by Bella Andre
"It's nice to meet you too, Harry."
All the while, she could feel Alec's eyes on her. Judging. Weighing. And then deciding she came up short. Way short. Suzanne might not be worried about her brother's new girlfriend, but Alec clearly had a problem with her.
She could feel Drake stiffening beside her and desperately wished she could defuse the situation. Unfortunately, since she couldn't change who she was or what she'd done, the only thing she had in her arsenal was to smile and say, "It's nice to meet you, Alec." Before he could respond, she turned to Drake. "Why don't I take Oscar for a walk so that you all can catch up?"
She swore Oscar could understand English, because he immediately trotted over to her side with a leash in his mouth. Where he'd found the leash she had no idea, but she didn't care. All she wanted was to get out of the tension and let the brothers settle things. And if Alec really didn't want her there...well, she'd figure out something. Because there was no way she was going to get between Drake and his siblings on top of all the other messes she was already dragging him into.
She'd barely left the kitchen when Drake came up behind her and put a hand over hers to make her turn and face him. "Don't go. My brother is an idiot. I'll make him apologize for the way he just acted. He doesn't know you yet, but once he does--"
She put a finger over his lips. "He's not an idiot. We both know it's got to be a heck of a shock to see me standing there kissing you. Even without the pictures, it would have been weird. And now that he's probably seen me naked..." She fought back a shudder. "All I'm saying is that he didn't do anything wrong by reacting the way he did. Not when it's obvious that he loves you and wants to protect you." She made herself smile. "It's exactly what I'd hope your siblings would do."
"I brought you here so you could feel safe. Don't run again, Rosa. Not from me."
This morning she'd freaked out and talked about leaving, but she knew deep within herself that she wouldn't have gone very far before running right back into his arms.
"It will go easier for you guys to talk about the situation with your father and the paintings without me here, at least at first. And I could do with some fresh air and a little quiet." When it looked like he was going to argue with her, she put her hands on his bristly jaw and went on her tippy-toes to kiss him again. "All the good things you want for me with my mother, I want for you with your father. Maybe spending a little time talking things through with your brothers and sister will help get you closer to clearing them up."
With that, she kissed him again, then headed outside with Oscar into the crisp, cool forest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"What the hell are you doing with her?"
Drake sprang at his brother. "One more word and you're going to leave here looking a hell of a lot worse than when you walked in."
Just as Alec opened his mouth again to reply, Harry stepped between his brothers and caught Drake's fist halfway to Alec's face. Harry might spend plenty of hours poring over dusty tomes, but he'd managed to fit in martial arts training too.
"Cool down. Both of you." Harry had stopped Drake's punch from landing, but he knew better than to let him go just yet. "Someone had better fill me in fast."
"I'm in love with Rosa." Drake would shout it from the rooftops if he could. "She's been through hell this week and just got slapped with a fresh round this morning. I'm itching to tear someone apart." He snarled at Alec, "Perfectly happy if it's you, bro."
Suzanne stepped into the fray next, putting a hand on Drake's arm. "That's awesome that you're in love," she said first, and then to Harry, "Rosa is a reality TV star. I know you live in a box of dusty books, Harry, but you've got to have heard of the Bouchards."
He thought about it for a few seconds. "Their name sounds familiar."
"I swear, it sometimes seems like you actually live in medieval times, instead of just studying them," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, Rosa's family has been on TV for the past five or so years, and they're really, really popular. Especially her. If you ask me, it's not just because she's so pretty, but because when you watch, you wish she was your sister."
"You've got to tell her that," Drake urged. "She's let too many people online and in the press convince her that she's been making trash, but even Smith and Valentina told her they like to watch her show."
Alec snorted. "You've got to be kidding me."
By then Harry had loosened his hold on Drake's arm enough that when he lunged again, Drake nearly landed his punch.
"Alec, shut up for once, so I can finish giving Harry the deets," Suz said before turning back to Harry. "This week, some naked pictures of Rosa hit the press. Pictures she didn't authorize."
