Page 6 of Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop

“Also, your aunt’s name was Moira too. I mean…could this be even more perfect? Ugh, just think of all the hotties. I want you to be bathing in men.”

“That sounds awkward at best. I can barely fit in a bathtub, let alone adding copious amounts of men to the equation.” It was true too. Blessed with a body that fashion magazines liked to call “curvy” when they really meant fat, bathtubs and I were not usually on speaking terms. I preferred it when the hot water actually covered my knees and breasts.

“We’ll just make you a list. Like a dos and don’ts list for picking men. Or a wish list of sorts.”

“Damn it, Jess. You know I love a good list.” They were so neat and orderly, and I always got a little dopamine hit when I crossed an item off.

“That I do.” Jessica squealed and jumped up from the couch. “I’ll get paper and pens.”

I closed my one good eye and sighed, letting her have her fun. It was how she would handle me leaving the country, if she felt like she had some sense of control over my future. And knowing me, this would be the first of about seventy lists I’d likely make before my departure arrived. A soft thrill of anticipation worked through me.

My departure.

I was going to do this.

It was time for me to liveMyBig Life.

Chapter Three

Alexander

“Bloody hell.”

I dropped my binoculars from where I was watching for the arrival of the snow buntings on a particularly drizzly gray day at the beach in Kingsbarns. Icy wind buffeted me, bringing the salty sting of the sea with it, and angry clouds hugged the horizon. I was waiting for the telltale sign—the flash of white wings against a moody winter sky—as the first sign of the holiday season arriving. I’d always likened the snow bunting’s winter call to Christmas bells, a bit of nostalgia from my mother, I supposed, who’d dragged me to this beach year after year to look for these cute birds.

She’d loved Christmas, and even when the birds arrived some years as early as the end of September, she’dtaken it as her cue to start decorating for the season. While I didn’t decorate, or carry on much with any traditions, really, I still went to look for the snow buntings. The males always arrived first to set up their territories before the females, and my mother would note how nice it was they’d care for their partners. Hearing their call reminded me of her laughter, both a gentle note on the wind, and it was my way of honoring her memory. But now, I had a bigger problem on my hands than my grief.

Across the wide expanse of damp sand, a puffin was struggling ashore, which was all sorts of wrong. He should be out to sea, not clambering onto the beach with one wing askew. This could only mean one thing: he was hurt and needed help to survive. Without an ability to dive for food, he stood little chance of survival. Racing to my car, I grabbed a soft towel and strode quickly back to where I’d seen the wee puffin fighting.

It squawked at me as I approached, hopping away with one wing bent, but I just tossed the towel lightly over it and scooped it up before it could struggle much more. I didn’t want the poor thing to be in more pain than necessary, and I made soothing noises as I held its body secure and made my way to the car.

Two hours and one vet visit later, my new puffin friend and I were eyeing each other in my back garden.

My friend Niall, a vet, had not been optimistic about the bird’s ability to return to the wild, but one could hope. Something had clipped the puffin’s wing, and time would tell if a good molting would change his future. Whether the puffin ever flew again was another matterentirely, but for now, the wee bird should be out of pain and was healthy enough.

He was young.

With just two grooves on his bill, he was likely just over four years old and nearing when he’d first start looking for a mate. Now, it looked like he’d be spending the winter in my backyard, unless I could find a bird rehabilitation center that could take him in. In the meantime, my heart quite simply couldn’t handle the alternative—to euthanize him—so he’d come home with me in a carrier and now we had to figure out what to do with each other.

The first of which was trying to build an enclosure that would keep the wee lad safe from any predators, as well as keep him from wandering away while I was out. The second? I’d need to make a stop at the fishmonger to make sure he was well fed.

I should name him.

The puffin eyed me, turning his head back and forth, and scraped one of his webbed feet on the bottom of the carrier.

Of course. They liked to burrow. I should try to make him a makeshift burrow and then maybe a pool of sorts so he could still be in the salt water. Luckily, I had the perfect back garden for this sort of thing. My house was set just behind the sand dunes that overlooked Kingsbarns Beach, and one of the selling points, at least for me, was that a low rocky cliff edge narrowed to a point where salt water trickled through craggy rock piles to form a wee wading pool of sorts. It was tiny, no more than threeto four meters across both ways, but if I could figure out how to fully enclose it, the puffin could have a wee paddle about, maybe even catch a few minnows that snuck through when the tide was high.

The puffin rattled its bill at me, clearly wanting to be let out of the carrier.

“Not yet, lad. I have some work to do.”

Luckily, I had a shed full of miscellaneous building materials, as part of the cheap price on this seaside cottage had been its desperate need for repair. I’d spent the last three years shining it up, and it was almost finished. I hadn’t planned to basically become a builder in my downtime, but I had to admit, it suited me. I’d learned that I quite liked working with my hands, and every project had been a reason to expand my knowledge. Between YouTube videos and trips to the bookshop, I’d been well equipped with tools to teach myself how to build.

Except the bookshop had been closed for almost a year now, requiring me to stop at the shop in St. Andrews to source my materials, and I had to admit I missed my wander down to Two Sisters for a cup of coffee before my stop at Highland Hearts, our local bookshop in Kingsbarns. A frivolous name to be sure, but the owner, Moira, had been anything but staid.

“I’ve got a plan for you,” Moira had always singsonged to me when I’d seen her at the shop, swirling by in a swath of frilly skirts and bright jumpers, several reading glasses caught in her bird’s nest hair. She’d never gotten around to telling me what herplan was, and I supposed I should have expressed more interest at the time. Frankly, she’d intimidated me. She’d decorated the shop for every holiday, and it had been practically a social hour whenever I’d gone in there. At the very least, it had forced me to interact with people outside of my colleagues and my students, and slowly I’d grown to be on a first-name basis with many people in the small village. I tried to avoid the bookshop on Thursdays, when an equally terrifying group of women, the Book Bitches, descended upon the store wearing punny T-shirts and doling out life advice left and right.

I’d narrowly escaped their ruthless attempts at matchmaking, and it had taken me the year since the store had closed to recover from being questioned about if I would wall slam a woman or if I was more of a “take it slow” kind of lad. Even now, I flushed at the thought. I’d had to go home and look up wall slam to see if it had meant exactly what I’d thought it had meant and then had lost an hour of my time to some dirty videos on the internet that left me taking a cold shower and clearing my browser history.

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