‘Do that,’ he snapped, turning abruptly and leaving her to it.

Annie didn’t move until she heard the outside door close. Only then did she raise her hands to her face, run her fingertips over the warm spots where George Saxon had touched her.

He’d been so close as he’d slipped the glasses on her nose, held them in place, his thumbs against her cheek, fingertips supporting her head. There had been an intimacy about the way he’d looked at her that had warmed her, made her pulse leap, stirred something deep inside her so that when his lips had touched hers it had felt like two pieces of a puzzle finding the perfect fit.

And if he could do that with a look, a touch, a tender kiss, what could he do if…?

She whirled around, refusing to go there.

Instead, she crossed to the corner to root through the small collection of old cookery books before pulling out a heavy black bound book that was reassuringly familiar.

She’d kept all her mother’s books-medical textbooks, mostly-and a copy of this basic cookery book had been among them, the inscription on the flyleaf from the foster mother who’d taught her to cook and passed on her own cookery book when she’d left for university.

How much strength of will must it have taken her mother to get to medical school? More than she’d had, she thought, swallowing hard as she opened the book to check the index.

Potatoes…

Potatoes, it seemed, took around twenty minutes to boil, depending on whether they were old or new and, once cooked, should be creamed with a little pepper and margarine. Clearly post-war austerity had still been part of life when this book had been published. And a sprinkle of parsley was as exotic as it got back in the days when garlic was considered dangerously foreign.

But, despite the fact that Mrs Saxon’s cookery book and fridge appeared to be from the same generation, the large bulb of garlic tucked away in the salad crisper suggested that she, at least, had moved with the times. Or had that been bought specially for the prodigal’s homecoming too?