by Bella Andre
“It’s okay.” The look he gave her was as gentle as his voice. “It looked like you needed to be there. I know we’ve just met, but if you need any help, maybe I can—”
Oh God. Of course he’d witnessed her meltdown. Her endless, wracking sobs, which had ended with her throwing her phone off the cliff.
“I’m sorry I trespassed,” she said again, her gut twisting at what a fool she must seem to him. She supposed she shouldn’t have any pride left at this point, but somehow she still did. “I need to go.”
He held out her food. “Don’t you want these?” She shook her head as she finally managed to get around him. “At least tell me your name.”
Shock sent her skidding through a puddle. He really didn’t know her name? Was he for real? But she couldn’t risk his finding out as she yanked open her car door and threw herself inside.
Only, before she slammed it shut, she heard him say, “If you want to come back to my cliffs, you can.”
Her heart was leaping as she gunned her old car out of the lot. But even though she wouldn’t let herself look for him in the rearview mirror, his invitation played over and over in her head.
If you want to come back...if you want to come back...if you want to come back...
She wanted nothing more than to go back—to watch the tides shift, the sky change colors, the seabirds swoop down to the sand. She wouldn’t even mind the rain, not when it was just part of the natural ebb and flow of the seasons.
But this wasn’t a vacation. She might have fled home without thinking things through, but if she didn’t want her family or the network to find out where she was and drag her back into the middle of the madness, she needed to stay hidden.
She also needed to take a shower, put on some dry clothes, and eat something. A little sleep would probably do her a world of good. But first, she needed to get out of Montauk and find a new town to hide out in. One where gorgeous men in general-store parking lots didn’t make her heart race even when she knew better.
But when she pushed her foot down harder on the gas pedal, her car suddenly began to make noises. Really bad, loud noises.
This couldn’t be happening.
Her car couldn’t actually be breaking down on top of everything else, could it?
Chapter Four
The woman from the cliffs had peeled out of the parking lot in her beat-up old car faster than she should have. Drake didn’t know her—didn’t even know her name—but he was worried nonetheless.
He’d seen that kind of bleak look before. Whenever his mother’s name came up, even after all these years, all the color would drain from his father’s face. Thirty years after her disappearance and death, William Sullivan’s pain hadn’t dimmed.
Likewise, whatever had happened had obviously hurt this woman deeply. Especially considering how spooked she’d seemed by every word out of Drake’s mouth.
He’d never thought he would see her again, never thought he’d get to drink her in up close, never thought he’d have a chance to memorize the perfect, exotic planes of her face. He’d already done more than he should have by sketching her, then had left his cottage to make sure he didn’t give in to the pull to bring her to life on a canvas. But now...
Now the itch to paint her had spun into deep desire. The kind of urgent drive to paint that an artist waited his whole life to feel.
Drake didn’t realize he was still holding the woman’s apples and cookie until the cookie crumbled in his fist. Wet dough and chocolate chips were smushed between his fingers as he walked over to the garbage can by the front door and threw the cookie away. After he let the rain wash away the crumbs on his hands, he dropped an apple into each pocket and finally headed inside.
“Drake, sweetie, we haven’t seen you all week.”
Mona Agnew had manned the general store’s till for the past thirty years, ever since she and her husband had opened the doors. Despite the fact that she was a tad on the nosy side—particularly when it came to his love life—he far preferred shopping here to the new chain grocery store just up the road. Drake had always appreciated places with some life to them, which was why the old hunting cabin at Montauk Point suited him perfectly.
“How are you, Mona?”
“Just fine. I’ve saved one of those fresh-baked apple pies you like so much. Why don’t you take care of your shopping while I get it out of the back for you?”
He grabbed a hand basket and was picking up his usual chicken and veggies when his gaze caught on a magazine cover. Stopping dead, he put down the basket and grabbed the glossy magazine, hardly able to believe his eyes.
The girl from the cliffs was on the cover.
In most ways she barely looked like the woman wearing tons of mascara and blood-red lipstick and dripping with jewelry—but he’d just stared into those eyes and he couldn’t be mistaken.
As much as he sometimes wished he could, he didn’t live under a rock, so he knew the Bouchards were the reality TV family on the networks these days. He’d never seen their show, however, and had never met any of them in person either. Not until—the magazine said her name was Rosalind, which didn’t seem quite right, though he couldn’t pinpoint why—Rosalind showed up out of the blue on the cliffs this morning.
His gut clenched as the headline finally registered. America’s Favorite Bad Girl: Nude Photo Scandal? Or Another Brilliant Business Move for the Bouchards?
Was that why she’d been crying? Why she’d hurled her phone over the edge? Why she looked so bleak?
He’d never taken naked pictures on his phone, but he knew plenty of people did it. Had some sexy photos she’d taken for a boyfriend been hacked into and broadcast for the whole world to see?
Drake had enough brushes with fame—and enough famous relatives—to know there was likely less than ten percent truth to anything written in this magazine. But where he’d just barely managed to keep from painting her, now there was no way he could stop himself from flipping open the magazine and reading the article.
