completed phase one without a hitch. I might not get another chance.
‘Will you sit down?’ I said to Finn.
‘Are you asking me to, or telling me to?’
He sat on the sofa before I could answer, his long jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him and one arm resting along the back. He wasn’t such an imposing prospect sitting down. In fact, he looked almost relaxed. I wished I was.
‘Look,’ I said, moving to stand right in front of him to make sure his attention didn’t wander.
‘How about I go first?’ he suggested.
‘Absolutely not.’
I know I sounded rude, but I couldn’t risk any interruption. It might have been happening on Finn’s turf, but this was my intervention; my way, my rules, my words first.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘I know this might seem a little unorthodox…’
‘A little,’ Finn snorted, ‘you’ve all but kidnapped me in my own home, Freya!’
I dismissed the ‘tied-up’ image which had appealed to Hannah in the pub.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘and I’m sorry about that.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘Please,’ I begged, ‘please, just listen because I’m here to clear the air between us once and for all.’
Finn nodded and thankfully didn’t say anything else.
‘You told me that you liked me last week,’ I swallowed, ‘and I told you that I liked you back.’
He was most likely wondering why now.
‘Right?’
‘I did,’ he confirmed.
‘And you also said that you have trust issues.’
He began to move and I held up a hand to stop him standing up.
‘I haven’t come to ask what they are because that’s your business, not mine, but what I do want to do is dispute the conclusion that I think you jumped to when we talked about relationships in the pub.’
It felt like forever ago now.
‘I told you,’ I carried on, ‘that I had broken off my engagement at the wedding venue and I think you assumed that I had left the poor, broken-hearted groom at the altar.’
Finn frowned, but didn’t comment.
‘Didn’t you?’ I asked, wringing my hands.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what else was I supposed to think?’
‘I daresay, it was a logical assumption,’ I swallowed again. ‘But it was wrong. My fiancé and I were at the wedding venue when I broke off our engagement, but it wasn’t our wedding day, nowhere near it in fact, and it wasn’t the selfish act on my part that you’re thinking it was, at all.’
‘Go on.’
‘On the day it happened,’ I told him, reaching for a dining chair because my legs were shaking, ‘we were both beginning to realise that our so-called romantic relationship had materialised purely as a result of us working in such close proximity and we were going along with a union which would benefit us professionally, but had absolutely nothing to do with falling in love.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Our families are both highly esteemed landscape architects and they were keen to have more than a business merger. We had successfully worked together on high-profile projects before, and our parents, noticing this, took the opportunity to push us closer together. They thought they were giving us the nudge we needed to take things from professional to personal.’
‘I see,’ Finn frowned.
‘However,’ I carried on, keen to ensure that he really did, ‘when I met Eloise at Broad-Meadows, I talked to her about the relationship, and she told me some blunt home truths before asking me some probing questions. The answers I gave her made the scales fall from my eyes. I realised I wasn’t in love and so I sat my fiancé down and told him what I’d worked out.’
‘And did he understand? Did he agree with you?’
‘Totally,’ I sighed. ‘What we were planning to enter was a marriage of convenience, a business transaction really, and deep down it wasn’t what either of us wanted. We were a dream team when it came to work, and it was our professional compatibility which had seduced us into believing that we were right for each other in love, but we weren’t.’
‘So, if it was mutual a decision to end it,’ Finn asked, ‘then why did you say it was you who broke off the engagement?’
‘Because I was the one who instigated the break. I was the one who got the ball rolling and as I wanted to stop working with my parents and return to a more hands-on horticultural role and he wanted to carry on in the industry, it was easier to explain it that way. I guess it’s just kind of stuck.’