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“Meg! Wait! Please!” Art called, triggering a fresh bout of nausea.

I stopped at the base of the stairs to my apartment and reluctantly turned around, one hand wrapped tightly on the banister to steady myself and one foot poised on the first step, ready to bolt. “You dragged your kids here because of me?” I whispered, shame twisting my stomach into a knot.

He rubbed his hand across his forehead, nearly hiding his pained grimace from me. “As I said the other day, it’s complicated.”

The cold sea breeze twisted around my legs, making me shiver. I hunched down into the oversized wool cardigan and took a tentative sip of my hot coffee to see if it would burn my tongue.

“Can we maybe go inside?” Art asked, tipping his head at the shop entrance, shivering as the same breeze permeated his far-thinner sweater.

I hesitated.

“What about the kids?” I asked, frowning slightly.

“They’ll be fine for a bit. Viv is fifteen and used to watching her brother. I ordered them some more snacks, and Merry has a movie downloaded on his tablet. Viv has a phone. They won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” I replied, biting back a sigh. “I only just moved in, so it’s a little sparse, but it’ll be more comfortable than the folding chairs in the shop.”

He followed me silently up to the apartment and into the kitchen. The ancient rattan chair groaned ominously when he settled himself awkwardly at the quirky octagonal etched-glass table.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked, leaning against the kitchen counter, eyeing the spot across from him, wondering if I should sit down while trying hard not to think about how different this was from how I’d once pictured our first moments alone. “I think the options are tap water and tea made with tap water. Thus, the coffee,” I said, holding up my to-go cup as evidence.

“I’m okay. Thanks. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I just don’t like where we left things the other day, and I wanted to apologize for running out like that.”

“It’s fine,” I said, not meaning it at all.

He winced. “Listen, I get that this is weird. Especially now that you know I have the kids with me. I’m worried that you might be freaking out.”

“You think?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

“I promise that you have nothing to worry about. This really is a coincidence. I swear, I’m not stalking you.

“Isn’t that what a stalker would say?” I asked, my second eyebrow aligning itself with the first as my stomach flipped over. Even as I said it, part of me warmed at the implication.

I had read a lot of romance novels in my day. Moving to Scotland with his children because he couldn’t fight his attraction to me was a Grand Gesture, capital G, capital G. The kind you would expect Hugh Grant to pull off in a romantic comedy. I steeled myself. But this wasn’t a romance novel. Nor was it a cheesy movie. This was real life. And in real life, men who uprooted their life to come follow a woman to the other ends of the world usually had ulterior motives.

“Let’s say I believe you,” I added. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here. You never once mentioned that you might be moving.”

“To make a very long story short, Viv’s been hanging out with a rough crowd, and her therapist suggested we either have her switch schools, or, better yet, take her out of school completely. The town we live in is small enough that switching schools wouldn’t have been enough to really get her away from them.”

“Sounds tough,” I said.

Art smiled wryly, keeping his eyes on his hands on the table. “Yeah. Not ideal. The company I work for regularly sends teams abroad to train new international distributors on our tech. My boss sent out a call for trainers the day I talked to Viv’s therapist and school counselor. The timing felt…” He paused to find the right word. “Fortuitous. The options were Italy, Portugal, or here.”

“And you chose Scotland because…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence the way my gut suggested.

“The language,” Art said with a laugh. “Joke’s on me there.”

“And the place you’re doing the training just happens to be Banhaven?” Something about his story just wasn’t adding up.

Art sighed and dramatically threw back his head. “The plan wasn’t to move here, here. My team is working with a company in Edinburgh. That’s where we were supposed to go. Though clearly, they’ve got us working the city and the outskirts or I’d never have shown up in your shop.”

“So why are you here?” I echoed.

“Because of my meddlesome assistant,” he grumbled, sounding exactly like an unmasked villain in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

I snorted a laugh. “Your what?”

He groaned. “She swore up and down that it was a total coincidence, and that the only short-term rental available in the project’s budget near an elementary school that could take Merry a month into the start of the school year was here in Banhaven. But I got her to admit that she knew you were here. Something about a video she saw online about an American woman opening a tea shop. I told her about your trip, and she somehow put two and two together. Which is how the Winslows have come to be in Banhaven.” He met my gaze and flashed me a sheepish grin that set my insides ablaze.