Beneath the Canvas and Chords

Paint, music, and the coffee shop that anchors them all: a grumpy-and-sunshine romance set in Austin. Book 4 of The Morning Set Series by Gabriella Quist.

Coming soon

She is everyone’s sunshine. He forgot how to be heard.

Ophelia Wilder is the heart of her friend group, the artist who shows up paint-splattered and certain she can hold anyone’s chaos. Her sunshine is real. It is also a performance, learned young, and lately her East Austin apartment has gone quiet. One by one, her roommates have fallen in love and moved on, and Ophelia is happy for them. She is also, for the first time, alone.

Emilio Reyes owns Grounds & Grain, the coffee shop that anchors them all, and he prefers it that way: behind the counter, gruff, reliable, unasked. A widower raising his four-year-old daughter, Wren, he keeps the shop they dreamed up together in the good years — her legacy — running beautifully, and keeps his own music locked in the back office, where his guitar waits and no one can hear.

Then, after closing, Ophelia hears it through the door. Three notes, then silence, and a man who has not let himself be heard in years.

Beneath the Canvas and Chords is a grumpy-and-sunshine story about mutual rescue: she draws his music back into the light, and he becomes the first person she never has to perform for.