“Wait,” she heard him call.

Janie, bent over her painting supplies in the living room, only looked up when Dave stopped beside her. She lifted her eyebrows, figuring he wanted to ask more about the whole Lionel thing. Instead, he just stared down on her with a confused expression.

“What?” she asked.

His brow furrowed. “Um.” He shook his head. “So you’re painting at their house?”

She laughed. Clearly he’d been exposed to enough of Madison’s crazy sense of humor not to question it. “Yes. She offered when I spoke to her about all this. Since they have more bedrooms than sense, I figured why not. I don’t want to get in your way.”

“I don’t mind.” His voice, so soft, wrapped around her.

She turned away. What was going on? It was like she’d drank the Kool-Aid from the crazy fountain and couldn’t get back on track.

She shook herself and tried to walk it off. Maybe it looked strange to walk around in a circle like some demented chicken, but it was happening. “I think that’s the best place. Because I had an idea for my collection. What’s the universal emotion?” She stopped her circular pacing for long enough to collect the bags and move them in front of the door so she’d practically trip over them when she was leaving. With all the things running through her head at the moment, she knew she’d likely forget anything not actually on her person.

“Love.”

She threw him a surprised and impressed smile. “Look at you. I thought you’d say sex. Given your current situation, I mean.”

“Sharing a moment with a beautiful, intoxicating woman?”

Another circle. The man was firing pheromones and hotness on all cylinders. Also, she should’ve picked a less alluring scent. That was her bad. She had to take responsibility for that one.

“Dressing up for a sex date, actually, but thanks.” She turned the circle into a straight line and moved into her bedroom. “Anyway, yes. Love.” She grabbed a clean T-shirt out of her drawer and dropped it onto the bed. “Everyone responds to love. Sex, too, but not as many people want to hang sex on their walls. They reserve that for their private internet browsers. So I figure hanging around Madison and Colton is my best bet, right? Those two just ooze love all over the place. I’ll have a healthy vibe to sponge off of.”

“You’re going over there now?” Dave, who’d trailed in after her, glanced at the clean pair of yoga pants she’d just dropped on her shirt on the bed.

“I have to pick up some canvases on the way, but yeah. Madison said Colton would clear out the room after he was back from the gym.”

Dave checked his watch and turned away, shaking his head. A moment later, he braced his hands on his hips and bent at the waist, like he was debating something and needed some blood flow to his head.

“What’s up?” Janie asked, pausing at the end of her bed. She wasn’t about to strip down while he was there. Madison, sure, but this felt different.

He glanced back. “Nothing. Just wishing I hadn’t taken this gig. I would’ve headed over and helped him cook while you girls made drinks. We could’ve made a night of it.”

She waved him away. “You’re not missing anything. Once I get into my painting headspace, I am known to lose track of hours. I won’t be drinking tonight.”

He nodded slowly and checked his watch for the second time. That boyish grin crept up his face, seemingly never far away. “Not going to get changed in front of me?”

Her face heated. She took the two steps before shutting the door on him.

That answered that question.

Two hours later, Janie was sitting at the island in Colton’s kitchen with a glass of water in hand, watching him prepare dinner for when Madison got home.

“You know,” she said as she watched his movements. She was waiting for the arrival of what some artists called the muse. The thing that would inspire her. That would make her leave the area mid-sentence and seek out her painting space. “I call that little counter between the kitchen and the living room/dining room in my apartment an island. But after seeing this…” She glanced around the enormous kitchen, then the granite countertop at which she sat. “This is an actual island. A lone slab of granite in a sea of cookery. Mine should be called a peninsula.”

“How many paintings are you aiming for?” he asked.

She watched the play of muscle across his back, trying to get in Madison’s mindset. Trying to imagine what her friend felt like when she looked at the love of her life.

He stood as tall as Dave and nearly as robust, also a big, well-built man. He had more of a chiseled handsomeness than Dave, all planes and angles, but they were equally good looking to her mind. Colton’s air was more serious. More reserved. Certainly more refined. But Dave had charm in spades. In oodles. He shed the stuff as he walked, for heaven’s sakes. When he smiled.

Her heart swelled and she looked away, picturing one of those smiles now. The glimmer in his beautiful, deep-set eyes. The lift of his cheeks and his loose, open stance—as if his whole body were smiling.

She blew out a breath. This wasn’t why she was here. She’d come here to be inspired by Colton and Madison, not Dave.

