by Bella Andre
“She’ll figure things out.” He was sure of it. If only he could be as sure about everything else.
Yes, he was fired up to paint Rosa right now. But would that fire translate into anything he could actually show in the NYC gallery in two weeks? And even if it did, how the hell was he going to keep from tracking Rosa down in the future when he simply couldn’t imagine never seeing her again, never feeling her laughter resonate all the way through his body, never watching Oscar worship at her feet?
Damn it, he needed to stop thinking about her, at least long enough to ask his sister, “What are you doing here?”
“If you ever bothered to turn on your cell phone,” Suzanne replied with a little scowl, “I wouldn’t have to drive three hours to talk to you in an emergency. It’s so much easier to reach you when you’re in the city.”
“Emergency?” Now he was the one reaching for his sister to make sure she was okay.
“I’m fine. But Dad isn’t.”
Of course. He should have guessed the emergency had to do with his father. Suz had always been the one to take care of him. Harry too. Alec was usually too busy knocking heads with him.
As for Drake? The truth was, he’d never had much of a relationship with his father. Maybe because Drake had been one kid too many in five years for their mother to handle? Maybe because William Sullivan thought Drake was the reason his mother had left—and his father had never been able to forgive him for it? Or maybe it was because Drake had his mother’s eyes and had always been too painful a reminder of all his father had lost?
His mother and father’s tragic story might be up on Wikipedia for all to read, but Drake and his siblings didn’t actually know much more about their parents’ marriage than that. Their father had never sat them down to talk about what happened—and none of them had ever felt they could ask. As the years went by without anyone broaching the subject, the wall between their father and his kids had only grown higher and thicker.
“What’s wrong with him now?” he asked his sister as exhaustion finally hit him like a brick. Heading into the kitchen, Drake pushed the start button on the coffee maker, while Oscar went back to his dog bed in the corner and flopped down on it, watching brother and sister.
“Dad called to ask if I wanted any of his paintings. Evidently he also called Harry and Alec and asked them. I’m assuming there’s a message waiting for you on your phone.”
Drake wasn’t in any frame of mind for family drama right now, but he still needed to clarify something. “He wants to give us his paintings of Mom?”
“Yes, and I told him of course I wanted them. That I was sure we all would. He said I had until the end of the month to collect the ones he’d put aside for me.”
“I don’t get it,” Drake said as he tried to make sense of this hugely unexpected news. “He’s been holding on to those paintings for thirty years. What could possibly have changed?”
His sister looked just as bewildered. “I don’t know, but I’m heading to the lake now to pick them up. I’m hoping he’ll explain things once I’m there. Do you want to go with me? Harry and Alec said they’re both going to make some time to head out to the Adirondacks in the next week or so.”
Thank God the coffee maker dinged right then—Drake was going to need to drink the whole pot before he could begin to make heads or tails of this. He poured both of them a cup, then chugged his. Suz drank slowly from hers, watching him over the rim in a mirror of Oscar’s watchful pose while Drake willed his brain to push through the sludge of exhaustion.
“You’re not going to come with me, are you?”
It had been so long since he’d felt this kind of creative inspiration, he worried that if he left in the middle of the rush, it might pass. And there was still so much he wanted to paint, so many different visions of Rosa that he wanted to bring to life on his canvases.
But even as he tried to tell himself that his work was the main reason he didn’t want to head to his father’s house in the Adirondacks with Suzanne, he knew he was lying to himself. Even his strange relationship with his father wasn’t the main reason.
No, the biggest reason Drake wanted to stay in Montauk was because of a woman he barely knew. Odds were pretty high that she’d left the Seaside Motel yesterday after he’d pushed her too hard about her mother, and hit the road again.
But if Rosa was still here? If there was even the barest chance that he could convince her to come back to sit for him again...
“Jesus.” He put his head in his hands. “It’s finally happened. I’ve turned into him.”
It was clear Suzanne knew he was talking about their father. “Why are you saying that? Because you want to paint Rosalind Bouchard?” She waved her hand in the air as if his statement were utterly ridiculous. “Sure, you’re brilliant painters. And I love you both. But you’re not Dad.”
Suzanne and Harry had always been the rational ones—the computer genius and the brilliant academic. Alec had a fairly well-earned reputation as a hothead. As for Drake? While he’d certainly been willing to play the artiste card when it suited him, at his core he’d always thought of himself as a fairly even-keeled guy.
Until now.
Until Rosa.
“That’s what I’ve always thought.” Or at least it was what he’d always told himself—that he and his father were totally different people. That he didn’t have any of the inner torment William had nursed for thirty years. “But I’ve got twenty-four hours of paintings staring me in the face telling me I’m full of it. Even though I know I need to stop thinking about her, need to stop painting her, I can’t.”
The last thing he expected Suzanne to do was laugh. “It’s called a crush, Drake. Everyone gets them.” She looked at the paintings again. “Rosalind is a stunningly beautiful woman, and not in a typical, boring way. If I were a painter, I’m sure I’d be just as excited about painting her. But it’s not like you’re in love with her or anything.”
