The Best Next Thing

by Natasha Anders

  It seemed to her that the only person Miles Hollingsworth did not have patience with was himself.

  She considered that fact while they retraced their steps back to the land rover.

  “Should we stop for lunch somewhere?” Miles asked, after he had maneuvered the vehicle back onto the road.

  “I can’t think of any pet friendly places in Riversend,” Charity said.

  “Then I suppose we’ll have to venture farther afield,” he said carelessly.

  “I don’t see why not,” Charity agreed, not wanting their day out to end just yet. “The cleaning service will be at the house for a few more hours.”

  “Then let’s see where the road takes us.”

  The road “took” them to a quaint farmhouse kitchen style restaurant off the N2 just outside of Knysna. They provided under cover seating for pet owners and their four-legged charges in their courtyard. Charity took an instant liking to the place, which was a working farm with a thriving cottage industry eatery. The menu—outlined on a chalkboard at the entrance—was small and consisted of wholesome country foods. Sunday roast served daily, chicken pie and veggies, as well as lamb chops with mashed potatoes, and “farm fresh”—as the menu boasted—peas. Their dessert options were limited to milk tart or dark chocolate cake.

  As was to be expected on a random Tuesday afternoon, the restaurant wasn’t very busy. There were only a handful of patrons inside and none outside. A truculent young man led them to their table and provided a couple of glasses of water.

  “Your server will be here soon,” he muttered, before skulking off. Charity raised her eyebrows at his surly attitude, but since he wasn’t their server, chose not to comment.

  Miles didn’t seem to notice the guy, he was too busy making sure his dog was comfortable. He put Stormy’s “travel cushion”—as he called it—down on one of the chairs and after two turns, the pup flopped down and passed out.

  “I’m always amazed by how fast she switches off,” Miles marveled, an undercurrent of amusement in his voice. “I found her comatose with her head in her food bowl the other night.”

  “I nearly tripped over her in the den two days ago. She was fast asleep in the middle of the floor, stretched out in that superhero pose, you know the one?”

  Miles chuckled and nodded. Stormy often lay with her front paws outstretched, head tucked between them, her tummy flat on the floor and her hind legs splayed like a frog’s. It looked comical but it was her favorite way to sleep.

  Charity watched Miles’s face soften as he ran a gentle hand over the puppy’s head. The dog barely seemed to register the touch. Charity’s insides melted into a pool of comfortably warm goo. The pleasant shudder of excitement that accompanied the giddy sensation felt familiar. A long-ago echo of something that could only be described as romantic interest.

  Every instinct she had screamed at her to distance herself from him. And from this unwanted and painful awakening of feelings that she had believed were dead and buried. She had known, of course, that she was sexually attracted to him. But the possibility of forming a romantic attachment was inconceivable.

  But instead of skittering back into her shell or distancing herself the way she knew she should, she folded her arms on the table and leaned forward, keen to learn even more about this intriguing man. “I didn’t realize you knew Sam Brand so well.”

  “I’ve known him for about six years. His company handles security for Hollingsworth Holdings. As well as personal security for my family.”

  “And for you.”

  “To a certain extent. I don’t have a security detail or anything like that.”

  “Why not?” Surely a man as powerful and wealthy as Miles Hollingsworth, chairman of the board to one of the most successful holding companies in Europe, would need some form of personal protection?

  “I’m reclusive.” He used air quotes to frame the word “reclusive” and his tone was light, but the tongue in cheek response didn’t satisfy her. It seemed negligent of a man in his position to allow himself to be so vulnerable. Charity knew how swiftly someone who meant to do violence could strike. From one second to the next, you could go from seemingly fine to prone, in pain and powerless.

  “You shouldn’t be so flippant about your safety,” she heard herself berating him, and instantly wished the words back when he pinned her with a searching look. She had sounded too grim and her intensity didn’t match the tone of the conversation.

  “Uh…I’m not,” he said, after a long pause. “When I know I’m heading into an unknown situation, or into a crowd, we always take extra precautions. I don’t take unnecessary risks. Not in business and not with my life.”

  “You did with your health.” She pointed out.

  He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “You got me there. It was stupid. It felt like a cold and I ignored it but it kept getting worse. I saw a doctor when my concentration became impaired. He suggested I take time off and I—foolishly, I admit—disregarded him. I took the medication he prescribed and kept pushing myself. It was a fucking bug, I thought I had it under control. Right up until the point I found myself waking up in the hospital with my mother and sister crying at my bedside like I’d already died.”

  “What did you have?”

  “I had the flu…” He waved his hand when she started to say something in response to that. “Seriously. That’s how it started. Influenza Type B. Sore throat, runny nose, chills, the works. It all felt manageable, and I worked from home because I didn’t want to spread it and debilitate my entire company. But when I work from home, I tend to overdo it. I schedule international conference calls at all hours, work on contracts till late into the night, research new acquisitions…I wasn’t joking earlier when I said I’m reclusive. That’s pretty much my life. And it was easier to ignore my symptoms without anyone around to nag me about them.”

  “But your sister and brother must have checked up on you. Your mother?”

