I was up early—just before six—thinking we could make a head start, but I found Foster at the wheel in the cockpit and we were already sailing. Which would explain the rocking of the boat. “Oh, morning,” I said, taking the stairs into the cockpit. “I thought it felt rough. I wondered if the weather had changed.”

“Morning,” he replied with a grin. “And no, we’re cutting across the water, heading west to the mainland. It’s not too rough though.”

I looked out at the water. It was smooth enough, but we were going against the grain, if you will. “You were up early.”

He grinned as he steered, not taking his eyes off the bow of the yacht. “Yeah, have an important day trip with this hot guy planned. Don’t want to be late.”

I rolled my eyes to dull my smile. “Whatever.”

He laughed. “No, I want to get moored while the tide is in.”

That seemed a more Foster thing. “Want me to start breakfast?”

He glanced at me. “You don’t have to…”

“I can make toast,” I grumbled, going back into the cabin. Yes, I was his client, but it was just the two of us. I could also help him out by pulling my weight to get shit done. Ten minutes later, I took some toast and coffee up to him, carefully handing the coffee over, our fingers brushing.

“Thanks,” he said with that ever-present smile. He sipped his coffee but seemed reluctant to take his other hand off the wheel to eat his toast.

So, feeling like a bit of an idiot, I stuck it in front of his mouth. “Bite.”

He laughed but chomped into it, and I continued to feed him until it was gone. When he’d taken the last piece, I brushed crumbs off his bottom lip with my thumb which made his eyes flash to mine, and a sexy pink tinged his cheeks.

Well, that was interesting.

“We, uh,” he started, now focusing intently toward the land ahead of us. “We’ll be arriving in about thirty minutes.”

“Then I better go get ready for this hot date,” I replied, lightly touching his arm as I went back down below deck.

Showered, dressed, breakfast things washed and dried, I went up the stairs when I heard Foster talking to someone. It was only about the weather or something, but we were obviously mooring, and sure enough, Foster had us backing in to the jetty, parking us like he would a car, in a long row of boats a similar size.

The sail was done already, everything seemed stowed away, and Foster grinned as he stepped with a familiar ease onto the jetty and manoeuvred the mooring line around a post like it was the easiest thing in the world to do. He tied it off in some kind of fancy knot and stepped back on board.

“Just like that, huh?” I asked, amazed at how adept he was. How he knew to do all this stuff…

“Just like that,” he replied, still smiling. Then he looked me up and down. “Oh, nice to see you did actually pack some clothes. I was beginning to think you only brought Speedos and underwear.”

I looked down at my white shirt, charcoal golf shorts, and grey leather Merrells. “This whole entire outfit cost me a small fortune.” I shrugged. “But I can go in my Speedos if you want? I’m sure the locals won’t mind.”

“If the police don’t arrest you for indecent exposure.”

“Wearing swimmers isn’t illegal.”

“It is if they’re white and completely see-through when wet.”

“Fair point.” I laughed. Then I whispered, “Just don’t make me wet… while we’re in public anyway. I can give you a private viewing later tonight; wet or dry is up to you.”

He made a low growly sound. “Your outfit today is fine. Better than fine, in fact.”

He was far too easy. “Thanks.”

“Have you got everything you need?”

“Yep. I only need my wallet.”

“No phone?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not turning it back on until I absolutely have to.”

“Good idea.” He stepped off the boat onto the jetty and held out his hand. “You good?”

I took his hand, warm and strong, stepped across, not as smoothly as him, but didn’t fall in so I took it as a win. “I am good.” I looked up the marina toward the town of Trinity Beach. It was just after seven, so I assumed all the fishing boats were out already, and the recreational boats were getting ready to head out as well. He’d timed it perfectly.

I had organised to pick up a hire car from the marina, so we sorted all that out, and when we’d walked to the car, I went to the driver’s side and jingled the keys at him. “Now I’m the captain.”

Foster rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. “Then where to first, captain?”