In love with her?
Of course he wasn’t.
There was no way that he could have fallen in love with Rosa at first sight, out on the rocks in the rain. No rational reason that talking with her while eating lasagna on chipped plates at a card table on folding chairs could have cemented those crazy emotions.
“Oh, my God.” His sister was staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. “You are in love with her!”
Thirty years of practice at keeping love at bay had Drake instinctively telling himself that he was simply captivated. Obviously enthralled. Definitely consumed. Yes, he was tempted to break all of his rules for her—was already doing it, for God’s sake. Had been riding the edge from the first moment he’d drawn her in his sketchbook.
But did that mean he was in love with her?
Drake deliberately turned his back on his paintings. “I told you—I just met her yesterday.”
Suzanne actually had the nerve to smile. “At least half of our happily married cousins can attest to the fact that love at first sight is real.”
“When did my computer genius sister become such a romantic? Is there a guy you haven’t told us about?”
“Don’t try to turn this on me.” She wagged her finger at him. “We’re talking about you right now and what you’re going to do about the fact that you’re in love with Rosalind Bouchard.”
“Her name is Rosa.” Of all the things to correct his sister on right then, Rosa’s name shouldn’t have been at the top of the list. And yet, he couldn’t forget how she’d looked as she’d said, Rosa is my real name. Working to shake that vision out of his head, along with the others that had all but hypnotized him from the first moment he’d seen her on the cliffs, he said, “Trust me when I say that the last thing she needs right now is some new guy in her life.”
And the last thing he needed was to fall in love with a woman who could too easily become an obsession. A woman who had already brought him far too close to the kind of deep feelings he’d made it a point his whole life to avoid
so that he wouldn’t repeat his parents’ destructive cycle.
“Are you sure about that? After all, she let you paint her. Maybe you’re exactly what she needs. And maybe that goes both ways.”
His sister had the same determined look that she got when a computer program she was writing wasn’t doing exactly what she wanted it to do. Drake knew for a fact that she’d always beaten the computer, every single time.
“I understand if you don’t want to head to the Adirondacks with me right now to see Dad. But I won’t understand if you don’t do something about Rosa. I’ve never seen you like this, never seen you paint like this either. Your work has always been amazing, Drake, but these paintings?” She put a hand over her chest. “They make my heart spin around in my chest, in the best kind of way. And if my heart feels like this just from looking at your paintings, then I can’t even imagine the way yours must feel when the two of you are actually together.”
Lack of sleep had him admitting, “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” Now that he’d finally said the words aloud, it was suddenly impossible to keep the next ones inside. Especially when Suzanne was one of the only people on the planet who could fully understand where he was coming from. “But that’s exactly the problem, Suz. Our mother wasn’t just Dad’s muse, she was his obsession. And that obsession didn’t just destroy him.” He ran a harsh hand through his hair. “It destroyed them both.”
“Yes, it destroyed them. But it didn’t destroy us. And I refuse to believe that you and I and Harry and Alec are destined for the same horrible-ever-after ending.”
Suzanne spent so much time inside her head that people often made the mistake of assuming her passions didn’t run deep. But Drake knew firsthand just how wrong they all were. His sister had one of the biggest, most caring hearts of anyone he knew. Especially when it came to her brothers. They would fight to the end for her, and she would do the same for them.
Just the way she was right now.
Her eyes were flashing as she told him, “One day, when I find the guy I’m supposed to be with, I’m not going to be afraid to love big. And I’m definitely not going to stop myself from loving with everything I am. Our parents might have misused love to destroy each other, but as far as I’m concerned, that just means the four of us all know better. Better than to throw away real love when it comes just because of mistakes they made.” She looked at his paintings again, before turning back and pinning him with an unwavering gaze. “And definitely to be brave enough to risk our hearts when love comes walking through our door, even if we’re not expecting it. Even,” she added in a softer voice, “if that love looks like the one thing we’ve always thought we shouldn’t have.”
Oscar’s howl from the corner was the perfect punctuation to his sister’s words, an exclamation point at the end of Suz’s heartfelt wisdom that Drake couldn’t possibly ignore.
No more than he could ignore the way he felt about Rosa...whether he should or not.
Chapter Eleven
Rosa had just got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself when she heard a knock on her motel room door.
Oh God, they’d found her.
Whether it was her family or the paparazzi barely mattered. All that mattered was that the little cocoon of safety she’d sewn herself into for the past twenty-four hours was about to be ripped apart.
She hadn’t yet made any big decisions, but at least she had started to feel as if every stitch she put on the tourist clothes she’d picked up at the general store was helping to stitch her back together, little by little. Of course she wasn’t planning to sit in this motel room forever, but after five crazy years, was it really too much to ask for a handful of days of peace and quiet? A few moments to actually sit down and plan how she was going to deal with what had happened?
