Page 7 of Guarding My Love

“I’m glad to hear you say that. I came to Amore Island just wanting to start fresh. I didn’t know it’d be the place I’d call home for the rest of my life.”

“You struck gold. I keep digging up coal. I’ve put my shovel away for now.”

“You’re so much funnier than I remember,” Amanda said.

“I don’t want to say I feel different, but I do. Maybe I’ve been pretending for years and I’m not anymore.”

“As long as you’re happy that is all I care about,” Amanda said.

“I really am.”

“I wish you could have come for Easter. I hate that you’re alone tomorrow.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “It will give me time to work on the house.”

Last year she was with Landon for Easter and they went to some fancy brunch that took him months to get reservations for. He’d bragged about it the entire time. The waitstaff was stuffy, Landon tried to throw his name and weight around, and the tiny fancy portions of food left her starving.

This was much better in her eyes. She’d make herself something and maybe slip a little to her puppy.

“I know,” Amanda said. “I’ve spent a lot of holidays alone, but never you. You’ve always been the one to be with someone. I do worry about you.”

“Don’t worry. This is good for me. I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places. And now I’m quoting songs. Next, I’ll get a few cats to go with Marco and call it a day.”

First thing that was wrong, was the fact all her boyfriends tended to be significantly older than her. Not by choice. It seemed to fall that way for some reason. Could be because of the attention they bestowed on her she’d been craving in her life.

But now, it was going to be the first flag she would spray paint red.

Second was a man with money.

No, thank you. All it’d done was make her feel like a second-class citizen to be treated as if she was nothing more than a pretty little thing on their arm. One that could hold intelligent conversations, throw a great dinner party and host all sorts of other events if needed.

Her degree in marketing and then her MBA came in handy for those things.

What she wanted to do was put it to use in her career, not just as part of her partner’s grand plans.

“And now you’ll just be looking for piles of dog poop,” Amanda said.

She cringed. “Yeah, not my favorite thing to do. I wasn’t thinking it through that I’d have to pick that up, but if I don’t do it daily, I step in it.”

Amanda was almost roaring with laughter. “Good God. All I can see is Mom’s face if she knew that.”

She laughed again, almost as hard as Amanda. “If you keep it up you’re going to cause your water to break.”

“I miss this, Charlotte. I wish we’d had this for longer than we have, but I’m glad we’ve got it now.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“And I hope you find everything you are looking for in life,” Amanda said.

“Right now, I’m only looking at paint samples. That’s good enough for me.”

3

BE SETTLED

“You’re on the shit list,” Talia, his youngest sister, said to him on Sunday morning.

“Nothing new there,” Foster said.

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