I snorted out a laugh, but we got into the car and buckled up. “Well, I have open tickets for the SkyRail, the butterfly house, national park entry. Let’s do that first. They’ll have places to eat, I’m sure. Then when we’re done being total tourists for the day, we can hit the market for supplies, and by then we can find somewhere nice for dinner.”

“Sounds good. One problem though.”

“What’s that?”

He was reading a pamphlet the car rental lady had given him. “SkyRail doesn’t open till nine. The butterfly place is ten.”

“Then a second breakfast on the beach first it is.”

He laughed. “Sounds even better.”

“But first things first,” I said, starting the car and driving out of the car park. “You’re going to have to direct me because I don’t know where the hell I’m going.”

He laughed and pointed ahead. “Take your first left.”

He directed me to Trinity Beach where we found a café on the beach. We sat, ordered a huge breakfast, and ate it looking out across the ocean. He smiled at the young waitress, laughed with her when she wrote something down wrong, and told her nothing was a problem.

So typically Foster. Smiling in the sunshine, nothing’s an issue, just go with the flow. So very far removed from the corporate life.

I sipped my juice. “You know, sometimes I look at you and I can see how you would have been ruthless and sharp in finance. And then sometimes, like just now, I can’t picture it for anything.”

He cocked his head, amused. “How so?”

I took a deep breath, wanting to word this properly. “When I think of finance and mergers and acquisitions, I think grey suits, grey buildings, grey skies. Then I see you here, and it’s yellow sunshine, blue skies, white sand, aqua water. It’s polar opposites, and it’s hard to reconcile.”

He smiled as though that summary pleased him, and he put a triangle of fresh pineapple in his mouth. “Because I’m not that man anymore. That’s not who I am now. If you’d met me six years ago, you wouldn’t have recognised me. I think the only time I ever smiled was when we closed a deal.”

I sighed, but he wasn’t done.

“And do you think your description of monochrome and dreary settings back home versus sunshine and happiness here is trying to tell you something?”

“Like what?”

He looked me square in the eye. “You’re not happy there.”

I moved the fork on my empty plate so it sat at twelve and six. “Maybe.”

He never said anything back. Maybe he knew I had more to say. Maybe he was using the oldest trick in the corporate book: leave silences and the uncomfortable person will speak first. Maybe I fell for it.

“I’m not happy there,” I admitted. It was hardly breaking news. Anyone willing to look could see it. “It wasn’t just my idea to take this vacation.”

“Your boss saw you were about to crack?”

I shook my head. “My doctor.”

That stopped him. He frowned and his eyes narrowed at the table between us. “If you’re not happy, that’s one thing. But medically…”

“Medically, I was heading for a heart attack or a stroke,” I said, admitting more than I wanted to. “High blood pressure, insomnia. Like my mind was stuck in fifth gear, know what I mean?”

He looked at me then, and there was something warm in his eyes. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I didn’t doubt him, and it was nice, reassuring even, to be able to speak to someone who truly understood what I was going through. Then I cleared my throat and told him what I hadn’t ever told anyone else. “I’d had some panic attacks. I didn’t know what they were at first. My head went all spacey and my lungs went all tight. I thought I was having a heart attack, or more of a blood pressure thing. I didn’t know what the hell it was. Anyway, after a barrage of tests and appointments, my doc told me it was anxiety, and I laughed at her.” I shook my head at how stupid this all sounded. “I mean, how could I, Stuart Jenner, have anxiety? I’m at the top of my game. I’m the guy who everyone wants to be. Phone calls, appointments, clients, emails. I’m in such demand, my PA has a PA. It sounds ridiculous, right?”

Foster shook his head slowly. “Not to me. Sounds like you’re one phone call, one appointment, one client, one email away from doing a Foster Knight.”

“Walking away from everything I’ve ever known to run a private charter yacht in the tropics?”

He almost smiled. “Well, I don’t know about the private charter business, but walking away, yeah.”

