The Best Next Thing

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.

He glared at the table, and Charity leaned forward to shift his plate aside.

“Save some space for dessert,” she suggested gently, and he heaved a sigh and slanted her an unreadable glance from beneath those dark, furrowed brows. Her breath caught at the intensity of that look, and she found herself quite unable to do anything but stare helplessly back.

He opened his mouth to reply, but Stormy chose that moment to open her eyes. She immediately spotted the lamb and chickens and was on her paws and hysterically yapping in under ten seconds.

Miles shifted his penetrating gray stare to his dog, and Charity heaved a relieved sigh, before pushing her own nearly empty plate to the side.

The hens, startled by the onslaught of barking, squawked indignantly and waddled away fussily. The lamb toddled forward on stilt-like legs, seemingly curious about the noisy creature making all the fuss. Bleating plaintively, it ignored Stormy’s frantic barking and shoved its face toward the dog’s chair.

Miles grinned, and when he stroked the lamb’s velvety looking muzzle, Stormy calmed down almost immediately, clearly trusting her human to know best. She cautiously sniffed at the strange creature standing so close to her, but when the lamb baaed again, Stormy yelped and leaped into Miles’s arms.

He laughed, that same carefree laugh he had shared with Sam Brand earlier, and Charity swallowed painfully. She wasn’t at all happy with the way his laughter made her feel and didn’t know how to deal with it.

The lamb bounced away and disappeared around the corner. Stormy stopped barking and curled up on Miles’s lap with a contented sigh.

Miles chuckled quietly. “She seems a little smug now, doesn’t she?”

“She probably thinks she scared them off.”

He shook his head and fondled the dog’s ears.

“Crazy mutt,” he grumbled beneath his breath, his voice loaded with affection.

Charity didn’t respond to that. She aimlessly fiddled with her water glass; twirling it, running her index finger along the rim, tracing patterns in the condensation on the smooth, cold surface. Miles allowed the silence to grow, and for a long while there was nothing but the sounds of birds chirping, chickens clucking in the distance, a cow mooing, and the wind gently susurrating in the grass and the leaves of the massive wild fig trees dotted around the courtyard.

“Are you divorced or widowed?”

The question seemed to come from nowhere and, after allowing the soothing sounds of the farmyard to lull her into an unguarded and relaxed stated, it unnerved Charity. But it was just a question. Personal, sure…but no more so than any of the ones she had asked him today.

“What makes you think I’m either?” she replied with a nonchalance that surprised and impressed her. Her emotions were in complete upheaval, and she did not want to discuss her marital status.

Not with Miles.

Not with anyone really. But especially not with him. Not when she was starting to feel so many things around him. Physical things. Possibly even emotional things.

Bringing her marriage into this moment—this formerly tranquil, and happy, moment would ruin everything.