It took less than a paragraph to make him angry. According to the article, someone on one of her TV crews had secretly placed cameras throughout her hotel room on location in the Virgin Islands—and then the scumbag had sold them for an “unverified but hefty” sum to the worst gossip site on the Web, which had then resold the pictures everywhere possible. Evidently, her family was “furious” and “working to prosecute the man who took and sold the pictures, to the furthest extent of the law.” Rosalind was “recuperating from the shock” and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Recuperating? Like hell she was. She was sobbing and shivering on a clifftop fifteen hundred miles from Miami.
In this magazine, the stolen pictures had been reprinted with red stars over the most private parts of Rosalind’s body, but they didn’t really hide anything.
And Drake hated himself for looking.
He slapped the magazine shut and shoved it into the back of the stand behind an issue of Log Home. But her beautiful face—and barely covered body—was on the covers of half a dozen others.
As soon as he’d seen her walking along the cliffs, he’d known something was wrong. If only it had just been a bad breakup. Because Drake couldn’t imagine how eviscerating it would feel to have something like this happen. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he brought his groceries over to the counter where Mona was waiting with his apple pie.
“Anyone you’re planning to share this pie with?” she asked as she rang him up.
Unbidden, Rosalind’s face popped into his head. “Not unless one of my siblings drops by unannounced. I’m here to focus on painting, just like always.”
“I suppose a strapping young man like you must have all the girlfriends you can handle in the city, don’t you?”
He forced a smile. “I’ll see you in a few days, Mona.”
Rain was still coming down as he headed back out to his car. He hadn’t seen a storm like this in years. Visibility was so bad as he pulled out of the parking lot that he wo
uldn’t be able to drive safely at much more than fifteen miles an hour.
He’d been planning to head straight back to his cottage to force himself to get some work done even if it killed him, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Rosalind. Her family had told the press that they were helping her through her ordeal. But was that actually true? From what Drake had seen, it sure didn’t seem to be.
What’s more, he doubted someone from Miami would be used to driving in this kind of fog, with its low visibility. Hating the thought of something else happening to her, he turned left out of the parking lot in the same direction she’d gone a few minutes earlier, rather than heading back toward home. It wasn’t likely that he’d run into her again, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t at least check to make sure something hadn’t happened to her or her car in the storm.
Less than five minutes later, when he saw her car on the side of the road, he knew his gut had been right. He pulled up behind the old car and got out, expecting to see her sitting inside waiting for help. But she was nowhere to be seen.
Was she actually walking on the side of the road in this weather?
Cursing, he ran back to his car, put it into gear, then pulled back onto the narrow two-lane road, squinting through the thick rain and fog in which his windshield wipers and headlights were barely making a dent. Finally—thank God—he saw her walking a hundred feet ahead with her head down and her shoulders hunched against the force of the rain.
The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally skid into her, so he carefully pulled to the side of the road again before jumping out of his car. “Rosalind!”
Even through the fog, he swore he could see how big, how scared her eyes were as she turned at the sound of her name. A beat later, she started moving even faster down the road, away from him.
He didn’t blame her for running, considering what had happened. But that didn’t mean he could let her stay out here on a seriously dangerous stretch of road in the middle of a storm.
For the second time in one day, he went running after her. Only this time he didn’t stop halfway there. Not when he knew precisely how much she needed someone to help her.
He didn’t know what he expected her to do when he caught up to her and put a hand on her arm, but it definitely wasn’t dropping the bag she was holding and whirling around with her fists raised as she yelled, “Go away!”
My God, she was beautiful. And so damned fierce, even when scared and soaking wet, that he now knew for sure exactly where her beauty came from. Not the perfect lines of her jaw. Not the lush curves of her mouth. Not even her incredible figure.
No, it was strength that underlay every other part of her. So much strength that she literally took his breath away.
But just because she was strong didn’t mean she wouldn’t be worried about being out in the middle of nowhere with a man who was a good foot taller and eighty pounds heavier.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised her in a voice loud enough to carry over the rain hammering the pavement. “But walking on the side of the road in this storm isn’t safe.”
“I’ve been fine so far.”
Drake had no doubt whatsoever that she would be fine again one day soon, but sometimes it didn’t matter how strong you were—you still needed help to get over the worst parts. “I saw your car on the side of the road a half mile back. I can help by taking you where you’re trying to go.”
He could see how much she hated needing to accept his offer. But no one could deny the danger in their spot on the side of the narrow road.
Still, she didn’t answer him with words, simply bent down to pick up her soaked bag. Since it had already torn most of the way through, the slightest touch was all it took for the brown paper to split completely. Everything rolled out, with a pack of underwear landing on his foot, followed a moment later by a couple of oranges.
Maybe it was the last straw on a terrible day, because she simply stood there and stared at the mess. Moving quickly, Drake bent down and picked up everything. The TV dinners, tourist shirts and sweats, and especially the underwear, toothbrush, and toothpaste, told him that she hadn’t planned this trip. She’d obviously needed to get the hell away from Miami and had somehow ended up in Montauk.
