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.