I’ve never seen flame azaleas like theirs anywhere else. And the roses… Mind-blowing.”
She had a far-off look in her eyes. Then she seemed to recall herself. “Sorry. I’m holding you up.” She straightened and stepped back from the car, waving a hand to indicate he should go.
“Thanks for the directions.”
She gave an awkward little shrug. He drove out into the street.
“If you’re feeling guilty about looking, don’t,” Hayley said after a few seconds. “I looked. Couldn’t help myself. She has amazing breasts.” She sounded wistful.
Flynn glanced at her briefly before concentrating on the road. “I didn’t look.”
“Flynn. Come on. This is me. A blind man would have looked.”
“I didn’t look,” he repeated. He glanced at her again as he signaled to pull onto the highway.
She looked bemused. “Why on earth not?”
“Because I’m with you,” he said simply.
A slow smile curled Hayley’s mouth. “Sometimes I think you’re too good to be true, you know that?”
“If you believe that, I’ve got some swamp land to sell you.”
“I think I just might buy some swamp land if you were selling it.”
The real estate agent was already waiting for them when they parked in front of Summerlea’s familiar white fence. He scrambled out of his Mercedes as Flynn cut the engine.
“Flynn Randall? Spencer Knox. Pleased to meet you.” His eyes were assessing as they exchanged greetings.
One problem with being a Randall—everyone knew your net worth before you walked through the door.
“We really appreciate you moving the viewing time for us,” Flynn said.
“Not a problem, and it’s great to meet you both.” Spencer paused a moment before offering Flynn a shrewd smile. “We can talk about the weather a little if you like, but you’re a busy man and I suspect you’re keen to cut to the main event. So shall we?” He gestured toward the gate.
“Absolutely,” Flynn said, appreciating the other man’s bluntness.
Spencer walked ahead of them to the pedestrian entrance, situated to the right of the main gate. The paint was peeling off the wood and streaks of rust ran down from the lock. The main gate wasn’t in much better shape and Flynn took a step back to assess the fence line itself.
“As I mentioned on the phone, the old place has been a bit neglected in recent years,” Spencer said. “A combination of old age and money issues, I gather. So things might not be quite as you remember them.”
“Sure.”
The other man struggled with the latch for a moment before the gate swung open with a painful screech.
Hayley gave a nervous laugh. “That sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it?”
Flynn murmured something noncommittal, his focus on what he was about to discover on the other side of the gate. Adrenaline had his heart racing as he stepped into the grounds.
In many ways, Summerlea was where he’d first discovered his love of gardening. He could still remember dragging his feet as his mother led him into the grounds as an eight-year-old, past the crowds of tourists milling about the entrance. He’d been bitching and moaning all the way from the city, sure that he was missing out on doing something cool with his friends. The moment he’d gotten his first look at the garden his complaints had blown away like dust.
Rolling lawns, archways heavy with roses, whimsical benches made out of gnarled local tea-tree branches, copses of birch trees, their trunks silver-white in the sun… He’d been roped into helping his mother in the garden often enough by then to understand that he was looking at something special. A living treasure.
Twenty-six years later, he looked at the same view and saw that the rose arbor was rotted and falling down, the lawns patchy and overgrown, and the benches absent, no doubt having fallen prey to the weather or insects long ago. And still his heart soared, because he knew that not only could he fix all of the above, but he could also make it better. His fingers literally itched for pen and paper so he could start sketching and jotting down ideas and he had to stop himself from stooping to pull the nearest weed from where it sprouted between two paving stones.
He glanced at Hayley, keen to see her reaction, but she’d put on her sunglasses and most of her expression was hidden behind the lenses.
“What do you think?” he said quietly as they walked up the pathway toward the house.
“I imagine it was once very beautiful,” she said diplomatically.
He looked out across the garden once more, and again he felt the pull of possibilities. This place was special. It would be an intoxicating challenge to restore it to its former brilliance. He’d have to pare things back, rebuild. The lawn was a mess, the garden beds overcrowded and full of weeds. With water restrictions in place, the whole space would probably benefit from a modern reticulation system—
Aren’t you forgetting something?
Flynn tore his gaze from the garden and fixed it on Hayley’s slim back as she walked ahead of him. He didn’t have time to indulge this dream. He was responsible for Randall Developments now, and things would only become more intense with his father.
This was too much for him to take on right now. No matter how much a part of him wanted to.
And yet the thought of walking away from this opportunity made him want to grind his teeth. He’d already walked away from Verdant Design and the career of his choice. He needed something of his own. Some way of keeping a small part of his dream alive.
Hands thrust deeply into his jacket pockets, Flynn climbed the steps to the house. For better or worse, the next twenty minutes had the power to change his life.
THEY WERE BOTH QUIET on the way back to the cottage. Flynn was lost in his own thoughts, shuffling things around in his mental diary, formulating scenarios for himself and his parents that would allow him to have his cake and eat it, too.
Not that any of that was going to change the outcome of today’s inspection. At a certain point in the tour he’d given in to the inevitable and admitted to himself that he was going to put in an offer for the estate. It was too rare and precious an opportunity for him to pass up. He had no idea how he was going to make it fit with everything else, but he would work it out.
Somehow.
He turned off the engine when they returned to their accommodation but made no attempt to get out of the car. Instead, he looked at Hayley, who was staring pensively out the windshield.
“What do you think?”
“I think that it’s terrifying, frankly. That house needs new everything. And the garden… I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“I would.” He could hear the relish in his own voice.
She looked at him, a small, curious smile on her face. “Which is why you’re going to buy it, of course.”
She knew him so well.
“Yes. I am.” Anticipation spiked through him as he finally said it out loud.
She opened the car door. “Come on, then. There’s a bottle of French bubbly in the fridge thanks to our efficient hostess. I think this calls for a celebration.”
He followed her into the cottage. She opened kitchen cupboards until she found long-stemmed flutes and he tore the foil and the wire cage off the top of the champagne bottle. The pop of the cork sounded loud in the small space and Hayley laughed and pulled a comic face when the sparkling wine foamed up over the neck.
“Don’t waste it!”
He