Remembering how he shook with fury over what that old villager had said, I mirrored Lucas’s sigh. “You’re young and cocky and right now you think you’ve got years to make mistakes and fix them. But you don’t, Lucas. That’s why I’m here. Because I graduated from college and the next eleven years of my life passed by in the blink of an eye and I found myself with nothing but regrets over the choices that I’d made. I don’t want you, or anyone, to wake up in ten, twenty years’ time, and wonder what could have been. Such benign little words—‘what if.’ But at some point in life, those two words become the scariest two words in the English language.”

I half expected another sarcastic response. Something immature and lacking in foresight. Yet, to my surprise, Lucas just looked at The Alnster Inn and then back to me, his expression solemn.

“You think I don’t already know that, growing up with my dad, then you really don’t know anything about this place. Now”—his gaze flickered over my shoulder to Roane before returning to mine—“take this as a gentle warning and not a threat, because I don’t want your boyfriend kicking my arse, but putting your nose into people’s business round here tends to get the thing lopped off.”

I could tell by his expression and tone that it wasn’t a threat. That he actually meant well by the warning. So I heeded it, wondering if perhaps I really had crossed a line. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just . . . trying to be helpful.”

“Aye, well, I’m not in need of your matchmaking services, Ms. Starling.” With a wry grin and a tip of his invisible hat, he strode past me toward the inn.

I shook my head in disbelief. No wonder young Viola was intrigued by this guy. He was too smart for his own freaking good, and talking to him wasn’t like talking to any twenty-year-old guy I’d met before. There was an attractive authority and maturity about Lucas Elliot that made him dangerous to young women everywhere. And he totally had me figured out.

Dammit.

“You getting in anytime soon?” Roane called from his SUV.

With a grin of apology, I hurried over and climbed in. “Sorry.”

“What was that about?” He jerked his chin in the direction of The Alnster Inn.

Did I really want to tell Roane about my failed matchmaking attempts?

“Evie?”

Finding myself unable to invent a lie or bad excuse, I told him everything. What I’d witnessed between Lucas and Viola on Market Day, Viola’s expression when she saw Lucas with that unknown girl, and then Lucas’s reaction to the old racist villager.

“I think they like each other underneath all that animosity.”