"What would be good enough for Aunt Doris?"

Charity smiled. "To have us all normal. To have me married to a doctor, Faith married to a lawyer and Mason married to a debutante."

She laughed softly. "To have all of us, with assorted tiny tots, living with her in one great big house outside of Boston. Sort of Dallas-the-TV-show-style, you know what I mean? She'd be Miss Ellie, the glue that holds us all to gether."

She sighed. "She'll never get that, and she knows it. So I'd like her to have something, you know? I'd like her to think that at least one of us turned out the way she tried to direct us."

"Why does it matter so much what Aunt Doris thinks?" he asked, searching her face.

He still didn't understand?

"I love her," she said sim ply.

He frowned. He loved people, too, he supposed. His mother. His sister. His brother. All those other Carringtons littering Destiny Bay like so many overly-fertile bunny rabbits.

But he never did things to please them just because he loved them. In some ways this was a new concept to him. Giving instead of taking as though it were one's due. Caring more about somebody else's happiness.

He supposed mothers and fathers felt that way about their children. And maybe husbands and wives. But since when did that apply to nieces of maiden aunts?

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He looked at her again. She kept surprising him with the layers upon layers of emotional connections she made.

"She's so good," Charity was saying, still trying to ex plain. "She wants us all to love each other. And she tries so hard."

She hesitated, knowing Ross still didn't fully understand and determined that he should, no matter what it cost to convince him.

"You see, she took the three of us in, my sister Faith and Mason and me, when..."

She took a deep breath. This was the hard part. This was what she fought so hard to hide, to run from. Now she was actually going to tell Ross. She'd hardly ever told anyone, but she was going to tell this make-believe husband.

"When my parents went to prison," she said quickly, getting it over with.

"Prison?" Startled, he couldn't disguise the shock in his voice.

"Yes." She raised her chin, her eyes clear and challeng ing. "Eighteen months for running an illegal lottery in Tonga."

There. She'd said it. She hadn't said it often, though it had happened years ago. But it was time to face it, to put the past behind her. She was proud of herself for the way she'd laid it out on the table, but for some reason she couldn't force herself to meet Ross's gaze again. Sud denly she just wanted to leave the room.




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