Touched By Fire (Harlequin Romance #2150)

Hero has a bad history with heroine's parents; over ten years ago, he persuades heroine's father to quit his dead end job and move away to some remote location to concentrate on painting - his real love - if he's to have any chance of making it as an artist.

He moves to a remote island location but unfortunately dies a year later, without having realised his potential as a painter. His wife then confronts hero at his art gallery, causing a massive scene, accusing him of 'killing' her husband by telling him to leave his job, thus destroying his family as he had never written to them after leaving. Heroine understands her father leaving them and knows her mother was a very unsupportive, neurotic wife and he did the right thing listening to the art dealer hero and leaving. They fall in love and she also finds out that her mother had deliberately kept a whole lot of mail from her father, that he'd sent to her and her mother thoughout his year on the island, asking his wife to join him with their daughter and live like bohemians while he worked at his painting.