Page 35 of The Playboy's Most Unexpected Baby

He looked up at her.

“You know, my mother works two jobs, so she can’t always be there for things,” Olivia said. “But she always makes time to check in. She leaves a note for Izzy every morning — she used to do that for me, too, when I was living at home. And when she came home at night, she would stop in our rooms to kiss us goodnight, no matter how tired she was. If we were still awake, she’d sit on the edge of our beds and ask us questions about her day, even though she sometimes looked like she wanted to fall right down in her tracks. She had to work hard, but she never let that come between her and her children.”

“I hope I get to meet her someday,” Charlie said. “She seems like a remarkable woman.”

“She really is.”

“That’s not what it was like in my family,” he murmured. “My parents… I don’t know how to explain it, because they really didn’t need to work as often as they did. They could have spent so much more time at home with us, being a family. But they cared a great deal about their careers — more than they did about their children, in my opinion.”

“That’s very sad. Were you and your siblings alone all the time, then?”

“We had nannies when we were children.”

“Were you close to them, at least? I know some children form good bonds with their nannies, right?”

“Maybe. It wasn’t that way for us. Mother and Father usually chose someone who didn’t speak English very well, so even when they were very kind and caring, we couldn’t communicate.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t learn to speak their native languages. Children pick things like that up so quickly.”

“I think we might have, except that my father felt very strongly about…interacting with the helpwas the way he put it. I think that’s a pretty crappy thing to say, personally, but he didn’t like the idea that we were getting close to the staff. I remember one time, John said something in Spanish at the dinner table. I don’t even remember what it was that he said. But my father just froze, as if John had said a dirty word or something, and by the next morning our nanny had been fired and replaced by a Russian woman. We all learned pretty quickly that that wasn’t something we should do if we wanted our parents’ favor — or if we didn’t want our nannies to be fired.”

“That’s terrible,” Olivia murmured, her heart aching for him. “You couldn't ever get close to anyone.”

“We had each other. We were closer back then than we are now. They liked me more when I was just the baby of the family, when I didn’t have my own mind. Once I turned ten, a distance started growing up between us. They started to realize they couldn’t just tell me what to do all the time.” Charlie grinned. “It was the beginning of my rebellious years — though I think I was really trying to get my parents’ attention by acting out more than I was trying to push my siblings away.”

“What do you mean by acting out? What did you do?”

“Oh, all kinds of things. When I was ten, eleven, I used to go out on my bike and stay out past my curfew. I always hoped my parents would come looking for me — I actually wanted them to yell at me — but that never happened, of course. It was silly of me to think that it would. Most of the time, they didn’t even notice I had been out too late, and on the rare occasions when they did, a member of the staff would be tasked to take my bike away and tell me that I wasn’t allowed to use it for the next week.”

“That’s very cold. They never tried to find out why you were acting out like that?”

Charlie shrugged. “They probably just thought I was a bad kid. And it didn’t help when I got to high school and started cutting class to hang out with girls all the time. My grades tanked, obviously, but I think my parents just decided I was stupid. They didn’t care. They had Cait and Scott, they were the smart ones. John was the athlete. They probably thought they were due for a dud.”

“But that’s not who you were,” Olivia protested, surprised at how defensive she felt on his behalf. “They missed out on seeing you for who you really are.”

“I know. I got over that a long time ago, though,” Charlie said. “It was what I wanted from them when I was young, but for whatever reason, they weren’t able to give it to me.”

“Charlie, that’s terrible.” Olivia felt as if she had swallowed something sour. “I mean, acting out like that probably wasn’t the ideal way to get your parents’ attention, but even so — you were just a kid. They should have realized that you needed more from them than they were giving you.”

“They did their best.”

“Charlie.” She reached out and took his hand, unable to resist the urge to do so.

He looked at her, his clear blue eyes seeming to give way directly to his soul. She felt as if she could see every single piece of him.

“They didn’t do their best,” she said quietly. “I’m not trying to say that they didn’t care for you, or that they weren’t good people. I’m sure they were. But… I helped to raise my sister, you know. I understand what it is to be a good and loving caretaker. It involves being present. Seeing what your kid needs from you, even if it doesn’t always make sense. And they didn’t do that for you. You deserved better, even if it’s difficult for you to see that.”

“I thought you thought I was spoiled.”

“I didn’t know all this.” It made sense to her, suddenly, that he would be the way he was. She didn’t want to articulate it to him for fear of sounding as if she was trying to play therapist. But he must have felt so empty. He must always be chasing after the affection he had yearned for in his childhood, unable to find it. He must always hope that the next woman he met would make him feel loved in a way his parents never had.

She doubted he even recognized that himself.

And she ached for him. She cared about him deeply, she realized, and she wanted to do something to ease his pain. She wanted to put her arms around him.

Maybe she had multiple reasons for wanting that. She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t long to hold him for her own reasons — reasons that had nothing to do with the pain he had faced in his childhood.

Her gaze went to his lips. They had always looked so soft to her. She had always wondered how they would feel. And without meaning to, without even really thinking about what she was doing, she found herself leaning close to him.

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