‘Maybe not, but if you’re afraid of being recognised, I’d advise getting yourself a pair that fits properly instead of sliding down your nose.’ He waited, hoping that she might tell him the truth this time. ‘Maybe go for tinted lenses.’

Something to tone down the distracting blue.

‘I bought them on the Internet. I had no idea they came in different sizes.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Maybe I should get some little sexy ones with lenses that react to the light.’

‘Maybe. I have to tell you, though, that if anyone has put together a photofit of you, you can forget the glasses. It’s the hairdo that’s the dead giveaway.’

‘Oh…’ she lifted a hand to her hair in a self-conscious gesture ‘…no. No danger there.’ She pulled a face. ‘I cut it myself this morning with a pair of nail scissors.’

Well, yes. Obviously. No woman would walk around with hair like that for a minute longer than she had to.

‘I’d have bet on the garden shears,’ he said, accepting that she wasn’t going to trust him with her secret. Or was, perhaps, protecting him from something he was almost certainly better off not knowing?

Just as he’d be wiser not to imagine how her hair might have looked before she’d hacked it off.

Adding long, creamy-coloured silky hair to the image that was building up inside his head was not helping him drop his hands, take the necessary step back.

‘I’d better get back,’ he said, forcing himself to do just that. ‘Before Xandra, in her enthusiasm, strips your car down to the frame.’

He picked up the glass of water he’d abandoned but at the door he stopped, looked back. Despite a natural poise, a look-him-in-the-eye assurance that was so at odds with her innocent blushes, there was a lack of knowingness in the way she’d responded to his kiss that didn’t quite fit with the jealous-partner scenario.

But then, presumably, if she was any kind of con woman, she’d have that down pat.