Not that one.

Maybe this one.

I shuffled through my paintings like a deck of cards on one of those old Game Show Network programs. The oversized ones that were as big as the model.

Hmm. Okay, so maybe my paintings were more the size of mini billboards.

Too big.

What was I thinking? Why would anyone want to see these?

Martha from Songbird Gallery was just being nice. Probably felt sorry for me since I melted down in her gallery while looking at the Freida Kahlo exhibit. She probably thought I was just a crazy child with dreams of being an artist.

I should go back to the freelance work.

I had four requests in my email right now. It was easy money. I could do the contemporary gig in a few hours. It was even an interesting article they wanted me to illustrate.

Not as interesting as the painting on my make-shift studio. I’d spent hours hiding—I mean drawing studies—of my mom’s orchids. Just because it was the only place Ian couldn’t find me didn’t mean the studies hadn’t been important.

In fact, the diary piece was turning out more interesting by the day.

My mother’s hands caring for the blooms on her favorite plant. The plate-sized purple blooms of the Pachara glowed thanks to some cool luminescent medium I’d found. As if my mother’s touch made it come alive.

Add in a forest of blooms. Some blurry, some crisp, and it actually ended up being one of my favorites of the series I started since I’d been back at Happy Acres. Even if the orchids had replaced me.

“Wow.”

My shoulders stiffened. “Shouldn’t you be doing something? I don’t know, slurping moonshine off the floor with Hayes?”

Ian came through the door. “I’m trying to get along with your brothers, Magic. Moonshine was just a way to bond.”

“Like you bonded with the bushes the other night?”

“I was unaware of just how potent Hayes’s chemistry lesson would be. However, I have learned how to make his favorite Apple Pie version. Even Aunt Laverne liked it.”

“Good for you.” I slammed my palette on the table.

He leaned against the post just outside my work area. His shoulders had bronzed in the endless sunny days of the summer. Even Ian and his British skin had to brown or perish in the grove.

And it had definitely not perished. Rat bastard.

Nope, he was settling in just fine with the crew in the orchard. He’d gone from crying about blisters, and waking up at five in the morning to rolling out of his nest of blankets before his alarm chimed.

His riot of curls wouldn’t be contained in the bandanas he wore anymore. Now he had a stubby man bun going on that Justin teased him about mercilessly. But he hadn’t cut his hair again.

Because I’d taken such offense or just to be contrary, it didn’t much matter. It was growing and the silky curls were following me into dreams.

Bastard.

“Are we having a rough painting day, love?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“All right. Are we having a rough painting day, Magic?”

“Why does it have to be a nickname? Always. Can’t it just be my name?”

One ebony brow arched. “I didn’t come in here to be sniped at, lo—Zoe.”

“Well then why don’t you go?”

“No. I’d like to know what’s got you so riled up. Your painting is lovely. You even made some of the flowers look ethereal.” He took a step forward and I growled. He sighed and put his hands up, returning to lean against his post. “You should be excited, not upset about it.”

Why did he have to be so understanding? And always in my damn business. He’d been here for weeks and was always hovering on the fringes like a fucking puppy. Always watching me, as if waiting for me to kick him. Always ready to do something for me. To fetch and keep me happy.

Dammit.

He was being too…perfect.

It was pissing me off.

“I know the difference between when you’re not having a good painting day and not.” He tugged the elastic out of his hair and leaned forward to rake his fingers through the strands.

God.

He needed to stop.

It was so much shorter, but I knew just how silky it felt. I remembered how it tickled my thighs when he went down on me. How it mixed with mine when we slept. My almost white-blonde to his ink. The perfect yin and yang.

He flipped it back, totally unaware that I was mentally reliving half of our morning sexcapades. Because I shouldn’t be reliving them. I was trying to be strong. I didn’t know if I could walk back into the intensity of living with Ian.

And this new perfect gentleman?

Yeah, no.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t him. Again, he was playing chameleon to be what he thought I wanted.

I grabbed the rag off the side of my scaffolding and stepped away from my canvas. “What are you doing here, Ian?”

“Beckett sent me out of the orchard. Something about me meeting with Laverne when she got back from town.”

“So why are you bugging me?”

He shrugged. “She’s not back yet.”

“And you couldn’t go take a nap or eat or something.” He was always freaking eating. And it was showing. Not in a bad way. No, he was filling out from all the manual labor and I was having a very hard time concentrating whenever he was near me.

And saying no to all the dates he wanted to take me on.

Wooing.

Who even said wooing anymore?

Ian, that was who.

“Maybe I should have. You’re being a right bit of a…” He swallowed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, maybe I should head out.”

