up dating vapid and beautiful women—mostly younger than her—and was about to marry a woman his own age.
He and Annie seemed to be blissfully happy, and after what Laura and the crazy gold-diggers had put him through she was happy for him. He deserved to be loved and loved well. And, judging by the perpetual grin he was sporting lately, Annie loved him very well indeed.
Callie let out a whistle that Patch had taught her as a kid and Patch instantly turned, his fantastic smile lighting up his face. She might have had a screwed-up childhood, and maybe Patch hadn’t been the perfect father, but it had been a very long time since she’d doubted that he loved her. He was one of her best friends and the strongest rope keeping the balloon that was her life tethered to the ground.
Patch bounded across the sand and immediately pulled her into his arms, warm and strong. She buried her head in his neck, sucked in the smell of him and felt her tilting world settle down. Patch ran a hand over her hair before kissing her temple and stepping away from her to sit on the wall next to her.
‘Seb told you, huh?’
‘Yeah.’ She suddenly remembered that her mother had been his wife and wondered how he was handling the news. ‘How do you feel about her returning?’
Patch shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean much to me except for how it affects you and Seb.’
Callie sank her bare feet into the warm sand and wiggled her toes. She bit the side of her lip and stared out to sea. ‘I’m running away …’
Patch cocked his head. ‘You are? Where to?’
‘Well, it’s not quite settled, but there’s this guy and he needs a—a friend to go on a trip with him.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘He seems nice, and he’s just gone through a rough time, and we seem to like each other …’ Callie waved her hands in the air. ‘Not as … you know … but I think we could be friends … He needs a friend.’
‘Most of us do,’ Patch agreed. ‘And you want to avoid seeing Laura.’
Callie waited a beat before turning anxious eyes to his face. ‘Am I wrong? Should I be meeting her?’
Patch ran his hand over his jaw. ‘Honey, for the last ten years, ever since you totalled your car at a thousand miles an hour, I have trusted you to do the right thing—not for me but for yourself. I still trust you to do that.’ He reached for her hand and held it. ‘That thing we call intuition? That little voice? It’s your soul talking. You can trust it.’
‘My intuition is telling me to go on this trip with Finn.’
‘Then do it,’ Patch said, before frowning. ‘Wait—is this Rowan’s client? The travel writer?’
‘Mmm.’
Patch smiled broadly. ‘Tell him to come kayaking with me—maybe he’ll do an article on the tours.’
Callie had to smile. Her dad was her rock, but he was never shy about putting himself forward. Ah, well, she thought as she sat with him in the morning sun, you don’t get apples from orange trees.
Callie buzzed Finn through the gates of her complex in Camps Bay and walked onto the wide veranda that encompassed most of her second-storey luxury flat. She leaned her arms on the railing, watching as he steered his expensive SUV into her visitor’s parking space. He left his vehicle and Callie watched as he stretched, his T-shirt riding up his abdomen to reveal a ridged stomach that had to be an eight or ten-pack and the hint of make-women-stupid obliques.
She did appreciate a fine-looking man, Callie thought, and they didn’t come much finer than Finn Banning. Sexy, and also very successful She’d researched him and read that he had been an award-winning investigative journalist before switching to travel journalism, where he was raking in the praise.
What had really gone wrong with his engagement? Why had they called it off? Why would any woman walk away from that?
Maybe there was something about Finn Banning that she didn’t know yet—and that worried her. Especially if she was considering spending three weeks in his company.
After she’d called him from Awelfor she’d spent ten minutes convincing him that she wasn’t joking about being his ‘wife’ and avoiding his probing questions around why she’d changed her mind. She’d ended the conversation with the suggestion that if he still thought that taking her along was a good idea he should pop by for a drink at sunset.
And here he was—still hot, still sexy, still sad and still, apparently, wifeless.
He was her get-out-of-the-country card. Okay, the truth was that she didn’t need him to go anywhere—she had enough cash at her disposal to go anywhere she wanted. But since she was taking a month’s holiday at very short notice wherever she went she would be going alone. Normally she wouldn’t mind being alone, but at the moment she needed a distraction from her thoughts—from thinking about Laura.
She’d thought she’d buried those feelings of betrayal and abandonment but apparently it only took the knowledge that Laura was heading home to pull them all back up to the surface.
If she went anywhere alone she’d think and wallow and feel sad and miserable. But if she went with Finn she’d have a sexy man to distract her; she’d have to be happy and flirty and … well, herself.
She could shove all thoughts of Laura back into the box they’d escaped from.
Finn pulled off his sporty sunglasses and held them in his hand as he looked around the complex, eventually seeing her number on the front wall. He rubbed the back of his neck as he stopped a couple of feet from her door—a gesture that told Callie he wasn’t totally comfortable with this idea and was thinking of backing out.
‘Finn … hi.’ She leaned over the balcony to look down at him, not aware that she was giving him a super-excellent view of her hot pink lace-covered breasts. ‘The door is open. Come on up the stairs and hang a left. It’s too gorgeous an evening to be inside.’
Finn nodded and walked through the front door. She heard the thud of the door closing behind him, and his rapid footsteps told her that he was jogging up the stairs. Through the wooden patio doors she saw him entering her lounge, looking around at the eclectic furniture and her wild, colourful abstract art. He dropped his glasses, mobile and keys on her coffee table and looked at her across the room.
His eyes caught hers and a small smile played on his lips. ‘Hello, possible fake wife.’
Callie laughed, immediately at ease. What was it about him that instantly had her relaxing? She felt she’d known him a lot longer than she had.
She watched as Finn stopped, as everyone always did, at the wall of photo frames. She watched his eyes skim over the photographs, quickly taking in her history—her journey from being a daredevil kid to a daredevil teenager to who she was today, whoever that was.
Finn spent more time than people usually did staring at the photos, eventually turning to look at her, his eyebrows raised. ‘You’re up a tree.’
‘I frequently was.’
He pointed to a frame. ‘You look like you’re about forty feet up.’
