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“Are you close to your family?”
She pulls her knees up tighter, curling further into the fetal position. “The usual, I guess. I get along better with my brothers now than when we were kids.”
“Same for me. Though I do still sometimes want to give Max a wedgie.”
“You’re not the only one.” Her lips curl up at the corners into an adorable and incredibly sexy smile.
“You always give in to him, though,” she adds. Her smile fades quickly, and a shadow forms in the crinkle in her brow. “He asked me to research weekend spas for your mom’s birthday—laughed and told me you thought she’d rather have gardening equipment. But from everything I’ve heard about your mom, you’re probably right.” She pauses. “So why didn’t you insist?”
The disappointment in her voice grips my heart. There’s no one on earth I’d want to disappoint less—not even my own mother.
“I gave up pushing back against Max years ago. Not worth the hassle. It just causes a bunch of bad feelings and stress and doesn’t change his mind about anything.” But Charlotte’s relationship with her family is way more interesting. “Do you stand up to your brothers?”
“Hell, yes.” The subtle smile is back. Good. “But I think they constantly feel a bit guilty too.”
“About what?”
“About everything I gave up to take care of them after Mom left.”
The thought of high school Charlotte having to be more like a mom than a teenager causes an ache in my chest. “Like what?”
“I dumped my boyfriend and quit piano lessons because Dad needed me home after school to make sure the boys did their homework, had dinner and stuff.” She’s silent for a moment. Her shape under the bedding rises and falls with a huge breath. “And not going to Notre Dame.”
I raise my head to get a better look at her. “You were accepted at Notre Dame? And didn’t go?”
She rolls onto her back, the cupid’s bow of her lips forming two perfect peaks. “Yup.”
I don’t know what her dad does, or did, but with only one income and three kids it couldn’t have been easy. “Was that because of money?”
“Partly. Obviously, we were broke. But I got enough scholarships to make the student loans manageable.” She turns back onto her side as if she’s not sure what to do with herself. “It was mainly the time.”
“Notre Dame. Wow. That’s tough to get into. Were the guys really so reliant on you that you couldn’t go?”
Her dark lashes flutter against her cheek.
“I was all ready to head off. I’d put a bunch of systems in place so my dad would be able to cope. I made him planners and charts and everything.” She pauses and presses her lips into a thin line for a second before continuing. “But a couple of weeks before I was due to leave, Brody—he’s the youngest—got badly injured playing football. There was a danger he might not walk again. So I stayed home to help him recover.”
Whoa. That’s a whole new dimension of sacrifice and putting others first.
I push myself up to sitting. “God, Charlotte, that’s a lot to take on. And a lot to give up.”
Her shoulder shifts slightly as if she’s shrugging. “It was the only thing I could do.” Her voice is soft, resigned to the inevitable.
To delay your own life for someone else takes a level of generosity that’s hard to comprehend. Maybe that’s why she’s so focused now. She had to wait to get her turn.
“I had no idea you’d been through all of that. So you didn’t go to college until Harvest funded you for Columbia?” I’d thought she’d done that concentration in business management because her first degree was in something completely different, like English or geology or whatever. It never occurred to me she didn’t actually have a degree before that—she’s so damn sharp and business savvy.
“After a while, I did.” She sniffs. “I needed to do something for myself. So I took evening classes at the local community college and got my associate’s. I finished my bachelor’s at Columbia.” She pulls the covers snugly beneath her chin. “I was lucky Max gave me a job with just an associate’s. Lucky that he bases his opinions on how good people are at their job, not on what pieces of paper they have.”
“And that’s probably because of our upbringing. Guess everything always comes back to how you were raised.”
“Yeah, you know what it’s like. You worked your ass off to get scholarships to get into MIT.” She pauses. “And I bet all the girl geeks there loved you.” Her tone’s changed to tentatively mischievous.
“Ha.” I turn away slightly, less comfortable now I’m the subject of the conversation. “It was a bit of a shock. I was a late bloomer.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Being the high school computer nerd doesn’t exactly make you a chick magnet.” I rest my head back against the pillows and watch the shadows of passing cars flash across the popcorn ceiling. “Particularly when you live with two brothers and two cousins who’re God’s gift to women.”
