and the thought of sullying them with what was essentially bribery didn’t exactly thrill Suzanne. But surely he’d be able to see her cause was noble even if he’d never met her parents?

Didn’t cowboys go for all that noble shit? Wasn’t that part of their code?

Suzanne knocked again as the chilly air seeped in through clothes not suitable for a freezing December night in eastern Colorado. Because it was only a short walk, Suzanne hadn’t bothered to bundle up, wearing just her jeans, a light sweater, and her knee-high Uggs. She’d figured she’d only be out in the air for less than a minute, and it’d save her having to unravel in Grady’s cabin because taking clothes off near him reminded her of him stripped down to the waist, and she was still trying really hard to forget that incident.

But apparently, he was going to make her wait. Probably hoping she’d turn into a Popsicle on his doorstep.

Was he that mad? Yeah. Suzanne gave a mental nod. He was that mad.

Annoyed, she lifted her hand to knock a third time—she knew he was in there; she’d watched him go inside an hour ago just as the deep purple chill of twilight had descended. The door opened before her knuckles had a chance to connect, and Suzanne had to tense her quads to stop from stumbling forward.

He frowned at her. Just for something different… “What did you break now?” he asked as delicious warmth from his cabin made her very aware of her fripples high-beaming him.

Suzanne was torn between the urge to brain him with the bottle of red—it wasn’t that nice—and full-on ogling his body. If she thought Grady in Levis, plaid shirt, boots, and hat, smelling like hay and hard work, was something, then Grady in sweats and an old T-shirt was something else. There was a faded logo on the front, and he smelled like soap and toothpaste. His hair was damp around his head and, if she had to guess, she’d say he wasn’t long out of the shower.

She suppressed the ridiculous urge to take a step forward and lean in, to bury her face in his shirt and revel in the kind of soft that hinted at a thousand washes. She locked her quads tighter instead and gritted her teeth for a beat before consciously ungritting them and plastering a smile on her face.

“I come in peace.” She thrust the bottle of wine at him and offered him the bowl of pasta. “Truce?”

His frown morphed to a scowl as he eyed the pasta like she’d laced it with strychnine. “Why?”

Suzanne kept smiling. “Because we’re neighbors, because we’re a long way from anywhere, and because it’s the festive season.”

He shifted warily, and Suzanne’s gaze dropped to his feet, bare against the wooden boards, and her belly did a cartwheel. Why she found his feet sexy—apart from their obvious size—she had no idea. Basically, this man and her body’s response to him were a complete and utter mystery.

She was blaming long-term exposure to paint thinners.

“I thought we’d agreed you were going to stay over there, and I was going to stay over here?”

“It’s the festive season,” Suzanne repeated, resisting the urge to grit her teeth again.

Grady pointed to his face. “Does this look like a face that gives a rat’s ass about that?”

Nope, it did not. His face was not lit with the festive spirit. Burl had said this was a tough time of year for Grady, and there was that shrapnel wound. Had something tragic happened when he’d been on tour one Christmas?

Whatever his problem with the season, Suzanne realized as he stood stubbornly in his doorway making no move to admit her, she was going to have to give him an acceptable reason for him to admit her, because neighborly wasn’t going to work.

“I have a…proposal I think you’ll be interested in.”

His eyebrows rose fleetingly before he was frowning again. “I already told you, I’m not in the market for a wife. Or a bed warmer.”

The outrage she’d felt that first day they’d met surged again, heating her blood. The man really had an ego the size of Colorado. “It’s not that kind of proposal. Nor is it a proposition.”

He folded his arms like she was trying his patience, but it didn’t stop the funny hitch in her breath as the T-shirt stretched very nicely across his biceps. “Fine…why don’t you enlighten me?”

Suzanne looked over his shoulder, where she could see high ceiling beams and the flicker of a flame in a fireplace. It looked cozy and inviting. Shame Rancher Surly was guarding it. “Could we maybe talk inside like two reasonable adults?”

“Nope.”

She bugged her eyes at him. Jesus, he really didn’t quit, did he? “You like being a hard-ass?” The fact that he was going to make her state her business while freezing her butt off on his doorstep was not endearing her to him.

A nerve ticked in his jaw. “What do you want, Suzanne?” His voice was hard, but there was a degree of weariness to it. Or maybe that was exasperation.

“I need a favor.” She cleared her throat.

“No.”

He went to shut the door, but Suzanne stopped it with her hand holding the wine bottle. For crying out loud, anyone would think she was about to ask him for a kidney.

“Please,” she said as their eyes met and locked, his the stormy green of an approaching tornado. “If you help me, I’ll hand over the paintings.”

He eyed her for long moments, his face a mask, his eyes unreadable. Then he pulled the door open. “You have five minutes.”