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“A nice-size family.”
She looked at him. Should she tell him it was a bigger family than that? That she also had three brothers?’
Yes. She should.
“We’re a big family,” she said. “I also have three brothers. Half-brothers. Our father’s first wife died and he married our mother.”
“And everybody got along?”
“Yes. “ She smiled. “We never think of each other as half anything’s.”
He laughed. “Did your father take your brothers to France, too?”
“Well, there’s an age gap. Our brothers were away at school. We were
still home.”
“Ah. Must have been fun, a holiday like that.”
She knew he was trying to reconcile what he thought, that she’d grown up poor, with a family that could afford a holiday in Europe.
“It wasn’t actually a holiday. As I told Mrs. Barnett, my father was—is—in the army. We visited him when we could.”
“It must have been difficult. Your mother, raising three girls and three boys with him gone.”
“Actually, she died when we were little.”
Marco let go of her hand, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side. “And who took care of you?”
Nannies. The housekeeper. The ranch hands. And Jacob, Caleb and Travis when they weren’t away at school.
“Hey.”
She looked at Marco. He smiled, hugged her closer and kissed the top of her head.
“If it hurts too much to talk about—”
“No. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just, you know, it’s kind of complicated. There were—there were always lots of people around.”
“Good. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. You were not alone, cara. I am happy to know that you were cared for and loved.”
That much, at least, was true. She had been cared for and loved, though not by aunts and uncles and grandparents.
Her belly knotted.
She had to end this litany of omissions and half- truths. What had begun as a self-protective way of keeping people from seeing her as a Poor Little Rich Girl had turned into the kind of falsehood she would never have told this man she had come to care for.
Her throat constricted.
To care for? What a lifeless way to describe what she felt.
She loved him. With all her heart. With everything she was.
All the more reason to tell him the truth, but when she did…
Would he be upset? She sensed that he might be. But if he really cared for her…
He must.