I met his eyes. “I’m not as brave as you.”

He reached over and took my hand on the table. “Yes, you are. Like you said, you run rings around your competition. That takes balls.”

“Yes, but I know that world. I don’t know how to not be that guy.”

He squeezed my hand. “I could say all it takes is a leap of faith, but it’s not really that. It’s a case of do or die. Literally. It takes getting to a place in your life when you have no other option but to walk away. One more minute will kill you.”

I nodded because he just nailed everything I’d tried to summarise. My voice was barely a whisper. “When do you know? When do you know you’ve reached that point?”

He gave me a smile that made my heart skip a beat. “Trust me, you’ll know.” He still held my hand. “You know what you need?”

“What’s that?”

“You need a quick walk along the beach after the amount of food we just ate. Then you need a day sightseeing and hiking and a relaxing dinner overlooking the ocean. A few beers, maybe something more.”

He had a glint in his eye that matched his smile. It made me smile in return. “Will there be tequila straight from the bottle? Lick, sip, suck happens to be my new favourite game.”

He chuckled. “Not sure the tequila’s necessary, but sure.”

I drained the rest of my juice, glad the seriousness from before was gone. “I’m just glad we didn’t decide to play a game with martinis. Not sure where the olives would go.”

He laughed and stood up, keeping hold of my hand. “Come on, let’s walk off some of those ridiculous calories we just inhaled.” We waved goodbye to the waitress and took the steps down to the sand and headed up away from where the tourists and locals were now milling around the town.

“I can’t tell you the last time I ate eggs and bacon and toast.”

“It’ll do you the world of good,” Foster said. “How about we make today the day Stuart does a whole lotta stuff he wouldn’t normally do. I want to see you smile all day long, and by the time we get back on board tonight, I want you to tell me you had the best day ever.”

I stopped walking. “Well, if you give me a happy ending when we get back on the boat, I’m sure it will be.”

He laughed and pushed my shoulder. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But?”

He slid his arm around my shoulder and we started to walk down to the water, heading up the beach. “But that depends. You said you liked to be fucked into the mattress. Was that a metaphorical thing, or are we talking literal, inside the mattress, because that could get weird.”

Now it was me who laughed. “I’m pretty sure I’d be happy with either, to be honest.”

He smiled serenely at the water. “This is nice, yeah? Walking up the beach, my arm around your shoulder?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it is. And if we’re ticking things off the ‘Stuart’s never done’ list, then we can add this.”

“Never?”

I shook my head. “Never had the time.”

He gave me a squeeze, then slung his arm around my neck like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Well, I’m glad I’m your first.”

The thing was, I had a feeling Foster might be my first for a lot of things. “Me too.”

The SkyRail was awesome, although I was hoping we would have a carriage to ourselves, but an older, grey-haired couple were bundled in after us, the doors closing the four of us in. They sat facing us, with kind enough smiles, but I could see it on their faces they didn’t know what to make of us. Two guys sitting close enough to touch from knee to shoulder. “Nice day for it,” Foster prompted.

“Most certainly is,” the lady replied.

And then there was an awkward silence, and when we got to the first of two stops and it was pretty clear they weren’t getting out, Foster grabbed my hand and, laughing, we ducked out of the carriage.

There were two stops along the SkyRail that allowed people to get out and explore the rainforest, and given the guide at the base explained the second one was more popular, I was glad we got out at the first.

We had the trail to ourselves.

The air was thick and humid, dank with rainforest undergrowth, loud with birds. Everything was every possible shade of green, and filtered sunlight covered the path. It was kinda perfect.

Foster grinned as he faced me. He threaded our fingers and led the way along the path.

“I’m pretty sure this is how some of Australia’s Most Wanted episodes start,” I joked as he pulled me deeper along the forest path. “Or ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ I should have worn my red shirt.”

His laughter rang out in the trees, birds replying overhead. Then he stopped and pulled me against him and said, “My, what beautiful lips you have.”

