It felt huge.
Forty-eight hours ago, her agreement to pose for a painter would have come with a twenty-page contract and a price tag in the multiple hundred thousands. And she wouldn’t have been sitting here in too-big sweats—she would have been dressed to the nines, in couture and full makeup. Her PR team would have been hovering over the painter, watching every stroke of his brush to make sure she looked good enough that the painting couldn’t possibly harm her future net worth.
She was breaking every single rule that her mother had set up early in the game to benefit all of them. Only, in many ways, hadn’t those rules stopped making sense once they had more than enough money in the bank to ensure they’d never need to worry about where their next meal was coming from? And if so, why hadn’t Rosa and her mom and two younger brothers sat down together and made some positive changes? Changes that would have given them all more time to truly be themselves—or, in Rosa’s case, time to figure out who she was now that she was no longer a frightened eighteen-year-old willing to do whatever it took to keep her family together.
This was the first chunk of time, the first bit of space that she’d had in five years in which to make some big decisions about her future. And if she was going to make a big change, she wanted it to be the right one. Not some rash reaction because she was mad or sad or scared. Or helplessly attracted to a gorgeous painter.
Fact was, so much had happened in the past forty-eight hours that she wasn’t sure she could trust any of her instincts at the moment. Not even when the warmth of the fire felt so good...and Drake’s hot gaze felt even better.
She stole a look at him from beneath her lashes, then felt herself flush as he caught her checking him out. How could he not, when he was watching her so closely? But it was more than just watching. It was as though he was drinking her in, one slow, sweet glance at a time.
The absolute last thing she needed right now was to get involved with a guy. Of course she wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Her world already had way more than its fair share of stupid in it at this point. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be curious, did it? And since she was already sitting here, what could it hurt to learn more about the man drawing her as though his life depended on it?
“Why don’t you paint people?”
More than a little discomfort registered on his face as his pencil stilled over the sketchbook. “It’s a long story.”
“I like long stories.” Everything in her life had been boiled down to thirty-minute episodes, two-minute interviews, six-second video clips. An actual story that took a while to tell felt wonderfully fresh by contrast. “The promise goes both ways, you know. You won’t tell anyone about me and I won’t tell anyone about you.”
His gaze grew sharper, even more intense. “My story has never been a secret.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father is a painter too. A really well-known, respected artist. At least he was until my mother walked out on him six months after I was born, then took her life. The story is up for anyone to see on Wikipedia, timeline and everything.”
He said it as if he were totally over it, as if it not only didn’t bother him that his mother was gone—but also that a major part of his life story was clinically detailed on an Internet encyclopedia site as if there were no human beings with feelings behind it. But how could that be? Rosa might have big issues with her mother right now, but at least her mom had made sure they stayed a family even in those difficult years after Dad had passed away and they hadn’t been able to figure out how they were going to keep paying the mortgage and the grocery bill.
“I’m sorry, Drake.” Though she barely knew him, she ached for his loss. No child should ever have to lose a parent so young. And she knew firsthand how hard it was to deal with people writing about you on the Internet.
“My siblings, and especially my father, were destroyed when she left and passed away. I always figured I was the lucky one because I never really had a chance to know her.”
She hated that he’d had to try to find the silver lining. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Two brothers and a sister.”
“You’re close, aren’t you?”
He smiled. “How’d you guess?”
“Your voice, your expression—talking about them clearly makes you happy.”
“We’re a pretty tight unit,” he agreed. “We had to be.”
“I lost my father when I was a kid.” Suddenly, she needed to share that with him. “So I know how hard it can be to get by with only one parent left. Your cliffs were my special place with my dad.” But since she still wasn’t yet ready to dig too deeply into her own story—past, present, or future—she asked, “Is that how you found this spot? Because of your father?”