Page 22 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

“Do you want the front seat?” I asked as we got close to the car. Finn was only a couple of feet from us, and I still felt his eyes on me.

“No, dear, I’d like to sit with my crazies.”

For someone who had leaned so heavily on me, she grabbed the side of the van and hoisted herself into it with surprising ease.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t seemed to need much help at the airport either, or when traipsing around the potato museum.

Was she okay? Maybe she had dizzy spells or something.

Finn was still watching me, so I slowly turned back to him as the rest of the Hastings piled into the van.

“Are you excited?” he asked, leaning against the hood of the van.

“Depends, do I get to see any potatoes today?”

“For you, I’m sure that can be arranged.” His smile was wide.

The last of the Hastings had made it to the van, and the back door closed beside me with finality. I reached for the passenger-side door, but Finn beat me to it. All I saw was his hand reaching out and grasping the handle, then he pulled it open slowly enough that I could step out of the way. As I slid in, I met his eyes with a raised brow. Mostly to cover how my fingers were strangely shaky as I buckled my seatbelt. He just saluted with those eyes that seemed perpetually smiling, then circled around to his seat. He adjusted his rearview mirror and then glanced back at the group behind us.

“Everybody ready?” he asked.

A cheer rose up from the back, Gemma the loudest of all, and a smile cracked my face. Finn and I locked eyes, and I jolted my gaze forward, my face growing warm.

At a look. Just a look.

I didn’t exactly like how those smiling eyes were making me feel. He had been a complete twerp to me in junior high, and while I wouldn’t usually hold that against an adult—after all, we’d all done dumb things as kids—it was proving a good squasher of my growing attraction. I was here for work, not to be someone’s two-week fling.

And now my mind was galloping its way into a detailed daydream of a vacation fling. “Summer Lovin’”fromGreasewas even playing in the background.

My cousin Dani wrote books. Maybe I should give it a try to get some of these wild scenarios out of my head before they leaked their way down to my heart.

Finn cranked the radio and backed out of the driveway and onto the lane. I couldn’t help the way that my eyes drifted over to his forearms, which were surprisingly muscled. I had never thought of driving as a physical event, but with the way his arms flexed and moved as he turned the wheel, I was seeing it in a completely new light.

“Like the view?” Finn asked, not glancing up from the road, but his voice full of insinuation.

I plastered my heated gaze back out the window. I deserved that. “Yep,” I said, my voice higher than usual.

Finn’slow chuckle combined with the chatter in the back seats. I settled back into my seat, head turned away from the gun show that was Mr. Finn Harrison.

The view coming into Charlottetown was picturesque. The tall spire of Saint Dunstan’s Basilica topped tree-lined streets, all backed by the blue water of the Atlantic. Like the carbonation at the top of a shaken Coke bottle, a bubbling sensation filled my chest. I tried to tamp it down—it did no good to get over-excited for something that might not live up to expectation, but the idea of seeing even a handful of Anne-related things made that hard to do.

I was stepping into her world: the world that had helped raise me when my single mom had work, and I’d sat behind her check-out counter and read books. The soda bottle suddenly felt even more shaken up.

I opted to join the group for the tour of the basilica with its soaring, delicate architecture. Then we all enjoyed walking through the historic Beaconsfield House that very well could have been Aunt Josephine’s grand home, where Anne and Diana stayed in the spare room upon their visit to Charlottetown.

Should I pinch myself? It was like I’d been dropped into one of my daydreams. I felt such kinship with the fictional character that it was hard to remind myself that she was just that: fiction. We even drove by Holland College, where Prince of Wales College—Lucy Maud Montgomery’s alma mater—had once been. I’m fairly certain that detour was for me, because despite the love that Gemma and her three daughters might have forAnne of Green Gables,they didn’t seem overly enthused by the less touristy locations. Meanwhile, I had stared like a drooling dog at the beautiful campus as we passed, and imagined Queens College, where Anne had earned her teacher’s degree.

This was the part of traveling I’d missed. Immersing myself in a new world. Coming to a bookish location though? I hadn’t realized vacations could attain this level of fun.

Work trips, I mean.

But whatever they were called, it made me want this job even more. To be able to create this experience for other people would make going to work like a mini vacation every day. Already I was dreaming up what a Jane Austen tour would look like. Or Louisa May Alcott. I could help other people have this same feeling I was experiencing.

Everyone in the group, particularly the toddler, was dragging by the time we got back to Queens Square to enjoy some shopping and food before theAnne of Green Gablesmusical that evening.

Gemma took her family to a late lunch once little Luke had fallen asleep on his mom, and she tried her best to convince Finn and me to join them, but I’d just seen anAnne of Green Gablesstore across the street and suddenly wasn’t very hungry. Not even the cute bistro tables covered in dappled sunlight from the trees above could convince me to sit and not explore that store.

“I’ll stick with Lucy,” Finn said, pushing his hands in his pockets and coming to stand beside me.

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