And especially to every single hungry look he’d given her in his cabin.
She’d never felt so tempted by a man before. She could so easily lose herself in him and temporarily forget her worries in his arms. But she wouldn’t let herself do that. And not because staying away from a potentially complicated relationship was the smartest thing to do at this juncture.
She would keep her distance—would handcuff herself to the old scratched-up bedpost at the motel if that’s what it came to—because she wasn’t good enough for him.
I’m not a big fan of reality TV.
Only eight little words, but they spoke volumes. He hadn’t said them in a mean way. Hadn’t even said them in a judgmental way. But she’d been called plenty of bad things over the years—trash, one step down from a stripper, media whore—so it wasn’t hard to read between the lines.
She didn’t need to know about the art world to guess how prestigious Drake’s work was. All she’d needed was to see his paintings for herself.
Drake Sullivan was talented beyond measure and he was clearly close to his family, who all sounded really great and normal. He could have anyone. A nice girl without a nutso career making duck faces for selfies and oversharing “personal” things with utter strangers.
She hadn’t yet figured out her next step, but she knew one thing for sure: Drake should be with a girl whose naked body hadn’t been viewed by millions of people on cell phones and computer screens and TV sets and magazines all over the world.
Which was why she needed to make herself forget him. Needed to forget the heat in his eyes. Needed to erase that too-potent visual of how strong and sexy his hands were as he speed-sketched her in one moment, then served her lasagna the next. And especially needed to forget how he’d leapt to her defense when she’d overshared about her mom.
He’d been her knight in shining armor more than once. First on the wet road, then by getting her broken car fixed without blowing her cover, then again in his fury over what her mother had said after the naked pictures came to light.
She understood his fury—it was a large part of why she’d fled. But as she’d told him, things truly weren’t that simple. Rosa knew her mother loved her. And even though Rosa had run from her family and was deliberately hiding out in Montauk, the feeling was mutual. But somewhere along the way, things had gotten weird. Worse than weird―downright bad. And now, Rosa had no idea whether she could ever make them good again.
Could she be a part of the Bouchard family without being on their show? Or did leaving the show also mean leaving the people who meant the most to her?
After forty-eight hours of distance, her family had to be worried about her. She hadn’t called or texted, hadn’t given them any information at all about where she was, didn’t even have a working cell phone so that they could trace her whereabouts. Guilt pooled in the pit of her stomach, thick enough that even though she wasn’t ready to go home, she had to at least let them know she was okay.
She was almost past the general store’s parking lot when she decided to pull in. She’d had good luck going incognito yesterday, and she was pretty sure she’d seen prepaid cell phones for sale. It was fairly easy to track a call from a cell phone, but could she use it to connect to her email without giving away her location?
The truth was, she hadn’t actually missed her phone at all. If there was any other way she could think of to get an immediate message to her family, she would have chosen it, if only to have more than a two-day respite from the ever-present technology.
Rosa kept her head down as she headed through the parking lot and into the store, but the woman behind the counter obviously remembered her. “I’m so glad you’re back! You forgot your change yesterday.” She reached under the counter and handed Rosa several bills and coins.
Rosa made herself smile as she said a quiet, “Thank you,” before she hurried toward the rack with the phones and quickly chose one that said it was Web mail–enabled. She picked up a bunch of grapes and a couple of bananas on her way back to the register, the cash she hadn’t given to Drake still in her pocket.
She knew he didn’t care about the money, but now that he wasn’t painting her, she wouldn’t feel right if she didn’t pay him back. Of course she wouldn’t make the mistake of going back to his cabin—she couldn’t trust herself around him. Not when he made her want so much more than she deserved. As soon as she could, she’d mail him the money in a simple thank-you note.
“You sure do look familiar,” the woman said as she rang up Rosa’s purchases, “and not just because you were in yesterday. Have you recently moved to town?”