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It’s a life so far removed from my own that there are days I wonder if I’ll be able to adjust, assuming Will and I stay together long enough to make that a question. I mean, he and I are great. But I’m not great at living in a greenhouse.
“Hey, look. Taillights. We’re about to roll. Hooray!”
“Hooray,” Will says with no enthusiasm.
“I’m sorry this is stressing you out.”
“It’s not your fault. And I’m sorry I’m so cranky. Having those guys”—he bumps his head against his headrest—“on high alert puts me on high alert, and it’s uncomfortable as hell. Not that I expect anything will happen, it’s just …” He doesn’t finish his sentence.
“Statistically, that’s exactly when something bad happens. I get it. But we’ll be at the house soon. And then I promise, you’ll not feel anything except relaxed. It’s so beautiful there. Peaceful. Full of life, but hardly any people.”
“It sounds like heaven,” Will says, leaning across the giant armrest to kiss me.
A polite double honk tells us our kiss has lasted a little too long.
Will puts the car in gear and rolls a few feet forward while the vehicles immediately ahead of us start moving. Within thirty seconds we’re at highway speed again. Fifteen minutes later, two security men are checking the property around the house I rented, two are inside making sure it’s empty, and the last two are hauling in our luggage and boxes of food.
It all seems like overkill to me since I’m not publicly connected to either Will or his company, and anyone in Lily Valley who knows me—which is a fair few of the two hundred residents—knows that I normally trade gardening services for free B&B weekends in the low season. In other words, the odds of me showing up with a man who earns enough to take me away for a staycation weekend, let alone the richest man in the country, are one in a billion.
“Pretty nice view, isn’t it?” I ask. Will and I stand in a living room with a three-story ceiling and wall of glass overlooking the inlet with mountains across the water. “The sunset will blow you away.”
Will grabs my hips and pulls me backward into him. “What blows me away is seeing how happy you are here.”
“This is nothing!” I face the man who makes me happier than getting a one-of-a-kind orchid to bloom again after being dormant for two years. “There’s a bluff in the forest that overlooks Howe Sound without any obstructions. It’s like standing on top of the world. We can have a picnic there this afternoon.”
“Kind of chilly for a picnic, isn’t it?”
“You won’t be cold. It’s a proper hike. You’ll be glad for the rest. At least, I will. You’ll probably just be happy for the food.”
Since Will is leaving to deliver the European dates of his seminar tour in under a week, he’s warned me he’ll have to work a little this weekend, mostly responding to questions from his travel team.
“Now’s when you can take thirty minutes to work and I won’t even notice,” I say. “I’ll prep some snacks for the picnic, then we can get dressed in hiking clothes, and I’ll show you my favorite place on the planet.”
“Let security know, OK? We’ll need two guys with us.”
Now I’m the three-year-old, wanting to bang my head on the wall to protest this unfair treatment.
“We’ll be alone. I’ve never seen anybody else where I’m taking you.” I stand on my toes to look right into his eyes. “Can’t we do thisone thingwithout chaperones?”
“I wish.” He tilts my chin up and kisses my lips.
“I’d planned a surprise,” I whine. “Anakedsurprise.”
He smirks. “That’s not happening. And not only because we’ll have two guys within earshot, but because there is no way in hell I’m exposing any part of my body to be attacked by nature again. As much as I love your ass, I am not sucking thorns from it.”
“No roses where we’re going … though … there are blackberry vines. Those can tear your arm off if you move through them too quickly.”
“You really need to work on your pitch.”
Afew hours later, Will, Liam, Jake, and I are standing shoulder to shoulder on a rocky outcrop, a mile above sea level overlooking forest, ocean, and mountains in the distance. The air is crisp and smells of dirt and cedar trees.
I pull off my backpack and place it on the picnic table that, the story goes, was carried here a decade ago in pieces by a besotted young man. His lover told him she wanted to have a picnic at the top of the world, so he granted her that wish.
“Do you love it? Don’t you feel relaxed here?” I ask Will.
He leans down and whispers in my ear. “I’d feel a lot more relaxed if you hadn’t planted the idea of making love to you here.”
I mouth, “Make. Them. Leave.”
