The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  He resolutely decided not to think about that as he steadily sucked up water, and, between the two of them, they got the job done.

  Grady was on the last section near the wall that separated Suzanne’s bedroom—the bedroom; it wasn’t hers, for fuck’s sake—from the living area. The water had almost made it to the wall and didn’t appear to have spread into the bedroom, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Flagstones were notoriously uneven, which could cause little gutters, allowing some water to flow under the door.

  It didn’t occur to him not to check the room. Grady didn’t half-ass anything, and it made sense to confirm all was well in the bedroom while he was here. There was a rug just inside the entrance that might easily soak up a lot of water before being symptomatic of a problem. So he thought nothing of opening her door. He did look around to tell her he was going in, but he couldn’t see her, so he assumed she was kneeling in the kitchen hidden behind the counter and the noise was prohibitive to calling out.

  Turning the knob, Grady stepped inside. There was no immediate squelching of the rug, which he trod over back and forth to be sure as he assessed both it and the nearby flagstones for signs of water encroachment. Satisfied all was well, he turned to exit when his gaze fell on several canvases leaning against the wall.

  Curious as to just what kind of painter Suzanne St. Michelle was, he paused to give them more of his attention. Grady blinked. Nudes, apparently. He recognized the famous figures on the canvases at first glance, and it took only a few moments for him to realize that Suzanne had talent.

  Grady may not have had an artistic bone in his body—he couldn’t even draw a straight line with a ruler—but clearly the woman could paint. It was on second glance, however, he realized something startling.

  Something outrageously startling.

  His face staring out from each of the five canvases. Not his body but most definitely his face.

  What. The. Fuck.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Grady blinked and blinked again. Shaking his head, he grappled with what he was seeing, trying to make sense of the images that were familiar but not. His thoughts were spinning like a tumble dryer, and he couldn’t concentrate with the vac rumbling like a goddamn jackhammer in his brain. Switching it off, he dropped the head of the apparatus on the rug and moved closer to the paintings.

  She’d…superimposed his head on famous works like David and that dude with the four arms and four legs that da Vinci—or maybe it was somebody else?—had done. The reproduction of the subjects was very good but, with his head substituted for theirs, the paintings looked surreal. Like those big boards with people’s bodies printed on them and a cutout where their faces should be so other people could stick their heads in for a funny photo opportunity.

  Grady did not think they were funny.

  Maybe she was just a frustrated classical artist hiding behind silly doodles, and she was here to try her hand at serious art. And failing. Giving up at the last hurdle and…painting his face instead.

  It was very definitely him. She’d captured with startling accuracy the hardened loner who stared back at him from the mirror every morning. There was nothing caricature-like about the detail of his face or that haunted kind of look in his eyes. And then there was that circular puckered wound placed beneath the right clavicle on every painting.

  The bodies may have been different but she was, he was sure of it, painting him.

  What. The. Actual. Fuck.

  Heat flushed through his system, building rapidly to a simmer and then a boil. The flow of his blood washed loudly through his ears. Why on God’s green earth was she painting him? Why? And, also, fuck that stalker shit. He planted his hands on his hips, becoming more and more incredulous at her audacity. He hadn’t given her permission to paint him.

  She couldn’t just…do that, could she?

  “Grady?” His name coming from a distance barely disrupted the red mist fogging his brain. The second time pierced it like a bloody great anvil. “Graaaady!”

  It sounded like she was in motion, and he was sure he could hear her feet on the flagstones getting closer, and then she burst through the door, skidding to a halt on the rug, her gaze taking in his closeness to the paintings and, if she had two functioning eyes in her head, the rigid set of his jaw and the expression of absolute fury on his face.

  “Grady.” She took a couple of steps closer, but his gaze flashed over her in a beam of hot rage and she pulled to a halt. “I can explain.”

  Oh, she could, could she? Well…he’d like to hear that. “Explain why you’ve been over here all this time painting me like some stalker.” His knuckles whitened as he dug his fingers almost painfully into his hips and stared at her, waiting for her explanation.

  Her eyes darted to the paintings and back. “To be fair…I haven’t really been painting you.”

  Heat crept up Grady’s neck. She was going to equivocate now? “Yeah,” he insisted, his jaw throbbing from how hard he was clenching it, “you have.”

  She shook her head, her blue eyes large in her face. “No…I’ve been painting David and The Creation of Adam and Atlas—”

  Grady stabbed his finger at the nearest painting, pointing to his face peering out from beneath the golden curls of a cherub. “Me.”

  “The faces, sure,” she said, hastening forward but stopping abruptly again at his glare. “But the bodies aren’t.”

  That was true. And really fucking true for certain parts. A less educated, less secure man might have felt emasculated looking at nude paintings of micro-dicked men that were not him. But Grady had been to an art gallery or two; he knew tiny weenies were a thing.

  Also, he wore size fourteen boots. How about them apples.

  Grady stabbed another finger at the paintings, pointing directly at the bullet wound on Adam. “Me,” he repeated, his voice as deep and earthy as dirt.

