It was Grady’s turn to swallow, the conviction in her voice so compelling that it was almost as if he could see her need. It didn’t make him feel any better about the price he’d demanded, but the fact she was willing, no matter how reluctantly, to sacrifice the painting to a greater cause helped.

And he could no more deny her her oxygen than he could deny his own.

“Then let’s do it.”

…

Half an hour later, after having the last of the brownies soaked in bourbon for breakfast—end of the world adulting 101—Suzanne had a five-foot canvas set up landscape style on her easel. The light from the window behind her was good, and Grady had given her one of his old plaid shirts on the proviso she didn’t wear anything underneath, so she wasn’t.

The sand in the hourglass was running out in this bubble of theirs, and she wanted to wring every sexy, lighthearted moment she could from it. If that included him getting off on catching an occasional glimpse of her bare ass, then fair enough, considering he was lying buck naked on the rug amid a nest of duvets, pillows, and blankets.

He looked warm and comfortable and exceedingly sexy in the firelight and very at home in this cabin as rough-hewn as himself. Very…frontier man, lying so casually, unconcerned while the storm raged outside.

Even naked and horizontal, the man was king of his domain.

A thrill, the same thrill she felt when she’d first started painting him, gripped her as Suzanne made the first slash on the canvas. Magic tingled in her fingertips and tapped in her toes, and she knew that all the painting she’d done of Grady up till now had been leading to this moment.

Suddenly the heaviness in her heart over losing those paintings lifted. They had meant a huge amount, but they’d merely been signposts in her journey to this painting. Signposts to the starting point of her career. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in her possession, because she would always carry them in her heart.

“What do you want me to do?”

Suzanne glanced up from her palette. “Do?”

“Yeah. Am I supposed to lay a certain way? Do you want me to…pose?” He turned on his side, with his top leg splayed wide, showing off his wares like a bad seventies porn star.

She laughed. “This ain’t that kind of portrait.” He laughed, too, but she could see he was finding the whole experience a little discomfiting. “Just be yourself.”

He snorted as he rolled onto his back again. “This is so far from myself, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Just lie like that for a while and talk to me.”

“What if I need to scratch my nose? Or use the bathroom?”