Relief swept through her. Not only because it wasn’t a blackmailer’s note—but also because she hadn’t been wrong about Drake being a good person.
Actually, her feelings about Drake weren’t entirely about relief. Rather, she was feeling an emotion she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Some combination of gratitude and attraction.
Well, now she knew what she needed to do next. She needed to find Drake and pay him back. Sure, she could find his address in the phone book and mail him the money, but the truth was she couldn’t resist seeing him again. Couldn’t stop herself from wanting to know if he was as handsome and kind after her full night’s rest as he’d been when she was freaking out and losing it.
Her car started right up, and as she headed toward the cliffs again, if she tried really hard she could almost pretend that she was on vacation and simply enjoying a beautiful day in a seaside town. She couldn’t pretend forever, but she wouldn’t begrudge herself a few minutes of forgetting in the car.
She entered the state park, then parked in the same spot where she’d left her car the day before to head toward the cliffs via the same unused storm drain her father had showed her so long ago. She hadn’t seen a house in the woods yesterday, but she hadn’t been looking for one either. Now, she scanned the trees until a small brown cabin finally came into view. It didn’t take her long to get to Drake’s front door, at which point she suddenly realized that just as she should definitely not turn on the TV in her motel room, she probably shouldn’t have given in to the urge to come here either.
But before she could turn around and hightail it out of there, the door opened.
“Rosa?”
Oh my. She definitely hadn’t exaggerated his good looks yesterday. Or his rugged physique. Or the concern in his eyes as he said, “Are you okay?”
No, she wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. So rather than answering his question, she said, “I wanted to pay you back for the car repairs and towing.”
“Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to.”
But she’d stopped listening a couple of words back, because to his left she could see a couple of canvases up on easels in the living room.
And her likeness was painted on both of them.
Chapter Six
“Why are you painting me?”
Drake was so surprised to see Rosa standing on his doorstep that his brain pretty much stopped working—just the way it had every other time he’d looked into her eyes. Which was why it took him far longer than it should have to realize that she was pointing at his canvases.
At herself on his canvases, damn it!
Even worse, every answer he could think of sounded lamer than the next.
I was blocked until I saw you.
These paintings are just studies to see if I can get my mojo back.
You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on.
No, he definitely couldn’t tell her that. Not when he knew for a fact that her beauty had brought her more bad than good, at least in the past week.
She’d pushed past him by then and was standing directly in front of the painting he’d just been working on. She stared hard at it for a few long moments before whirling back to face him. “Why?”
In the end, he didn’t have anything for her but the truth. “I couldn’t help myself.”
His honesty seemed to disarm her a little. “Oh!” She jumped as a wet nose pressed into her hand. She looked down to find Oscar gazing up at her in his characteristically serious way. “Where did you come from?”
“That’s Oscar.”
Most people who met Drake’s dog took one look at his big body and sober expression and assumed he was vicious. But Rosa immediately got down on the ground and began to stroke his ears. “Aren’t you sweet?”
Oscar’s eyes were all but rolling back in his head from the extreme pleasure of having such beautiful hands stroking his fur. As woman and dog connected with each other, the bright halo of fiery color that Drake always saw when he looked at Rosa began to shift to a calmer blue-green. But instead of continuing to let herself relax, she gave Oscar one more sweet stroke over his big head, then stood to face Drake again.
“Normally, I would be flattered that someone as talented as you had painted me. But the way things are right now, I just can’t allow you to—”
“I’m not going to sell them.” He needed her to know he wasn’t looking to exploit her the way everyone else was. “I promise you that’s not why I’m painting you.”
She frowned. “Why else would you do it?”
He hadn’t admitted to anyone just how bad his block had become. Yes, his siblings and agent knew he wasn’t exactly having a good run of it, but he hadn’t actually told anyone that inspiration—hell, even the urge to paint—had completely dried up.
But Rosa was going through more than enough crap already. He’d never forgive himself if he added to it. Which, unfortunately, meant that he was going to have to take the truth yet another level deeper.