Suddenly in Love (Lake Haven#1) by Julia London

Johnny’s Bike Shop. A peace symbol. The apple that came in the box of every Apple product ever sold. Some of the pages had gotten wet at some point and paper had swelled, making the cover a little wavy.
    He picked up the book and opened it. He looked with surprise at the drawings, made both in pencil and ink, and covering a wide variety of subjects: three musicians in a park. A skyline he guessed to be New York. A vase of flowers.
    Brennan flipped through, only mildly interested until he reached those that obviously depicted this house. He recognized some of the empty rooms, but things had been added in the sketches. In the living room, which was currently empty, the sketch included a couch and a woman dressed in a period costume. He recognized the dining room by the strange wallpaper, but not the table around which several people sat. That sketch reminded him of an old Norman Rockwell painting—people laughing, leaning over one another.
    The Palladian-style windows on the front of the house had been drawn with shutters instead of the actual thick drapes that seemed to catch dust. Azaleas lined the house where there were no shrubs. Nor were there goats foraging in the grass as the next sketch suggested, and Brennan highly doubted the security guard ever stretched out on a lawn chaise to catch some rays.
    He turned the page. The next sketch was of the kitchen. The dogs were curled into little balls on their pillow next to the cheap table and chairs his mother had picked up somewhere. Atop the kitchen island was an ape. The ape was hunkered down, his arms scraping the counter top. And he had a surprisingly familiar face. Not identical, but close enough—
    “Hey!”
    The sound of the girl’s voice startled Brennan so badly he almost dropped the book. He jerked around; she was standing in the door of the butler’s pantry. And she looked furious.
    “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded as she strode forward, her hand outstretched.
    Brennan looked at the sketchbook. “Is this yours?” he asked dumbly.
    “Give it back.” Her brows had sunk into a dark vee, and her amber eyes turned stormy. She managed to get her hand on the book, jerking it out of his hands.
    Brennan lifted his hands, surrendering. “Sorry.”
    “ Sorry? Do you often go through people’s things without their permission?”
    “You’re right, I shouldn’t have done that,” he conceded. “I saw it lying there and I . . .” Well, he’d picked it up, obviously. He shouldn’t have. But he did. He shrugged. Was it really such a big deal?
    Apparently so, because if looks could slay, he’d be lying in a bloody pool right now, gutted and left to die. He put a hand to his nape and rubbed it. “Who’s the ape?”
    “Who do you think?” She turned away from him.
    Wow. Brennan had absolutely no idea what to say to that. Part of him wanted to laugh. Another part of him thought he ought to be mad about it, but he couldn’t really get there. “What are the drawings for?” he asked.
    “For me . I like to draw. What else would they be for?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe you mean to show them to someone.”
    She turned around and looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “To who ? Who would care about your kitchen? It’s a diary, obviously.”
    Not so obvious to him, but he believed her. “Your diary includes a drawing of me as an ape in this kitchen?”
    “Well, yeah,” she said, and looked down at her book. “It’s not every day I run across someone like you.”
    “That doesn’t sound like a compliment in any way,” he said.
    “I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
    “Huh,” he said, because Brennan was beginning to believe that this woman really had no clue who he was. God, he could be an idiot sometimes. He ran his hands over his head. He hated always being on edge.
    Worse, his body was beginning to take notice of her. He could smell her again, this woman in the wild clothing. She smelled sweet, like fresh cotton sheets. That was