Page 1 of The Painter and His Poet

PROLOGUE

STERLING

Closing my eyes and pressing my fingertips to the bridge of my nose, I try in vain to stop the kaleidoscope of colours from forming in my mind. There are shades of cobalt blue, radiant sunlight yellow, soft hazy pink, spring meadow green, and deep blood red blending together to create a masterpiece that I have yet to bring to life with my paintbrush. Each hue shimmers and shifts behind my closed eyelids, tempting me to run from this goddamn hotel and back to my studio so that I can capture the image on canvas and relieve myself of the fucking turmoil.

And it’s all because of her, Harlow Richards. A woman whose voice is as enchanting as an angel’s and as seductive as the Devil’s.

Despite drinking five shots of whisky, I still can't shake the insatiable desire to create art that was inspired by Harlow's performance at my father’s wedding.

Fuck.

She’s the woman I had a one night stand with several months ago. The woman who gave me a false name after I heard her sing at a dive bar in New York, who spent hours tangled up in my arms as we talked and fucked. The woman who I’ve been trying to find ever since.

The shock of seeing her again hit me like a ton of bricks as she walked down the aisle, and if that wasn’t enough, she was also singing. Her voice, so fucking alluring, had triggered my synesthesia and caused a riot of colourful emotions to explode within me.

Emotions I’ve been battling ever since.

As I sit here with my three friends, Benedict, Drix and Dalton, in the bar of the five-star hotel my father was married in last night, I can’t help but wonder what I did in a former life to deserve the pain of this one. Then again, I’m not the only one in turmoil. The bottle of whisky we've consumed between us only seems to deepen the shadows of our thoughts, making it even more difficult to come to terms with the fucked-up reality we’ve found ourselves in.

"What a fucking night," I mutter, swiping my hand through my hair as I catch Dalton’s own weary gaze.

Drix shifts in his seat beside him, turning his attention to Ben who’s lost to his own thoughts. "I'm assuming you've had just as little sleep as the rest of us," he says pointedly.

Ben glances up at him, his lack of words, and harrowed gaze, conveying a multitude of emotions we can all relate to.

"Yeah, that would be none then," I say, blowing out a sharp exhale of breath.

We’re four heirs to our family’s riches. Four men who’ve been rocked to the core by the women who have entered our lives and felled us just like the giant oaks surrounding my father’s estate.

There’s Benedict Pike, my best friend, whose brilliant mind is consumed by a forbidden love for a married woman who once shattered his own heart into a million jagged pieces. A woman whose bastard husband is willing to accept two million pounds in an indecent proposal so that Ben can spend a month alone with her.

Opposite him sits Drix, adopted son to the late Hubert Hammer, who was forced into the role of enforcer for our families in order to pay off a debt and putting his new relationship, to a single mum fleeing domestic abuse, in jeopardy.

Sitting beside him is Dalton, womaniser and self-confessed playboy, who has been manipulated into an arranged marriage with the one woman off-limits to him—Drix’s younger sister—all in order to fulfil his duties as son and heir to the Gunn’s immense wealth.

And then there's me, Sterling Blade, a secluded artist, and a perpetual source of disappointment to my overbearing father who wants nothing more than for me to take over his businesses and turn my back on the only thing that has ever made me happy.

This morning I had every intention of leaving town and never looking back. My relationship with my father has always been strained, but how can I leave now knowing that the woman I’ve been searching for will be moving into our estate?

A woman I want but can’t have.

I should leave. I should put the past behind me and never look back.

And yet I won’t.

Because everyone knows that an artist needs a muse, and ever since that fateful night, that person for me is Harlow Richards.

My goddamnstepsister.

ONE

STERLING

Four months ago

Adjusting my noise cancelling headphones over my ears, I keep my attention focused on the pavement beneath my feet then turn left onto 52 Street, which leads back towards my apartment in the heart of Brooklyn. The open plan loft has bare brick walls, a raised area where my bed is situated, kitchen, bathroom and, more importantly, there’s another room on the top floor of the building with floor to ceiling windows that bring in lots of light, making it perfect to rent out as a studio to create my art.

Since leaving the picturesque English town of Princetown a month ago, I’m finally beginning to feel as though I’ve found a place I fit, but perhaps not in the way you might think. In Brooklyn, everyone is too busy with their own lives to be interested in what the heir to a billion pound fortune is up to. I can disappear here. No one gives a shit about my family name, my father’s money, or the fact that I have synesthesia, which is both a blessing and a curse.

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