Suzanne’s hand paused abruptly above the cookie she was frosting. Where in the hell had that come from?

Sure, over the course of her life, she’d thought about being a wife. Somebody’s wife. She hadn’t thought too much about her mysterious husband, but deep down she’d always assumed he’d be an artist like her or in one of the associated industries. Maybe an agent like her father. Or a gallery owner. Or…someone who worked at Sotheby’s. But never in her life had she ever thought she’d be a rancher’s wife.

It was…utterly ridiculous.

She was here for a month. And this relationship was fake. A big, fat fake. She didn’t know the first thing about life out here, and two weeks on a ranch did not make her rancher wife material. Not to mention the fact that Grady didn’t want her here. Hell, he probably had some calendar somewhere he was crossing off the days on with a big red marker.

Besides, she was a New Yorker. Her life was in New York. Her work was in New York. Her friends and family were in New York.

But even as she thought that, she knew it wasn’t true. Not really. Sure, she had friends in the city, and her parents and the house she’d grown up in were there also. But her work often took her away from New York and, frankly, she could paint anywhere—she’d just proven that.

Especially if she wasn’t traveling for commissions and decided it was time to concentrate on her own art for a while.

Her heart fluttered like wings inside her chest as her muse stirred. Her own art. Grady might want her gone at the end of her rental period, but that didn’t mean she had to leave Credence. What if she got her own place by the lake, like Winona? Set up a studio out there? Finally left home and found out who she was without the constraints of the familiar?

The thought was both preposterous and exciting at once.

“I thought I could smell cookies.”

Suzanne startled and almost dropped the frosting tube, glancing to the side to find Grady paused under the archway. He was in track pants and that soft faded T-shirt, looking like the best kind of Christmas present. His hair was a little messy, as if he’d been shoving his fingers through it, his jaw dark with stubble and his feet bare.

And the way that T-shirt stretched just right over his shoulders was the most indecent thing she’d ever seen.

She straightened. “I…thought you were in bed.”