Page 3 of The Hottest Daddy
She drove to the small mountain town of Rockford and down Main Street, parking her car outside the small apartment block and sitting for a time, getting her bearings. She saw, with relief, a small diner, still open even after 1:00 a.m., a gas station and convenience store, brightly lit along the street, and various other small stores. A cute little coffeehouse was on the corner of her block.Yes.She could see herself being settled here.
It didn’t take long to unpack. The apartment itself was small but comfortable. The open-plan kitchen and living space had a bay window overlooking Main Street, a small table and chairs nestled into it. A brand-new laptop sat in its box, and Sunday was touched to see that Sam had snuck some of her favorite books onto the bookshelves—not her own well-worn copies, perhaps, but the that fact he’d taken the time to make things homelier for her was a sweet thing to do.
Sunday—her new name really would take some getting used to—unpacked her things and made herself some tea. It was almost 3:00 a.m. by the time she sat down at the small table and gazed out over her new town, but she didn’t feel tired at all. Instead, she took a deep breath in … and burst into tears.
Chapter Two
On the other side of town, her future employer stared at a blank canvas in his studio, seeing in his mind’s eye the swirls of color that would cover it, pinks, blues, purples, green, yellow. He could almost reach out and touch the texture of the paint he would load onto his brush.
The piece would be vibrant, exciting … and he would see very little of it. The colors had started to change a few months back and today, his best friend—and his optometrist—told him why.
He was losing the ability to see color.Him, River Giotto, the wunderkind of the painting world for the last few years, the natural successor to Rothko or Hans Hofmann. Celebrated, feted, and admired and he was losing the colors. The cruelty of it took his breath away.
“Riv?”
River turned to see Luke, his best friend, standing in the doorway of the studio. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
Luke half-smiled at him. “I was talking to Carmen. She’s worried about you. We all are, Riv.”
River turned away, not wanting his friend to see the pain in his eyes. “I just need to adjust.” He sighed. “Goddamn it, Luke, of all the things to happen.”
“I know, buddy. Look, you’re only thirty-six, still young. With care and the right treatment, there’s no reason you can’t …”
“I’m already losing the colors, Luke. They’re not as sharp or as rich.” He went to a stack of canvases in the corner of the studio and found what he was looking for. “Look at this. When I painted it, the greens popped, the reds were sumptuous. You know what I see now? Watered down. Faded color. It’s not the same painting.”
“It is to everyone else, buddy.”
River shook his head. “But if I can’t express what I want to, paint the way I have, what kind of artist am I? What do I have left?”
Luke took a deep breath in. “River … I’m going to say this because I’m your best friend, your brother, and I love you. Art … while it may be a part of you, isn’t all you are.”
River gave a humorless laugh. “Then why I am I so terrified that it is?”
Later, when Luke had gone, unable to cheer his friend, River went to his bedroom. The house, a piece of art itself, felt hollow and empty, ringing with silence. His housekeeper, Carmen, no longer stayed at the house at night, wanting to be with her husband, and he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been good company for anyone for he didn’t know how long.
River stared back at his reflection. His large, bright green eyes didn’t look any different. They had always been his best feature, he thought, and now they were failing him. His dark, shaggy curls were wild about his head, three days of beard on his handsome face. There was a crease between his eyes that, along with his heavy brow, always made him look brooding and unapproachable and, being as reclusive as he was, he’d used that to his benefit.
He’d also used his good looks to sleep with some of the most beautiful women around the world without ever getting too involved. Except one time, and to his chagrin, in that case he’d broken his one rule—never get involved with women in his hometown.
Aria Fielding still lived and worked in Rockford, and although River didn’t often go down the hill into town, he still felt bad about the way he had treated her. The sex had been good, but emotionally he had felt nothing. Aria had deserved better, and from what he heard, she still held a grudge about the way things had ended between them, even after almost a year.
Now, since his eyesight had been failing him, myopia as well as the colors fading, he had become more reclusive, by choice. His father, a man River had adored, a second-generation Italian immigrant, had passed ten years ago, fifteen years after River’s mother, and had left his billion-dollar fortune to his son, rather than his spiteful, much younger stepmother.
Angelina Marshall-Giotto love to portray herself as a saint. A charity maven in New York, she had wasted no time after her husband’s death in trying to seduce his son. River, who had always loathed her, rejected her without thinking twice, and since then Angelina had made it her mission to destroy his life.
His carelessness in sleeping with woman after woman had come back to bite him and Angelina had made sure that everyone found out about his secret daughter.
River had gotten one of his one-night stands pregnant, and Angeline had used that to funnel money from River to herself. Finding out, River had met with the mother of his child and offered her a settlement. Lindsay, the woman, had turned him down. “I don’t want your money, River,” she’d said coolly. “I want you to know your daughter.”
He’d balked but, knowing Angelina would swoop in and turn the girl against him, he’d finally agreed.
The moment he’d met five-year-old Berry, however, his life had changed. The little dark-haired girl stared back at him with clear green eyes, so like his, and River had been lost. Berry was the very best of his world. He and Lindsay had reached an agreement on custody and child support, taking Angelina out of the loop once and for all.
His one regret was that Berry lived in Phoenix most of the time. It had been on her last visit to him that he’d begun to notice the changes in his eyes. She had been wearing a little dress that he’d brought back from Paris. The flowers on it, which had been a vivid mix of red, oranges, and pinks, to his eye suddenly looked faded. He’d frowned. “I guess your mom has to wash that a lot, huh?”
Berry, already precocious, completely confident in front of her father, shook her head. “No, I only wear it on special occasions, Daddy.”
River had brushed the matter aside, putting it down to his memory, but later, when his paintings had begun to change, he had known it was something serious.