“Finally.” Relief poured through me at the fire in his eyes. I stalked toward him. “You’ve been so fucking polite. I can’t stand it.”

He fisted his hands in his pockets. “It’s called being a gentleman.”

“Shrug off the British, Ian. Tell me what you wanted to say.”

“No. I don’t insult women if I can help it. Especially when it’s the woman I love.”

I pushed him back a step until his shoulders slammed into the post.

Again the fire lit in his stormy eyes. “Watch it, Magic.”

“Why are you here? Why won’t you just go away. We aren’t getting back together. When are you going to get it?”

He pulled his hands out of his pockets. “I’ll never get it. I’ll never give up on us, dammit. We’re meant. Period.”

My heart raced. “We don’t work. Been there, done that.”

“We always worked.” He took two steps forward and loomed over me.

The skin between my shoulder blades zinged with awareness and my nipples pushed against the light tank I was wearing. It was so freaking hot even with my fan going. This summer had been a scorcher in every way.

From emotions to the endless lust that crackled between us. It would be so much easier if I could just turn it off. How the hell was I supposed to get on with my life—with this new life—if he was always here?

To go pour my heart out at the gallery and pray that my work was good enough. That someone would want to buy my paintings for their living room. My very personal diary pieces.

God, I was so stupid.

Who would want them?

He framed my face with his big hands. The new callouses zinging across my skin making it even harder for me to step back.

“What’s wrong? You’re intentionally picking a fight which isn’t like you.”

“How would you know? We barely know one another.”

His eyelids drew heavy and he peered down between us to my obvious reaction of his nearness. “Ah, love, I know all about you.”

I pushed him back and turned away from him. “No you don’t.”

“Oh, but I do.” He came up behind me, his long fingers curling around my upper arms. He drew me back against his warmth. “I can see the worry in your golden eyes.” He lowered his mouth to my shoulders. “You get this little line between your brows.”

I shook him off. “I do not.”

“You may be the artist between us, but I know your face better than anyone. And if I had the ability to paint it, that’s all I’d do.”

“Quit it with the romance. You’re pissing me off.”

He laughed. “Only you would get pissed off with soft words.”

“What’s wrong, Zoe?”

I don’t know what did it. Him actually using my name or the obvious concern in his voice. I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want to think about him being there for me. Not when I’d let him in so easily before and paid for it.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever get him out of my system.

I hopped into his arms and fused my mouth to his. He tasted of the blueberries that were mid-harvest right now. And that unique Ian taste that I just couldn’t define, but knew deep in my bones.

He went stone still. He didn’t drop me, but he didn’t kiss me back either. I’d been adamant about us not falling into this trap.

Into the skin on skin we did so freaking well.

“Just shut up and touch me, Ian.”

“Magic, please.” His voice was husky with emotion. “I don’t know how to be with you without loving you.”

“Can’t it just be this?” I tangled my fingers in his hair. I understood this. I needed this to get through my day. I needed his strength to go and be the artist I’d always dreamed of being.

It galled me to say it even to myself.

But I was stronger with him. And I was so afraid of letting that back inside me. Letting him matter again. Because a little bit of Ian would never be enough.

I tried to detangle myself.

He was right. I was being selfish.

But he gripped my ass and dragged me tight against him. “Don’t make me have to let you go again. I swear I won’t survive it.”

I closed my eyes. He really hadn’t learned anything since he’d been away. “Ian, that’s why—”

He lifted me against him tighter until I opened my eyes. “No, not because I’ll toss myself off the nearest bridge, for fuck’s sake. But because I’m a better man with you. I’ve always been a better everything because of you. Better lyricist, better musician, better human. It’s because we go together. I keep you from turning into a hermit covered in paint, and you keep me from the darkness.”

I closed him out again, but it was no use. I heard the song in my head. The one he’d released and the world wouldn’t stop playing on every damn radio station from country to rock. The only time I could escape it was in silence or my own playlists.

Because Ian had even brought music into my life. Color used to be more than enough—loud enough.

But now the silence was too much.

My colors weren’t enough.

Maybe they never had been and I was too blind to see it.

“Letting you go

Is what I’m supposed to do

Made you that promise

You made one too

But leaving you behind

Feels like dying inside

The best part of me

Is still in love with you”

I pressed my forehead to his as he finished the husky, soft lyrics against my lips. “Dammit, Ian.”

He smiled against my mouth. “You know it’s true, Magic. We are each other’s other half, better half. And if you need more time to come to terms with that, I’ll give it to you. It will kill me to put you down right now and step back, but I’ll do it.”

“Just shut up.”

“I love you, Zoe Jayne Manning.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I love you madly.”

