She’d knocked again, several times, despite her growing conviction that all was lost. But eventually she had to accept the truth. Harper drove away from Rowan Cottage not knowing how to feel, only that she was so overwhelmed by emotions she couldn’t even begin to recognise that it was like white noise in her soul.

She tried to tell herself that she could find him in Norway and try to contact him – people did it all the time. But the very fact he’d gone told her that perhaps he didn’t want to be found. She’d driven him away when he’d opened his heart and he’d understood that to mean she didn’t want him. She could hardly blame him for that. And then her thoughts, increasingly bitter, turned to Shay. It was yet another way he’d managed to screw up her life. If she hadn’t been cursed with a stupid sense of loyalty to a man who hadn’t deserved a crumb of it, she might have been happy with a man who was worth a thousand times more. Kristofer was the one – she knew it in a way she couldn’t explain, and she’d lost him.

If anyone had asked her to describe her drive back to Silver Hill Farm, she wouldn’t have been able to recall a single detail. She’d somehow functioned, returning in one piece, but it had been a fluke. As she looked up at the welcoming vista of her beloved tearoom – with its candy-coloured walls, flowers from her own garden on every table, customers laughing as they tucked into their lunches, Allie skipping back and forth with a new lightness of step that Harper had never seen in her before, Will still standing at the counter talking to Pip – she tried to fill her mind with positive thoughts. There was a lot to be thankful for and people who needed her to be strong. But it was hard when regret stung like an angry wasp. Without Kristofer, life wasn’t meaningless or pointless or not worth living, or any of those sentimental things that filled the pages of the romance books on her bedroom shelf, but it was duller somehow, emptier, a hollow feeling of loss opening up like a sinkhole at her core. She would mourn for the possibilities, for the future she could have had, knowing that there was no blame to place but that she placed upon herself.

But for now she locked the car and painted on a smile as she went back to work. Later, Pip would want to know the reasons she’d hurried off, and she would offer a shoulder to cry on. Now, however, she had a business to run.

As she pushed open the tearoom doors, Pip rushed over.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been phoning you!’

‘You have? I didn’t hear it; I’m sorry. I was driving.’

‘I guessed that much,’ Pip said, a note of irritation in her voice. ‘You still haven’t said where… We were worried sick.’

‘I’m sure you were… Honestly, it was something and nothing.’

‘Something and nothing? What the hell does that mean? You don’t go racing off in the middle of a working day for something and nothing.’

Harper shook her head, desperately holding back tears. ‘I’ll have to talk to you later…’

Harper began to sidle past her but stopped dead, staring towards the occupant of a table she hadn’t noticed as she came in. Was this her mind playing tricks? It had to be.

But then he rose, striding over.

‘Cesca has told me all about what happened,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see if you were OK.’

‘Kristofer!’

Indifferent to the stares and gasps of surprise, she launched herself into his arms. He stiffened for a moment, clearly shocked by her reaction, but then relaxed and folded her in closer. His scent filled her head – pines and mountains, glacier lakes and wild grass – and she breathed him in, the beat of his heart steady in her ears, syncing even as they embraced to match hers.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’

‘I was about to,’ he said. ‘My flight is this evening.’

She pulled back to look at him. ‘And you’re going?’ she asked, not daring to breathe until she had the answer, terrified that she would come this close and then lose him again.

He gazed down with a faint smile. ‘Do you wish me to stay?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I wish it. I’ve never wished anything as much in my whole life.’

‘I thought you were lost to me.’

‘I know, and I’m sorry about how we parted last time.’ She frowned as the realisation hit her. ‘That’s why you were going?’

‘I could not see you married to another man, but it was not my place to break your engagement.’

‘Shay’s gone,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘He’s not coming back.’

‘You do not love him?’

‘No.’

‘So there is hope?’

‘For us? More than hope.’

He opened his mouth to speak. But then he closed it again and instead dipped to press his lips to hers. It was shy, almost chaste, as if testing the waters. But as she yielded his mouth caressed hers with more confidence, their movements an effortless dance of perfect timing, her insides ablaze at his touch.

Then there was the sound of someone clearing their throat, and Harper pulled away, sucked back to her surroundings to see Pip watching with a grin, while Allie and Will were both agog, and an audience of customers – half of them curious, half embarrassed – did their best to look as if they weren’t watching when it was clearly the best entertainment most had seen in a long time. Harper felt a rush of heat from her toes to her scalp.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘Perhaps you’d like to take this out back?’ Pip said in a teasing voice. ‘Or we might have the police arriving to investigate a case of lewd conduct.’

Harper glanced up at Kristofer, who looked as embarrassed now as she did. ‘Do you want to talk?’ she asked. ‘In the back room?’

‘Talk?’ Pip folded her arms. ‘That’s what we’re calling it nowadays?’

‘Shut up,’ Harper said, grinning. No amount of ribbing could ruin this perfect moment. She took Kristofer by the hand and he followed. They had a lot to talk about and a lot to decide, but one thing was certain – she wasn’t letting him slip through her fingers a second time.