Chapter Four

If Suzanne thought she was one and done with committing Joshua Grady to canvas and that she’d be able to move on to something else, she was sorely mistaken.

She’d woken with the same dire urge to paint thrumming in her blood and propelling her out of bed, but she’d had zero intention of painting Grady again. He and that epic battle with her muse were yesterday, and she was keen to move on.

But with Brooks and Dunn blaring from the speaker, it didn’t take her long to realize it was Grady’s eyes emerging from the canvas again. What the hell? No.

No. No. No.

But her muse giggled with excitement. She freaking giggled. And she had her way.

It was a strange conundrum. Suzanne feeling compelled to paint Grady again by her little internal dictator but not liking it, not one bit, pushing back as much as she could within the confines of the compulsion. Because it was impossible to have a career painting only this damn rancher, and she would not paint him without clothes no matter how much her muse begged.

By the time she was done, it had been another long day, pushing into the night as the music pumped around the cottage. Her body ached again, and her eyes felt like peeled grapes, but this portrait was even better than the last. Her chest expanded painfully as her gaze flowed over the granite stillness of Grady’s expression. Yesterday’s image had been the fiery Grady, annoyed at her presence. Today’s was the gruff, tight-lipped cowboy.

The rancher.

Just to teach that interfering little hussy of hers a lesson, she’d attached Grady’s head to a reproduction of Vitruvian Man—the iconic Leonardo da Vinci drawing of a naked man in two superimposed positions inside a circle. Grady’s surly, silent expression and the shrapnel wound were perfect for the deep, dead-eyed stare of Leonardo’s four-armed, four-legged man.

Not to mention probably being a little more accurate in the junk department.

But still, she sent a tiny prayer to the heavens for the gods of artistic pursuit to forgive her for both today’s and yesterday’s transgressions against art; then she cleaned up the paints and herself before heading to her bed and oblivion.

…

On the third morning, Suzanne was determined not to paint Grady. No matter how much it itched beneath her skin and her muse demanded it. She’d been determined to try her hand at the landscape outside her window again, and those first brushstrokes had been encouraging. But without her even knowing it, the strong ridge of his throat took form and shape before her and she was halfway done with his face before she’d even realized it was him.

Man…she was pissed now.

But Suzanne had the last laugh, flipping her muse off by placing Grady’s head on a Botticelli-style cherub flying through a blue sky and puffy clouds, a bow and arrow poised to strike. The body was all cute and soft, in stark contrast to the hard planes and angles of the adult face and the brutality of that shrapnel scar. She’d even gone overboard and painted the slightest uptilt to his beautiful lips.