CHAPTER ONE

      “WHY IS YOUR face blue?”

      Holly froze in shock. She had just opened the door to the apartment she’d expected to find empty. But instead of flicking on the lights in a vacant living room she’d walked in on lamps already blazing. And a shirtless man sitting in the center of the sofa. Reading a newspaper. A gorgeous brown-haired shirtless man was reading a newspaper.

      “Why is your face blue?” he repeated. Broad shoulders peeked out over the newspaper he was holding.

      Why is your face blue? Holly heard the individual words but couldn’t put them together to understand them as a question. She could hardly get over the fact that there was a man in the apartment, let alone make sense of the sounds coming from his mouth.

      She checked the keys in her hand. Perhaps she was somehow in the wrong place.

      And then she saw.

      Her hands were blue. Cobalt Blue Two Eleven, to be exact. She’d know that color anywhere. It was one of her favorites.

      It suddenly made sense. Just a few minutes ago she’d ducked out of the rain and under the front awning of the building to rifle through her duffel bag for the piece of paper that confirmed the address. The duffel held paint tubes and brushes, paperwork, clothes and heaven knew what else. The cap must have come off her Cobalt Two Eleven.

      And she must have touched her face with paint-covered hands.

      “What are you doing here?” Holly asked the shirtless man.

      “This