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