“Don’t know?”

“Huh?” She belatedly remembered Colton’s original question. “Oh. Um…I’ll aim for five to get things rolling. I mean, five in each theme. The first theme is love. Which is why I’m here. Staring at you. Trying to tap in to what Madison sees in you.”

“Ah. I thought you were staring at me in starvation.”

“That is also true.”

“What will the next theme be?” Colton delivered a plate of cold cuts and cheese before turning back to his stove, all brawn and power.

Flashes of Dave’s brawn and power pushed into her brain. How gracefully he moved despite the size of his body. In that, the men were exactly alike.

“I think you should just paint whatever is on your mind,” Colton said as he seared a hunk of meat. “You must have something in there. You’re not normally this incapable of conversation.”

“Thanks for noticing, Lionel,” she said dryly. She ran a fingertip down the side of her sweating glass of water.

“Paint what you know. Isn’t that a saying?”

“I think that’s ‘write what you know.’”

“Hmmm.”

Janie slid off her stool. “Can you let me know when Madison gets home? Maybe if she’s around, you’ll seem more interesting.”

“Doubt it. She only raises me to the level of tolerable, at best.”

“Don’t I know it.” Janie set off through the large house. It was a really great place, expertly furnished and with high ceilings. Good to fill with a family. The front room could be turned into a playroom, where the kids would be sent on rainy days or when they were in their parents’ hair. Then the living room at the back of the house would be blissfully free of Lego to step on and cars to trip over.

At the top of the stairs, she ignored all the blank canvases leaning against the wall. She looked in each room lining the hall until she found the one that had clearly been set up for her. Madison had a huge heart. Bigger than big. It seemed Colton was just as awesome.

In half a day or less, he’d cleared out most of the furniture in the large room. What he couldn’t get through the door by himself, like the bed, he’d upended and leaned against the wall. White painter’s tarps covered the hardwood floor from wall to wall. Three easels stood in a line, waiting for their canvases. A note on the wall said, We can always repaint. Splatter away.

She braced her hands on her hips as tears filled her eyes. All these people were too good to her. She’d never done anything for them. Not a thing. And yet here they were, trying to help her with anything she might need.

And she did need those easels. She’d completely forgotten to get some. That jerk Atticus had texted a picture of her old one. It lay in ruined fragments.

On the way back down to get the rest of her supplies, which she’d forgotten in the car because clearly the canvases hadn’t been enough of a memory jog, she stopped in the kitchen.

“Thanks,” she said simply, not trusting herself to say more. Madison and Colton were turning her into a real sap.

His glance was brief as he sautéed. “No sweat. When Dave or one of the guys is free, we can get that bed out of there, too. Let me know if there’s anything else I can pick up for you when I’m out tomorrow.”

“Oh no, you shouldn’t have bought—” Her voice hitched and she paused, shaking her head against the threatening tears. This was ridiculous. “It’s great. Thanks.”

“We’ll help you in any way you need, Janie. Any of us will. All of us. Your success is our success. We’ve always believed that of each other, and you’re one of us now. We’re stronger together.”

She crinkled her nose and quickly wiped away a tear that had broken free. “Madison was lucky to have found you, Colton. Just so you know.”

“I do. It’s pretty obvious, after all. I’m awesome.”

She gave his back a watery smile. “And when you get your playground up and running, I’ll paint the walls or slides or whatever.”

His whole body sagged with his sigh. “I really wish that joke would get old.”

“It never will. Just so you know.”

“As I see.”

She laughed and headed to the car to get her supplies.

It wasn’t a playground Colton was building. It was a state-of-the-art mini-golf course with arcades, go-karts, and a bunch of other fun stuff that made the kid in her gleefully bounce up and down in excitement. His mother, who was a ball buster at the best of times, didn’t think it was a dream worth pursuing, and constantly called it a playground. He hated that.

Which meant Janie had to start calling it a playground, too, of course. Followed by the rest of the guys.

Back in the room, with the windows open and the soft breeze flowing through the space, she set up her supplies and took a seat on the stool in the corner. Closing her eyes, she called up memories of Colton and Madison together. Of their smiles. Their constant touching. The deep glimmer in their eyes.

She dropped her head, focusing on the feeling those images called up.

Adding more into the mix, she remembered Madison telling Janie of their first night together. Of her running through the cold with her dress swirling around her legs. Of Colton just as anxious, crashing into her and swooping her off her feet.

