Page 10 of The Best Thing He Never Wanted

She felt him start breathing again under her hand. Caught you, she thought, and didn’t let it show.

She turned the smile on the two young women—careful not to look like the kind of jealous wife who’d take her husband’s wandering out on them. She gave them a kind, unbothered, absolutely immovable smile, the kind of smile that closed the door so gently you thanked it on the way out.

“Hello. I’m so sorry, I’ve got to steal him. He wanders off and forgets he’s married. Don’t you, darling?”

The word darling took her by surprise. Dear would have made more sense, surely. That was the word a wife reached for. Except dear belonged to Simon. Thirty years of use had worn it smooth and gray, and she couldn’t imagine using it here.

Darling, on the other hand, had come out far too naturally. She declined to examine that.

It was only then she noticed Blane had wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He gave her a slight squeeze, and she came back to the moment.

“Oh—” The girl with the phone deflated, though she was gracious about it. “Oh no, you guys are so cute. I’m sorry. We thought he was security. We didn’t mean—”

“Not at all. I completely understand. He does have the security look.” Bea patted his chest. “He’s very proud of it.”

Bea steered, and Blane let her guide him out of the corner and into the flow of the crowd—her arm still around his waist, his around her shoulders—and neither of them said a word until they were swallowed up and safe among twenty thousand strangers who didn’t care who he might be.

Out on the concourse, the crowd flowing around them, she let go and stepped back to a normal distance.

She did miss the warmth of his arm, though she couldn’t for the life of her interpret whatever his knitted eyebrows were trying to signal. If he was cross, that was going to be his problem. He’d signaled for assistance and she’d obliged.

“You’re welcome,” she said, with a smile.

And finally—for what had to be the first time she’d seen—he smiled back.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked. “Play along?”

She considered it a moment, then decided there was no harm at all in telling him the truth. “Because you looked, for about one second, exactly like I felt the night I checked into the hotel.” The eyebrows went up a fraction. “Like the whole world had suddenly noticed you, and you’d have given anything to be invisible again.”

She gave a small shrug. “Just that—I know that look, because I know the feeling inside it. And I’d hate to leave anyone standing in it.”

There was a silence. She lifted her chin as he studied her. It might not mean anything to him, but it was her reason, and she was proud of it.

Then one of the young women called from across the crowd, still cheerful, still wanting to be nice. “Wait—what’s your name? You guys are adorable together.”

Bea turned and smiled. She didn’t know these girls and would never know these girls. She could give them the name that didn’t hold any of her. The full one.

But— She shot a sideways glance at Blane.

Beatrice would never have married him—not even for three minutes, not even as a falsehood in front of two young women.

“Bea,” she called back, easy as anything.

“Bea,” the girl repeated, delighted. “Oh my gosh, like—like the bug? That’s so cute. Bea. What a pretty name.”

Her friend was already drifting away on the crowd. “You guys are so cute,” she called again, and hurried after her.

“Like the bug,” Bea agreed. Just what her sister had warned her people would think, all those years ago, when she’d set down the mantle of expectations that came with the full name. Beatrice.

She inhaled sharply and held very, very still when Blane’s large hand came down on her shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Perfectly.” And as she let herself relax into the moment, the smile turned genuine. “Come on, darling. You can buy yourself a terrible warm beer and tell me nothing whatsoever about yourself, before you go back to hiding in your corner.” She turned toward the bar. “It’s the least you can do.”

~ ~ ~

Of course there was nowhere to sit and have a quiet get-to-know-you over a warm beer. Instead, they stood in line with dozens of other people and mostly didn’t talk. Bea got the impression that silence was his norm—and that he didn’t find it uncomfortable.