She grinned in amazement. "How clever."
He agreed, and was incredibly proud of his sister and her accomplishments. "The concept is very remarkable, and she did well enough selling her pieces on consignment that she was able to open up her own gallery."
"I'm definitely intrigued, and I can't wait to see her designs." Cupping her hand, she brought a drink of the creek's fresh, clean water up to her lips to quench her thirst. After a few long sips, she glanced at him, her gaze turning inquisitive. "You and your sister… you're close, aren't you?"
He picked up another stone and weighed it in the palm of his hand. "What makes you say that?"
She stood back up, dried her damp palms down the front of her jeans, and shrugged. "It's the way you talk about her. There's a certain affection in your voice when you mention her name. It's enough to make me think you two have a special brother-sister kind of relationship."
And one she apparently envied, he thought, hearing the wistful emotion in her soft voice. "I think out of all my siblings, Mia and I relate to each other the best. We have similar personalities, so we understand one another pretty well."
"You're so lucky to have that connection with her." Smiling, she brushed back the strands of hair tickling her cheek from the breeze. "You mentioned that your mother passed away when you were a kid. What happened?"
He tossed the stone out onto the water with a snap of his wrist, giving it just the right spin for it to bounce five times before dropping to the bottom of the stream. His first instinct was to brush off her too-personal question, or attempt to change the topic of conversation, but something stopped him from doing either.
He couldn't remember ever talking to anyone about that part of his life-when his mother had died and the aftermath of that loss. Not with his family, and never with any of the women who'd tried to get him to open up about that part of his past, and that usually happened when they felt the end to their affair was near. He knew it was their way of trying to establish an emotional bond between them, yet it always had the opposite effect and made him feel stifled, and that only made it that much easier for him to break up with them.
But he knew that wasn't Lora's intent at all. She'd suffered similarly with the death of her parents, and he knew her well enough now to realize her question was based more on that mutual experience than any attempt to manipulate his emotions. Her interest was as real and genuine as she was, and that made it easy for him to tell her what she wanted to know. For the first time he wanted to open up to someone, and that was because it was her.
"My mother died in a car accident when she was visiting her sister in Florida," he said, and straightened to his full height. "It was a strange thing, actually, because one day she was leaving to go on a short vacation, and then we never saw her again. It was almost like she just never came back."
"I'm so sorry. That couldn't have been easy," she said softly. "But at least you had the love and support of the rest of your family to get you through that rough time in your life."
Which she'd never had. No, this amazing woman had taken on most of the burden of her parents' deaths, and then had gone on to raise her brother on her own. Alone. Without any help from anyone.
"Like with you, everything changed dramatically after my mother passed away," he said, thinking back to that difficult time. "My father was devastated, of course, and my sister, who was only five at the time, had a hard time adjusting to the fact that her mother was never coming back. My two older brothers, Scott and Alex, did their best to handle a lot of the family responsibilities, and their main focus was Mia, and making sure she was taken care of while my father was at work."
"And what about you, Joel?"
He wasn't certain what she was getting at, and he didn't want to assume anything. "What about me?"
"It sounds like everybody in your family was busy taking care of everyone and everything else." Her comment was insightful and incredibly intuitive. "Where did that leave you?"
"As the odd man out?" he said automatically, and even though his voice was tinged with a teasing quality, too late he realized just how much he'd revealed.
Her gaze met and held his, delving past those tough, guarded layers of his. "Yeah, I think it did," she said gently, and without an ounce of humor to indicate she was joking, too.
He inhaled a deep breath until he felt his lungs burn. How in the hell did this woman see past the surface and understand him so well?
"And, I also think that's a good part of the reason why you try and keep everyone around you at an emotional distance," she said, adding to her psychoanalysis. "You felt disconnected from the family, didn't you? Like you didn't have a purpose like your dad and older brothers did."
She wasn't even close enough to physically touch him, yet he felt as though she'd reached deep down into his soul and released years' worth of personal anguish. With anyone else, he would have told them they were over-thinking things, but he found that he couldn't deny the truth, not with Lora.
"Yeah, I guess I did feel that way." He stared across the creek at nothing in particular, then shifted his gaze to the dark gray clouds heading their way. "So, while my brothers were busy being responsible and dependable and trying to take care of Mia, who became quite rebellious after my mother's death, I did my own thing. Eventually both Scott and Alex went to work for my father's tile company, and when I graduated from high school and realized that there wasn't a place for me in the family business, I decided to join the Marines."
"They told you that they didn't need or want you in the business?" she asked incredulously.
"Well, no, not exactly." He didn't care for the harsh way her question sounded and tried to explain. "But everything was running just fine without me, even after my father remarried and retired from the company."
"So, you just assumed they didn't need you," she said, more a statement than a question.
He frowned. "I didn't belong there, Lora."
Even as he said the words, there was something about her comment that made him wonder if maybe, in his youth, he'd judged the situation too hastily, based on emotion rather than logic or reason. That maybe he'd come to his own conclusions without giving his father or brothers the opportunity to make him a part of the business. Or worse, they'd thought he wasn't interested, which now, looking back from an adult perspective, would have been understandable considering he'd always distanced himself from that part of the family.
It was a disconcerting notion, yet he'd never regretted his choice to join the Marines. He'd loved the sense of adventure the military had to offer, and even the risks and rush of adrenaline that came with the missions he'd been sent on. He knew he never would have been happy sitting at a desk pushing paperwork. For him, the tile business would have been too mundane, and he would have eventually felt too stifled.
It was difficult to admit that his lifestyle had been one of his own making, and not a result of anything his brothers and father had, or hadn't, done. That he'd cut himself off on many levels and especially with relationships, because it was so much easier than putting himself out there emotionally.
The sound of thunder rumbled in the distance, a distinct warning of the impending storm approaching them. Lora shivered at the sudden drop in temperature and rubbed her hands along her arms. "We should probably head back to the cabin before we get stuck in the rain."
He'd been so caught up in their conversation that he'd forgotten about the storm moving in. But it was definitely on its way, and judging by the dark, bloated clouds drifting overhead, it was going to be one helluva downpour. "I think you're right."