Alec snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
By then Harry had loosened his hold on Drake’s arm enough that when he lunged again, Drake nearly landed his punch.
“Alec, shut up for once, so I can finish giving Harry the deets,” Suz said before turning back to Harry. “This week, some naked pictures of Rosa hit the press. Pictures she didn’t authorize.”
“Someone hacked her accounts?”
“Wow, so you do actually know something about modern technology. But no, it was even worse than that. One of the film crew snuck a camera into her hotel while they were filming and took pictures of her changing and getting in and out of the bath. She had no idea she’d been attacked like this until the pictures were sold and literally splattered everywhere, print and digital.”
Harry looked utterly disgusted. “That’s terrible.”
“She doesn’t deserve any of this,” Drake bit out. “Especially not the shame of feeling like the pictures were her fault. She thinks she needs to hide out forever because the world will just heap more crap on her if she resurfaces.”
“That’s bullshit.” Drake was surprised both by Alec’s comment and by how disgusted he looked. “Just because your girlfriend has made some questionable career choices, there is no way those pictures are her fault.”
“Questionable career choices.” Suz put air quotes around the words. “You’re so full of it, Alec. We all know the reason you immediately recognized Rosa is because you secretly mainline reality TV in your spare time.”
Alec was the one snarling this time. “Her face is everywhere. You’d have to live under a rock not to know who she is.”
“I’ll take that as an affirmative on your viewing habits,” Suz said with a snort of her own. “You’re just jealous that Drake found someone as amazing as Rosa first.”
“Stop winding him up, Suz,” Harry said in the voice of mediation that he’d been using with them for over thirty years.
“Look,” Alec said in what Drake knew was intended to be a more reasonable tone, “the last thing I expected was to walk in and see the woman who’s been all over the news this week standing in my brother’s arms. When the hell did you even start dating her? And if you’re an item, how come you aren’t coming up in any of the endless news clips about her?”
“You can let me go now,” Drake told Harry. “I’m not going to tear him apart just yet.”
Harry looked between his brothers to confirm intent on both sides before stepping away.
Drake poured himself a cup of coffee and gulped it down so that the caffeine could hit his system before he started answering his sibling’s questions. “I met her a week ago when she showed up out of the blue on my cliffs in Montauk. I was trying to paint and hadn’t been paying any attention to the news, hadn’t turned on my phone or checked the Internet, so I didn’t have a clue what the stranger on my cliffs was crying over. Then when I ran into her at the general store later that day and it was clear she was running, hiding, I still didn’t know who she was or what she was running from until I saw the headlines on the newsstand.” His hands fisted at his sides. “That day I helped her with her broken-down car, but I wished I could do more.”
“We all do,” Suz said. “I’ve already started sketching out the architecture for software that could erase pictures like these off the Internet.”
Alec raised an eyebrow. “You can do that?”
“I can sure as heck try.”
“With you there is no try, there is only do. Internet creeps aren’t going to know what hit them once you and your soon-to-be-written software get hold of them.”
Suz grinned at Alec’s vote of confidence, then turned back to Drake. “You’re not done telling your story yet.”
Drake knew there was no point in trying to hide the truth from his brothers. “I’m painting her.”
Harry’s eyebrows went up. “Say that again.”
“The first time I set eyes on her...” None of his siblings was an artist, but they all knew what passion was. Suz for her computers. Harry for history. Alec for his planes. “I couldn’t stop myself from painting her. Even knowing better, even knowing the risks of falling too hard and caring too much. Rosa’s the muse I didn’t know I was looking for.” He shook his head. “More than a muse.” He looked each of his siblings in the eye, one at a time. “She’s it for me.”
“What about her?” Alec asked. “Does she feel the same about you?”
Drake ran a hand through his hair. “She’s been screwed over pretty bad. It’s been hard for her to trust.”