  “They’re used to me being fine. Hugh was adjusting to his new role in the company—he’s just been promoted to a junior executive position and is assisting my COO. He had a lot on his plate. And Vicki was traumatized, she was mugged a day or two before I was hospitalized. My mother was taking care of her. I just had the flu.”

  The statement was telling. It seemed like his family relied on him to be the strong one, to take care of them when they were sick or in trouble. Miles was the previously infallible head of the family.

  “How’s Vicki?”

  “She’s fine.” He shook his head with a wry chuckle that attractively accentuated his dimple. “She hates that I had Brand assign a close protection officer to her after the mugging. I imagine she must be making the poor guy’s life hell.”

  “So why were you hospitalized?”

  “Are you ready to order?”

  They both looked up when their server—a woman who looked around seventy—spoke.

  Charity had been so engrossed in the conversation that she hadn’t even noticed the woman approach. And she definitely hadn’t given any thought to what she would eat. And, judging by the startled look on his face, neither had Miles.

  “I think I’ll have the chicken and mushroom pie,” Charity decided impulsively. “With milk tart for dessert.”

  “Same for me. Pie. But I’ll have the cake for dessert.”

  “Anything for the pup?” The server—Estie, according to her name tag—asked with a twinkly smile. Miles grinned appreciatively at the question.

  “I think she’s fine for now. Thank you for asking.”

  The polite thank you surprised and charmed Charity. He wasn’t a rude man. Just abrupt and to the point. He didn’t usually seem inclined to bother with social niceties like minding his p’s and q’s.

  Estie shuffled away, her fuzzy slippers sighing against the ground as she walked.

  “She’s wearing bunny slippers,” Miles muttered, his voice choked, and his eyes shining with suppressed laughter.

  “
I know.”

  “That’s fucking ridiculous.”

  “I like it,” Charity confessed. A giggle burbled from her lips, and the lighthearted sound surprised her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had made that sound. Or when last she had just wanted to laugh with someone.

  “Me too,” Miles said, a chuckle escaping, and the happy sound matched her effervescent giggle. That seemed to surprise him as much as her laugh had shocked her. He blinked for a moment, before shaking his head and laughing again and this time, she joined him.

  They exchanged shy glances after the uncharacteristic bout of shared laughter, and Miles cleared his throat before taking a sip of water.

  “Well?” Charity prompted him, and when he looked confused she reminded, “You were going to tell me why you were hospitalized.”

  “I started coughing...I was disoriented and dehydrated, despite drinking what I thought was a fair amount of fluids. When my brother found me, I was incoherent and confused. Turns out I had bronchitis, which—left untreated—developed into bronchial pneumonia. By the time I was hospitalized, I was facing the very real possibility of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Which could have resulted in permanent lung damage. I was fortunate that my stubbornness didn’t get me killed.

  “It was a little…humbling. I’m healthy, I stay in shape, I eat all the right things. I can’t remember ever being seriously ill, not even as a child. A cold here and there, sure—but nothing like this. It was a wake-up call. I hate being so bloody incapacitated, but I know I have no one to blame but myself.”

  “Why did you choose to come here? It’s cold and wet and miserable this time of year. And I’m sure you had other options in more tropical settings.”

  “It’s cold and wet and miserable,” he repeated. “But it’s also peaceful. And it holds one very important advantage over my other holiday homes.”

  She considered that comment but couldn’t figure out what that advantage could be.

  “What?”

  His lips quirked and he gave her a hooded look that she could not decipher.

  “It has you.”

  “Oh.”

  Was that a come on? She flushed, not quite sure what to make of that comment. But ridiculously flattered by it, no matter what it meant.

  “And before you read anything shady into that,” he clarified quickly. “By you…I mean Mrs. Cole.”

  The clarification confused her, and her brows knitted as she considered his words. “We’re the same person.”

  “Are you?”

  No…they weren’t. And it was alarmingly astute of Miles to pick up on that. Charity felt more exposed than she had in years. And it terrified her.

  Terrified and exhilarated her. It felt wonderful to be seen again. Recognized as an attractive woman who had very little in common with the ageless, sexless, frosty persona she had created out of fear and desperation.

  Before Mrs. Cole, she had been Charity Davenport, grieving widow of the saintly Blaine Davenport. And further back still, she had been the pastor’s wife—smiling, serene, and counselling to others, while screaming and dying on the inside.

  She hadn’t been just Charity in so long. She didn’t even recognize that free-spirited, happy, confident woman as herself anymore. She was no longer that woman-child, ridiculously in love with the charming boy next door. How shocked people had been at the match. How disapproving his parishioners, that their beloved pastor had married someone so very wrong for him.

  She couldn’t go back to being the person she had been before marrying Blaine. She had lost that Charity somewhere along the way. But she was no longer Mrs. Davenport either…the broken woman of Blaine’s creation.

  And she now recognized that she would have to move on from Mrs. Cole soon. That reality terrified her. Mrs. Cole had been a cozy security blanket and had kept her safe while she healed from her emotional wounds.

