Page 34 of Guarding My Love

He nodded. He was thrilled she’d agreed with that statement even if he wanted to know what her secrets were.

“They would be lying,” he said. “Go on if you want.”

“Randall, that was Amanda’s boyfriend. He went away to Harvard. He just ghosted her. She was able to hide the pregnancy at the end of the school year and no one knew. Randall and his parents knew. My parents knew. No one was happy. My mother was embarrassed and wanted her to terminate the pregnancy.”

“How old was your sister?”

“Eighteen when she graduated and she wasn’t doing it. She is the mothering nurturing type. She wanted their child. But unfortunately, she lost the baby later in her pregnancy. My mother was horrible to Amanda during the labor. She still had to give birth to a stillborn. Randall’s parents had given her money prior to take the child and leave their son and move away.”

“All of that is horrible,” he said.

Jesus. He couldn’t imagine his mother doing anything like that. His mother would bitch slap Charlotte’s parents for even thinking that.

“Why did you smile?” she asked.

“What?”

“You just smiled. Why?”

“Sorry. I was thinking my mother would have a few choice words for your mom.”

“She wouldn’t have cared or listened,” she said. “But I suppose it’s a nice thought. Moving on, Amanda took the money and left town days later and didn’t talk to my parents for years. She had very little communication with me either.”

“Did you feel the same way as your parents?” he asked. He wasn’t sure he’d like that. No, he knew he wouldn’t like it.

“No, but I didn’t want to go against them. I saw the treatment of Amanda.”

“Self-preservation,” he said. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen,” she said. “An impressionable age and I made some poor decisions in my life because of that.”

“Don’t think of the ones you made in the past, but rather the ones you’ll make in the future.”

“You’re pretty smart,” she said.

“I try to be,” he said. “I won’t say I’m the smartest in my family, but I get busted on about it.”

She smiled. “I’m happy to say Amanda and I mended our relationship years ago. I’d been dating someone and was in Boston. I saw her shopping. Crazy fate to run into her when I was on vacation. I still had her number. She looked so happy and I wasn’t. I caved and called her. She was there for me when I never thought she’d be.”

All he heard was she wasn’t happy. “What was going on in your life? Or is that one of those secrets?”

“Nothing more than life wasn’t working out the way I’d hoped. I had a boyfriend like my last. He liked me for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t have a job I enjoyed. After we’d split is when I went back to get my MBA.”

“So you started making changes right then,” he said. “Good for you.”

“I find it sad in a way that I have to look at my sister’s life to see everything she went through and how her life turned out for me to realize I want that too. That was why I ended things with Landon. I’d just come back from visiting Amanda and saw the life she had with Drew on Amore Island. I mean, I get it, she’s married to a Bond. It’s not like I want that kind of life, but just her happiness. She is being her and doing her thing and owns a salon and her husband is so supportive of everything she does. To me, that’s the dream.”

“Your sister is married to Drew Bond?” he asked.

Fuck. Not that he knew Drew personally, but West had some business dealing with Scott Bond, who was Drew’s father.

He knew for a fact if his full name was brought up around her sister’s husband, he’d know right away who Foster might be.

12

HAD AN UNDERSTANDING

“You are a grill master,” Charlotte said. “These are perfect.”

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