Charli

THE SIGHT OF THE NUMBER had her heart racing.

She almost answered.

Each time the phone rang, she had to clench her hand into a fist to keep from doing just that.

She wasn’t ready to talk to him.

If she could get herself to the point of acceptance, she might just acknowledge that there was no point in talking to him ever again. Except maybe to tell him goodbye.

That was what she needed to do.

Tell him goodbye, let her brothers know she was tired of things, that she needed a change, tired of staying in the small town where she’d grown up, hoping the man she’d always loved would one day notice her. She should move. If she got away from him, permanently, it would be easier to move on.

Some part of her knew that.

It was just so hard to actually do.

Especially when she saw him so often.

And now he was calling...

Abruptly, she grabbed her phone and brought up the internet. Ignoring the little icon at the top of the bar letting her know she had missed calls—like eight of them—she did a search for realtors.

Her sharp, agile brain wasn’t fazed by the influx of hits, or even the costs. She didn’t make much as a resident, but she’d been working since she was sixteen and she was, after all, a genius. That carried over to numbers. At one point, she’d almost told her brothers they didn’t have to do what they did out of any need to take care of her, but she’d decided they felt like they had to.

Riley still had no idea that she knew how he’d provided for her.

Con, she believed, suspected, but she had no intention of cluing them in.

The male ego was a weird thing.

It didn’t bother her that they felt the need to take care of her. She understood it—the urge, at least. It had been hard on all of them, losing their parents. Riley’s way of coping had been to focus on taking care of his siblings. Con had coped by turning into more of a charming bastard, and, like Riley, he’d doted on her.

Charli had focused on school...and some odds and ends. The stock market had almost lured her away from medical school. Not out of any desire to be rich, but because she loved the edge of it. The money was a thrill, but she didn’t need money to be happy.

But by the time she was twenty-one, she’d earned enough to pay for more than half of what hadn’t been covered by her scholarships. Riley had been so focused on what her regular education had cost, he was unaware of all the extra classes she took and she was quietly paying those down, letting him handle what he needed to handle.

Now, at twenty-five, she had the money she needed to take this trip to Mexico, and enough of a nest egg that she could put a down payment on a house and not hurt, money-wise, while she finished up her residency. Actually, she could spend the next two years down here in Mexico and not lift a finger.

Charli hated the fact that she was tempted.

She hated the fact that she’d run down here to hide.

But she had.

It wasn’t just from Shame, though, and that was the one thing that let her keep her chin halfway up. She’d needed the time. To heal. To breathe. To accept. To grieve over a loss she hadn’t even realized was happening until it was too late.

“It was a sign,” she told herself softly, finally selecting a website.

She knew where she wanted to live.

Immediately, Shame’s face flickered through her mind.

Scratch that—she knew a place where she thought if might be fun to live. Simple and small, and that would be a welcome change after dealing with the upkeep of her parents’ old place for so long.

She could move to Louisville, see about transferring her residency to one of the bigger hospitals there, and she already knew the suburb where she’d like to live.

The train cars in Germantown had been overhauled completely and designed to serve as apartments.

She’d seen them online months ago but then, she had still been convinced she could get Shame finally to admit what she’d always believed to be true.

Now she was the one doing the admitting.

The only truth was that she needed to move on.

When the caboose apartments came up as available, she clicked on the link.

It took her to a website and she stared at the phone number for ages before she finally tapped on it.

“It’s time,” she told herself. As she shifted on her lounge chair, a twinge in her lower belly jolted up, a persistent reminder to be careful how she moved.

She took it as another sign.

The phone rang and when a man came on the line, she said, “I was wondering if any of the train cars are still available for rent.”