She hadn’t shopped since…

She shook herself. Don’t go there.

But maybe she had to go there. Maybe that was part of the healing. No, she hadn’t shopped since the fire. She hadn’t dated since the fire-or before, of course, but then she’d had Toby. Or she’d thought she’d had Toby. There was the king of all toerags. Even the thought of him made her cringe. That she could have imagined herself in love with him…

She’d been incredibly, appallingly dumb. She’d made one disastrous mistake that had cost her everything, so what on earth was she doing lining up for another?

Oh, for heaven’s sake, she was supposed to be moving on. There were good people out there, she told herself. Good men. She had to learn to trust again. Jake had seemed…

Bored. Compelled to be there. But sort of interesting?

Maybe Barb was right; she did need to get out more, because Jake seemed to have stirred something in her that hadn’t been stirred for a long time.

He’d been long and lean and sort of…sculpted. Rangy. He hadn’t bothered to shave, and there was another mark against him. She’d gone to all the trouble of finding this stupid blouse and he’d come with a five-o’clock shadow. Mind, it had looked incredibly sexy, with his deep, black hair-a little bit wavy-and his lovely brown eyes and the crinkles around his tanned face that said he normally didn’t look as bored as this; normally he smiled.

How stupid was this? She gave herself an angry shake. She’d met ten men tonight, all of them seemed uninterested and uninteresting, and even though Jake seemed…interesting…he was the rudest of the lot.

She’d been stupid once. Any relationship she might have in the future must thus be dictated by sense and not by hormones, and all she’d felt with Jake was hormones. Lots of hormones.

Disgusted, she climbed into her battered van and headed out of the car park, back up the mountain. She’d been away for long enough.