jumped back through time six years and all her past awareness of him as a man had returned.
Actually, it hadn’t—because she saw him now with a history of working in his employ for six years. She saw him with more maturity. With more certainty in her interest in him...
‘I started this operation about four months ago.’
Soon after she’d realised she needed a distraction and a way of letting out her emotions, thanks to the implosions going on in her personal life.
She simply couldn’t feel a renewed attraction to Linc, let alone a deeper one. Because— because business and that sort of pleasure didn’t mix. Because she had enough to deal with in her life without trying to take on a romance. Because she’d learned the hard way, when Hugh had disappeared from her life without a backward glance, that you just couldn’t trust romantic attachments once ‘real life’ interfered with them!
Most of all because Linc had rejected her overtures all those years ago. Remember? There was no earthly reason why he’d feel any differently now.
‘Any time I’m out and about I visit garage sales and junk shops...thrift stores and car boot sales.’
Perhaps if she made herself sound like a lonely single girl with a craft obsession, she would embarrass herself out of being so conscious of him.
‘All the items are ridiculously cheap to buy,’ she continued, ‘and people leap at the chance to purchase the end product—the repurposed item. There’s good profit to be made, and the items appeal to the style of visitor who comes here to tour the maze. Jemmie features them online, as well.’
His strong hands lifted a pottery urn from the bench. It had a chunk missing from one side. ‘So a buyer will pay top dollar for this?’
‘Once the urn has herbs growing in it, or maybe some flowering cacti, you’ll be surprised how quickly it will be snapped up.’
She took the urn from his hands, held it up to the light. She ignored her fanciful thoughts and how it felt to stand so close to him, to measure her smaller frame against his taller, stronger one.
Get over it, Cee. Get over it right now!
Cecilia went on to tell Linc about her repurposing timetable, and then led the way back through the nursery acreage to the maze, quickly showing Linc the upgrades she’d had done to the fruticetum at the centre of it. Its circular arrangement combined colourful blooming potted shrubs with evergreen native species.
‘Clever work.’ He made the declaration the moment they stepped into the central area. ‘Those shrubs grouped all around the edges of the circular space will add to the air of mystery for the masked ball.’
She gestured to the picnic tables dotted around the central area as well as the edges.
‘Currently, when folks finish touring the maze, they can sit for a while, enjoy the quiet and utilise the screens embedded in the tabletops to scroll through our available stock lists and place orders. They can either take them with them, collect later or have them sent to any address they choose. The night of the ball there’ll be a raised dais for dancing. The central picnic tables will be shifted out to the edges of the area and the canopied dais will be assembled on-site the day before the event.’
Something she had told herself was mostly about commerce and exposure for the business suddenly felt quite personal to Cecilia. She could imagine herself on that dais, dancing with a handsome partner.
Well, a girl could buy into a romantic idea, couldn’t she? Even if it was an idea she had germinated to increase the popularity of her business.
As for that vision of herself on the dais... The man who appeared in it with her looked remarkably like Linc.
Heat warmed the back of her neck. The middle of a working tour was not the time for such flights of fancifulness. Hadn’t she allowed herself to be distracted enough by him this morning?
‘Will it be an old-fashioned ball?’ he queried. ‘With waltzing and so on?’
Was his voice deeper than usual? Cecilia glanced at his face but couldn’t read his expression.
‘There will be waltzes and other simpler dance tunes. I want people at all levels of dancing ability to be able to participate,’ she murmured, and then had to clear her throat and strive for a stronger tone. ‘I hope to create a night to remember.’
His gaze met hers and, for one breathless moment, electricity seemed to charge the air between them.
‘I’m sure you’ll achieve that.’
Oh, Linc, do you feel this too?
‘I hope you’ll be there.’ The words came unthinkingly, and the warmth that had started at the back of her neck now rushed into her cheeks.
Had she not learned the last time?
She rushed on. ‘What I mean is, it would look good to have the owner here. For business. But I understand you may be busy. It’s not an expectation.’
Cecilia had asked the question with business in mind. She had!
‘I’ll have to consider—’ He broke off as his cell phone started to ring.
Yet not before Cecilia sensed the hesitation in him.
So there. That answered her unspoken question.
Of course he wouldn’t want to involve himself in a masked ball. She had never asked him to do anything like that before. Why should she start now?
Mortification threatened, because she did not want him to see her request as an overture. It didn’t matter what she might or might not have felt towards him since his arrival to undertake this review of the business.
Her request had been about business, and she needed Linc to know that.
Cecilia ignored the little voice that suggested it had been a little bit about the man himself, as well...
A moment later he’d responded briefly to the caller. He turned to Cecilia. ‘I’m sorry. That was the call I’ve been waiting on. I need to go.’
‘You’re fine. Go do what you need to do.’ Cecilia waved him away as though she had some claim to granting him permission or not. ‘And don’t worry about my invitation. I understand if you can’t make it or don’t want to attend. It was a marketing-related thought. That’s all.’
Another thought encroached. What if he did attend the masked ball and arrived with some beautiful woman on his arm?
Not her business—and she wouldn’t care one way or the other!
Linc gave a quick nod and strode off.
Cecilia did not watch his departure until he was out of sight, nor did she stand there daydreaming, incapable of remembering what she should do next even though she’d just given herself a stern internal talking-to.
She merely took a moment to gather herself for her next job. Yes. That was what she did.
And that job needed to be a last-minute check of the maze before the flower-show committee arrived.
Cecilia forced her attention to her work. And it was as she inspected the perfect flowerbeds that Cecilia admitted to herself that she really did hope Linc would attend the masked ball.
But only for business purposes.
* * *
‘You can go ahead and sell off two of the three apartment complexes as whole lots to those investors. It’s a good time to do it, and you know the profit margin I’ll be looking for.’
Linc gave his agreement over his cell phone to his property broker as he strode from his car to the entrance of Cecilia’s plant nursery the following morning.
‘The third is to be offered as individual units under the first home-buyer arrangement we have with our partner real estate firms.’
‘You