  Her cheeks, which were already flushed, seemed to get even rosier, but she stared him straight in the eye and jutted out her chin like the day she’d arrived when she’d called him a cowpoke. “This is none of your business.”

  “The hell it’s not, lady.” He didn’t raise his voice, choosing instead to inject it with a high level of do-not-fuck-with-me. It was the voice he only ever used in war zones. Or on recalcitrant bulls. “You can’t paint me without my permission.”

  “Actually—” Her forehead wrinkled into blue lines of consternation. “I hate to get all technical on you, but I can. As long as I don’t sell it or exhibit it for profit, I can paint whatever I want. Whoever I want. From the president of the United States to the queen of England and everyone in between, and I can certainly fill every spare inch of this cottage with paintings of you if I wanted to, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Grady had thought his anger had reached its peak. Turned out, he had hidden peaks. And that the universe hadn’t stopped fucking with his life just because he was hiding from it out here in bumfuck eastern Colorado. It was still trying to screw him.

  And not the good kind of happy-ending screwing.

  “Lady, you have acres of land out there.” He didn’t even try to keep the exasperation out of his voice as he jabbed a finger at the window. “There are trees and fields. There are cows and horses and barns. It’s called nature, and it’s quite popular hereabouts. Maybe you should try painting that?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but it turns out your trees and cows just aren’t that inspiring. Trust me: I have several shit landscapes shut away in that closet over there because I can’t even stand to look at them and, as far as I’m aware, only one of us here studied fine art at Columbia, so if you don’t mind, I won’t take any art advice from the person who—”

  Her lip curled like she was going to say who herds cows for a living, but it wasn’t what slipped from her mouth.

  “—didn’t,” she ended.

  Grady g
round his teeth together. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass what she thought of him and how he earned his money. The opinion of some woman he’d only just met who had a streak of blue paint on her forehead and was destined to be a pain in his ass was less than zero in his estimation. So he cut to the chase.

  “I want them. All of them.”

  Which wasn’t strictly true. It wasn’t like he was going to hang any of it. But he sure as hell wanted to see how well they’d burn. Maybe roast some marshmallows over the flames.

  Her eyes grew large at his command, and she moved, dodging around him to put herself between him and her paintings, her legs planted wide, her arms akimbo, as if she could block any attempt he made at getting to them.

  Right. Her and which army?

  “Back off,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “They’re mine, I painted them, they belong to me. And you can’t have them.”

  Despite another uptick in Grady’s temper, he almost laughed at her as she swayed slightly, back and forth on her feet, her hands out in front as if she was about to karate chop him. He figured this was her ninja stance, but those curves and that streak of blue paint on her forehead ruined the badass.

  “They’re of me,” he reiterated.

  She shook her head again. “That’s not the way copyright works, Grady. I painted them. They belong to me.”

  Grady shoved his hands on his hips. “Hand them over.”

  “You want them?” Her eyes narrowed as she squatted a little lower. “You’re going to have to take them from me.”

  Grady blinked, taken aback by the challenge and the almost zeal-like quality in her gaze. She was dead serious. These…bizarre paintings obviously meant something to her. They meant something to him as well, but if she thought he was going to wrestle her for them, then she was mistaken. Grady had spent far too long in the military witnessing force to be a party to it in his civilian life.

  Plus, Burl would probably kick his ass. When he put his mind to it, his uncle had a look that made Grady feel seventeen all over again.

  “I think you’re being a little melodramatic now, don’t you?”

  “Art is serious stuff.”

  “You painted my head on a cherub,” he said incredulously.

  “It’s a Botticelli,” she snapped.

  “I don’t care if it was painted by a chorus of actual angels.”

  She crouched a little lower. “I’m not handing over my paintings.”

  Grady did laugh this time as Suzanne eyed him like she was going to spring into bloodcurdling action at any moment. “Relax, crouching tiger,” he said with a wave of his hand, his voice low and grim. “I’m not going to take them from you. I’ll buy them off you.”

  The last thing Grady wanted was to fork out hard-earned cash for a bunch of paintings he was just going to torch. But if that was what it took…

  Suzanne pulled abruptly out of her ninja stance, her arms dropping to her sides. “Wh-what?”

  Oh yeah…that did it. She had no interest in giving them away, but with some cash in the offing, suddenly she was interested. “How much?” he demanded.

  She was frowning, looking at him like he’d grown another head. “They’re not for sale.”

  Grady cocked an eyebrow. “Honey…everything’s for sale.”

  “These aren’t.” She folded her arms.

  Hmm…okay. It was going to be like that, huh? Suzanne St. Michelle wasn’t going to be some pushover. He should have known that from day one when she’d yelled at him and called him on his bullshit.

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

  Her whole face contorted into an expression of surprise followed swiftly by a twist to her lips that reflected her degree of insult. Her face clearly said, You have got to be kidding me, and he hurried to clarify.

  “Each.”

  Six hundred bucks was a ridiculous amount of money for art that belonged on the sidewalks of Montmartre or in the local high school art competition. But he was good for it.

  She blinked several times, her expression morphing quickly as she broke into laughter. Laughter. She was laughing at him. “A hundred bucks? Each?”

