On the other hand, I’m struggling. Majorly.

  We’ve been through the same set of basic flashcards multiple times, and while I thought I was doing well for a bit, Luna recognized that I’d only memorized the order, not the actual answers. She shuffled them, and suddenly, we were nearly back to square one.

  “What’s this one?” she asks, holding up a painting of a group of white-collared men gathered around the deathbed of another man, his arm dissected.

  “Renoir,” I say with surety.

  Luna pushes her glasses up onto her head, looking at me closely. “Seriously? Renoir and Rembrandt both start with R, but that’s about where the similarities end. A trick I used with the outreach kids is to remember that Rembrandt has a D in his name, so his paintings were darker. Literally, the backgrounds are darker and there’s an ominous nature to them. Renoir sounds a little like air, and his paintings are light as air, showing the activity of a bustling Paris. Does that help?”

  I flop back on the couch, a concerning creak sounding out from somewhere under the quilt. I consider that I might end up on my ass in more than one way . . . from Luna’s couch breaking beneath me and with Mrs. Cartwright if I can’t sort this out.

  I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms, appreciating the sparkles behind my lids as much, if not more than, all the art flashcards. “This is never going to work. It’s going to be worse than my just admitting I know nothing about art. I wish you could just come with me. You could do the art talk, and I could do the money talk.”

  Luna laughs, thinking I’m kidding.

  But . . . I sit up suddenly, struck with my brilliance. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

  Still shaking her head at the idea, Luna says, “No way. Nopity, nope, nope. No freakin’ way, count me out. And did I mention . . . no.”

  I stand up, the idea taking shape in my mind. “We could say that you’re my assistant and working with me for the portfolio management presentation.”

  Luna stands up too, her beloved cards falling to the floor. She’s a good foot shorter than me, but that doesn’t stop her from putting her hands on her hips and squaring up. “Your assistant? Why? Because I’m young? Or because I’m a woman?” She shakes her head, the messy bun on her head flopping around wildly. “I shouldn’t be surprised from you.”

  “What?” I have no idea what she’s upset about. I only meant that could be a cover story so she could go with me to Mrs. Cartwright’s for the meeting, but she’s acting angrier than a honey badger.

  She’s mumbling under her breath, and I strain to make out what she’s saying. It sounds like, “Assistant? Unbelievable! Just because I have a vajayjay doesn’t mean all I’m good for is taking notes and looking pretty. Not that I’m pretty.”

  “You’re very pretty, Luna,” I reply, surer that I heard that part correctly than the rest of it.

  She stomps her foot like a pissed off gnome. I definitely do not notice that it makes her shapely thighs and voluptuous breasts wobble as she does it because Zack would cut my dick off for looking at his little sister that way. Still . . .

  “You should go now,” she orders flatly.

  “Wait. I’m sorry. We were doing well with the cards. Maybe we can flip through them a bit more?” I bend down to pick them up, but the suggestion falls on deaf ears as Luna strides toward the door, giving me her back as answer.

  “Tomorrow, then?” I try as she opens the door. I consider that she might actually bodily shove me out and for a moment think that I’d like to see her try. Her fire is intriguing, especially when it pops up unexpectedly, taking her from quiet and bookish to badass and confident in an instant. But I squash that idea down quickly.

  “I work tomorrow. Good luck scamming the old lady out of her money, Carter.”

  And with that, she yanks the cards from my hand and shuts the door in my face. I stand there in shock, not sure how everything went wrong. Well, it started wrong, but we were doing well there for a while. Until it all went haywire again.

  But Harringtons aren’t quitters, and if I let a small setback derail me every time one came up, I’d never be a successful businessman. I saw Luna’s passion for art and her need for money, and I’m not above using those things to persuade her to continue to help me.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  LUNA

  “Whew, I’m glad that tour is done!”

  School field trip groups are typically my favorite visitors to the art museum where I work, because the younger kids are so unfiltered and the older kids are usually art lovers already.

