The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

‘So we’re ruling out anywhere with pavements.’

‘It’s fine. Ben, you don’t need to play travel escort.’

‘No more city stuff?’ he said, ignoring her.

‘Ben...’

‘Would you like to see my favourite place?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere I go to chill. When I have a business deal I need to clear my head from? Where I go to turn off?’

‘That sounds like a bar.’

‘It’s not a bar,’ he told her. ‘Have you heard of the Adirondacks?’

‘I... Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean...I guess I know it’s a park of some kind.’

‘A park,’ he said, and snorted. He glanced out the window. ‘Central Park’s a park. I’ll show you a park!’

‘Isn’t it...miles away?’

‘You won’t have to walk an inch, I promise. It’s an amazing spring day, one out of the box. Let’s take advantage of it. Okay, Mary Hammond, drink some juice and eat some toast while I do some phoning. Adirondacks, here we come.’

* * *

And two hours later, courtesy of a helicopter whose pilot greeted Ben like an old friend, Mary saw the Adirondacks.

First they flew over them.

‘How can there be such a place so close to New York?’ she breathed, looking down at what seemed endless mountains, rivers, lakes.

‘It’s our best-kept secret,’ Ben told her through the headphones. ‘It’s bigger than almost all the country’s national parks combined, enshrined in the constitution as a wilderness.’

At their landing place there were kayaks and a couple of burly men to help launch their craft. One kayak. One set of paddles.

‘Because you’re not paddling today,’ Ben told her. ‘This is your day of rest.’

‘I can kayak.’

‘It’s pretty much floating. Give it a rest, Mary. Let me take charge.’

By which time she was flabbergasted. This was so far out of her league she was speechless.

‘Just shut up and enjoy it,’ he told her, so she did. This was another world. Ben’s world. She wore one of Ben’s big, warm jackets that smelled of him. She sat in the front of the kayak while Ben paddled behind and there was nothing to do but soak it in.

Ben paddled with the ease of a man who’d done this all his life. That made her feel...like she didn’t know how to feel.

He took her along the Sacandaga River, into wilderness. There seemed to be no soul for miles, except for loons and ducks, and deer standing still and watchful on the river bank. When she saw a great bald eagle soaring in the thermals, even Ben seemed stunned.

‘The eagles disappeared from here by the early sixties, but there’s work to reintroduce them,’ he told her. ‘At last count we had twelve nesting pairs. It’s a privilege to see them.’

She heard his awe and knew that for Ben this was indeed special.

‘How often do you come here?’

‘Often. Whenever I need to be alone.

You’re almost always alone, she thought. Surrounded by people, you’re still alone.

But she said nothing. This was not her business.

‘I’m betting you help fund these wildlife projects,’ she guessed.

‘The company does fund wildlife projects,’ he admitted, but he sounded brusque and she wondered why. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to admit to being passionate about something.

But the more they paddled in this amazing place, the more the feeling of him as a loner intensified. What he’d told her of his family left her cold. Poor little rich boy.

He was a man in control. He was a financier, a commando, a billionaire.

Whatever, he seemed more alone than she was.

He paddled for miles, with strong, sweeping strokes that sped them along the calm surface of lakes and the streams that joined them. He must know where he was going. All she could do was trust him. All she could do was sit back and soak in the majestic mountains rising on either side of the banks, and the utter stillness, broken only by bird calls, the honking of geese and the weird calls of the stunningly marked loons.

The smell of the pine filled her senses. The sun was on her face and Ben was paddling with ease.

He did this often. Always alone? She guessed yes, and wondered if this was his only escape from the financial pressure he lived under.

Why did she keep coming back to his loneliness? Wasn’t she the single mum? She should be worried about herself but, instead, the more she knew of this man the more her heart twisted for the isolation she sensed inside him.

She thought suddenly she’d vowed never to depend on a man. What if a man could be persuaded to depend on her?

It was a crazy thought but it shifted something inside. Something was changing. The defences she’d built up over so many years seemed to be cracking and she wasn’t sure how to seal them again.

Ben was just...Ben. The man she’d held in her arms. A man she could hold in her heart?

It was a crazy thought, unthinkable, but against all reason the thought was there. What if...?

But the what-if stayed unspoken. Indeed, there seemed little need to speak at all. It was as if the wilderness itself was ordering them to be still.

Stop overthinking this, she told herself. Ben’s a loner and he always will be. He’s chosen his own course. Stop thinking and soak this in, because reality started tomorrow.

Alone for both of them.

* * *

This was make-believe. Time out.

Jake would approve, he thought. He was drifting through the most beautiful scenery in the world, with a beautiful woman...

Yep, it was playing make-believe, only it wasn’t. She was a restful woman, his Mary. He could tell already that she loved this place. When he came here he could bring her...