  More laughter, her hand going to her stomach like it was actually hurting to laugh so goddamn hard. Despite his irritation, Grady had to admit, she had a great laugh—light and musical, a woman’s laugh. It’d been a long time since he’d made a woman laugh, even if it was sarcastically.

  “Clients pay me tens of thousands of dollars for my paintings,” she said when her laughter had faded enough to communicate.

  It was Grady’s turn to blink. He glanced at the canvases. What the fuck? Sure, she could obviously paint, but that was preposterous. Although, to be fair, he hadn’t been able to see the artistic merit in the many pieces he’d seen hanging in famous galleries, either. “I’m assuming what you do for your clients is a little more…highbrow?”

  Surely people only paid big bucks for capital-A art, and Grady seriously doubted there was a thriving rich people’s market for caricatures.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Well, at least I know where to come if I ever want a backhanded compliment.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” Grady shook his head, no idea why he was apologizing. “I’m not really the guy you come to for compliments of any kind.”

  She snort-laughed this time. “Ya think?”

  Grady felt the tug of a smile at the corners of his mouth but suppressed it. He was trying to negotiate a deal here, not get distracted. “Okay, so… How much do you want? For the paintings.”

  And just how much was he prepared to pay?

  “Remembering that I’m just a simple rancher with a long, hard winter ahead of me.” He injected some John Wayne into his voice. That’s how badly he wanted those paintings.

  She ignored the eyelid batting. “You could offer me a million dollars for each of them and I still wouldn’t sell. These paintings are…priceless to me and not for sale.”

  Priceless? Who in the hell did she think she was, and what size checks was her ego writing to make her think those five…caricatures more at home next to Garfield or in the pages of Mad Magazine were priceless?

  Grady’s jaw muscle ticked as his patience wore thin. “I must insist.”

  That mutinous look he was beginning to know so well hardened her gaze to chips of blue ice. “I’m sure women don’t tell you no very much, Joshua Grady, but read my lips. N. O.” She spelled it out for him just in case he was an idiot of the highest order. “No.”

  Pain flared along his jaw, warning Grady he’d better ease up or he might shatter it completely. The problem was, they were at an impasse and, short of physically stealing them off her, there wasn’t a lot he could do if the deluded woman wasn’t smart enough to make a quick buck.

  But that didn’t mean he’d give up. He’d just execute a strategic withdrawal—for now.

  “You read my lips, Su-sahn Saan Meeshell. If I ever see one of these paintings”—he stabbed his finger at them again—“out on display somewhere, there will be hell to pay. By the time my lawyer is done with you, you won’t even be able to get a gig painting a cinder-block restroom facility in the Alaskan wilderness.”

  Grady didn’t have a lawyer. His uncle had one in Denver, but his office was run out of a strip club, and Grady was pretty sure he spent more time getting lap dances than winning cases. But Suzanne didn’t have to know that.

  She gave him a horrified look like the mere suggestion of showing them was preposterous. “Oh, you can rest assured, these are not for public consumption.”

  Grady frowned. It sounded like she was…ashamed of them. These so-called priceless paintings she’d painted. Yet she wasn’t going to give them up or sell them to him. Which made them what? For…private consumption? Her own viewing pleasure?

  Man…do not go there. Do not put pleasure and Suzanne St
. Michelle in the same sentence. Just go. Get out—now!

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Tipping his chin at the vac, he said, “Leave it outside when you’re done. I’ll pick it up later.”

  And with that, he turned on his heel and strode out of the cottage straight for the barn and the ATV and a herd of cattle that needed hay and were about as far away from Suzanne and her paintings and her curves and that fucking blue paint on her forehead as he could get.

  …

  Suzanne sat on the end of her bed as the door to the cottage slammed shut. Shit. That had not gone well. She stared at her paintings, a sick kind of dread sinking in her stomach as Grady’s face times five stared back at her.

  “What are you looking at?” she said waspishly to the figures that all seemed faintly accusing now. Or maybe that was her guilty conscience talking.

  But she’d just…panicked. When she’d emerged from behind the kitchen counter, she’d suddenly noticed the vac had fallen silent, and then she’d seen her bedroom door open and she’d freaked out. Not as much as she had when she’d thought he was going to forcibly remove the paintings from the cottage, though.

  It was in that moment she realized what they’d come to mean to her.

  Sure, looking at them, they were just more of the same for her—art reproductions. But it was what they represented that was important. She hadn’t had this urge, this driving need to paint in such a long time. Maybe not ever. Growing up in the shadow of a famous artist, it’d been hard to find her own way, her own style—her own voice. Especially when everyone expected her to be a chip off the old block.

  That kind of pressure had been almost paralyzing.

  It’d been easier to pour her creativity into mimicking. Into copying. And, for the first time, instead of criticism for her artistic choices, she’d been praised. And when she’d started to earn a legitimate living out of it, she’d grabbed it with both hands.

  It had been the final nail in her artistic coffin for her muse, though. Or so she’d thought. But it must have only been in a deep freeze, because her muse was a living, breathing pulse in her breast, and it was because of Grady and those paintings. The thought of him taking them away had been too much to bear.