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At least I didn’t waste one of my better outfits on it.
“This… this looks fantastic, Jack,” I say, handing the papers back to him. “I still don’t quite understand, though. You’re going to rent these out? Like holiday lets?”
“That’s the basic idea,” he says, his face alight with excitement as he scans the pages, which I can already tell are very familiar to him. “But it’s so much more than that, too. It’s an Eco-community, Emerald. Sustainable living, but with a luxury twist. Everything here will be the highest quality imaginable, sourced right here in the Highlands.”
He goes on for a bit, talking about how he’s been working with a team of developers for months now, and as I listen, I try my best to summon up some gratitude for all of this.
It’s not every day a girl gets given an entire eco-living community after all. Or a — I take one of the pages back from him to scan it — “harmonious blend of sophisticated design and rustic allure” in the form of a luxury log cabin, with space to sleep 6.
So that’s… awesome.
It seems the road to happiness is still very much under construction. Quite literally, if this place is anything to go by.
“And all this is for me?” I ask, trying not to think about how I came here hoping to be proposed to, but now I’m just standing in a muddy field, with shit on my shoes. “Do you want me to help run it? Is that why you brought me here?”
“Well, no. I mean, it’s notjustfor you,” Jack says, his brow furrowing slightly. “It’s for us, Emerald. It’s our future.”
I nod uncertainly. I personally hadn’t imagined my future in a log cabin. Not even one with an eco-friendly handmade wooden hot tub and wraparound deck.
“This was my grandfather’s dream,” Jack is saying now, placing his hand reverently on the wooden sign. “And we’re going to make it a reality.”
“Your grandfather dreamed of hot tubs?” I ask, surprised. “I thought his dream was to start a distillery? I thought that was why you started The 39? To pay homage to his memory by making the whisky he didn’t live to see?”
“It was,” Jack says, his eyes shining as he turned to face me. “It was his dream; and it became mine, too. But he also wanted to build a community here in the Highlands; to give people a reason to stay, rather than always setting their sights on somewhere new. And Emerald View can be that. It can be all of that. Or that’s the plan, anyway. Just think of the visitors it’ll bring to the area; the jobs, the opportunities. Something like this could really put Heather Bay on the map.”
I nod again. I’m not totally sure how a bunch of Airbnb log cabins is going to stop people leaving the Highlands, really. And Heather Bay was well and truly put on the map last year when Jett Carter came to town with Lexie, and the world’s paparazzi decided to follow them. Thankfully Shona’s campaign to rename the townHeather Slaywas defeated by a narrow margin, but, even so, I’m not sure the town reallyneedsany more tourists.
(Also, I’d never admit it to anyone other than Frankie, but if I’m totally honest, I’m getting a bit sick of Jack’s grandad, and his dreams which must be fulfilled at all cost. The distillery was one thing, sure, and I know how much it meant to Jack to make that happen. But this is something else entirely. Let’s just hope he’s not about to reveal that his grandad’snextdream was to give away all his worldly goods and become a nudist, because there’s only so much a girl can put up with in the name of family, you know?)
But I want to be a supportive girlfriend here. I really do. Because I love him. I want him to be happy. And he’s so excited about this — so much so that I don’t think he’s evennoticedthe smell of cow dung that’s been following us for the last ten minutes, despite my efforts to dislodge it — that I can’t ruin it for him. I just can’t.
If log cabins are Jack’s dream, then I’ll make themmydream, too. I can do that. I’m pretty adaptable. I once spent an entire year answering to the name ‘Emily’ at work, because my boss picked me up wrong when I tried to introduce myself, and I couldn’t bring myself to correct him. So pretending I’ve always wanted to run a small log-cabin community just to make Jack happy will be abreeze, seriously.
And I guess I’ll have a lot of free time now that I don’t have a wedding to plan, won’t I?
So. Emerald View it is, then. I cantotallyturn myself into a girl who runs a log cabin community. I could buy a … a plaid shirt, maybe? And some boots? Or, you know, whatever it is log cabin people wear.
“I think it’s amazing,” I lie, standing on my tiptoes to kiss him. “You’reamazing. I can’t wait to see what it’s going to look like when it’s finished. When will that be, do you think?”
I let him go and turn back to the tractors, pretending to find them fascinating as I try to squash the white wedding hopes I came here with down into a log-cabin sized shape.
“Oh, a few months, I reckon,” Jack says casually. “Just in time for the wedding, I hope.”
“The… the what?”
My heart, which has been plodding along quite comfortably, minding its own business, suddenly skitters to a halt and holds its breath.
What did he just say?
I turn to face him, on legs which appear to have developed a mind of their own.
Jack’s down on one knee, not caring about the mud that he’s kneeling in, with a small, velvet-covered object that is unmistakably a ring box in his hand.
Oh. My. God.
“This place was my grandfather’s dream, Emerald,” he says, “But you’re mine. You’re my dream. You’ve always been my dream — ever since the very first moment I met you. I was standing in mud then, too, remember?”
I let out a sound that can’t decide whether it wants to be a laugh or a sob as I remember our first meeting; me glaring at him from the bus he’d just driven off the road, while he stood scowling back at me from a ditch.
