Her love was right there for all to see, just as it was in the nude portrait she’d painted during the blizzard except, this time, she was aware she was doing it and she laid it on thick.

She also painted some landscapes as alive and vital as the portraits.

The outside of Annie’s. The boardinghouse. The old red barn on Harkins Street. The park where they’d had a snowball fight on Christmas Day. Suzanne had caught the play of winter light on cold ground, a sunbeam shining in a bead of liquid hanging from a frozen cobweb and the glisten of frost on anemic grass. She’d captured the peel of paint, the well-worn furrows in a railing, the echo of children’s laughter in snowy footprints.

And she signed all of them.

Annie was throwing a New Year’s Eve event and Suzy was the special guest—her first informal gallery showing and the landscapes were going to be auctioned, the proceeds going to the old folks’ home.

Burl had assured her Grady would come to the event, but she wasn’t so sure. He was probably immune by now to portraits of himself, and while he might cringe at being the center of attention, she didn’t think that trumped his desire to never see her again.

Unless, of course, Winona’s plan worked and the idea of her painting more portraits of him made him mad as hell and he stormed in and ripped them all down. He would have done exactly that four weeks ago, and frankly, she’d prefer that to the way he’d shut her out a week ago.

Spinning around the makeshift gallery, taking in all her paintings, Suzanne felt sick with doubt and worry. God…why had she let her mom and dad and Winona talk her into this?

What if Grady didn’t come? Hell…what if he did?

…

At four o’clock in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, Grady was sitting on an Adirondack chair on his front porch amid a mountain of tinsel, garland, and an absolute tangle of Christmas lights no one was ever going to be able to undo. He’d tossed the Christmas tree, complete with all the awful baubles, over the railing of the porch like a fucking great Scottish caber. It leaned drunkenly half on said railing, half across the bottom of the stairs.

He’d been ignoring all Suzy’s Christmas shit in the cabin for days now, but he’d come home in an absolutely foul mood to an empty, screamingly quiet cabin. No terrible chipmunk carols playing, no cooking aromas, no welcoming smile. And the decorations had been like a red flag to a bull. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was in his every waking thought and all his sleeping ones? Did he have to be reminded of her everywhere he looked, too?