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.
Miles wasn’t quite sure what to do…an increasingly familiar sensation around Charity, but he hopped out of the chopper as well. After briefly thanking the pilot, he grabbed their bags and followed Charity. She had thrown back her shoulders and was bravely walking toward her family, as if she wasn’t absolutely petrified of facing them all again.
She didn’t spare Miles a second look but he, nevertheless, followed her slowly. Giving her enough distance to not feel crowded, but making sure he was close enough so that she knew he was there if she needed him.
Not that she would need him. Not that she would turn to him even if she did need him.
The people hovering just yards away, could no longer contain themselves and once she was out of the chopper’s downwash radius, they rushed toward her, with joyful exclamations and open arms. Charity was surrounded by them in seconds, disappearing in the middle of the crowd, swamped with love and hugs and kisses.
Miles knew that she would probably never forgive him…but seeing the vulnerable fear disappear from her eyes to be replaced by love and joy almost made this devastating loss worth it.
Losing her had always been inevitable. But at least now he never had to worry about her being alone, or hiding from the world again.
Because she was finally home.
“Mr. Hollingsworth contacted me last Friday,” Faith explained twenty minutes later, when everybody had settled down to a sizable family breakfast. “He told me that you took your job very seriously and because he had been ill you were reluctant to leave. But he said he knew you wanted to come and felt bad about your missing the party on his account. That’s how he came up with the idea to surprise you by bringing you here today. He said you would never abandon your post so to speak, which meant that he had to do all of this without your knowledge. He’s so nice.”
Oh, he was something alright. But nice wasn’t the adjective that currently sprang to Charity’s mind.
Manipulative, maybe.
Bossy, sure.
Control freak, absofreakinglutely.
But nice?
Charity allowed herself a sigh as she acknowledged, that despite being all of the above…there was no denying that he was nice as well. Miles Henry Hollingsworth was a complex man. And nice, kind, and gentle…were a few of the many layers she had uncovered in him.
But just because he was one of the sweetest men she had ever met, did not mean that he got a free pass after this stunt.
In the following half an hour of sheer excitement and everybody talking over one another and hugs and so much emotion, Charity lost track of Miles. In fact—she surreptitiously glanced around the long, crowded family table—he was nowhere to be seen. The still-pissed-off part of Charity told her that she didn’t care where he was. That he had no place being here anyway. But