Page 110 of The Best Thing He Never Wanted

She felt a flush creep over her cheeks when he turned and let his gaze travel over her.

“You’re in great shape, Bea, and you’re beautiful.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“No need to thank me.”

She smiled. She knew him well enough by now to understand what he meant. Blane didn’t say things simply because he thought she wanted to hear them. If he told her she was beautiful, or that she looked good, it was because that was what he saw when he looked at her.

“Well, I’m thanking you anyway. I feel so much better for getting out and walking like this every day, and I wouldn’t have started if it weren’t for you.”

“I’m just glad I got to be here and share it with you.”

Her eyes filled before she could stop them. She turned her head, pretending to look across the field before he could see. He didn’t need to know how hard his words had hit her. It was silly to hear them the way she had, as though their time together was already over, and he was talking about it in the past tense.

She could feel that he was watching her, but she couldn’t let him see her face yet; it would give her away. She kept her gaze determinedly turned away from him and spotted something moving in the field beyond the shepherd’s hut.

She slowed, squinting toward it, then stopped. “What is that?”

Blane came to stand behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders as she peered into the distance, trying to make her brain make sense of what she was seeing. Even while she concentrated on the strange shape moving toward them, she was far too aware of how much she liked having him at her back like that.

The figure had passed the shepherd’s hut now, and suddenly her brain made sense of it. She burst out laughing.

“Oh my God. Blane, look.”

“What?”

She pointed, laughing too hard to explain, and he followed the direction of her finger.

Pericles was trotting toward them through the field, trailing an unmistakable expanse of white lace behind him.

Blane went completely still, and Bea laughed harder.

He stared at the goat for another long moment. “That fucking goat.”

Bea still hadn’t gathered her composure when Katerina’s sister, Dimitra, came hurrying up the lane toward them. She stopped dead when she spotted Pericles and called out something that Bea, despite her limited Greek, was fairly sure she understood the gist of—and it didn’t bode well for the goat.

Pericles approached looking shamefaced, if that were possible for a goat.

Dimitra gave Bea an apologetic look and hurried over to free the tablecloth, which had somehow snagged on one of his horns. Bea imagined he must have been wearing it since sometime yesterday.

“He is bad boy.”

“Yeah, we already established that,” Blane agreed.

Dimitra rolled up the tablecloth and presented it to Bea. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. I’m sure it’ll wash.”

As they watched Dimitra hop over the low stone wall, catch hold of Pericles’s ear and lead him away, Bea kept getting the giggles.

Blane cocked an eyebrow. “You find it funny?”

She laughed. “Not just funny—hilarious. Of course, I hope there’s no lasting damage to the lovely tablecloth, but Blane, did you see him trotting across the field? He looked absurdly pleased with himself, like he’d stolen the thing deliberately and was waiting for compliments.”

Blane made that huffing sound.

“You’re not amused?”