Faith removes her cover-up and sits down next to me, her black pants now splattered with paint as well. “Isn’t it going to be hard to work like this?” she asks.
“I’ll manage,” I say, leaning over and kissing her, when it hits me that she stopped painting the minute I showed up. “Unless,” I say, pulling back to study her, “I’m making you feel uncomfortable.”
She covers my hand with hers, a sweet gesture, when sweet has never been my thing. “I like you being here with me,” she says, and when she lets go of my hand, I want hers back. Apparently, I like sweet now. A whole fucking lot. “I just wish you had a better place to work,” she adds. “You should put a desk in here.”
Or I could just buy a new house. A thought that stuns me, but I don’t fight it. I’d buy ten houses for Faith, who is now flushing at her own words. “Not that I’m not suggesting I’ll be here often, but—”
“Faith,” I say. “I made this room for you. I want you here all the fucking time.” I don’t give her time to object. I move on. “And I’m fine right here. I have a ton of paperwork to review and emails to answer.”
She rotates to face me, on her knees, her hand on my leg. “Hard limit: One night.”
My lips curve. “That didn’t go as you planned, now did it?”
“No,” she laughs. “It didn’t.” She stands up and heads back to her painting station, and I decide I’ll talk to her about extra security tomorrow morning. She’s had enough hell today and she needs to paint. She has a show coming up. I watch her cover up before she turns back to me. “We need music.”
I pull my phone from my pocket. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Surprise me and I’ll see where it takes me on my canvas.”
I tab through my music and choose Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and the moment it starts to play, she sighs. “Perfection,” she says, a smile not just on her lips, but in her eyes.
I relax into the wall, intending to reach for my files, but when the music lifts with a dramatic chord, I find myself watching Faith. Every stroke of her brush mesmerizes me as I wait for that red streak that she has proclaimed the beginning of a story. To me this symbolizes a feeling of hope, a look forward, not behind.
My mind goes back to the night we’d met, sitting in front of her fireplace, talking over pints of ice cream:
“Why black, white, and red?” I’d asked of her trademark colors.
“Black and white are the purest form of any image to me. It lets the viewer create the story.”
“And the red?”
“The beginning of the story as I see it. A guide for the viewer’s imagination to flow. I know it sounds silly, but it’s how I think when I’m creating.”
I cringe with the words: The beginning of the story as I see it.
The beginning of our story is nothing like she sees it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Faith
There are things in life that are inarguably perfect: Milk chocolate. Good ice cream. A perfect sunset. A cold night with a fireplace. And me with a paintbrush in my hand for the past few hours, while Nick sits a few feet away, working, with Beethoven lifting in the air. There is just something about that combination, that inspires me. Nick manages to calm and center me, which is really incredible considering he’s intense, demanding, controlling and arrogant, while I am someone who is far more zen. But as I reach for the red paint to put the finishing touches on the mountain top of my painting, I debate the reasons that might be, and an amazing list of answers come to mind that I decide I might just talk over with Nick.
Satisfaction fills me as I stroke a brush through the red paint to complete my work-in-progress. In another fifteen minutes, I set my brush down. I’m done and Nick is behind me almost immediately.
“Stunning, Faith,” he says, his hands on my hips, and I find myself leaning into him, his big, hard body like a shelter in a storm that he’s now helped me quiet. He really is a shelter, and there lies the core of why he calms me, why he works for me. He makes me feel like the rest of the world can’t touch me.
“I like it,” I say, inspecting my work. “But I’m not sure I’m going to use it for the show.”
He turns me to face him. “Why?”
“It doesn’t feel special. It’s safe. I have to be cautious everywhere else. I don’t want to do it on the canvas.”
“You don’t have to be cautious with me, Faith.”
I reach up and pull his hair from the tie. “I know.” I reach up and run my hands through his hair. “Because you’re…”
He arches a brow. “I’m what?”