Page 123 of The Best Thing He Never Wanted

He nodded. “Okay.”

“And if we’re going to spend our last day doing something practical, we might as well try to have some fun with it.”

“Car shopping can be fun.”

She gave him a skeptical look.

“Sometimes.”

That made her smile. “All right then. Let’s go and find me a car.”

He leaned across the space between them, and her hand came up to his cheek as he kissed her softly. If loving her meant helping her get ready for the life she was going to keep living after he was gone, then that was what he’d do—and he’d make damn sure they had some fun doing it.

~ ~ ~

When they arrived at the Suzuki dealership in Chania, Blane let go of Bea’s hand so he could park, and she realized for the first time that he’d been holding it for almost the entire drive.

He looked across at her. “You okay?”

She really wasn’t, but there didn’t seem much point in saying so. “I am.” She patted the dashboard. “And I think this little thing has made one decision very easy for me.”

“What’s that?”

“I want an automatic. Like this one.”

His eyebrows came together. “That was something you needed to decide?”

She let out a short laugh. “Oh, I forgot. You Americans only drive automatics, don’t you? To be fair, I think that’s becoming much more common in the UK now too, but when I learned to drive, a manual gearbox was the only way to do it. So yes, as you people would say, I am perfectly capable of driving a stick shift.”

He laughed. “Okay. I apologize. Should’ve known better.”

She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. “There’s no reason you should have known, though, is there?”

He held her gaze for a long moment but didn’t answer, and the sadness that passed between them was enough that she wished she hadn’t said it.

He reached for the door handle. “Come on.”

She’d expected them to go straight inside and find someone to talk to, but instead he caught hold of her hand again and led her toward the rows of cars outside.

“I know we talked about it, but you sure you don’t want one like ours?”

She looked back at the dusty, dented white Vitara that had somehow become, just as he’d said, our car, and something caught painfully in her chest. “I don’t think so. It’s lovely, but…” She met his gaze briefly before looking away. “When I’m by myself, I think I’ll be more confident in something smaller.”

His arm came around her shoulders, and she didn’t mind in the least that he held her against his side a little too tightly. She curled her arm around his waist.

“My goodness, Blane. I don’t think I’ll survive this if every little thing we talk about brings us back to the fact that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

He looked down at her, and his eyes seemed a darker gray than she’d ever seen them. “I know what you mean, darlin’. Right now, I want to pick you up, bundle you back into our car, drive away and just keep going.”

She tightened her arm around him and didn’t tell him quite how much she loved the sound of that. He gave her a smile, but it wasn’t one of his real ones. It looked like it cost him something, and she loved him all the more for trying.

“We said we were gonna have fun, right?”

She nodded. Coming to buy herself a car had seemed like a sensible way to use the day, but at that moment she wished they were back at the house, curled up together and pretending tomorrow might never come.

Blane pointed toward a tiny city car, one of those little two-seater things that looked as though a passing bus might flatten it and not even notice. “That the kind of thing you’re looking for?”

She laughed and slapped his arm. “You know full well it isn’t.”