  But the group I had this afternoon was a doozy. One kid kept trying to touch the paintings, and another was making inappropriate comments about every centuries-old sculpture. He even pretended to spank a dyad’s ass.

  And the poor teacher was trying to be in five places at once with octopus arms to keep each kid safely corralled while preventing damage to the museum’s pieces.

  So I’m admittedly grateful to see that particular school bus pulling away.

  “Well, I hope your tank still has some gas in it, girl. You’ve got a four o’clock tour now,” Maeve informs me.

  Maeve is basically the boss of the museum. She usually stays buried in the administrative tasks, keeping us funded and running. But it’s not unusual to see her walking the floor, her colorful outfits almost works of art themselves. Today, her gray hair is pulled back to give her teal hat the spotlight, which matches her multi-colored wrap dress and contrasts with her bright red loafers and lipstick. She’s what every cool sixty-year-old woman dreams of being on their best day.

  Shoot, she’s what I dream of being at twenty-three.

  “A four o’clock? That wasn’t on the schedule this morning.” I look at my phone to confirm. Nope, schedule clear. And after the insanity of my last three-hour tour, I was looking forward to a cold cereal dinner with a fruit punch, truly like a real adult after a long day, not another couple of hours of WWE-meets-art lecture with kids who scatter like wolf spider babies.

  Please let it be a couple of tourists who want a show-and-tell tour.

  “It was booked today, actually. A private tour at that, with a special request for you as the guide,” she confides slyly. I know what she’s thinking . . . the cost of a private tour will be a boon for the monthly museum budget.

  But I have a sinking suspicion that I know exactly who would book a private, last-minute tour with me.

  An hour later, my suspicions are confirmed when I arrive at the main desk only to find Carter there, leaning against the counter and at least halfway to charming the panties off the receptionist with his toothpaste-commercial smile and naughty-glint eyes.

  Before he notices me, I take a moment to look him up and down. He’s objectively attractive, of course, but I’ve always felt that there’s something dark beneath his squeaky-clean exterior.

  For him, I think he’s dressed casually in slacks that are likely part of his daily suit and a button-up shirt that he’s undone at the throat after ditching the tie. Vaguely, I wonder if he ever gets down and dirty, and an image of him climbing into bed in one of those old-man, two-piece matching pajama sets makes me giggle internally.

  Right at that moment, it’s like he senses me because he looks my way, catching me grinning like a loon right at him. Of course, he thinks I’m smiling because he’s here, the idea that I’m laughing at him never once occurring to him.

  “Well, hello, Luna,” he drawls out, seeming pleased to see me. Or tickled that he’s busted me mooning over him like the receptionist and every other woman he encounters.

  Prickles run along my arms, and my own response to his honeyed voice saying my name all sexy like that annoys me. “What’re you doing here?”

  His blue eyes go frosty, but he shrugs as though my challenge is no big deal. “Getting the help I need. I don’t give up easily, or ever.” He shoots a cheesy wink at the receptionist who’s probably sitting in a puddle of her own making.

  I take a big breath to steel myself. “Fine. We’ll start with the medieval torture devices.”

  We don’t even have those, but right now, I’m wishing we had an entire wing of them so that I could put Carter on a rack and stretch him until he was as long and elastic as Gumby.

  “For my use or yours?” Carter quips with a sly lift of his brow. When my jaw drops in shock, he holds his hands up and grins that panty-melting smile. “No judgment if that’s what you’re into.”

  “I could be into that,” the receptionist offers with a twirl of her hair.

  “Argh,’ I growl. “Come on.”