"Someone hacked her accounts?"
"Wow, so you do actually know something about modern technology. But no, it was even worse than that. One of the film crew snuck a camera into her hotel while they were filming and took pictures of her changing and getting in and out of the bath. She had no idea she'd been attacked like this until the pictures were sold and literally splattered everywhere, print and digital."
Harry looked utterly disgusted. "That's terrible."
"She doesn't deserve any of this," Drake bit out. "Especially not the shame of feeling like the pictures were her fault. She thinks she needs to hide out forever because the world will just heap more crap on her if she resurfaces."
"That's bullshit." Drake was surprised both by Alec's comment and by how disgusted he looked. "Just because your girlfriend has made some questionable career choices, there is no way those pictures are her fault."
"Questionable career choices." Suz put air quotes around the words. "You're so full of it, Alec. We all know the reason you immediately recognized Rosa is because you secretly mainline reality TV in your spare time."
Alec was the one snarling this time. "Her face is everywhere. You'd have to live under a rock not to know who she is."
"I'll take that as an affirmative on your viewing habits," Suz said with a snort of her own. "You're just jealous that Drake found someone as amazing as Rosa first."
"Stop winding him up, Suz," Harry said in the voice of mediation that he'd been using with them for over thirty years.
"Look," Alec said in what Drake knew was intended to be a more reasonable tone, "the last thing I expected was to walk in and see the woman who's been all over the news this week standing in my brother's arms. When the hell did you even start dating her? And if you're an item, how come you aren't coming up in any of the endless news clips about her?"
"You can let me go now," Drake told Harry. "I'm not going to tear him apart just yet."
Harry looked between his brothers to confirm intent on both sides before stepping away.
Drake poured himself a cup of coffee and gulped it down so that the caffeine could hit his system before he started answering his sibling's questions. "I met her a week ago when she showed up out of the blue on my cliffs in Montauk. I was trying to paint and hadn't been paying any attention to the news, hadn't turned on my phone or checked the Internet, so I didn't have a clue what the stranger on my cliffs was crying over. Then when I ran into her at the general store later that day and it was clear she was running, hiding, I still didn't know who she was or what she was running from until I saw the headlines on the newsstand." His hands fisted at his sides. "That day I helped her with her broken-down car, but I wished I could do more."
"We all do," Suz said. "I've already started sketching out the architecture for software that could erase pictures like these off the Internet."
Alec raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"
"I can sure as heck try."
"With you there is no try, there is only do. Internet creeps aren't going to know what hit them once you and your soon-to-be-written software get hold of them."
Suz grinned at Alec's vote of confidence, then turned back to Drake. "You're not done telling your story yet."
Drake knew there was no point in trying to hide the truth from his broth
ers. "I'm painting her."
Harry's eyebrows went up. "Say that again."
"The first time I set eyes on her..." None of his siblings was an artist, but they all knew what passion was. Suz for her computers. Harry for history. Alec for his planes. "I couldn't stop myself from painting her. Even knowing better, even knowing the risks of falling too hard and caring too much. Rosa's the muse I didn't know I was looking for." He shook his head. "More than a muse." He looked each of his siblings in the eye, one at a time. "She's it for me."
"What about her?" Alec asked. "Does she feel the same about you?"
Drake ran a hand through his hair. "She's been screwed over pretty bad. It's been hard for her to trust."
"She trusts you." There was perfect certainty in Suz's words. "She wouldn't be here with you, with all of us, if she didn't."
"I hope so." But Drake wanted so much more than Rosa's trust. He wanted her heart. Wanted to know that he was as deep in her soul as she already was in his. "She's got some big battles to fight. I'm hoping she'll let me fight them with her, but I know there are some that are going to have to be all hers." He went to the sink and rinsed out his mug. "Anything else she wants you to know, she'll tell you herself."
