Page 54 of Guarding My Love

“Where did you leave things?” Amanda asked.

“We talked a bit more.” After they’d had sex again. She could have gone for a third time and that only shocked her more. “He’s younger than me. That was the big stunner.”

“You said you’d never date anyone younger than you,” Amanda said, laughing. “You thought he was older than you by a few years.”

“Yeah, he found it funny. He’s thirty-two. So only a year. But he doesn’t act it. Just goes to show that I had my head in the clouds on perception and dating.”

“I think when you were in your twenties it wasn’t a hard stretch to think someone a year younger than you was immature, Charlotte.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m trying not to beat myself up over that. Or the wasted years with a horrible dating history. I made those decisions and I can own them.”

“That’s right,” Amanda said. “You did make them. You chose those men. As far as I know, no one abused you, right?”

“God no,” she said. “I would never tolerate that. It’s more that I wasn’t taken seriously and not made to feel worthy of them. Their ideas and mine of relationships were completely different.”

“What is Foster thinking now?” she asked.

“I have no clue,” she said. “And since I said I’m not looking for something, it works out.”

But he did joke that she was the old one in therelationship.

Relationship could mean friendship. Neighbors. Partners. Significant others.

Too many things and she wasn’t about to get herself worked up just yet trying to figure it out.

Which was another new thing for her.

“It’s as I told you before: you know what you need to know. And now you know some more. Whatever you two are doing, it seems to be working for you.”

“It does,” she said. She debated adding this to the conversation but wanted her sister to know that Foster had a lot of good traits too.

“When I was gone, Landon showed up at my house.”

“What?” Amanda asked. “How do you know? Did he reach out to tell you?”

“No,” she said. “Foster saw him looking in my window and stopped to ask if he could help him.”

“Did Foster say who he was?”

“No. I don’t think so. Landon pretty much dismissed him and he drove away. I was going to block him and Foster told me not to. That it’s easier to keep a trail of things if I needed it.”

There was silence on the other end. “Do you feel unsafe with this? I’m not sure how I feel about this myself,” Amanda said.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t want to even tell you and worry you. I told you because I wanted you to know I feel completely safe because of Foster. I know he’s right there and he told me to tell him at any point if Landon reaches out again or if he stops by. He even offered to put a doorbell camera on the house for me.”

“Did you take him up on it?” Amanda asked.

“I did. I have a camera in the front and the back of the house. This way if Landon comes back, I can see him and talk to him through the cameras without seeing him.”

Foster hooked that all up for her yesterday when he got out of work and showed her how to use it. It might be annoying that her phone went off every time she let Marco out, but at least she knew it was detecting people on the property.

“Did Landon reach out to you again since he was at your house?”

“I texted him on Tuesday to say I knew he was there and to leave me alone. This morning he texted back that he missed me and only wanted to see how I was doing and where I lived. That he can’t believe I’m happy in that little house and it’s nothing like what he could give me.”

“Jerk,” Amanda said.

“One of many words used for him. I didn’t reply. I did tell Foster that he replied. I texted him a screenshot this morning.”

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