  I lead him to the Impressionist section first, showcasing the single Monet painting we’ve acquired that is the capstone of our collection. In full tour guide mode, I tell him, “This was loaned to the museum by an anonymous donor. It’s been on display here for over ten years and seen by thousands of visitors. If you’ll notice, looking at the piece overall, the way he used light and shadow creates a sense of vibrant movement even though the subject is a still-frame capture.” I pause, waiting for Carter to agree, and once he nods, I continue. “Moving closer, you can see that the way he does that is through small brush strokes going all different directions to create that fluidity. For example, here.” I point to the lower portion of the painting where there’s a section of greenery in the foreground that appears to be blowing in an invisible wind.

  “I can see what you’re talking about.” Carter seems surprised himself, but no more so than I am. It gives me a little hope as we walk through the rest of the Impressionist area, moving into post-Impressionist and then toward more modern artists. He’s an attentive student, and as we go, I forget my official tour guide capacity and start talking about the art for real with Carter, sharing my thoughts, not just quoting the approved speeches about each piece.

  Standing in front of a Picasso, Carter tilts his head left and then right, looking at it with a furrowed brow.

  “What does it make you feel?” I ask.

  “Huh?” Carter says, now looking straight on at the piece.

  “All art is created from emotion. The artist sees something, whether with their eyes or their mind, and feels something within their soul. The art, or painting in this case, is merely the method the artist uses to convey that emotion. There’s no right or wrong answer, though, in what the viewer feels when seeing the art. That’s the beauty of it.”

  “I feel . . .” He pauses and then admits, “confused.”

  I laugh lightly. “That’s completely valid. Especially with pieces like this that challenge what you see with your eyes. I mean, obviously, people don’t look like this, exactly, but it was Picasso’s perception of them. Take the line of the eyes here. Most people have eyes that are unilateral.” I hold my hand flat at my eye level, showing that mine are even. “What could he be saying about this person by painting their eyes off a linear line?”

  Carter pops off. “That he was drunk, high, or both, and seeing double?”

  Disappointment floods me. He’s been doing well, listening and responding thoughtfully, but I’m trying to push him beyond the technicalities of the art. If he truly wants to impress his client, the deeper meanings will be key. He can’t just read the name on the painting and start repeating a Wikipedia page by rote memory. Well, I guess he could, but something tells me that won’t be enough for this client.

  He could just smile at her and she’d probably hand over the passwords to her whole portfolio.

  “Try again,” I challenge. “Think deeper.”

  His lips purse, and I realize that what I said could be easily misconstrued. Thankfully, he doesn’t make a juvenile joke about ‘I’ll show you deeper’ like most man-child types would.

  “Okay, the eyes are—as my grandma would say—cattywampus. I’m trying to think what she would say about someone like that.” I watch him as he stares contemplatively at the painting, and his entire mood shifts into something serious and introspective, which is somehow more attractive than his typical gregarious charm. “Someone who always thinks there’s something better around the corner. Like they’re here with you” —he points at the painted eye that seems to be in the correct placement and then moves to the other— “but they’re always on the lookout for something better or different. Distracted by what could be or what they could have. Like being with you in the moment isn’t enough.”

  My heart skips a beat as my jaw drops. “Wow,” I say breathily. “That’s . . . really good.”

  “You don’t have to seem so surprised. I’m not all dashing good looks and Southern charm. I’ve got a brain in this head too.” He taps his temple with one of those panty-melting smiles, seemingly not offended at my over-the-top reaction, but it feels a bit forced and there’s a blankness in his eyes that wasn’t there a few moments ago when he was talking about the meaning in the Picasso.

  “No, I didn’t mean . . .” He gives me a sharp look, and I confess, “Okay, maybe I did. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed you couldn’t grasp what I was talking about. That was rude of me.”

  “Apology accepted.” He dips his chin once, and with that, it’s like the whole thing never happened. He says brightly, “Where’s your favorite piece in the whole museum?”

  Interesting. It seems Carter has a deeper side than maybe I’d considered, but he keeps it hidden away. I can understand that. It’s not like we’re besties. I’m just a means to an end for him, but for a moment there, I could see more to him. And that ‘more’ is way more interesting than Carter’s usual façade.

