Her heart was leaping as she gunned her old car out of the lot. But even though she wouldn’t let herself look for him in the rearview mirror, his invitation played over and over in her head.
If you want to come back...if you want to come back...if you want to come back...
She wanted nothing more than to go back—to watch the tides shift, the sky change colors, the seabirds swoop down to the sand. She wouldn’t even mind the rain, not when it was just part of the natural ebb and flow of the seasons.
But this wasn’t a vacation. She might have fled home without thinking things through, but if she didn’t want her family or the network to find out where she was and drag her back into the middle of the madness, she needed to stay hidden.
She also needed to take a shower, put on some dry clothes, and eat something. A little sleep would probably do her a world of good. But first, she needed to get out of Montauk and find a new town to hide out in. One where gorgeous men in general-store parking lots didn’t make her heart race even when she knew better.
But when she pushed her foot down harder on the gas pedal, her car suddenly began to make noises. Really bad, loud noises.
This couldn’t be happening.
Her car couldn’t actually be breaking down on top of everything else, could it?
Chapter Four
The woman from the cliffs had peeled out of the parking lot in her beat-up old car faster than she should have. Drake didn’t know her—didn’t even know her name—but he was worried nonetheless.
He’d seen that kind of bleak look before. Whenever his mother’s name came up, even after all these years, all the color would drain from his father’s face. Thirty years after her disappearance and death, William Sullivan’s pain hadn’t dimmed.
Likewise, whatever had happened had obviously hurt this woman deeply. Especially considering how spooked she’d seemed by every word out of Drake’s mouth.
He’d never thought he would see her again, never thought he’d get to drink her in up close, never thought he’d have a chance to memorize the perfect, exotic planes of her face. He’d already done more than he should have by sketching her, then had left his cottage to make sure he didn’t give in to the pull to bring her to life on a canvas. But now...
Now the itch to paint her had spun into deep desire. The kind of urgent drive to paint that an artist waited his whole life to feel.
Drake didn’t realize he was still holding the woman’s apples and cookie until the cookie crumbled in his fist. Wet dough and chocolate chips were smushed between his fingers as he walked over to the garbage can by the front door and threw the cookie away. After he let the rain wash away the crumbs on his hands, he dropped an apple into each pocket and finally headed inside.
“Drake, sweetie, we haven’t seen you all week.”
Mona Agnew had manned the general store’s till for the past thirty years, ever since she and her husband had opened the doors. Despite the fact that she was a tad on the nosy side—particularly when it came to his love life—he far preferred shopping here to the new chain grocery store just up the road. Drake had always appreciated places with some life to them, which was why the old hunting cabin at Montauk Point suited him perfectly.
“How are you, Mona?”
“Just fine. I’ve saved one of those fresh-baked apple pies you like so much. Why don’t you take care of your shopping while I get it out of the back for you?”
He grabbed a hand basket and was picking up his usual chicken and veggies when his gaze caught on a magazine cover. Stopping dead, he put down the basket and grabbed the glossy magazine, hardly able to believe his eyes.
The girl from the cliffs was on the cover.
In most ways she barely looked like the woman wearing tons of mascara and blood-red lipstick and dripping with jewelry—but he’d just stared into those eyes and he couldn’t be mistaken.
As much as he sometimes wished he could, he didn’t live under a rock, so he knew the Bouchards were the reality TV family on the networks these days. He’d never seen their show, however, and had never met any of them in person either. Not until—the magazine said her name was Rosalind, which didn’t seem quite right, though he couldn’t pinpoint why—Rosalind showed up out of the blue on the cliffs this morning.
His gut clenched as the headline finally registered. America’s Favorite Bad Girl: Nude Photo Scandal? Or Another Brilliant Business Move for the Bouchards?
Was that why she’d been crying? Why she’d hurled her phone over the edge? Why she looked so bleak?
He’d never taken naked pictures on his phone, but he knew plenty of people did it. Had some sexy photos she’d taken for a boyfriend been hacked into and broadcast for the whole world to see?