Page 69 of Playing for Keeps
He chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t know what kind of wow that was … but I suspect I’ve just impressed you with what a geek I am.”
“I’m impressed that you went to that effort.”
“I did a couple of landscape architecture courses after uni, but I’ve never put it to use.” He shrugged. “It was just a bit of fun.”
“You have an interesting idea of fun.” She took a long swig of her drink. “I’m going to need to see it.”
“Really?”
She didn’t respond but took her beer and wandered back along the hall. Stopping abruptly at the foot of the stairs, she turned back to him. “This isn’t all an elaborate ploy to get me up to your sex dungeon, is it?”
His face cracked into a wide grin. “If I had a sex dungeon, surely it would be in the basement.”
CHAPTER 25
On the upstairs landing, Allie stood aside to let Hugh lead the way.
“That’s Emmy’s room.” He pointed to a door to the right, which was slightly ajar. The walls were a soft lavender with a matching bedspread. Every available space seemed to be littered with clutter. Knickknacks covered her shelves and desk, while the spines of the books on the bookcase were only partially visible behind the collection of ornaments and trinkets.
“Bathroom,” Hugh said, pointing again as he continued. “My sex dungeon …” Indicating a closed door, his lips twitched to a smirk. “And in here is my office.”
“Hopefully with some golf drawings or things are about to get awkward.” Allie followed him into the neat and ordered space where there were no ornaments to block the spines of the thick architecture tomes on the bookcase.
“Golf drawings,” Hugh announced, bringing her attention to an imposing standing desk at the side of the room. The top of it was angled and displaying a large sheet of paper with a sketch of a fairway and a green. “One golf drawing anyway. I just recreated your sketch, but to scale.”
“I think you’re playing down your skills a bit there.” She moved closer to get a better look. She’d never really thought of architects as artists, but the sketch was stunning. “I thought everything was digital these days?”
“Most architects work digitally. It makes the process a lot easier.” He took a swig of his beer while she continued to take in the details of his drawing. “Seeing your sketch inspired me.”
“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone could ever say about my scribbles.”
“I created a version on the computer, too.” Moving to a second desk, he set his bottle on a coaster and sat down. From a drawer, he retrieved a wireless keyboard.
“You keep a very tidy desk,” Allie told him, hovering beside him as the monitor came to life.
He pulled out an ergonomic mouse and opened a file on the screen. “Clutter distracts me,” he said idly.
“There definitely aren’t many distractions in here.” Her eyes roamed the bland, uninspiring room.
“Here we go,” Hugh said.
Allie’s gaze shifted back to the screen. “Wow,” she said, surprised by the 3D picture on the screen. “That’s great. Much easier to imagine it that way.”
“Yeah. Hang on … I can also …” He trailed off, concentrating on manoeuvring the mouse and clicking buttons. A moment later, the picture on the screen changed. It took Allie a moment to figure out what she was looking at.
“Wait …” She set her bottle down as she leaned closer. “That’s the course? In real life?” Everything was suddenly entirely lifelike, as though she was looking at a video of an actual place. The leaves even quivered in the trees.
“I imported satellite images of the course as it is now, then made some tweaks. It’s pretty cool what you can do with AI software.”
“Pretty cool?” Allie’s eyes felt as though they might bulge all the way out of the sockets. “It’s incredible. It feels as though I’m there on the course.”
“I threw in an avatar.” He clicked some more until a man with a golf bag appeared on the screen. “I can set him to take a walk around, then you get even more of a feel for it.”
“That’s insane,” Allie said, watching in delight. Immediately, she imagined how impressed her dad would be. One of his irritations when they’d redone Fox Hill was that he couldn’t visualise it properly from 2D renderings. It was amazing how far technology had come in the intervening years. “How long did all of this take you?” she finally asked.
Hugh lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “The computer images took a lot less time than the drawing.”
“It’s brilliant,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on the screen for a moment longer, then wandering back to his hand-drawn version. “You’re so talented.”