“Insane.” I crossed my arms behind his neck, pressing my chest closer to his.

“Insanely in love with you.”

I covered his mouth with mine. It was the only way he’d stop talking. Even as the words wanted to erupt from my chest. One arm supported my butt and his other slid up my back to cup the back of my head and turn me to the angle he wanted.

Yes.

This was the Ian I needed.

The one who knew how to touch me, how to hold me, how to make me feel everything. He walked me back until we crashed into ladder to my loft area. It wasn’t the most romantic way to lure him to my bed, but I didn’t want to do this down on the lower part of the barn where anyone could come through.

My brothers didn’t really know what the word privacy meant.

I reached behind me to the rungs of the ladder and slid away from him. “Up to the loft.”

“Are you sure?” His stormy eyes were an inch away from wild. And that made me love him all the more. Because he really would have stopped. Even with the longing entrenched in his gaze, he would have stopped for me.

“I love you, Ian. I’m sure—” I didn’t even get to finish and his mouth was on mine again.

“You can’t take it back,” he said against my lips. “You said it, you had to mean it.”

I climbed up one rung, then another. “I did mean it. Let me show you how much I meant it. How much I missed you. But you gotta stop with the gentleman shtick, pal. I can’t take it.”

“I always want to treat you with respect.”

So frigging earnest. Out of the gutter and he still had a sweetness to him when he was with me. “In the streets, buddy. In front of my family. Here? I want you raw.” I swung around and raced up the ladder. “I want you to show me just how much you missed me.”

I got to the loft and whipped my shirt off and tossed it at his face. He was right behind me. There wasn’t much room to my loft, but there was a bed and that’s all we needed.

He grabbed my ankle as I tried to get to the other side of my little fortress. I had a dozen pillows on my bed to make me feel less alone. Knowing he was below me for weeks and I hadn’t allowed myself to touch him.

Not even once.

I’d needed the fortress of feathers to keep me in check.

Especially on the long, hot nights.

He dragged me under him and groaned at my half naked state. “Zoe mine, what you do to me.” And finally, he touched me. He cupped my breast and lifted it to his mouth, watching me as he scraped his teeth over my nipple just like I needed him to.

I loved his gentle touch, but right now I needed the fire. I needed the edges and the proof of everything he felt for me.

I arched under him and pulled at his Happy Acres shirt he was wearing. He stopped tasting me long enough to get it over his head. His cross swung between us and the warm metal slithered between my breasts. “Off.”

He froze over me.

“Your clothes, Ian.”

“Oh.”

The relief on his face made me curl my legs around his hips and urge him higher. Until his face was lined up with mine. “Romance me after you take the edge off. I’ve been sleeping up here alone while you were down there every damn night.”

“By your choice, Magic.”

“I know. But now it’s my choice for you to show me how much you fucking missed me.”

I laughed when he rolled off me and shucked his cargo pants and boots, even his socks before he climbed back on top of me. “Oh and I’ll show you how much I’ve missed you too. How much all of me missed you.” He dragged the head of his cock along my belly. “Now who needs to catch up?”

I dragged my cutoffs off and rolled him onto his back again. “Don’t worry about me.” I lifted his arms over his head and laced our fingers together on the mattress. I slid down his length. My slit already soaked with wanting him. “Can you feel that?”

He groaned and lifted his head to get to my mouth, but I moved out of reach. “Every night that you were gone I missed you.” I rolled my hips as I reached the base of his cock then traveled up again and dragged my breasts across his chest. “I hated you for making me miss you. That I couldn’t get over you.”

His pupils dilated. “It was the same for me.” His voice was hoarse.

“You don’t understand. You weren’t in my plan. At all. I had my work.” I lifted my hips to line us up and angled my pelvis to take him inside me ever so slowly. I slowly hissed out a breath as I stretched for him. The months melted away as my body relearned his shape, his girth, and the absolute perfection of how he filled me.

“Now there’s nothing but you inside me. Even when you’re not in front of me.” I let his hands free and sat up. “I feel you inside me, coloring my thoughts and my work.” I slowly rode him as he sat up to surround me.

Even here when I was on top, he had to curl around me. And I loved that about him. That he couldn’t just lay back and let me get him off. That it was always about me in his mind.

My knees pressed into the mattress as I sat astride him and the friction between us burned hotter, pushed me to move faster. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and touched his forehead to mine as we moved as one. As we synched up our bodies into our new reality.

He lifted to meet me halfway and hit me just right. I flung my head back so that he could reach my breasts. He sucked and bit until I was trembling over him, around him, and crying out his name. Sweat poured between us as I demanded everything from his strong, fluid body.

