Now That I've Found You (New York Sullivans #1)(15)

He all but ran to the freezer, grabbed the lasagna, shoved it into the oven, then grabbed a sketchbook. “It’ll be enough today just to make some drawings.”

Her eyebrow rose at his use of the word today, but all she said was, “Will it work if I sit over there?”

The leather club chair by the fire was where he sat and read at night. Her scent would cling to it—hell, her gorgeous essence had already permeated the entire cabin. “Sit. Stand. Pace the room if you want. Whatever you do will work for me.”

She headed over to the chair with Oscar tripping over her heels. As soon as she sat, he climbed up into her lap and dwarfed her while she laughed, a louder, stronger sound this time.

“Oscar,” Drake warned, motioning for his big lump of a dog to get off.

“He’s okay.”

“I’ve never seen him like this.” Oscar had always been a fairly aloof dog. He liked people, but didn’t cling. Not until today, when he seemed desperate to be as close to Rosa as possible. The thing was, Drake couldn’t really blame him—she was the kind of woman you couldn’t help but want to be close to.

“If your legs start to go numb, or you just want to shove him off, say the word and I’ll make sure he knows your lap is off-limits.”

When Oscar lifted his head and gave her a woeful look, she said, “Don’t worry, cutie, you can stay right where you are for as long as you like.”

Cutie? Had she just called his one-hundred-and-fifty-pound behemoth of a dog cutie?

She turned back to Drake. “Do I need to look at you while you sketch?”

Having already begun to draw, it took him a few moments for her question to register in his brain. “You don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to. Just having you here is more than enough.” So much more than he thought he’d ever get. And he couldn’t stop staring and drawing. Staring and drawing. Staring and drawing.

“I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” She truly did sound perplexed. “Easygoing and intense at the same time. Safe, but also kind of dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” His hand stilled over the sketchbook. He’d heard both intense and easygoing before, but dangerous was a new one. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel as though she was in any danger from him.

She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Sorry, none of that was supposed to actually come out of my mouth. I think I’m still tired, or loopy, or something. I didn’t mean dangerous in a bad way. I meant it more in a se—” Her cheeks colored as she cut herself off. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”

She’d almost told him she thought he was sexy. How was he supposed to forget that? Sure, plenty of women had said that over the years. But he hadn’t been trying like hell to resist any of them.

Only her.

“I’ve never met anyone like you either, Rosa.” A woman who was soft and fierce, broken and strong, all at the same time.

“You mean you haven’t had any other run-ins with reality TV stars whose naked pictures are plastered all over the media?”

He hated the sarcastic tint to her voice, hating most of all that the vitriol was clearly aimed at herself. “You didn’t ask that douchebag to take those pictures of you.” He didn’t bother to contain the heat behind his words. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for it.”

“See,” she said softly as sparks jumped high and hot between them, “that’s the dangerous side I was talking about.”

It took everything he had to stay where he was and draw her, when all he wanted was to steal her away from his dog, drag her into his arms, and kiss her until both of them forgot why they shouldn’t.





Chapter Seven





For the past five years, everything Rosa did, everything she said, every picture taken of her, every meeting—all of it was intended to build up her media profile so high that she could guarantee her family would never be on the verge of ruin again.

But the past forty-eight hours couldn’t have been more different from the life she’d become accustomed to. Driving all night from Miami to New York in an old sedan. No cell phone. Deliberately staying out of sight of the paparazzi. Sleeping at a roadside motel after eating a TV dinner.

And now Drake.

Technically, she wasn’t doing anything more than sitting on a leather club chair staring out at the ocean. Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like she was breaking all the rules. Maybe it should have felt like no big deal.

But it didn’t feel like no big deal.

It felt huge.

Forty-eight hours ago, her agreement to pose for a painter would have come with a twenty-page contract and a price tag in the multiple hundred thousands. And she wouldn’t have been sitting here in too-big sweats—she would have been dressed to the nines, in couture and full makeup. Her PR team would have been hovering over the painter, watching every stroke of his brush to make sure she looked good enough that the painting couldn’t possibly harm her future net worth.

She was breaking every single rule that her mother had set up early in the game to benefit all of them. Only, in many ways, hadn’t those rules stopped making sense once they had more than enough money in the bank to ensure they’d never need to worry about where their next meal was coming from? And if so, why hadn’t Rosa and her mom and two younger brothers sat down together and made some positive changes? Changes that would have given them all more time to truly be themselves—or, in Rosa’s case, time to figure out who she was now that she was no longer a frightened eighteen-year-old willing to do whatever it took to keep her family together.