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“Like cutting the grass?”
“Definitely.”
“Can Merit teach me?”
Mae bit her lip as she deliberated how to answer that. When she’d first sat him down, she’d intended to answer his very first question, if the baby would have a daddy, but now she wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. She didn’t want to get his hopes up in case things didn’t work out with Merit.
“Maybe,” she replied in reference to the grass. “Did you know he builds tree houses?”
Ian’s eyes went wide. “Really? That’s cool!”
“We’ll have to ask him to show us one sometime,” she said before really considering the words coming out of her mouth.
“That would be awesome!” He flopped back on the couch. “I wish I could have a tree house.”
She was saved from replying by the beep of the oven timer. Leaning over, she grasped his precious little face with both hands and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Let’s eat, Pete. You grab the milk from the fridge, and I’ll get everything else.”
All through dinner, she mulled over his last comment while sneaking peeks out into the backyard. Was there a tree out there that could support a tree house? The one in the corner was a possibility, but she’d have to look closer to be sure. Or, she could ask Merit for his professional opinion.
If he ever came back, that is.
Chapter 19
Monday evening, Merit stood in his art studio, glowering at the stark-white canvas before him. After dropping Mae off on Sunday afternoon, he’d gone for a run. He’d worked out. He’d swam fifty laps in his indoor pool, then a hundred, then two hundred.
This morning, first thing he’d thought about when he woke up was how the morning before he’d woken up in her bed. And the night before that, he’d lost himself in her heat enough times to realize he’d never get enough of her.
He’d lain there and missed her. The curve of her lips when she smiled. The narrowing of her eyes when she was annoyed or considering something he’d said, the sound of his name on her lips when he made her come.
Yeah, it was insane how much he wanted to be at her side again, yet just the thought of facing her after everything that had happened at brunch made his stomach knot up. So he’d gone back down to his gym, and put on his running shoes, then come home to dive in the pool. None of it helped, and in the end, he’d sought solace in the one place that was his refuge, only to be mocked by a blank canvas for the past however many hours.
A glance at his phone told him it had been four. A second glance told him he’d gotten a text from Asher, a call from Loyal, and a Snapchat from Shelby. He’d messaged them all yesterday that he was fine, but it didn’t seem they were buying it.
Twirling his dry brush in his fingers, neither was he.
What the fuck was this anyway? Wasn’t anger and frustration and wanting to punch something supposed to fuel an artist? Tortured angst and all that bullshit? Because it sure as fuck wasn’t working for him.
Prior to Mae, he’d scoffed at the term ‘creative block,’ or ‘painter’s block.’ Put a brush in his hand, paint on his palette, and he was good to go, able to lose himself in the seductive, therapeutic swipes of his brushstrokes for hours on end. Lord knew he’d needed it the past couple of years.
But after meeting Mae, especially after discovering Ian was her son, not her lover, he’d gone through a thoroughly frustrating phase where his muse refused to let him create anything but her. The arch of her brow and lush curve of her bottom lip. The sexy wave of her blond hair against the elegant line of her throat. The delicate fan of her lashes against her pale cheek. The myriad of blues that could turn her eyes from laughing to stormy, from shy to needy, all in one heart-stopping blink.
He’d spent hours at his easel, each image so vivid in his mind he could almost reach out and touch her. But doing those beguiling images justice with his brush had proved impossible. The closest he’d come to personal satisfaction had been the day after Asher’s wedding. After the most incredible night of his life, he’d woken up to find her gone. Before reality set in, before she’d ghosted him, he’d driven straight to his studio to transmit the perfection of her curves from his mind to the canvas.
That one almost perfect painting sat in his back room, covered with the rest of them. After Saturday night, he should’ve been able to do another…if not for the lovely-ass brunch that had come after.
He abruptly turned away from the blank abyss before him and moved to the paintings he’d finished over the past five years. They were stacked along the walls, some four and five deep in places. Some were abstract, others were mountain vistas, sunsets, and others still were faces and places that had stirred his muse, begging to be immortalized.
Hah. Right. He could see how he’d grown along the way in his craft and technique, and yet he wouldn’t dare to consider himself a true artist. All he had to do was look at the past two months when he’d tried to paint something—anything—other than Mae. Because in the face of her continued silence, his fixation on her had begun to feel a little creepy, and unhealthy.
Those works had turned out dark, and brooding, and some unexpectedly sinister. More than a few he’d shredded with his palate knife before tossing into the garbage bin behind the studio.
Now, he was just…murky. Replays of brunch shadowed everything. Flipping through a stack of street views, and then sunsets, he considered his father’s reaction when he’d told him his job—fake job—was building luxury tree houses. There hadn’t been one ounce of respect.
Yes, he’d been lying, but his dad didn’t know that. He could just imagine if he ever found out Merit painted actual paintings. His dad hadn’t put much stock in Asher’s photographs back in high school, not until he started making money with them, anyway, but it was back then that he had decided not to reveal his own passion.
No one knew he painted, not even Bells or his mom. His dad would tell him outright it was a waste of time. It was a toss-up if he’d tell him out loud he was no good, or just infer it with a curl of his lip as he looked down his nose. Which was quite a feat considering he stood as tall as his dad since he turned eighteen. His mom, on the other hand, or his sweet baby sister…well, he could dab some avocado green on a canvas, tell them it was an avocado, and they’d tell him it was amazing. His other siblings were less predictable, but still, he didn’t need criticism, or meaningless pats on the head or God knows what else.
Then there was the whole son of the governor turned senator shit to deal with, along with the weight of the Diamond name. There had been the occasional bouts of feeling like maybe someday he’d be good enough to have his own show. Maybe, he had enough talent to actu
