She dropped her shoes to the floor and helped herself to coffee. ‘You got me kind of curious when you wanted us to run that day.’ He’d made her feel like a lazy slob, but she didn’t say that out loud because she didn’t want him to feel bad about that. Not after everything he’d done for her yesterday. ‘Made me wonder if I could run the length of the beach.’
‘I bet you rocked it in.’
His faith warmed her. ‘Not rocked it in,’ she confessed, planting herself at the table. ‘But I did it. And it gets a bit easier every day.’
He moved to sit opposite. ‘You’ve been for more than one run? How many?’
She rolled her shoulders. ‘Only four.’
‘And you don’t hate it?’
‘It’s not like my new favourite thing or anything.’ But she didn’t hate it. Sometimes it felt good to be pounding along the sand. It made her feel...powerful. ‘I like having done it. It makes me feel suitably virtuous.’
He laughed and pointed to a spot above her head. ‘That’s one very shiny halo.’
He leaned back and drained his coffee. ‘Who’d have thought it? You find you don’t hate running, and I find I don’t hate lying on a beach reading a book.’
He hadn’t seemed restless for any of his usual hard and fast sports. She opened her mouth to ask him about it, but closed it again. She didn’t want to put ideas into his head.
He rose. ‘I had a couple of new thoughts about some designs for your shop. Wanna see them after breakfast?’
That caught her attention. ‘Yes, please!’
An hour later she sat at the outdoor picnic table with Finn, soaking up the sun, the views and the incredible designs he kept creating. ‘These are amazing.’ She pulled his laptop closer towards her. ‘You’ve gone into so much detail.’
‘You gave me good material to work with.’
She flicked through the images he’d created, loving everything that she saw. ‘You said—that first day when you showed me what you did—that the first step was the “dreaming big with no holds barred” step.’
He nodded.
She pulled in a breath. ‘What’s the next step?’
‘Ah.’ His lips twisted. ‘The next step consists of the far less sexy concept of compromise.’
‘Compromise?’
He pointed towards his computer. ‘These are the dream, but what are the exact physical dimensions of your shop going to be? We won’t know that until you find premises and either buy them or sign a lease. So these designs would have to be modified to fit in with that.’
Right.
‘You’ll also need to take into account any building works that may need doing on these new premises. And if so, what kind of council approvals you might need. Does the building have any covenants in place prohibiting certain work?’
Okay.
‘What’s your budget for kitting out your shop? See this shelving system here? It costs twice as much as that one. Is it worth twice as much to you? If it’s not, which other shelving system do you settle on?’
‘So...fitting the dream to the reality?’
‘Exactly. Deciding on the nitty-gritty detail.’
He swung the computer back his way, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his brow furrowed in concentration and his lips pursed. As she stared at him something inside Audra’s chest cracked open and she felt herself falling and falling and falling. Not ‘scream and grab onto something’ falling, but flying falling.
Like anything was possible falling.
Like falling in love falling.
Her heart stopped. The air in front of her eyes shimmered. Finn? She’d...she’d fallen in love with Finn? Her heart gave a giant kick and started beating in triple time. She swallowed. No, no, that was nonsense. She wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Finn. He didn’t do serious. He treated women as toys. He was a playboy!
And yet... He did do serious because they’d had several very serious discussions while they’d been here. She’d discovered depths to him she’d never known. He wasn’t just an adrenaline junkie, but a talented designer and canny businessman. The playboy thing... Well, he hadn’t been out carousing every night. And he hadn’t treated her like a toy. Even when she’d wanted him to. So it was more than possible that she had him pegged all wrong about that too.
In the next moment she shook her head. Rupert had warned her against Finn, and Rupert would know.
But...
She didn’t want to kill the hope trickling through her. Was it really so stupid?
‘Okay, here’s a budget version of your shop.’
Finn turned the laptop back towards her. She forced herself to focus on his designs rather than the chaos of her mind. And immediately lost herself in the world he’d created.