“All the better to suck dick with,” I replied, grinning.

He chuckled. “I was going for ‘all the better to kiss you with’ but that works.” Then he kissed me, chaste and sweet, sending a thrill through my body. My heart thumped and my blood felt electric, but he pulled away all too quick and grinned as he led me further down the path.

The forest was beautiful; the hike was invigorating. It was tiring, using muscles I hadn’t used in ages, but I felt so good. We laughed, we talked, we took our time, never rushing. It never felt strange that we held hands or that we stole kisses every now and then. We were acting like boyfriends, and that should’ve been weird, but it wasn’t. It felt so natural, so right. And if holiday flings allowed us to break from our realities and be something else, then why question it?

Foster certainly wasn’t questioning it when he was the one to grab my hand or slip his arm around my waist. The way he smiled, so free, without stress weighing him down, without a care in the world—it damn near took my breath away.

I took photos of him in front of ferns so big, his outstretched arms couldn’t measure. In front of trees that made him look tiny, in front of views that simply didn’t compare to the man in focus. “Selfie time,” he cried when we were back at the SkyRail. The view behind us was pretty incredible, but seriously, when I saw that photo of our heads together, our huge smiles, I almost didn’t recognise myself.

I looked happy.

When we reached the bottom, we grabbed some lunch from the café and sat under the trees outside to eat it. He was so laid back, like we had all the time in the world, and I realised something then, watching him, was that his peacefulness didn’t come from the lack of high-stress, fast-paced corporate life.

It came from within. Like he’d found Zen or something.

I couldn’t even be too jealous because I admired him too much.

“Stuart? You in there?” Foster was looking at me weirdly.

He’d obviously been trying to get my attention. “Oh, sorry. Just thinking. What did you say?”

“I asked if you were ready to go?”

I looked down at my empty sandwich wrapper, which I didn’t strictly remember eating, finished my water, and nodded. “Yep.”

He jumped to his feet and held out his hand, quickly pulling me up. We threw our rubbish into the recycling bin, and about thirty minutes later, we arrived at the Butterfly Sanctuary. Now truth be told, I didn’t think it’d be my thing, and I only agreed to go because the travel agent talked me into it, but it fit in with my ‘things Stuart has never done’ theme for the day.

We walked into the butterfly house, and all of a sudden it was like we’d walked into a fairy tale; the dome had a magical feel, with greenery, and in no time, we were surrounded by butterflies. And not just your average garden variety, but huge, bright-coloured ones. Some were blue, some were green, some were the size of birds.

The guide told us about the fight to save the species and how the blue butterfly, the big gorgeous one, had been saved by some butterfly doctor from Tasmania. We got to hold out halved oranges in our hands, and they flittered down to us.

They were so delicate, so remarkable. I’d never even considered butterflies before, but I was utterly blown away. And from the look on Foster’s face, he felt the same.

When the tour was over, we took a guided safari ride into the park, through rivers, through the forest, and sitting in the open-top truck, Foster took my hand and held it on his thigh. “This is kind of special, isn’t it?”

My eyes shot to his, wondering what he was talking about. Us? Getting to spend the day with each other, pretending to be boyfriends? Is that what he meant?

He laughed and waved his free hand in an arc. “This whole place. Those butterflies were just… Wow.”

“It was pretty amazing,” I replied, not letting my disappointment show. Fuck. Why was I even disappointed? Surely he couldn’t have been talking about me. Or us. There was no us. I was his paying client; I was literally paying him to spend the day with me…

But then he threaded our fingers and nudged his shoulder to mine. “The whole day has been amazing. The SkyRail, the butterflies. This, here, with you. All of it. Thank you.”

I pretended I wasn’t blushing, that his words didn’t make my heart thump. “What are you thanking me for?”

“For inviting me. For asking me to spend the day with you.” He squeezed my hand. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages.”

“I thought cruising around the tropical islands was your idea of fun,” I said, nudging his shoulder this time.

