He’s my best friend’s grumpy brother, my new landlord, and the one man I’m strictly forbidden to touch.

Ethan Rourke is a surgeon with a God complex and a house like a museum.

Cold. Sterile. Terrifyingly orderly.

I’m a chaotic artist with a cat who thinks prize roses are chew toys.

When I got evicted, he offered me his guest house.

Big mistake.

Now I’m living fifty feet away from the most brooding, damaged, insanely hot man in town.

He wants silence.

I bring noise.

He has strict rules about "boundaries" and "quiet hours."

I have a bad habit of breaking them.

We are fire and ice.

We shouldn't work.

But when a late-night argument turns into him pinning me against a wall covered in paint…

I realize the ice is just a shield.

And the fire is going to consume us both.

He thinks he’s too broken to love.

He says I’m just a temporary mess he has to clean up.

But the way he holds me in the dark tells a different story.

I’m ready to paint a future with him.

If only he doesn't scrub me out of his life first.