“Leave those,” he said. “I’ll take care of them later.”
“Are you sure? It’ll just take a minute.” She carried the dishes to the sink, rinsed them off and placed them in the dishwasher.
“It’s like this is your home.”
“It was once, remember?”
And it could be again, whispered a voice inside of her.
CHAPTER 4
Ethan pushed open thedoor to the room he used as his studio. It had large windows shaded by a giant maple tree. The view was gorgeous now with autumn colors, but in a few months, it would be bleak and barren. He didn’t know if he could do another winter without Allison.
The holidays were the worst. He loved his family, but two weeks in their boisterous company wore him out. Of course, they could not go, but staying home, or so he imagined, would be worse. Last year, he and Hannah had taken a Caribbean cruise, and while it had been lovely, it hadn’t felt like Christmas.
Christmas had always been a special time for his family. The chaos, the cousins, the—
“Oh, I love this one!” Zoe’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. She pointed at a pastoral landscape of a barn at the base of foothills.
“Great,” he told her. “It’s actually part of a series. There’s one for each season. Although I cheated and created one with snow.” He winked. “We don’t have snow here.”
“This is from around here?”
“It’s a farm in the Santa Ynez hills.” He went to find the others in the series. He kept his canvases stacked along the wall, organized by...well, they really weren’t organized. As long as the paintings were dry, he didn’t care where they landed.
“Why are all these here?” Zoe waved at his art.
“What do you mean?”
She stood in the center of the room, her arms held out wide. “I thought you were no longer painting.” He had told her that when he’d moved in.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m not.”
“Then where did these all come from?”
He dipped his head. “Oh, these aren’t for sale. These don’t count.”
