“Really,” he said dryly. “That must suck for her.” He really should’ve seen this coming, but his sister, and undoubtedly his mom as well, had clearly been cyberstalking Jane. He shouldn’t be so stunned at the level of duplicity and lengths they’d gone to in order to butt their noses into his business, but he was.
And they wondered why he’d chosen to live in San Francisco.
“Yeah, I guess he’s home for a bit,” Jane said, “and he acts like he’s still a teenager, leaving his clothes everywhere and dirty dishes in the sink. I never had any siblings, so it must be really hard to have to deal with that.”
Oh, goody. They were still talking about him. “Must be,” he managed.
Her smile faded a bit. “How big is your family again?”
“There’s five of us,” he said. “Though sometimes it seems like triple that.”
She didn’t smile, his first clue something was wrong.
“And they’re . . . nice?” she asked.
She was anxious about meeting them. “They’re going to be really nice to you, and very busy trying to figure out why you’re with me.”
She did give him a small smile at that, and he paused before bringing up her family again. “You’ve not said much about growing up, other than you were passed around a lot. You’re not close to your family, I take it.”
“No.” She pushed around the empty glass. “My mom was a teenager when she got pregnant and my dad didn’t stick around, so it’s an understatement to say she wasn’t ready to take care of a baby. It was tough for her to keep up with school and have a life, so we bounced around for a while, stayed with friends or family friends.”
“Not family?”
“Not then,” she said. “She’d burned some bridges.”
“And you? What happened to you?”
“I don’t remember much of this, but apparently when I was two, my mom got an opportunity to go away to college. I was sent to my mom’s older sister, Aunt Viv. But she had five kids of her own and worked all the time, so I ended up at my grandma’s sister’s daughter’s. I stayed there a bit, until she got married and wanted to start a family of her own.”
“What was wrong with keeping you too?”
“I was a needy thing.” She shrugged. “Got sick a lot.”
Levi shook his head. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”
“I was fine, I don’t really even remember much of it,” she said quickly, as if she didn’t want him to feel angry on her behalf, or worse, sorry for her. “And anyway, that’s when my grandparents took me in. And that was . . .” She smiled a little, as some of the fond memories appeared to beat back her bad ones. “The best. They lived here in Sunrise Cove in a tiny cabin. I loved everything about that time.”
“Here?” he asked, surprised. “They’re here in Tahoe?”
“Just my grandpa now. My grandma . . .” She paused, her liquid jade eyes revealing pain. “She died when I was eight.”
“Aw, Jane. I’m so sorry. Did you get to stay with your grandpa?”
“Her death was . . . hard on him. They’d been together since they were kids. They had an amazing relationship. He’d hide things for her to find. Food, cheap little knickknacks, seriously expensive jewelry, it didn’t matter. It was a game between them. He’d give her hints and she’d run around looking. She was just as happy to get a box of cookies as a diamond bracelet. He’d just sit there and laugh the entire time she was hunting for whatever it was.”
“They sound amazing.”