The Best Next Thing

Miles had been strangely quiet throughout the flight. They had worn headsets for communication, and while she had vocally thrilled over the incomparable sunrise, magnificent pods of humpback whales, craggy cliffs, pristine beaches, and rugged mountaintops, he had barely strung together two sentences.

And once the helicopter began its descent, somewhere close to Stellenbosch in Cape Town as far as she could tell, she had sensed him tensing more and more. Maybe he was a nervous flyer. She couldn’t quite imagine that, but it seemed like a logical explanation for his strange mood.

They were landing in the middle of a grassy field, close to what she assumed was a wine farm. She could see a large group of people milling close by.

It was just after eight, and Charity figured most of the people gathered had to be hotel staff to welcome them. Miles Hollingsworth was a pretty high profile guest, and Charity knew that they would pull out all the stops for a man of his caliber.

The pilot set the chopper down gently and flipped a few switches, before looking over his shoulder and grinning at them.

“Welcome to Weltevreden Estate,” he said jovially, before returning his attention to the knobs and dials. But Charity—instantly blinded with rage after that cavalier identification of their location—was no longer paying attention to the pilot. Instead, she turned to glare at Miles, who looked pale and anxious and sicker than he had in weeks.

“How…” Charity shook her head and forced her chaotic thoughts into order before attempting to speak again. “How dare you?”

“Charity, please hear me out. I knew you wouldn’t make this decision by yourself and—” Words continued to tumble from his lips. Sounding practiced and a little desperate, but nothing he said in this moment could make this right.

She had trusted him. And this was a complete betrayal of that trust.

“This was my choice to make. Not yours. Never yours. How fucking dare you?”

He swallowed, ashen, trembling.

The pilot, who could hear their conversation through his headset, shot them a troubled glance over his shoulder and removed his headset to give them some privacy.

“I trusted you to never hurt me. And this hurts, Miles.” She was beyond livid. “You shouldn’t have forced this on me. Take me back!”

“It’s too late,” he said, dismayed. “Faith knows we’re coming. They stayed at the hotel last night because they wanted to make a proper weekend out of this, and she messaged me earlier to say that they would all be waiting at the landing sight.”

Charity’s trembling hand crept up to her mouth, and her eyes drifted back to the group of people that she had assumed consisted of mostly hotel staff. Through a blur of tears, she could now pick out individuals in that crowd. She knew everybody there. Her parents, Faith, and Faith’s husband—Stuart. A few close cousins and their spouses. And nearly lost among the adults, was the tiny figure of her niece, jumping up and down excitedly.

And, of course, also standing among all of those much-loved people was Paul. And Sandra.

At the unwelcome sight of her former in-laws, a huge part of Charity wanted to curl up and hide from the inevitability of this moment. But she tossed back her shoulders defiantly. Refusing to buckle beneath this last remnant of Blaine’s suffocating control. His parents no longer had the power to hurt her.

“Charity, I made a mistake but I thought—”

“I’m not interested in what you thought.” She was scathing in her dismissal of Miles’s frantic attempt at an explanation.

“Charity, I’m so…”

She shot him a disdainful look before deliberately lifting the headset from her ears, effectively drowning him out beneath the noise of the helicopter.

His mouth slammed shut and the look of abject misery on his face would have been satisfying if she wasn’t so devastated by what felt like a massive loss.

Miles watched Charity gird herself to face her family. She smoothed her hands down the front of the flirty, pleated chiffon skirt of the lovely dress she was wearing and patted her short tresses nervously. It was a gesture that he hadn’t seen her use in weeks and hated that it was back. Hated that he was the reason it was back.

Christ, he had fucked up so badly. He should have stayed out of it, he should have let her do this in her own time. She was right…how fucking dare he? It wasn’t his place to fix her life. He should have supported her decisions to do what needed to be done at her own pace.

And now, because of his sheer arrogance, it looked like he had lost her.

The pilot hopped from the cockpit and opened the door for her and she stepped down. She looked ethereal and beautiful. The pastel pink of her dress such a gorgeous contrast to the velvet perfection of her brown skin…the downwash from the rotors lifted the skirt enough to give him a tantalizing glimpse of the lacy white panties beneath, before she ruthlessly clamped her palms over her butt and crotch to keep the skirt in place.