Free Project Love (Cascade Brides Series) by Bonnie Blythe Page B

sought his. “I can tell that just by the
tension in your hand.”
    He smiled, so thankful for her presence, for the feeling
of her fingers wrapped around his. “Okay, here goes. This might
come as a shock, but I'm the firstborn sibling in my family.”
    “ Um, no. Not shocked,” she said, her voice tinged
with mirth.
    “ I had a younger brother.”
    Charity's smile faded. “Had?” she said softly.
    “ He was very gifted in the arts. Where I am drawn to
schematics and logic and all manner of boring things, he could pick
up any instrument and play with hardly any practice. His voice was
amazing, too. But along with nascent success in the Los Angeles music
industry, he got caught up in the drug scene.”
    “ Oh, no. I'm so sorry, Daniel.”
    “ My parents broke their hearts over him, giving him
chance after chance. They saw it as mercy while I saw it as
enabling.”
    “ So there was tension between you and your parents of
how they handled the situation?”
    “ And then some. But there was tension between him and
me, too. I went to see him in L.A. several times, trying to get him
into rehab, or at least appeal to him to think of his parents.” He
paused. “Of course talking didn't do much good. I finally stopped
going back. I headed home to Missouri, finished college, got a job
with a good company there...”
    Daniel looked out at the fading light coloring the sky
faintly with orange. He'd tried so many times to seek forgiveness,
for his actions or the lack thereof. “He called me a year later.
Begged me to come and see him. I relented and went, but with a
hardened heart. Plus an unexpected leave of absence doesn't build
credit with a new employer.”
    “ Why did he ask you to come and not your parents?”
    “ I think they'd
finally given up. They just had nothing left he hadn't already
squandered.” Daniel swallowed. “When I found him, I was
unprepared for his condition. He had grown thin and had a terrible
cough. I assumed he'd asked me to come so he could get help. But he
wanted a hundred bucks to buy more drugs. As if I hadn't just flown
halfway across the country to see him. Instead of pity, I was furious
at him for wasting his life, wasting the talent he'd been blessed
with. For wasting my time .”
    He took a breath. “I think he saw the truth of how I
felt in my eyes. He became verbally abusive, playing off every one of
my faults and insecurities, making me even angrier.”
    “ So you left?” Charity's eyes were wide with grief.
    “ I left. But as I reached the door, he called me back.
Held out his hand and begged me to help.” His voice wavered. “It's
my last memory of him. He was dead before I arrived back in
Missouri.”
    Charity stopped, curling her other hand around his arm
and pressing her cheek against his shoulder. She was silent. He knew
there was nothing to say. Soul-deep regrets had a way of defying
attempts at comforting words.
    But he was comforted by her mere presence. More than he wanted to admit.
Charity's warmth soothed him in a way he couldn't have imagined.
Maybe he'd just needed to share his burden with another human being.
Or maybe Charity possessed some special magic.
    “ Do your parents stay in contact with you?” she
asked quietly.
    “ Only when they have to. And even then they somehow
believe I've become political because I work in the corporate
world—that the environment made me ultimately reject my brother.”
    “ He was their favorite?”
    What a strange, and yet, insightful question. The fact
that she even asked it told him she knew the sting of that very same
feeling. “Yeah.”
    “ What was his name?”
    “ Anthony.”
    She repeated the name. “How does this link to Evelyn?”
    Daniel sighed, exhausted from his confession. “When I
started going to this church and heard about their connection to the
care home, naturally I wanted to help. I was taken on a tour one day
and there was a woman in a wheelchair. She had this vacant stare and
her mouth hung