His siblings were silent for a few moments, each of them digesting what he'd said. Finally, Alec spoke. "When people see the paintings you've done of her, the art world is going to lose it. You know that, right?"
"Those paintings are private. All of them."
Suzanne made a frustrated sound. "I know both of you have your reasons to keep your paintings of Rosa out of the public eye, but I swear I haven't been able to stop thinking about them." To Harry and Alec, she explained, "I saw them when I dropped in on Drake in Montauk to see if he wanted to ride here with me. They're brilliant. Beyond, actually. And since I know you guys are thinking it, I'll tell you they're nothing at all like Dad's paintings of Mom. They feel totally different--light and bright and joyous, instead of obsessive and codependent."
"Speaking of obsessed and codependent," Alec said, "what has Dad told you about why he suddenly wants to pass on his paintings to us?"
None of them heard the sound of boots on the wide-planked wood floor until it was too late...and their father was standing in the doorway, clearly having heard more than any of them wished he had.
"Dad." Suz jumped up. "We didn't hear you coming in."
Drake had spent thirty years wary of being rejected by his father. But if he didn't want Rosa to keep hiding out, he needed to stop hiding too. He'd told her she had it in her to start fresh, insisted that the status quo wasn't necessarily the easier, safer way. Looked like it was time to stand by his words.
Which was why, despite the equally wary look on William Sullivan's face, Drake walked over and gave him a hug. "It's good to see you, Dad."
His father's surprise was palpable. So was that of Alec, Harry, and Suz, for that matter, as they gaped at father and son from across the room. The thing was, Drake had done enough thinking about Rosa's messy situation with her mother that turning the mirror on himself had been unavoidable. He couldn't expect Rosa to try to work things out with her mother if he wasn't willing to do the same.
"I didn't expect you all to come at the same time."
Drake could easily hear the subtext--his father hadn't really expected any of them to come except for Suz and maybe Harry. The five of them hadn't been together in the Adirondacks for years. Probably because it always felt like there was a ghost hanging over them all, the paintings of their mother that were stored in the cottage a short distance behind the house a heavy weight none of them really knew how to carry.
"You want to tell us what's going on?" Alec stood with his arms folded, looking like he wished he was anywhere but here. And clearly, putting his foot in it twice in the past half hour, first with Rosa and then with their father, hadn't put him in an apologetic mood. If anything, it had made him more blunt.
Out of the corner of his eye, Drake could see that his sister was about to dive into the fray to try to save their father from this uncomfortable situation. But even though Alec was lacking a hell of a lot of finesse today, he was asking the question they all wanted--and needed--an answer to.
Drake caught his sister's eye and shook his head. You can't save him this time, Suz.
He could see how hard it was for her to wait out their father's uncomfortable silence. I know I can't, her eyes seemed to say, but why does it have to be this hard?
Drake had given up wishing things could be different with his dad a long time ago. But now, he wondered if he'd given up too soon without ever actually learning the whole story of what had happened between his mother and father.
"A reporter called," his father finally replied. "When I didn't call her back, she came here and waited until I came home from a job site. She told me she was writing a story about the thirtieth anniversary of my last painting." His father headed for the coffee now and poured himself a cup, but set it down before drinking it. "I need something stronger than this." He reached into an upper cupboard for a bottle of whiskey. "Anyone else?"
"I'll take one." Alec uncrossed his arms and finally moved toward their dad. Suz shook her head, as did Harry. Drake figured it might help loosen things up a little, so together the three of them knocked the shots back, then set the glasses on the counter.
"Thirty years." William looked at Drake first, then Suz, then Harry, then Alec. Youngest to oldest. "How the hell did thirty years pass?"
"Did you do the interview?" Harry asked.