The only items that didn’t make sense were the colorful spools of thread and the sewing needles. If the magazine article was to be believed, she didn’t have any skills or interests apart from her growing beauty empire. Then again, given the ridiculously embellished stories he’d read about his father and mother over the years, Drake knew better than to believe anything he read.
Hoping she’d follow him now that he had her things, he headed for his car. Fortunately, by the time he opened the passenger door and threw her things in, she was only a step behind him. He held open the door for her until she was safely inside.
It wasn’t until he was behind the steering wheel that he realized just how small a car could be with only two people inside it, especially with the windows steaming up on the inside.
“I’m Drake Sullivan.”
It was a little strange to finally tell her his name when it felt like they’d already been through so much together today. But that wasn’t actually true, was it? She was the one who had been through the wringer. All he’d had to deal with was his painter’s block...and the relentless urge to end it by capturing her face and body on canvas.
“You acted like you didn’t know who I was at the grocery store.”
“I didn’t. I saw your face on a magazine, and that’s when I realized who you are.”
“Please.” She turned to him in supplication. No longer fierce. No longer furious. “Please don’t tell anyone I’m here. I’ll give you whatever you want. As much money as you want, just to keep this quiet.”
“I don’t want your money.” How could she think he would? Then again, she didn’t know him, did she? Didn’t know anything at all about him—even though he’d just seen pictures of her getting in and out of a bathtub. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“You feel sorry for me?”
“Not sorry for you.” He wanted to make sure she understood that. He didn’t pity her. She was clearly too resilient for his—or anyone else’s—pity. “But what happened to you? It was wrong. Really wrong. If something like that happened to my sister—” He gritted his teeth. “I’d want to kill the guy who took those pictures.”
“You’ve—” The word broke, and she slumped back into the seat in a defeated pose. “Of course you’ve seen them. The whole world has seen them by now.”
“If I could take back looking at them, Rosalind, I would.”
“Rosa.” The one word from her lips was so quiet he almost couldn’t hear it. “Rosa is my real name.”
“Rosa.” It fit her so much better than Rosalind. “Rosa,” he said again, just to feel her name on his own lips.
Had anyone ever tugged at him like this? If so, he couldn’t remember. Then again, these were some pretty crazy circumstances, weren’t they?
Of all the cliffs, in all the parks, in all the world, she’d walked onto his.
“I can help. My family—”
“No!” The word family seemed to snap her back to life. Back to fierce. “I don’t want your family involved. I’ll figure things out on my own. All I want right now is somewhere to clean up and rest for a few hours before I make my next move. When I was a kid, there was a motel pretty close to here. It would be great if you could take me there.”
“The Seaside Motel is still there. But there are nicer places in town.”
“No!” The word was infused with panic. “The Seaside Motel is good enough.”
Even if the magazine article had been ninety-nine percent lies, Drake knew one thing for certain—the woman in his passenger seat was rich. Really rich. One-thousand-thread-count sheets had to be her standard, not whatever faded cotton was on the ancient beds at the Seaside Motel. But instead of pushing her on it, he said, “I have a friend wh
o can help tow your car. Joe won’t ask any questions. And he can fix it for you too.”
Her “Thank you,” was heartfelt, but soft. Almost as if she felt she didn’t deserve his kindness. As if she actually thought it was her fault some creep had taken and sold those pictures of her.
“I have money, but I can’t really get to it right now without people tracking m—” She cut herself off as though she suddenly realized she was saying too much. “All I’ve got on me right now is some cash, so hopefully your friend’s work on my car won’t be too expensive.”
“Don’t worry, Joe doesn’t rip people off.”
Finally starting his car and pulling onto the road, they drove the short mile to the motel in heavy silence. When he pulled into the parking lot, she asked again, “You won’t tell anyone I’m here, will you?”
He understood the urge to get away from real life. It was part of the reason he’d bought his cottage. Yes, it was a quiet place to paint, but more than that, it was the perfect way to escape from the pressure that came with his painful legacy as William Sullivan’s son. Even so, he didn’t have the first clue how to deal with her situation.
“I won’t tell a soul, Rosa.”
He wasn’t prepared for her small smile—or for the way his heart turned over in his chest at the pure sweetness of her beauty.
“There’s an extra car key hidden under the driver’s seat.” She licked her lips, biting the lower one before saying, “I owe you. Big-time.”
With that, she gathered up her things in her arms and got out of the car. He waited until he was sure that she’d arranged for a room on the second floor before slowly driving back to his cottage.
He’d tried like hell to forget her this morning, but now that he’d met her and knew even the smallest details of her situation?
There was no chance at all he’d ever forget her now.
And there was no way he wasn’t going to try to help, even if they never had more than that five-minute conversation. First by calling Joe to take care of her car, then with a second call to his cousin Smith, who just happened to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