“It is. But there’s fun to be had on land too. I’m so used to being on water, I didn’t think I’d be able to walk properly.”

I leaned in close and whispered, “Is that what all the boys say?”

He chuckled and tightened his grip. “Dunno. You’ll have to let me know tomorrow.”

Holy shit. Okay, so we were both on the same page about what we wanted tonight. “That’s good to know. I’ll keep you posted.”

He laughed and the guide stopped talking to stare at us. I felt like a school kid busted for talking in class, and Foster waited until the guide started talking again before he leaned into me to muffle his laughter.

He smiled all the way back into Palm Cove, and I guess I did too. I’d promised him a fancy dinner, and given we were wearing shorts and shirts, the fanciest our dress code allowed for was a waterfront bar and grill. We were given a table for two on the deck and ordered a beer each while we went over the menu and wine list.

It was getting late. We’d literally been out the entire day, and the view of palm trees over the water as the sun set was truly spectacular.

The company was even better.

Foster told me how, when he started his business, people were sceptical of the city slicker lasting more than a week. But he proved them wrong, won them over with his charm and his ability to listen and learn.

“And I’m pretty sure that smile helped too,” I added.

He chuckled. “Maybe. But they soon figured out I was here to stay and that I ran a good business. I’m not here to make millions; I’m here for the lifestyle. I care for the environment, and that won me some votes.”

“So, are you a local yet?” I asked.

He snorted. “Jim Scott, the guy who owns the company I contract for, he’s been here for forty years, and he’s only just got his membership to local status.”

I laughed at that. “Exclusive club, huh?”

We ordered a dinner of swordfish, Wagyu ribeye medallions, and salad. Foster chose the white wine for us, and we ate by candlelight and the overhead fairy lights. It was, hands down, the most romantic dinner of my life.

Unplanned, unscripted, and completely unbelievable.

I wanted it to last forever. I wanted this fantasy holiday to be my real life, and now, along with going back to a job I didn’t want, I’d be going back to being alone.

To not having this. To missing this. I never knew I wanted this, until now. I thought all I wanted in life was a casual hook-up, no strings attached. It was all I ever had time for, and it had worked well for me until now.

Until Foster.

Until I knew what I was missing.

“What would you do,” Foster started, “if you left your life in Brisbane and moved here?”

“Here?”

He shrugged. “Well, anywhere. If you were no longer in mergers and acquisitions, what would Stuart Jenner do? Stay in Brisbane? Move?”

I sipped my wine while I thought of my answer. “I don’t know. I… I’ve never thought about it before. I mean, I’ve thought about it—God, I’ve dreamed of it—but what can I do? I don’t know how to do anything else.”

He stared at me, unblinking. “Yes, you do.”

“What? Model for Speedo?”

He laughed. “Hell yes. They’d be fools not to take you.”

I rolled my eyes and took another sip of wine.

“You read the stock market,” he said seriously. “You know finance. You predict trends that can shape the economy.”

“Yes, but you said if I was no longer in finance.”

“So why can’t you move into financial advising?”

“Because I’m not qualified.”

“You’d get qualified in no time. Hell, you could work the stock market for a living.”

“I thought I was supposed to be finding something less stressful.”

He laughed again. “Low-key, long-term. You know how it works for an individual investor.”

“Why didn’t you do that?” I countered. “If it’s that easy.”

“I dabble in the stock market, now and then. But I have my dream job.”

I swirled the wine around the glass, not taking my eyes off his. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. You’ll see. One day you’ll reach that point, that tipping point, where if you don’t walk away, you’ll feel like you’re dying. I hope you don’t. I really hope you don’t. But…”

“But I’m already close?”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I don’t know you that well, Stuart. But I reckon I know you well enough to know you want to get out.”

I laughed, a quiet, bitter sound. “See? That’s where you’re wrong.”

“You don’t want to quit?”

I shook my head. “No, not that. You said you don’t know me that well. Foster, you’re the only person on the planet that knows me at all.”