Page 71 of Guarding My Love

“No,” she said firmly. “You will do nothing of the sort. This is my life and I’ll deal with it.”

He growled at her and took a sip of his beer. Then a second. “Talk and I’ll listen.”

Charlotte weighed what she was going to say but decided to be honest. There was no reason not to.

“He showed up to ask me back again. I met him on the front porch so he couldn’t get near the house. He wanted to know what happened to me.”

He looked her over. She was wearing the same clothes as she had earlier. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It was the way I looked.”

“You look good to me.”

She moved over and put a big smacking kiss on his lips. “Thank you. He was appalled. He said I let myself go while I was grieving him.”

“Fucker,” he said.

She giggled. “Yes, he is. But moving on. He was a jerk like he always was. He said he recognized you when you stopped to talk to him a few weeks ago. It took him a few days to figure out from where. My guess is it was a picture because, once I knew your last name, I did a search and found some pictures of you with West. The most recent was in a magazine for West’s engagement.”

“I hated that being posted,” he said. “It wasn’t my choice, and as private as West is, he wanted to get out in front of things. They didn’t release wedding photos of the whole family. Just the one of them that West and Abby chose that wouldn’t show any indication on where the wedding even took place.”

“It showed family support for Abby,” she said.

She’d looked the picture over. Noticed Braylon’s girlfriend was in the picture too. His fiancée now. Then she saw Laken had just gotten engaged to a celebrity athlete about two months ago.

There was no hiding in this family.

Which had to be hard for someone who wanted to be left to his own devices.

“It did,” he said. “Which is all that mattered. My family comes first and always will.”

Which warmed her heart that though she felt he might be hiding things, he’d told his family about her without her knowing.

Was she nervous about meeting them?

Heck yeah!

But she wasn’t going to dwell on it now.

“I never had that. You know. But I’ve got it with Amanda and that is why I called her.”

“How did Landon know we were dating?” he asked. “Did you tell him?”

“Oh,” she said. “No. I didn’t. He was insulting me and then he insinuated that if I didn’t clean up or something, I’d be attracting you. Or maybe that is what I wanted all along. He threw it in my face that I go for guys with money. I really don’t.”

Not every man she dated was wealthy. Some wanted her to believe they were, but they weren’t.

Her last two serious boyfriends were older and had money, but they were the only ones that fell into both of those categories.

“I believe it.”

“Even though my sister married Drew? You might think we both are like that.”

“No,” he said. “What you told me about your sister, tells me that I’m happy she found someone.”

“I saw what money did to Amanda. How more people use it for bad than good. They use it to control people. You don’t.” She started to laugh and looked at the sandwich she’d put together. “You know, this fancy meal and all.”

He spit the beer out of his mouth that he’d been drinking. “I’m not a fancy person,” he said.

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