Page 38 of The Best Thing He Never Wanted

He gave her one slow blink.

She laughed. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s a perfectly lovely little village. It’s safe. Everyone’s very friendly.”

“You know your neighbors?”

“I’ve waved to them.”

“Bea.”

“What? I’ll get to know them. There are community things that go on in the village, and the shopkeepers are lovely. I chat to them whenever I’m there.”

“How far away is it—the village?”

“About a ten-minute walk.”

“Walk?”

“Yes, Blane. I have legs. And feet. I use them.”

His brows drew together.

She laughed. “I know your friend Cash would approve.”

It took him a second to remember Cash’s voicemail telling him to get his ass out of the hotel and use his feet.

“That’s not the same thing. What kind of transportation do you have? Tell me you have a car.”

“I’ll get one.”

“You don’t have one?”

“I’m not entirely sure about driving on that side of the road yet. Besides, as I said, it’s only a ten-minute walk to the village. I can get everything I need there.”

He let out a breath through his nose.

“Honestly, Blane, I’ll be fine. You don’t need to conduct a security assessment on my entire new life. I’ve had this arranged for ages. Everything’s going to be wonderful.”

“That sounds more like a prayer than a plan. Do you even speak Greek?”

She tried to hide her smile and failed.

Blane found himself smiling back despite the fact that he disliked pretty much every answer she’d given him so far.

“I’ll pick it up quickly. I know the basics. Hello, goodbye, thank you. And I used to be good at languages when I was younger.”

“That’s supposed to be reassuring?”

“It is, actually. And most people seem to speak English anyway. I’ll get by.” She frowned. “Although I don’t want to be one of those dreadful foreigners.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. The ones who move to another country and expect everyone there to speak English for them. And if they aren’t understood, their solution is simply to say the same thing again, only louder.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be one of those.”

He could see that. Bea would want to learn the language. She’d want to know her neighbors, talk to the people in the stores, figure out how things were done instead of arriving and deciding how she thought they ought to be done.

He knew the other kind. There were plenty of them in Montana these days. People who moved there because they loved what it was, then started complaining about the very things that made it that way. They brought their own ideas with them and expected the people who’d always lived there to adapt.

Bea wouldn’t do that. She noticed the people around her. More than that, she cared about them. That’d serve her well wherever she landed. It’d definitely serve her well in Montana.