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“Has it occurred to you that I might actually want some time alone?”
“It actually did. But I expected to come back and see that you were...I don’t know...doing something. You did so much for us, Levi. You do so much for us. And I thought that maybe once all the kids were out of the house you might...move toward having a life.”
He had no idea what his sister was talking about. He got up every day and he worked the land. There was no other life. No other life that he wanted, no other life that he had ever dreamed of. And all right, the case could be made for the fact that he simply didn’t have dreams. But when you were a seventeen-year-old kid who lost both parents to separate tragedies in less than a year, you kind of quit having dreams. You just focused on what you could do. On raising the kids that were left behind. That was what he’d done. He’d made the land his own, and he had used it to sustain them.
There wasn’t more. Not for him. And he was fine with that.
“You don’t know what all I do with my time.”
“You haven’t done anything with it except work in the time that I’ve been back home.”
“Maybe I have a different life when you aren’t here.”
There was some truth to that. He wasn’t exactly having a thriving sex life in full view of his siblings.
That, he did on his own time.
But he assumed she didn’t mean that, either.
He was happy to pretend she didn’t have a sex life, and he imagined that was mutual.
“You need someone to take care of you.” She sounded like a little hen. Cluck cluck cluck.
What was with women who had to be more than ten years younger than him thinking they knew better than him today?
And he thought of the little redhead that had appeared in his driveway earlier. “I’m fine, Camilla.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes, I am.”
She frowned. “What about all your records? Are you set to do taxes this year?”
“I’m hiring someone. And anyway, I can handle that on my own.”
He knew well enough now to know to hire out when he needed it. He was good at working the land. Paperwork? Well. Part of being in charge was knowing your strengths. He knew his. They weren’t paperwork, and that was fine.
“I worry about you,” she pushed.
“Well, don’t. I’m a grown adult, and I took care of you for your whole snot-nosed life.”
“You’re the epitome of an isolated mountain man. You haven’t shaved. The contents of your fridge—while plentiful—are not healthy. You basically live the life of a hermit. I don’t want that for you.”
He looked at his sister, the world feeling tilted. He had spent so many years worrying about her. And he was grousing about her acting like she suddenly knew more than him, but there was more than that. She was worried. Worried in the way that he worried about her. While she was away, he was concerned about everything. Boys taking advantage of her at parties, putting something in her drink. Her feeling stressed about her grades. Her having issues with friends. It was a constant turn of concern. But the idea that she was actually worrying about him while she was supposed to be taking care of herself... “Yeah. I...I am. I’m actually... Camilla, I want you to go back to school and not worry about me, in part because I’m in the middle of changing some things.”
“You are?”
And he thought about Quinn again, and the fact that she needed him. And Lord help him, he didn’t want to get involved with a Sullivan in any regard.
But since the Sullivan had involved herself with him...
Maybe he could use that.
He could consider it back pay from the Sullivan family.
“Yeah. I have some new plans on the horizon. Someone coming in to help manage some things. Don’t even worry about it.”
All he needed was for Quinn to show off that binder and get Camilla on her way.
