Let Me Hold You by Melanie Schuster Read Free Book Online

and gone to bed. Roland, gentleman that he was, helped Alana clean up the kitchen and put everything in order, although she told him it wasn’t necessary.
    “Are you like those VanBuren men who won’t let a lady lift a finger? Because it’s not a deal-breaker, I assure you. Although I am impressed with your skills,” Alana told him.
    They were relaxing in the living room with a fire going and the sound of Alabama Shakes playing. Roland took a sip of wine before answering her.
    “It’s kinda complicated,” he said slowly. “I’m the oldest of seven, you know, and after my father—my mother’s first husband—disappeared, I was in charge of a horde of screaming little girls. My mother had to work two jobs, and sometimes three, to keep a roof over our heads, so I had to keep order in the house when she wasn’t at home. I was the protective big brother and treated them like little ladies, which is how my mother wanted it, of course. And how I wanted it because they were my little sisters and I would have moved heaven and earth to keep them safe. I didn’t want anyone looking at them cross-eyed, you know? Chicago is a rough place no matter what part of town you’re in and after my father abandoned us, we had to move to a fairly undesirable area, so my role changed fast.
    “I had to help them get ready for school, give them breakfast, walk them to school, pick them up afterwards and keep them from killing each other when we got home. Make sure they did their homework, fix dinner and I had to keep the house clean. My mother had enough on her plate so I had to pitch in,” he said with a shrug.
    Alana was awed by his story. “Wow, that’s a lot of responsibility for you at a really young age. Your mother must be so proud of you. I’m proud of you and I didn’t even know you back then,” she said with sincerity warming her voice. She drank a little more wine as she leaned into the big pillows behind her. She rubbed the rim of her wineglass across her bottom lip in an unconsciously sexy move. “May I ask what happened to your father? I realize it’s really personal and I have no right to ask, so if you don’t want to talk about it, that is fine,” she murmured.
    Roland made a gesture to indicate that it was of no importance. “You can ask my anything you want, Alana. I have nothing to hide from you. My birth father wasn’t a bad guy, I guess, just irresponsible, not ready to have so many children, immature, whatever label you want to put on him. He didn’t come home from work one day and that was it. We had a nice house in the ’burbs, my mother was a teacher and he was an executive with a real estate company. We found out later that he’d been having an affair with a woman he worked with and they ran off together. He’d cleaned out the bank accounts and they headed to the west coast. They’d had a kid together, too, if you can believe that,” he said, shaking his head with obvious scorn.
    “That must have been extremely hard on your mother. Of course it was hard for all of you, but your mother must have been crushed.”
    “She was, but she couldn’t afford to give in to it. That’s what she used to tell me,” he said. “At first I used to hear her crying every night after we went to bed and I wanted to hunt him down and kill him with my bare hands. She had to keep it together for us, of course, and she just buckled down and worked tirelessly so that we would have everything we needed. I wanted to get a job, but it was more important that I be there for the girls.
    “In order to keep them focused I had to assign chores to each one of them and make them realize that we all had a role to play in the family. That’s why I told you it’s complicated; it would have been nice to be able to be the doting big brother and wait on the girls hand and foot like the VanBuren men, but we weren’t in that position, not anymore.”
    Alana couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the family. Her heart