They both spoke at once and then stopped, each with a shy smile. It was like they were two strangers all over again.

‘You go,’ Stuart said gallantly, lowering his head, as if to brace himself in case whatever she said was going to hurt.

‘I’m sorry about how it all ended so … unexpectedly,’ she said.

‘I am too. I wish I’d done things differently.’

‘There’s nothing I would change about our time together. It was all just … perfect,’ Elle said gently. And it had been. A perfect, unexpected surprise.

‘I didn’t want to leave it the way we did,’ Stuart said.

‘There wasn’t much else we could have done,’ she said, looking back out across the ocean before them.

‘I could have told you to go and that I’d follow. That I’d do whatever it took to make it work,’ he said after a few moments, making her look back at him uncertainly.

‘We still have the same issue,’ she said with a helpless shrug. ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing or where I’ll be in three months’ time; six months’ time. How can we plan anything around that?’

‘Plans are overrated.’ He shrugged back at her with a smile. ‘You know, you really need to loosen up a bit.’

She laughed and gave a long sigh.

Stuart reached over and took her hand in his gently, and the contact immediately sent a tsunami of memories through her. She blinked quickly and swallowed hard as her throat clogged with emotion.

‘I missed you too,’ she said, once she was sure she could speak without falling apart.

‘We don’t have to plan anything, Elle. I’m not going anywhere. I can wait for you as long as I have to. I just need to know you want to give us a chance, that there’s something to wait for,’ he said softly. ‘Nothing’s the same since you left. The house is too quiet, and even the sheep seem miserable,’ he finished with a grin.

‘That’s kind of low, using the sheep as emotional blackmail,’ she said, shaking her head and unable to hide her own smile.

‘If I have to play dirty, so be it,’ he said simply.

‘Stuart, I—’ She cut her own words off helplessly. She what? The time apart had done nothing to ease the hole in her heart. He was often the last thing she thought about at night before she went to sleep, her traitorous mind wondering how he was and what he was doing. Whether he was thinking of her too. ‘You live all the way over in Skye,’ she said finally.

‘All the way?’ he taunted lightly. ‘Wasn’t it you who scoffed at the distances to anywhere here? Miss I Come From Australia Where We Drive For Days Before We Reach The End Of Our Driveway.’