That got Winona’s attention. “Oh really?”

Suzanne nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s great, babe,” Winona enthused, her hands covering Suzanne’s.

Winona, who had seen some of Suzanne’s aimless doodlings one day, had always championed Suzanne’s talent, convinced she was more than capable of being an artist in her own right. But Suzanne had been told a long time ago that she didn’t have the raw gift her mother possessed, and she’d known it was true.

Sure, Suzanne could paint, she had talent, but a true artist needed more. Those mad scribblings she did late at night didn’t count; hell, they weren’t even art. They were just…exercise. All talent needed to be exercised. But her true calling was reproduction. Give her another artist’s painting, and she could study the colors and the brushwork and the techniques and reproduce it perfectly.

Rembrandt. Gauguin. Turner. Monet. Kahlo. Van Gogh. Cassat. Picasso. She’d done them all and more and been paid very nicely both from private collectors as well as publicly funded museums, art galleries, and other places that displayed priceless paintings.

Or copies of them anyway.

And she loved it. She loved her job. Who’d have thought art forgery could ever be a legitimate profession?

“I don’t know.” Suzanne withdrew her hands nervously. She didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself. It had been so long since she’d painted anything original, she didn’t know if she was even capable. And portraits were…tricky. It was best to stick to the landscape for now. “We’ll see. Don’t hold your breath.”

Winona nodded, but she did an excited little squiggle in her chair anyway, and Suzanne laughed, grateful for the day they’d been introduced at one of her mother’s art exhibitions in Chicago a few years ago. Suzanne had been instantly drawn to the older woman, who was loud and irreverent and spoke her mind. Winona was the real deal, and for someone who dealt in fakes for a living, it had been a refreshing change.

Suzanne usually headed to Chicago, to Winona’s, in between commissions to clear her head. And this time, at Winona’s urging, she’d come to Credence.

“So…” Suzanne shoveled more pie into her mouth as she glanced out the window at the afternoon shadows lengthening down the main street. “You’re really going to stay here?”

Winona smiled and nodded. “I really am.”

“It seems so…”

“So?”

“So not you. You’ve always been so…Chicago.”

Winona grinned. “I love it here. I didn’t expect to—I only came because I thought a bunch of bachelorettes coming to the ass-end of nowhere to hook up with a farmer would make a great plot for a book. But…” She shook her head. “It really crept up on me, and you should see the land I’ve bought at the lake. It’s…everything I never knew I wanted.”

Suzanne returned the grin. How could she not? Winona’s was so infectious. “How long until the house is finished?”

“Benji was hoping to get it done by Christmas and before the first snow of the season, but…there are disadvantages to living in a rural area.” She shrugged. “We’re aiming for spring.”