Sean frowned at his watch. If they didn’t appear in another sixty seconds, it would mean their miles per hour speed had dropped significantly on the last ten kilometres.

But just when he was about to reach for his phone, he heard footfalls in the distance, then voices. One light, the other strained.

Dean was more than done. Too bad the stubborn ass wouldn’t admit it.

When Liana had approached Sean about training her for an ultra run, Dean had volunteered to pace her.

It was time for his brother to admit he couldn’t keep up with his wife, not for hours at a time.

Sean tugged his visor off his head and wiped at the sweat forming along his hairline before he stood up. It was hard work, sitting in a camp chair and thinking about running techniques. He grinned at his little joke just as the happy couple turned the corner.

“What are you laughing at?” Dean growled as Sean handed him a bit of beef jerky and a Dixie cup of pickle juice.

It wasn’t watching his brother suffer through this trial run of his fifty mile training plan. Nope. “Nothing. Just happy, that’s all.”

His brother gave him a long, suffering look before nodding. “Good.”

Liana tugged off her mini backpack and handed it to Sean. “This is starting to chafe against the inside of my arms.”

He took a look at the buckle, and quickly unthreaded it, sending it the other way so the loose end would be on the outside instead. “Try that, but you want to keep your arms out a bit more, anyway. And we can order a different pack that doesn’t have any buckles there, just elastic.”

She nodded and took it back, slinging it over her shoulders with ease. Her breathing was back to normal too.

“How are the legs?”

“Hammy’s tight.”

“Both?”

She shook her head. “Just the right.”

“Stretch it out a bit now before you turn around and head back.”

Dean groaned.

“Just ten more, big brother,” Sean said, slapping him on the chest. “And this time, stop slowing Liana down. Let her go ahead if you can’t keep up.”

Liana gave him an apologetic look. “That’s on me. I like running with him.”

When it came to running, Sean didn’t have a lot of room for romance. “That’s not going to work as we get into longer distances. The big guy here can be your pace bunny for the first leg, but we’ll find you fresh bodies to run with for each subsequent chunk. That’s how it’ll be on a race day, anyway. Might as well get used to it. When the training group arrives next week, you’ll get a taste of how a race actually goes, and it’ll all make sense.”

She nodded as she stretched her leg. Then she bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m ready.”

“Okay. Off you go. I’ll meet you back at Mac’s.”

It would take them forty-five minutes at least, more if Dean slowed down, so Sean had time to stop in on his build site.

He picked up his camp chair and his backpack, and headed for his truck. He’d figured out a bunch of these check points up and down the trail. Their new house was the first one, five kilometres south of Pine Harbour. This spot was the next point, ten clicks out. He could get people started on a run then meet them at each point along the way.

It still blew him away that next week, ten elite athletes would show up for a week of training with him. That they’d all paid good money to have him put them through their paces and teach them more about cross-training.

He’d hired Olivia to manage the logistics that were beyond him now—no reason to induce a migraine if he didn’t need to, and she could do all the cottage booking and catering ordering ten times faster than he could anyway. She’d done all of that for a film shoot two years earlier.

If Hope Creswell wasn’t careful, Sean might just try to steal her assistant away.

He turned north, toward home—their new home, although they only had a foundation so far. And a new lane, properly graded. He drove all the way in, expecting to find the property empty.

Instead, he found his wife’s car parked at the end of the drive, and that was even better.

He didn’t see her, so he grabbed his cane. He didn’t need it for short distances now. He could better anticipate the vertigo and compensate for the disorientation when it happened. But for a longer distance, it was just smart, and if she was exploring the meadow…

But she wasn’t. She was curled up on the far side of the poured foundation, sitting on an outdoor blanket, with a book in her lap.

“This is a welcome surprise,” he said after he spotted her.

“My afternoon was wide open and I thought I might come and see if you were here.” She’d joined the practice in Walkerton as a full partner just before their winter vacation to Florida. Her job still consumed a lot of her days and nights, but the flip side of that commitment to whatever her clients needed was that every so often, she got a day to herself—and because he was the luckiest man on the planet, she chose to spend that found time with him.

“Liana wanted to go for a run.” He gestured south. “They’ll be running past here in ten or fifteen minutes. Do you want to go out for lunch?”

“Sure.” She picked up her book, and her blanket, and they strolled back toward their vehicles together. “The laneway looks good.”

It had been a disaster just a week before, with the excavation equipment and cement trucks tearing it up. But they were done now. The next thing to go in would be a well and a septic tank, and after that, they would be done with heavy machinery and he could grade in the last load of gravel to make the lane smooth again.

He checked his watch then glanced down the trail. A few more minutes, and he’d see them running past. “We can come back here after lunch,” he said. “Come with me in my truck.”

She hopped into the passenger seat, and he turned the truck around, pointing the nose at the trail so he could watch for his trainee.

He was taking this job seriously.

But this was also a prime opportunity to make out with his wife in his truck, which had been on his Sean’s-Getting-Better bucket list for a while.

He turned off the truck again and pushed up the middle seat, that most of the time he kept down as an armrest. He gestured for Jenna to come closer, and she lifted one eyebrow as she did just that.

“What are we doing?”

“A long time ago, I promised myself I’d show you how good it was to make out in a truck.” He kissed her, one hand possessively cupping the back of her neck, the other unzipping her sweatshirt so he could stroke her curves a little as he tasted her mouth.

“It’s really good.” She chased his mouth, her breath hot and alive against his skin. He curved his hand over the barely-there swell of her belly.

A year ago, his world had exploded and he’d thought his dreams of a family with Jenna had turned to dust. She’d had hope enough for both of them, though. His throat got tight when he thought about how close he’d come to losing her.

Their trip to Florida hadn’t just been the official start of his new career. They’d conceived a baby there.

“We might get caught,” he said as he tugged her closer. He didn’t care. Let them tease him for loving his wife this much.

“So?” She grinned as she climbed into his lap. “Remember? Life is short.”

Oh, he remembered. He remembered everything. Bring on the crazy adventure.