As the knocking came again, even more insistently, she realized she was standing frozen in place on the threshold between the bathroom and bedroom. Maybe she should be looking for an escape route. Maybe she should be checking to see if she could fit through the window above the shower. But as panic rapidly bore down on her at the thought of walking right back into her reality-star life, she couldn’t figure out how to make herself unfreeze.
“It’s me.”
The world’s biggest dose of relief flooded her as she recognized that voice. The only one she actually wanted to hear right now.
“Rosa, are you in there? It’s Drake.”
Just like that, her feet came unstuck. She didn’t think as she headed across the bedroom, couldn’t have stopped herself from opening the door even if she had been able to think clearly. And ohhh, was he ever a gorgeous sight to behold as he stood in the rain on her room’s second-floor landing.
“Rosa.”
All he said was one perfect, sweet word, drenched in need—and then his mouth was on hers before she could take her next breath.
His kiss was utterly unexpected. Took her completely by surprise.
And was glorious.
She’d never wanted a kiss this badly. Never wanted anyone’s arms around her so much. Never been so desperate to know another’s taste and to share hers.
Somewhere in her haze of pleasure, she felt him move them both far enough into the room to slam the door behind him, but then all she could feel was Drake.
His mouth was as hot as his wet clothes were cold against her skin, bared completely now because the towel had fallen down around her feet while they kissed. Somehow, though his hands were also wet, they were warm and so wonderfully big and strong as they moved down her back from shoulder to hip, then down even further to cup her bottom so that she could wrap her legs around him as they both tried to erase any space between them.
He answered her gasps of pleasure with a low groan of desire, and it was hands down the sexiest sound she’d ever heard in her life. She wanted to fall into the bed with him and never leave it. Wanted to drown in his touch, in his kisses, and never resurface back to “real” life where she couldn’t ever let herself fall in love with a sweet and sexy painter.
Unfortunately, that one thought about real life was all it took to drag her back into it.
No. No. Not now. Not yet. Why did she have to start thinking?
Why did she have to remember that she couldn’t do this with him?
Why couldn’t she have stayed in a blissful haze long enough to make love with him?
Why couldn’t she let herself have at least one good thing come out of all this pain?
But she knew why—knew the answer to every single question.
She couldn’t hurt him. Couldn’t drag him into her mess. She’d seen enough of his talent to be certain that he was a well-respected artist. But if they hooked up and anyone ever found out? If she let herself have this taste of him and then wasn’t strong enough to let go afterward?
Just like that, his reputation would go down the drain.
All because Rosa was the world’s biggest reality TV joke...and he was a good man who should never have made the mistake of getting involved with her.
Somehow, she made herself draw back from his mouth. At least, she almost did—she couldn’t resist swooping in to lick over his lips one last time. One last taste of heaven before she made herself untangle her arms and legs from his, pick up her towel from the floor, wrap it tightly around herself, and steel herself to say the four most difficult words in the world.
“We can’t do this.”
“We can.”
He followed up his statement by dragging her close for another kiss that felt just as inevitable as their first, but that didn’t mean she could let it spiral any further. Somehow, some way, she needed to stop this glorious, all-consuming madness—even if it was the very last thing she wanted.
She tore her mouth from his, still gripping her towel for dear life. “Drake.”
The desire in his dark eyes stole what was left of her breath. “Rosa.”
God, she loved hearing him say her name. Loved it as much as she loved
the hard press of his muscles all along her body as he held her so tight that it felt like he would never let her fall.
But none of this—none of him—was meant for her. He was too good. Too sweet. Too real.
Whereas nothing about her life was good or sweet or real. Only the too-short time she’d spent with Drake had been any of those things.
“I meant it when I said that I can’t do this.” No lie had ever been bigger, considering she so easily could. But calling on his sense of honor was the only way she could think of to stop them from taking things so far that he’d regret it.
He didn’t kiss her again, but he didn’t let go of her either. Instead, he surprised her yet again by saying, “I won’t hurt you.”
But I’ll hurt you. And I’ll never be able to forgive myself for it.
“I know you won’t.” Though she barely knew him, she didn’t doubt the truth of it. “But I still can’t be with you.”
“I know things are crazy for you right now. I’ll wait.”
“Don’t.”
The sure knowledge that she could never erase her past—and that she wouldn’t risk sending his life careening as off track as hers was right now—made her strong enough to finally let go of him.
Every part of her that had been so warm while pressed against him immediately chilled as she forced herself to put some space between them and made herself say, “You should go.”
Though she was wearing only a towel, he never looked away from her face. “Come with me. Sit for me again. I’ll feed you pie.”
He made it sound as if there wasn’t one single reason why she shouldn’t go back to his cabin and sit on the chair in the corner with his big dog in her lap while he painted her. As if they both didn’t know darn well that if she went with him, she’d also end up in his bed.
Dangerous.
Drake was so dangerous for her.
It wasn’t just his intensity that was dangerous. Wasn’t only his big heart as he’d looked out for a stranger.
No, it was his belief that this connection between them was worth taking a risk for, that suddenly seemed the most dangerous of all.