The Best Next Thing

Watching them cry over him had proven impossible to do, and Charity had begged her attorney, the only person on this earth who knew her truth, to help her find a place to hide. To lick her wounds in private. Mr. Lanscombe had found this position for her…he’d practically had it created for her. He had known Miles’s family attorney and had called in a favor.

And Charity had fled.

Something that she should have done during those three long years of abuse. She hated herself for not leaving him. For making every excuse under the sun until she had run out of excuses and instead found herself acknowledging that she was weak, stupid, and powerless. It had been her lowest point. He had owned her after that.

Body and soul.

“Cherry?” She snapped back to the present at the sound of her sister’s voice and realized that her face was wet with tears. She stared blindly out of the kitchen window and was alarmed to see Miles coming up the path. He caught her gaze and his brow lowered, but she turned away and scrubbed the edge of her sleeve over her damp cheeks.

“Faith, I can’t come. I have responsibilities here,” she said, hoping her sister wouldn’t hear the betraying husk in her voice.

“Cherry, you have a family who loves you, please come home.”

A familiar refrain.

“I’ll consider it. If I…if I can find a way to…” Her voice tapered off when the backdoor opened, and she kept her face averted, not wanting Miles’s perceptive gaze to spot any trace of tears on her cheeks.

“Everybody would love to see you. Sandra and Paul will be there too. They’ve been so lost since…since it happened. It would be wonderful if they could spend time with you again.”

Charity knew that, and it was the main reason she did not want to go to her niece’s party. Sandra and Paul Davenport, her husband’s parents. She had stopped thinking of them as her parents-in-law around the same time she had comprehended that they knew about Blaine’s abuse of her.

They were her parents’ best friends. Of course, they would be at the party. Beloved Aunt Sandra and Uncle Paul.

Maybe if you’d stop making him so angry, Charity. Her mother-in-law’s gentle suggestion, offered in an oh-so-helpful tone of voice, drifted through her mind. This after a particularly bad beating. He had broken her ribs that time, and Sandra had taken her to the hospital, offering some explanation or excuse for the injury that the doctors hadn’t questioned.

“Faith, I have to go,” Charity said, knowing she sounded abrupt but unable to do anything about that. She hated having Miles here to witness any part of this call. It felt like an intrusion. “I love you. Hugs to Gracie.”

She disconnected the call before her sister had the opportunity to say anything more. She cleared her throat and took a moment to compose herself before turning to face her boss.

He wasn’t paying her any attention. Instead, he was guzzling down a bottle of mineral water while Stormy enthusiastically did the same at her water bowl. After finishing half of the bottle in one go, he lowered it to wipe his forearm across his lip. The move was so unlike the fastidious Miles Hollingsworth that Charity couldn’t help but stare.

He caught the stare and lifted his shoulders.

“I’ll have to remember to take some water along next time.”

“You look…” She paused and considered her words. Hot, sweaty, wrung out, and not at all like his usual self. In fact, she would go so far as to say he looked really, really good. Despite his thinness and his sick bed pallor. His black hair—so much longer than she was used to seeing it—was wild and damp. The thick, unkempt mane framed his face attractively.

He was tallish, five nine or ten, and sparely built. Some would probably be generous in their use of the word “average” when describing Miles Hollingsworth. Charity would be the first to admit that perhaps he was beautifully, boringly average at first glance. In fact, the only thing about him that wasn’t average was a hawkish nose that dominated his narrow face and would have most people struggling to call him even passably handsome.

But there was something about him…about those plain features. A sharpness to his cheekbones and an edge to his jawline. Something in the piercing and aloof chill of his striking steel gray eyes. That penetrating stare, combined with that overbearing nose, was what made him seem so unapproachable.

That reticence was the very reason Charity should stay as far away from the man as possible. Yet something about him appealed to her in ways that she found unsettling and tried to keep suppressed. And while it had always been there, this tiny tug of attraction, she had never truly admitted it to herself before this moment.