Now That I've Found You (New York Sullivans #1)(3)

A month later he was gone in a helicopter crash that took the lives of his entire radio traffic reporting team, and she’d never come back to these cliffs that she’d always thought of as their special place. But on that one perfect afternoon, he’d told her all about the currents, the tides, the marine life. And then, for a long time, they’d simply sat quietly together and appreciated the beauty all around them.

Her dad had been so good at being quiet, and letting her be quiet too. Rosa hadn’t needed to be the pretty one with him. The bubbly one. The fun one. The exciting one. The risky one. She could just be herself.

Whoever the hell Rosa Bouchard was now...

Just that quickly, the sun disappeared, its warmth gone as if it had never been there at all. The wind picked up again too, but strangely, she wasn’t cold. Or maybe she’d just been cold for so long she didn’t notice it anymore.

The rain came again, pouring down so hard that it stung her eyes, her skin. She wished it could wash her clean, but after all she’d consented to during the past several years as a reality TV star—and the horrible pictures she hadn’t consented to—she was afraid nothing would ever wash her clean again.

She’d turned off her cell phone hours ago, but she could still feel the unyielding weight of it against her hip in the back pocket of her jeans. She always had her phone with her and would have felt naked without it.

Naked.

She still couldn’t believe that the whole world had seen her naked on their phones.

Again, she didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Just jumped to her feet, grabbed her phone out of her pocket, and threw it as hard, and as far, as she could.

Despite the countless hours of yoga and Pilates she’d put in to keep her naturally curvaceous figure in line, her phone barely made it to the sharp edge of the cliffs. Still, she could see the screen had shattered as it teetered back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...before finally falling over the edge.

Disappearing, just like her.





Chapter Two





She was leaving.

When the woman on the cliff had hurled her phone against the rocks in obvious fury, for a moment, even with the heavy rain drenching her, she’d almost seemed relieved. But then her shoulders had slumped again, her long, wet hair covering her face as she walked back along the clifftop toward the forest.

Despite the rain pelting her, she moved with innate grace, like a dancer or a runway model. And though there was no audience to impress, and she was still clearly upset, it was impossible to miss the sensuality in the slight sway of her hips. She was drenched from head to toe, and her jeans and T-shirt clung to her like a second skin, revealing a figure that would have made the hands of Rodin himself burn with the desperate need to sculpt her.

But the sex appeal that fairly dripped from her wasn’t what drew Drake, wasn’t what made it so hard to stop staring, to stop itching to paint her. He’d been with plenty of gorgeous women, and he’d never felt like this before.

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.