  “This way,” I tell him, leading him toward the piece that I love the most in the entire museum. I’m actually a teensy bit curious what Carter’s take will be on it.

  Please don’t let him say something stupid like ‘I could do that in five minutes’ or ‘he really put his all into it’ about the white splashes. I hear comments like that too often, and they infuriate me with their dismissiveness of the talent behind the piece.

  The large Jackson Pollock is a relatively new addition to our collection, and anytime I have a few moments, I like to sit and study it, finding something different in the layers of wild colors each time. It gives me a lift when I begin to feel like my work is never going to be enough, or seen, or valued. I pour all of myself into Alphena, and somehow, the chaos on the Pollock canvas makes that feel like a normal and reasonable thing to do.

  I stand in front of the piece silently, hoping that Carter can see some of the magic he saw in the Picasso painting in this one as well. Unexpectedly, Carter drops to a knee beside me, and at first, I think he’s fallen. Maybe he passed out or spontaneously hurt his leg?

  I gasp, “Are you okay?”

  He looks at me from a crouched position and reaches for my hand. I reach back to help him get up, still confused on how he ended up on the floor, but he doesn’t stand. No, he holds my hand in his warm, large one and gazes up at me with a strange look in his eyes.

  “Luna, thank you for sharing your days with me, and your nights. I hope to share a lifetime of them together with you as my wife. Will you marry me?”

  “What?” I manage to squeak out.

  Did he bump his head somehow? Is he having a stroke?

  My focus shrinks and time rolls in slow motion. I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down with a thick swallow, and then he smiles and tiny lines sprout beside his eyes, which are so blue and locked on me in a way that makes my whole body freeze in place. Squeezing my hand, he repeats more clearly, “Will you marry me?”

  That’s what I thought he said, but it makes absolutely zero sense. We barely know each other and don’t even like each other. We’re ridiculously incompatible, my awkwardness and his smooth charm a piss-poor fit. And again . . . what?

  Through the fog of my confusion, I hear a voice cry out, “If you don’t say yes, I will, honey!”

  I look around to see that we’ve gathered an audience of onlookers who have their hands clasped over their mouths or at their chests, eyes wide with excitement over witnessing what must look like a romantic proposal. It’s my worst nightmare come to life, or one of them, at least.

  I can feel my mouth opening and closing as I look back to Carter. “I . . . I . . .”

  He pushes a ring onto my left ring finger and then stands, grabbing me around the waist in one movement. He spins me in a circle wildly, my feet flailing through the air. Applause surrounds us and then . . .

  Carter. Freaking. Harrington. Kisses me. Right on the lips, like he has any right to.

  My first thought is that he’s a great kisser—his lips soft, his mouth warm, and his breath minty. My second thought is . . .

  “Put me down!” I shout, slapping at his shoulders.

  The onlookers laugh, and a lady says, “Let him pick you up while y’all can still do that.” I glance over to see her smiling lovingly at the wrinkled and hunched man at her side.

  Carter chuckles at the woman’s comment like this whole thing is some big joke and whispers roughly in my ear, “Smile, Luna.”

  The heat of the words and the gruffness of the order surprise me, but what surprises me more is the shiver that runs down my spine. I look at Carter, whose lips are entirely too close to mine again. I wiggle, looking for the stability of the floor because the foundation of my world has gone wobbly.

  I don’t like Carter Harrington, so why is it suddenly so hot in here? And why did he propose to me?

  Carter lowers me but keeps me tucked into his side with a tight arm around my shoulders, smiling at the crowd like he’s the mayor as he accepts their congratulations and well wishes. I’m too awkward and too confused to move away, my feet frozen in place and my face a mask of puzzlement.

  That only gets worse when Zack steps out from around the corner with a victorious smile. “Got it!” he shouts, holding up his phone.

  The crowd begins to dissipate, leaving the three of us alone with the Jackson Pollock painting that I’m definitely never going to look at the same way again.