Page 15 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

Avery: I’m going to call your mom if we don’t hear from you today. All good?

I grimaced, shading the phone so I could see better. Avery would call my mom; she was the responsible one to a fault. Honestly, she had helped raise me almost as much as my mother post-divorce, despite only being six years older than me. Six years older meant she was just old enough to be helpful and responsible and young enough to be around, unlike Mom, who’d had to get a job when Dad left.

Lucy: Sorry, sorry! I am in fact alive, and guess where I am! A lighthouse… with absolutely no significance toAnne of Green Gables. I can just taste the promotion now.

Did I tell them that Finn had saved me? I had wanted to give myself some time to figure out what this older version of Finn was like. But it would seem he was a copy of his junior high self, so right now I needed to vent, and who better to complain to than my five best friends?

Lucy: And I’ll give you three guesses on who saved me ??

“Talking about me?”

I jumpedin my seat, spinning to where Finn was standing beside my bench—positioned so he couldnotsee my phone screen.

“Still into eavesdropping, are you?” I asked as I tucked the phone into my back pocket.

“I don’t know what you’re alluding to.” He lowered himself onto the bench a foot away from me.

“Maybe that time you heard me planning a birthday party at the skating rink, and happened to show up?”

“If you’d just invited me, I wouldn’t have needed to sneak in,” he said with a shrug.

“It was girls only.”

“All your friends loved me. They were happy to have me along.”

Pushing aside the little trip down memory lane, I said, “Speaking of tagging along places… why am I here?”

His eyes grew innocently wide. I wasn’t falling for it.

“Because you wanted to join our tour group.”

I tilted my head and pursed my lips to the side. “I wanted to join theAnne of Green Gablestour group.”

He watched the ocean, nodding along like he knew exactly what I meant. “Yep, we’ll go to several of those locations too.”

I resisted the urge to punch his arm. “Maybe next time you could tell me beforehand if I’m about to waste my day at a pointless tour stop.”

Finn looked around suddenly, his eyes glancing across the landscape in such a covert way that I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder as well. He lowered his voice and leaned closer when he spoke. “Shhh. Don’t use the word pointless around here. Every place has historical significance. Every place is beautiful. Every place is worth the visit.”

Did he take anything seriously?

I started to stand, but he scooted toward me, clasping his hands in front of him and looking up at me with those dark eyes.

“Don’t go,” he said. And something in his voice actually made me pause. Something with just a hint of that feeling authors described in romance books.

And then he ruined it all by adding, “You’ll miss our tour of the potato museum.”

I threw my hands up. “Finn. I’m here on work—my future with the company depends on this trip going well, and it hasn’t been so far. I don’t have time to mess around at lighthouses and potato museums, no matter how significant, beautiful, or worthy they may be. I need to be working, not vacationing.”

Finally, that teasing spark left his eyes, and he nodded, brow furrowing in thought. “I can’t get you home before the museum, but I promise to tell you where the Hastings are going over the next two weeks so you can cross off any you don’t need. I’ll even be your personal tour guide for any other locations you have to see.”

Something twisted in the region of my heart when he said that with such sincerity. Between the anger and the… other stuff… I was feeling, I’d need an antacid if I spent any more time around this guy. “It’s okay. I’m getting a rental car.” My phone pinged on cue, and I glanced down, then held up the screen. “See? My intern just booked it all.”

“Same intern who booked your hotel and rental before?”

I pursed my lips.

“Maybe I’ll go with you to pick it up just in case.”

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