"No. I kicked her the hell off my property and told her to come back at her own risk. But it got me thinking. Thinking about how three decades is long enough to keep holding on to a ghost." He poured himself another shot. "And more than long enough to screw things up with all of you." He looked at each of them, looked more deeply than Drake could ever remember. "I hope you'll all stay, at least for the night, all of us around the same table at the same time--" He rubbed a hand over his face. "But I understand if you're too busy, if you need to get back to the city."
"We'd love to stay, Dad." Suz looked at her brothers. "Right, guys?"
"Sounds good," Harry said.
Alec poured himself another shot before saying, "I can wait until tomorrow to get back."
"Drake?"
"I was planning to stay. But you should know that I brought someone with me. Her name is Rosa. I've been painting her." Anticipating his father's surprise, he added, "I had to, even though she only agreed to sit for me as long as I never show the paintings to anyone."
"I know I have no right to tell you what to do," his father said in a grave voice that matched his expression, "but if she's that uncomfortable with people seeing her on canvas, even if you make her all the promises in the world about keeping them for your eyes only, you're still setting yourself up for trouble."
"She's already in trouble. That's how she found me. How I found her."
"What kind of trouble?"
"She's on TV. A reality show. She's famous. Really famous. Someone took pictures of her without her consent and sold them to the press. Nude pictures." Suzanne made an angry sound in the background. "She's spent the past week trying to find her footing again. Trying to decide exactly how she wants to deal with the situation."
His father's frown furrowed deep. "This morning on the job site, the radio was on. I'm pretty sure I heard about your Rosa, about the pictures. The newscasters were saying that no one in the press has heard from her since the day they hit, that she's disappeared. Her mother was on, and she was obviously worried. More than worried. Terrified about what her daughter might have done because of the pictures. She was begging anyone with information to come forward."
"Rosa's been safe with me the whole time," Drake told his father. "Actually, she's with Oscar right now, taking him for a walk. But I hope when she gets back that she'll be welcome here."
"Good. I'm glad she's safe, and of course she's welcome here. But why doesn't her family know where she is? W
hy couldn't she at least tell them that she needed time to think about everything?"
"She would have done that if she could. But her situation--the show, the pictures, and her relationship with her mother--it's all far more complicated than that." And if anyone could understand complicated, Drake figured it was his father.
Just then, William's phone buzzed in a jarring ring tone that couldn't be ignored. "Damn it, I've got to get back to the job site. But I'll be back as soon as I can to make dinner. And then--" He looked pained. "We can talk about the paintings."
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Adirondacks felt like the polar opposite of Miami. Yes, there was sand and water, but that was where the similarities ended. Rosa had spent her whole life in the sun--but this cool air, and all the green, felt so right. Montauk had been a good temporary refuge, but somehow this was like coming home. Especially with Oscar loping along beside her, a big bear of a dog who always looked after her.
Just like his owner.
Rosa really hoped everything was going okay with Drake and his brother Alec. While it hurt to be judged so quickly--and so negatively--she knew all too well that it came with the reality TV territory. So even if she still felt the sting in the disparaging way Alec had looked at her, it wasn't anything she hadn't felt before.
And maybe, she told herself, it wasn't a terrible thing for Drake to see what it would be like to go public with dating her. That it wouldn't just be strangers judging his choices, but his closest flesh and blood. He'd worked hard to persuade her that he didn't care what strangers thought, but she knew family was everything to him. She'd never forgive herself if she came between Drake and his family.
She'd hoped the walk would untwist her insides, but her concerns about how things were going between Drake and his brother gnawed at her gut. As if he could sense her mood, Oscar nudged her hand. She found a smile for him, especially when a duck swam to the edge of the lake and sent him barking and running toward it. Laughing as she let him tug her through the trees toward the shore, she was surprised to realize that they'd walked all the way to the edge of town.
It was straight out of a picture postcard--the bright blue sky, the lake sparkling in the sunlight, a pretty white gazebo at a waterfront park. During the past five years, Rosa had filmed all over the world and was lucky to have seen incredible beauty on nearly every continent. But nothing affected her the way this small main street on the lake did.