He gave me everything and held me as I shattered over him. He cradled me while the shudders turned to tremors and finally my breath came deep and slow. And once the tempest subsided, he rolled me onto my back.

“Zoe mine. I’ve been searching for you for so long it felt like my world was nothing but darkness. You say I gave you color, but it was really you who gave me mine. And the music I’d always longed for and couldn’t quite reach.”

I gasped as he slowly filled me again and again. He lifted my knee so there was no air, no space between us.

“I never want this to end.” His voice was hushed reverence.

I reached up enough to kiss his jaw, his neck and tug at the cross around his neck. He buried his face along the skin between my shoulder and neck, biting lightly as he groaned.

I tipped my hips and he swore, finally taking the sweet, slow progression into what he truly needed. His hair curtained around us, the silk tickling my cheeks and nose before he finally locked his lips to mine.

I tasted his groans and the surprise orgasm that hit me from the incessant friction. It seemed to set off a chain reaction in him and my name was a hoarse cry. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held him tight as he finally emptied himself in me.

He dropped on top of me, going entirely limp for a moment. He groaned and tried to roll off of me, but I held him tighter. “Not yet.”

He pressed light kisses along my neck. “I’m too heavy.”

“You feel just right.”

He did a near pushup over me and I may have swooned a little over the new muscles in his arms. He’d always been wiry and lean, as if he was a sandwich away from starving. A few weeks on the farm and my Aunt Laverne’s cooking and he’d filled out so much.

He flopped onto his back and dragged me over him. I pressed my cheek to his chest and played with his cross. “Where do we go from here?”

“We go wherever you want, Magic.”

I bit him lightly. He jumped and rubbed the pinched flesh with a frown. “That’s unlikely, rockstar. I’ve seen your single burning up the charts. Even if I didn’t want to listen to that song, I heard it wherever I went. The cafe in town, the store radio, even in the car. Sabrina won’t let you hide here forever.”

“It doesn’t matter what she wants. You’re what matters.”

It was sweet of him to say, but I knew things didn’t work that way. “We’ll make it work, I promise. Handy for you I can work anywhere.”

“You’d come back to LA with me?”

When I didn’t nod right away, he sat up. “We can live here.”

“What, in this loft?”

“Your family does seem to like to build on the property. We can build a home.”

I leaned down to grab my shirt at the end of the mattress and pulled it over my head. “That’s a sweet sentiment, but I don’t want to live at Happy Acres.”

“Why not? You’ve done amazing work since I’ve been here. There’s got to be another dozen canvases down there.”

“I needed home to figure out where to go with my work, but I don’t need the orchard to work anymore. I needed to just own up to what I need. You and to be true to myself.”

“Is that why you were so pissy earlier?”

I pushed my hair out of my face. “Part of it. It’s hard to hold myself away from you.”

“Good. Because I don’t want you to do it ever again.”

I pushed him onto his side. “Yeah, yeah. I have an appointment with a gallery in Woodstock this afternoon.”

“What?” He sat up. “That’s amazing.”

“Maybe.”

He crossed his legs, completely at ease with his nudity. I knew art models who weren’t as at ease with their bodies as Ian. I reached for his pants and tossed them at him. “Put those on before one of my brothers barges in here.”

He rolled his eyes and wiggled into his cargos. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around showing my paintings. They’re like diary pages.”

“So are songs. All that I poured into ‘Best Part of Me’ was like opening a vein. People resonate with that, with the reality of things. Same as paintings.”

I stared down at my paint stained fingers. “Would you go with me?”

“Of course I will.” He hauled me onto his lap and circled his arms around me. “I’m honored you would ask.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“Ah, Magic. You are the least romantic girl in all the world.”

“That would be correct. And here I am, in love with a poet.”

“Lyricist. Poets don’t make any coin, love.”

I laughed. “So sorry. Only one starving artist in this little family.”

“And a family we’ll have.” He rolled us onto our backs again. “I want to put a baby in there.” He lifted my shirt and pressed a kiss to my belly. “I saw my brother and his wife and their little wee one growing. They’re naming her Raine.” He peered up at me. “Same as I want for us. A family of our own.”

My eyes burned. “Oh, Ian.”

“I know it’s quick, and maybe a little crazy. But I want it and from the tears in your tough girl eyes maybe you do too?”

I shook my head. “You’re incorrigible. Did I mention that?”

“A time or two.” He tucked his head under my shirt to find my nipple again. “Care to let me show you one more time?”

My laugh turned into a groan. “Okay, maybe one more time.”

“We have much to catch up on, Magic.”

“Don’t you have to go see Aunt Laverne?” I arched my back.

“Later.”

I reached for the button on his pants. Good thing we had all morning.