Light seemed to surround her, follow her, cling to her, even beneath thick gray clouds and pouring rain.
Jesus. He was starting to lose it out here in his remote cottage, had obviously been staring at a blank canvas for far too many weeks. But even after he shook his head to clear his vision, that halo of light continued to surround her as she headed for the old storm drain that must have been her way in.
He didn’t need to keep watch over her anymore to make sure she didn’t fall—or leap—from the rocks. He should head back into his cottage and make himself paint something.
Anything but her.
Even if he were stupid enough to break the one hard-and-fast rule he’d always been careful to live by, he couldn’t chase this woman down and ask her to sit for him. Not when she’d just been sobbing as if her whole world had ended. Only a total douchebag would put his art above a person’s feelings. Sure, there were plenty of painters who felt justified in doing or saying anything to get what they wanted onto their canvases. But Drake had never hurt anyone in the pursuit of art, and he wasn’t planning to start today.
Still, as she disappeared into the trees and out of his line of sight, it took a hell of a lot of self-control to stop himself from running to the storm drain to find her. To ask for her name. To beg her to come back one day when she wasn’t sad anymore. If only so that he could feel this spark again, this insanely strong urge to paint that he’d taken for granted all his life.
As Drake forced himself to head back to his cottage, he finally noticed that he too was soaked through. He’d been so intent on the woman—and fighting his crazy urge to paint her—that only now did he realize how low the temperature had fallen during the storm. He had his shirt off by the time he got to his front door and stripped off everything else in a wet heap before he opened the door and walked inside.
Oscar looked up from his big, soft dog pillow in the corner, lifting his dark brows as he took in his naked and dripping owner. “Some guard dog you are. You just slept through a stranger out on the cliffs and one hell of a storm.”
Drake loved the big furball anyway, of course. Oscar only looked like a guard dog—part German shepherd, part Boxer, part Akita. Inside, the mutt was a sleepy ball of Jell-O. As if to reinforce his lazy reputation, Oscar yawned and buried his muzzle beneath one big paw.
Drake dried off with a towel, then grabbed a dry pair of jeans and a shirt from his bedroom and headed back into his combined living room and kitchen. He’d trimmed the tree limbs surrounding his cottage so that light streamed in through the windows that took up three walls. This had always been his best studio space, better even than his west-facing New York City penthouse that looked out over Central Park. Having his studio, kitchen, and bedroom within a dozen feet of each other had been the ideal way to keep himself fed and rested while on a painting jag.
Lately, the whole setup felt like it was mocking him.
Drake knew he wasn’t the first painter to lose his spark. Thirty years ago, his father had lost his spark too. But Drake had always assumed it would never happen to him if he was careful. If he didn’t make the mistake of pinning all his inspiration on one person the way his father had. If he didn’t let his heart get too attached or dive too deeply, not just with anything he painted—but with any woman at all.
William Sullivan had once been the hottest painter in the country. Back in the eighties, his work had fetched six figures—and even more at the end. Because that was what happened the day Drake’s mother, his father’s ultimate muse, had walked out on William and their four kids and taken her own life. William’s passion for painting, and his brilliant talent, had ended. He’d never picked up another paintbrush, never set foot in his studio again. Simply let the canvases gather dust, the paints dry up, and his paintbrushes be replaced with hammers and nail guns as he eventually turned to building houses instead.