parents, her sister, the people who loved her, to mourn her abuser. As if he warranted that consideration. As if he was worth a single one of their tears. She had permitted his parents to silence her with their stoic disappointment in her. The oh-so-subtle jabs that perhaps he wouldn’t have killed himself if she had only been a better, more loving wife, had been a different kind of abuse.
He did not deserve to live on fondly in people’s memories.
He deserved to be known as the hideous, repulsive monster who had raped her and beaten her almost daily.
She was shaking. Violently. She became aware of it when she heard her teeth chattering.
“W-why are you so invested in this?” she asked him, her voice unsteady. “This isn’t fun, or flirty or anything close to a holiday romance. You should be running in the opposite direction and avoiding me like the plague after what you’ve learned about my marriage.”
“Give it time.” The words were placid, his smile soothing. “There’s always tomorrow.”
“Always tomorrow for what?” she asked blankly.
He responded, still in a ridiculously serene voice. “Running scared and avoiding you like the plague.”
His words coaxed a reluctant laugh from her and he reached for a napkin and gently dabbed the moisture from her face.
She took the napkin from him and gave her nose a good blow before speaking again. “I’m serious, Miles. I’m clearly a mess. This thing between us isn’t developed or strong enough for you to stick around for this crap.”
“Charity, I didn’t come here looking for a holiday romance. I’m here to hide from the world while I recover from a debilitating illness. I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
“Of course, you were.”
“Don’t be pedantic, Charity,” he chastised without heat. “You know what I mean. I admit that at first, I did consider you an intriguing mystery that had to be solved. It was that fucking power outage. I was bored out of my mind. You and Stormy were the only diversions around. And she sleeps eighteen hours a day. But after that night at the pool…things changed. I was still interested but on a more, shall we say, personal level.”
“You wanted to shag me you mean?”
“So bloody desperately. I mean, there was sexual interest before that. But mere twinges compared to how much I wanted you after that night.”
“This is a lot of baggage to tolerate for a little nookie,” she pointed out acerbically, and he gave her a lazy smile.
“While I may feel like a perpetually horny teenage boy around you, Charity, I am not an adolescent. And I do have a modicum of hard-earned control over my hormones and base desires. Look, what I’m trying to say is that there’s no one else here for us right now. So why don’t we each be what the other needs us to be.”
“And what do you need me to be?” she asked in frustrated confusion. “A sexual partner?”
“No. Not because I don’t want it but because it’s probably not what you need right now. And that means it’s off the table.”
“So, what do you think I need right now?”
“The same thing I need…A friend.”
A friend? How…novel. And yet the notion of having someone in her corner, someone to confide in, spend time and laugh with, after so many years alone was incredibly appealing.
“And you can switch off the sexual thing? Just like that? Why would you even want to? What if I don’t want you to?”
“I can’t switch it off. I’m not. It’s on the back burner for now. It’ll happen or not. Either way, I’d like for us to be friends. In fact, I do believe we’re well on our way to establishing a friendship already.”
“I really liked what we did earlier though. In your room.”
He groaned before slanting her a heated look. “I did too.”
“I like the idea of having a friend, Miles. But I like the idea of having a lover just as much.”
She watched his throat move as he swallowed.
“I do too.”
“Blaine took so many decisions from me. How I should dress, who I should speak with, where I could go…when, where, how we had sex. It’s been so long since I had a choice. And right now, I need a friend…but I would also like a lover.”
“You can have both, Charity. I just don’t think we have to rush into anything.”
“What about friends with PG-13 benefits?”
He placed his hand, palm up, on the coffee table between them. She smiled, and without hesitation, put her