The surge of romantic whimsy Janie had felt upon hearing the story didn’t resurface. No spark of inspiration lit up her imagination.

She opened her eyes and glanced at the blank canvas, looming before her in the middle of the mostly empty room.

A shape appeared in the doorway.

“Ah!” Janie shouted, and jumped off her stool, turning to face the lurking man.

A slow grin soaked up Ethan’s face. His hooded eyes surveyed her for a moment, reminding her of sex and satin sheets. He sauntered in with an easy swagger before circling the blank canvas. Without a word, he stood in front of it for a while, staring.

“Hello?” she asked, knowing full well he was not someone who made any sense at all, but also knowing if she left him to his own devices, he’d probably set up camp in the corner and just hang out while she worked. Not. Going. To. Happen.

He turned slowly before drawing near, invading her space in a relaxed sort of way. “Howdy, lady.”

“You are the creepiest yet most strangely alluring dude I have ever met. Have I told you that?”

“Only every time you see me.” He turned around again, standing beside her now, and they stared at the canvas together. “What’s going to go on there?”

“I don’t know. Nothing is coming to mind.”

He bent a little and angled his head so he could look her in the face without stepping forward. It was as weird as she would expect from him. “I’ve seen you daydreaming. I’ve seen you focusing. I’ve seen you strolling through your apartment or this house with a drink in your hand. If I’ve learned anything about you, it’s that you move through life in distraction, always with something ready to go on canvas.” He tapped his temple and straightened up. “My mother drew in charcoal before she died. She was decent. More so because she worked hard at it. She wasn’t the natural talent Madison says you are. But even my mother was distracted all the time. As a kid, I got to share in her unique view of the world. I saw magic every day. I lived it. If you were to let your freak flag fly—”

“Like you so clearly do?” Janie joked.

His smile burned brighter, easy and effortless. “Exactly. I learned from my mother, as I am trying to tell you. If you open up, you can expose us all to the magic you feel.” He winked at her, something all the BD guys seemed to do at just the right moment. They probably shared notes. “Good luck. And when you’re ready, I have a horrible surprise for you. You’ll hate it, I guarantee it. It’ll be worse than those nipple clamps I urged you to try. And much worse than the snake I hadn’t realized you would hold.”

“Please don’t surprise me,” she said to his retreating backside.

His laughter was not reassuring.

“Psycho,” she muttered. “Really sexy, kind of hard to get out of my head, and totally psycho.”

He was right, though. So was Colton. She saw a subject for a painting everywhere she went. Thought of a new idea at least five times a day. Itched to paint nearly every waking moment. It was her sanctuary. Her escape. The only place in this world that she felt like she one hundred percent belonged.

So what was the problem right now?

The subject.

The answer was right there, waiting for her to notice.

She was trying to force it. Pushing herself to go in one direction. Instead, she just needed to open up and let it come.

Dang that Ethan. He was just as insightful as he was weird. It was a gift.

She took a seat again, then paused and glanced at the door. She didn’t want to get in her painting zone only to fall victim to one of Ethan’s surprises. For all she knew, he’d sneak in and put a cockroach in her lap while she had her eyes closed.

Door shut and locked, she started over.

The canvas waited patiently. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift. Almost immediately, the surge of fire and fear rolled through her from the cologne incident with Dave earlier in the day. Her desire to step closer…and to flee. His rapidly beating heart. Hers.

Her breath came faster as she remembered the strong pump of his heart against her palm. His deep eyes delving into her. The delicious tightness of her core, paired with the quivering vulnerability inherent in allowing herself to get too close to another person.

She was in front of the canvas before she’d registered moving. Had colors mixed and ready without thinking. Had her brush moving without any sort of plan or outline.

She’d paint just this one of him, she thought. Just one to express the feelings he called up in her. After that, she’d head downstairs and stare at Madison and Colton for a while, hoping they sparked something else in her.

Twelve hours later, she stumbled into her apartment in a daze. Fatigue dragged at her. Paint covered her. Her mind swam. She probably shouldn’t have driven home, but everyone else had been asleep and she didn’t want to stay there. Couldn’t. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to resist the call of more empty canvases waiting to be filled. Of living, through her work, the unreal emotions racing through her body. She’d had no idea of their complexity. Of how deep they went.

She’d had no idea they were even there at all.

She also had no idea what to do with them.