Page 28 of Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop

“No garden growing up?”

Rosie threw her head back and laughed, the sound sending a prickle of awareness over me, like someone blowing a soft breath across heated skin.

“No staying anywhere long enough. My mother was,is, impetuous, sporadic, and largely absentminded. She’d either grow tired of a place, forget to pay rent, or move on a whim. And I was just a second thought, a back-seat passenger along for the ride.”

I tried to imagine my steady and graceful mother packing me up and moving yearly. I just couldn’t do it. She’d enjoyed being settled as much as I had, and she’dprovided an exceedingly stable foundation for me to grow on.

“That had to have been?—”

“Exciting?” Rosie said, quickly, too quickly. “Of course, it was. Loads of new experiences and meeting new friends and all that.”

“I was going to say tough.” I kept my eyes on hers and saw the brief flash of pain before she turned away. From what I remembered of my boyhood years, it hadn’t always been easy to make new friends.

“Oh, it was fine. I’m fine.” Rosie waved a hand in the air.

It didn’t seem like she was fine. It sounded like she’d had a careless mother who’d had a child who needed love and attention. But this was not a problem I could solve, nor really weigh in on, and I did my best not to offer advice when it wasn’t asked for. So instead, I redirected the conversation.

“Do you know what kind of birds you’d like to see outside your window?”

“Um.” Rosie pursed those pretty lips. “Happy birds. I’d like to see happy birds.”

At that, I huffed out a small laugh.

“Any bird getting food in the winter is going to be a happy bird.”

“Perfect. That’s what I want then.”

“I’ll bring some feed by for you.”

“Oh, no. I’m sure I can get some on my own. You don’t have to do that.”

“I have entire bins of it.” I held my hands outto show the size. “It will get you started, and then once you get an idea if you’ll remember to fill it or not, you can start buying your own.”

Rosie tossed me an affronted look.

“You’d think I’d forget to feed my birds?”

I grinned. “I’m only saying that it’s easy to forget if it is not a habit for you. That’s all.”

“I would never let my birds down. They need me.”

“You haven’t even met them yet,” I pointed out, taking off my backpack and hanging up my coat on the rack at the door. “What if they’re a bunch of wankers?”

“Howdareyou call my birds wankers. Wait, what’s a wanker?”

“I’m not!” I held a hand to my heart, holding back laughter. “I’m just saying … what if they are?”

“I will have happy birds. The best birds in all the land. No wankers allowed.” Rosie narrowed her eyes at me, and I held my hands up.

“That’s fine then. Do you want me to make a sticker for your feeder that says that?”

“You’ve got a sticker machine?”

“Well, a label maker.”

“Keep talking.” Rosie fanned her face, and I laughed outright this time.

“I’m sensing you like organization?”

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