Page 67 of Guarding My Love

GET REAL

Foster slammed on the brakes when he turned into his driveway.

There was Charlotte running in front of his SUV.

He rolled the window down. “Hey,” he said. “Do you have a ghost in the house?”

“No,” she said. “I can handle a ghost. I can’t always handle not being told the truth, but ghosts I think I’ve got some advantages over.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“We need to talk,” she said, crossing her arms.

“At my place or yours?” he asked. “Where is Marco?”

“He’s in his crate. I don’t want him around for this.” She climbed into the passenger side of his SUV and he drove down the long driveway in silence.

He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was going on.

Then it hit him.

Not being told the truth.

He parked and they got out. He grabbed his laptop from the back where he’d tossed it when Charlotte was climbing in.

When they were in the kitchen, he turned to her. “You know.”

“What is it I’m supposed to know?” she asked.

He let out a sigh. “My name.”

“Mitchell is your middle name, not your last name. I feel like an idiot for not questioning that.”

“You assumed it,” he said.

“You didn’t correct it,” she said. “If I asked you, would you have?”

He wasn’t sure if he would have, but he wouldn’t have lied. “Probably,” he said.

“Which isn’t yes.” She was pacing around his kitchen. If he thought she’d be upset over this, he was wrong. She was livid. “Are you playing some game?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t play games. I told you that before. I’ve never lied to you once. You know what I do for a living. I’ve mentioned the number of siblings I’ve got. Where some of them live too.”

“But you were careful with their names,” she said.

“I was,” he said. “I always will be. You have no idea what it’s like to live in West’s shadow. Some of my siblings have no problem with it. I do.”

“Yet you work for your brother,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes,” he said. “I did. We all did. West made a promise to care for us and none of us want that. What he did, and how we were raised, was to be there for each other. Braylon and Laken, they play a bigger part in West’s businesses. I do mine behind the scenes. I stay away from the public view and like it that way.”

“Is that why you work here?” she asked.

“Yes. My brother knows enough to put us where it works the best. I’m close enough to him in the City or his house on Long Island.”

He never said where West lived. Only he visited family about an hour from here.

“I want to be so mad. There is part of me that is hurt too. I told you about my past. A lot of things.”

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