“Wait.” Roane moved toward me, his expression eager. “Evie, I don’t make a habit of asking tourists out but I can’t help myself. You’re brave, you love animals. You’re stunning. I’m a mere mortal.” His chuckle had a slightly disbelieving tone to it, like he couldn’t understand himself in that moment. “So please have a drink with me tonight?”

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t extremely flattered by Roane Robson’s attention. Or that I didn’t very much want to know what it would feel like to have the most tempting mouth I’d ever seen on a guy in real life pressed against mine.

But I wasn’t here for a fling.

I was here to find myself.

I turned to him, deciding to be as forthright as Roane was being. “I’ve sworn off men. Not forever. But absolutely while I’m here. No men.”

Roane’s eyes rounded with surprise, and he reached up to scratch his cheek, the sound of fingernails against the bristles of his beard overly loud in the quiet morning.

And weirdly arousing.

After a few moments of contemplating me, he threw back his shoulders. “Have you sworn off friendships with men?”

Stupid disappointment rose in me, and invisible hands quickly moved to stuff that feeling back down, somewhere deep and dark inside me where I’d forget about its existence. “Friendship is good.”

He dipped his head to me, his lips curled at the corner in what seemed to be a perpetually teasing way of his. “Then have a drink with me tonight at The Anchor. Let me say thank you properly. And maybe you can tell me where you come from—why you came here for four weeks and swore off men.”

I shouldn’t.

I really, really shouldn’t.

But didn’t I come here to experience something different? A new place, new people, and maybe a new me?

Becoming friends with an English farmer was definitely a new experience. Who cared if he could grace the front cover of “The World’s Hottest Farmers” calendar? “Okay.” I smiled. “A drink. But I’m warning you, my story isn’t that interesting.”

Roane’s grin widened. “Somehow I doubt that.” He glanced down at his dog and then back to me, his expression somber. “In all seriousness . . . thank you, Evie.”

Realizing Shadow probably meant just as much to him as Duke had meant to me, I answered quietly, “You’re welcome, Roane.”

With that, he nodded and took a step back. “I need to return to the farm. I’ll see you tonight at eight o’clock.”

“I’ll see you then.”

As he and Shadow turned and strode back in the direction they’d come, I realized how breathless I’d been in Roane’s company and sucked in a lungful of air.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I muttered, watching them disappear.

“You met Roane then—”