  But Charity needed to reclaim her freedom and find out who she was now. She had to mend fences with her family and confront the demons of her past. A part of her had always clung to the hope that she would one day—at the very least—follow the career path she had once chosen for herself.

  Why else would she have hung on to her practice number all these years? She still attended the obligatory chiropractic seminars and conferences a few times a year. She had done so even during her marriage, when she had—at great risk to her well-being—lied to Blaine about where she was going and what she was doing. And she had been studying in the hopes of taking her re-entrance examinations at some point.

  These were the actions of a hopeful person. Someone who wanted more. So much preparation, in the belief that someday she would find the strength and courage to pursue her dreams again.

  “Should I offer a pound this time?”

  Miles’s wry question snapped her back to the present, and she met his amused gray eyes in confusion. “What?”

  “For your thoughts?”

  “It’s quite a coincidence that you and Sam Brand wound up in the same random place on the Garden Route,” she said, clumsily steering the topic back on course.

  She wasn’t ready to talk about herself yet. Not with him. She wasn’t sure she would ever be ready to discuss her most intimate thoughts with this man. He was too…everything. Too powerful, too wealthy, too sexy, and too increasingly attractive for her peace of mind.

  He dimpled at her.

  “Not that coincidental,” he said, graciously allowing the subject change. “His former business partner, Mason Carlisle, grew up in Riversend. And, before he sold his half of the business to Sam, Mason was their company’s de facto client liaison officer. He often spoke about this part of the world. I was in the market for a holiday home and thought I’d look into this “slice of heaven” as he so eloquently and accurately described it. I fell in love with the location and built my house before either of them even considered moving here.”

  “Oh.”

  “Pretty mundane, right?”

  “Here you are, my lovelies. A nice home-cooked meal for you to enjoy,” Estie’s chipper voice filled the comfortable silence that had fallen between them, and they looked over to see the woman shuffling over. She epitomized everybody’s idea of a grandmother—round, matronly, and silver-haired with a twinkle in her eye and apples in her cheeks.

  The woman slid two plates in front of them, and they gawked at the amount of food that had been piled onto the dish. It smelled and looked wonderful.

  They thanked her and watched as she shambled away.

  “Bet she chain smokes and swears like a sailor in her downtime,” Miles muttered, and Charity choked back a laugh.

  “Probably wears leather and has a tattoo that says ‘Daddy’s Little Bitch’ on her left boob,” Charity added somberly, and this time Miles was the one who choked.

  “Toy boy thirty-six years her junior.” Miles flung the words down like a gauntlet.

  “Pothead,” Charity happily countered.

  “Estie, or the toy boy?” he asked.

  “They smoke together.”

  “Probably right before she bones that kid like that there’s no tomorrow.”

  Charity covered her face with both hands and shook her head.

  “Stop! Oh my God,” she laughed. He joined her and when the laughter died down, they grinned at each other a little goofily.

  He cleared his throat and picked up his fork. “Eat up before it gets cold.”

  Charity happily complied and the first mouthful of pie was divine.

  “This is so good,” she moaned, scooping up another bite. Miles watched her eat for a moment before digging in. His eyes widened, and he stared at her in shock.

  “It’s pretty damned tasty,” he agreed with her.

  While they ate, they chatted amiably about the weather, Stormy, and Miles’s attempts to help Amos in the garden. Safe topics—cautiously tiptoeing around the questions they really wanted to ask each other.

  Several pretty brown hens wandered into the garden and
slowly meandered toward their table. They were busily bobbing their heads, scratching and picking at the ground, cheerfully clucking as they got closer and closer to where Charity and Miles were seated.

  Charity watched them with a delighted smile and glanced over at Miles to share her enjoyment of the unexpected moment with him. But he looked less charmed by the chickens than she would have expected from a city boy. Instead, he appeared downright horrified.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed.

  He didn’t immediately respond, but glanced queasily at his plate before swallowing.

  “Do you…” he began faintly, before clearing his throat and starting again. “Do you think we’re eating one of their siblings? Or, God forbid, offspring?”

  He was starting to look green around the gills, and Charity bit her lips, fighting back a laugh.

  “P-probably more than just one,” she joked, her voice shaky with suppressed laughter. The look he shot her was so appalled, that she immediately regretted teasing him.

  “Shit, I should have ordered the lamb,” he muttered. He had no sooner uttered the words than a cute fluffy white lamb gamboled into the courtyard.

  “Fuck.”

  Charity covered her mouth with her hand, attempting to hide her smile from him.

  “Perhaps you should consider converting to vegetarianism,” Charity suggested, her tongue firmly in her cheek. She knew how much the man loved a medium rare steak.

  He winced, eyes still on the frolicking lamb, and shook his head in what looked like self-disgust. “I tried. When I was younger. But I didn’t have enough strength of conviction. I’m happy enough to eat meat and chicken but only prepackaged and refrigerated and store-bought.”

  “They were all alive once,” Charity pointed out, once again finding herself charmed by another unexpected facet of this interesting man.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. I never order lobster either. I fucking hate it. And I avoid those restaurants with the tanks of live lobsters. The thought of them being cooked alive—” He left the sentence unfinished, but his shudder said it all.