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sky. An oak tree with leaves of blues, greens, and yellows, trunks in brown, peach, and red.
    But her portraits were her most striking works. Wes had seen dozens in the same style. Faces that took up the entire canvas with colors that seemed to capture the soul. Michael had told him that Corinne was earning a reputation for these and had even had some portraits commissioned.
    Wes had feared for an instant that the face on the other side of the canvas would be Michael’s, but it wasn’t. He saw eyes flecked with black, gold, and turquoise, capturing the true hazel, and long brown hair lit with pink, azure, and yellow. A smile the color of lemons and cherries.
    Corinne.
    And she looked happier than he’d ever seen her.
    But now it was marred by shoe prints, stray daubs of paint, and dirt from the floor. Wes stood up and tried to brush away the dirt and shoe marks. He didn’t think much could be done about the paint mess, but if Corinne wanted to touch it up, he had no doubt that she could.
    Thinking that he had time to try to set the studio back in order, Wes grabbed the overturned easel and was placing the ruined portrait on the stand when the kitchen door opened.
    “Buck? Where are y—” Corinne’s call caught when she saw him, and her wide eyes moved between him and the self-portrait in his hands.
    “What the hell are you doing?!?”
    “I...was just—”
    “What are you still doing here?” Corinne screamed, taking a step toward him. And despite the fact that he towered over her by a solid ten inches, Wes stepped back. “Get the hell out of my house, you creep!”
    “I’m just trying to help!” Wes yelled back, but he was already backing toward the door, eager to get away from the crazy.
    “No one asked you!”
    Wrong there, bitch!
    But Wes wasn’t about to argue with his best friend’s psycho woman. He was out the back door and across the yard in about three seconds.
    “What were you thinking, Mike?” he asked out loud.
    But the only reply he got was the sound of the deadbolt sliding home and the clank of the chain locking behind it.

Chapter 3
    C orinne stood staring at her smiling face, the one she had thrown to the ground and trod over the day Michael died.
    He’d asked for it for Christmas, a self-portrait modeled on a picture he had taken on their trip to Austin only months before. He’d wanted it for his office, saying he’d be the only IT director in town with a Corinne Granger original.
    She’d brought it to the hospital on Christmas Day, two days before he died. Michael had opened his eyes for a little while, and Corinne thought by the lift in their corners that he’d seen it, known what it meant.
    Hours later, he’d awoken again to find her crying beside him.
    “I’m sorry,” he’d whispered, his last words to her.
    Corinne turned her back to the portrait and left the sunroom. She hoped he was sorry because the smiling girl on the canvas had died with him.
    She stepped into her clean kitchen and sighed. When she’d gotten up and couldn’t find Buck, panic had pricked through her. She worried that perhaps Wes and Mr. Roush had left him outside in the front, and when she didn’t see him there or on the street, she’d rushed to the back, hoping they’d put him in the yard. She hadn’t even noticed the emptied trash or the clean sink.
    What she least expected to find was Wes Clarkson holding the last painting she’d finished.
    And, apparently, he had cleaned up her house. Or Mr. Roush had. Of course, if it had been Mr. Roush, why would Wes still be here? And wouldn’t she have found Michael’s dad instead?
    Still, it was hard to believe Wes Clarkson doing anything that didn’t gratify Wes Clarkson. The man had never done his own dishes when he ate at their house, much less anyone else’s. Once, about a year ago, Corinne had gone into the spare room the day after Wes had crashed for the night after a bender with Michael—only to discover that he’d puked on her sheets and left