I couldn’t help my answering smile, even though I shouldn’t encourage his flirtation. He’d already pulled up Caroline’s number, so I just hit the call button. After a few rings, she answered, “Hi, Roane.”

“No, it’s Evie using Roane’s cell. How are you?”

“Oh. Oh, I’m very well, thank you, Evie. How are you?”

God, I loved the way she talked. “I’m good but I’d be even better if you agreed to join Roane and me for dinner tonight at my place. Roane’s cooking. We’ll pick you up in”—I glanced at the time and calculated how long it would take us to get the groceries and return to Alnster—“an hour. Okay? Great. We’ll see you then.” I hung up before she could respond.

Roane stared at his cell as I held it out to him, and then me, then his cell, then back to me. Suddenly he burst out laughing as he took it from me. Throwing his arm around my shoulders, Roane pulled me into his side to kiss my temple. “You’re mental, lass,” he declared, still chuckling.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“We’ll see.” He released me to push the cart up the aisle. “If she doesn’t call back in the next fifteen minutes, it worked.”

Turns out . . . it did work.

•   •   •

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that making connections with anyone in Alnster was akin to running with a knife. At some point I was going to trip over and land on the pointy end. It would be painful, even debilitating.

Yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

Not with Roane.

And apparently not with Caroline.

I’d stopped thinking about time and what it meant. Quantity didn’t matter in life. Quality did. Roane was a quality human being, and there was something about Caroline that drew me to her. Maybe it was because they were cousins and for some reason I could sense they both possessed a soul-deep kindness. Surprisingly, I’d also stopped questioning my own naivete. I was choosing to risk following my instincts, and there would be no more second-guessing.

I would befriend Caroline just as I had Roane, even if it hurt when I had to say goodbye.

How much could it hurt after only a month anyway?

Roane had been amused when we pulled up to a large cottage on the outskirts of Alnster. A tarmac road led all the way up to the house through the woodland. I could see from the SUV that the woods ended here, the view beyond the cottage that of fields.

“It’s a pity it’s one story. An upper floor would give views of the village,” Roane had told me just before he opened the door to get out.