Jamie would be a fool to read anything into Grace’s concern for his future, her desire to see him happy, but he could no longer shield himself from the truth. He’d fallen in love with her. Maybe he’d never fallen out of love with her in the first place.
Perching on a rock ledge, he removed his boots and lowered his feet into water so clear he could see all the way to the bottom. Grace sat beside him and did the same.
Reaching out, he squeezed her hand. She twined her fingers through his. Was it possible she’d developed deeper feelings for him too? The way she looked at him sometimes…
‘I’ve come to a rather confronting conclusion,’ he admitted.
‘Which is?’
‘I don’t like my work.’
She swung around.
‘Tinkering with robotics hardware, creating the perfect software…that’s what I loved. It was like a puzzle—frustrating but ultimately satisfying. I don’t do that anymore. My days are now filled with meetings, brokering deals and deciding on investments.’ And it was sucking the life out of him.
The way Grace lived her life—her appreciation for this place she loved, her dreams and goals, her innate compassion—had worked its magic on him. It made him see what his own life lacked. The enforced break from Sydney had helped too. It had given him the time to take stock of his life. While the beauty and grandeur of the Kimberley—its wildness and remoteness—had left him nowhere to hide from the epiphanies that had inevitably arrived.
Her hand tightened about his. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
He brushed his thumb over the sensitive skin of her wrist and had the satisfaction of seeing her shiver. She might not have developed deeper feelings for him yet, but she wasn’t immune. Surely that was something he could build on?
‘I’m going to turn my life upside down, that’s what.’
‘How?’
‘I’m going to employ a management team to run the company, and then I’m going to buy a rural utopia of my own—get a couple of horses and ride every day. I’ll have a custom-designed workshop built there and I’ll tinker with robots the way I used to. I want to fill my life with the things that make me feel alive again.’
‘Do that,’ she whispered. Her eyes had gone so wide and warm a man could fall into them. ‘Choose the perfect life, Jamie. You deserve it.’
‘I could move out here to the Kimberley,’ he said, then held his breath.
Her mouth opened and closed but no words emerged.
‘But that depends on you.’
‘On me?’
He stared at their linked hands. They belonged together. He could feel the rightness of that deep in his soul. ‘The thing is, Grace, my perfect life would have you in it.’
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