She gave him a horrified look like the mere suggestion of showing them was preposterous. “Oh, you can rest assured, these are not for public consumption.”

Grady frowned. It sounded like she was…ashamed of them. These so-called priceless paintings she’d painted. Yet she wasn’t going to give them up or sell them to him. Which made them what? For…private consumption? Her own viewing pleasure?

Man…do not go there. Do not put pleasure and Suzanne St. Michelle in the same sentence. Just go. Get out—now!

“I’ll hold you to that.” Tipping his chin at the vac, he said, “Leave it outside when you’re done. I’ll pick it up later.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and strode out of the cottage straight for the barn and the ATV and a herd of cattle that needed hay and were about as far away from Suzanne and her paintings and her curves and that fucking blue paint on her forehead as he could get.

…

Suzanne sat on the end of her bed as the door to the cottage slammed shut. Shit. That had not gone well. She stared at her paintings, a sick kind of dread sinking in her stomach as Grady’s face times five stared back at her.

“What are you looking at?” she said waspishly to the figures that all seemed faintly accusing now. Or maybe that was her guilty conscience talking.

But she’d just…panicked. When she’d emerged from behind the kitchen counter, she’d suddenly noticed the vac had fallen silent, and then she’d seen her bedroom door open and she’d freaked out. Not as much as she had when she’d thought he was going to forcibly remove the paintings from the cottage, though.

It was in that moment she realized what they’d come to mean to her.

Sure, looking at them, they were just more of the same for her—art reproductions. But it was what they represented that was important. She hadn’t had this urge, this driving need to paint in such a long time. Maybe not ever. Growing up in the shadow of a famous artist, it’d been hard to find her own way, her own style—her own voice. Especially when everyone expected her to be a chip off the old block.

That kind of pressure had been almost paralyzing.

It’d been easier to pour her creativity into mimicking. Into copying. And, for the first time, instead of criticism for her artistic choices, she’d been praised. And when she’d started to earn a legitimate living out of it, she’d grabbed it with both hands.

It had been the final nail in her artistic coffin for her muse, though. Or so she’d thought. But it must have only been in a deep freeze, because her muse was a living, breathing pulse in her breast, and it was because of Grady and those paintings. The thought of him taking them away had been too much to bear.

She may have battled with her muse these past five days, deliberately trying to curtail her, but she was back, and Suzanne was very much afraid that if she handed these paintings over, her muse would go away again. Because what if they were the key to this artistic rush? This flow had been so new, too new to know how tenuous it might be, and if the paintings were gone, would her inspiration go with them?