'Copper?' he repeated, his voice empty of all expression.

'It's not a proper name,' Megan informed him. 'It's a nickname.'

Mal did look at Copper then, but his brown eyes were quite unreadable. Could it be that he really had forgotten her? An obscure sense of pique sharpened Copper's voice.

'I'm Caroline Copley,' she said, relieved to hear that she sounded almost her old business-like self. At least her voice had lost that humiliating squeak. 'I was hoping to see Matthew Standish.'

'I'm Matthew Standish,' said Mal calmly, and all her newly recovered poise promptly deserted her as her jaw dropped.

'You are? But-' She broke off in embarrassment.

Mal lifted an eyebrow. 'But what?'

What could she say? She could hardly accuse him of not knowing his own name, and if she did she would have to explain how they had met before. Copper had her pride, and she was damned if she was going to remind a man that he had once made love to her!

She didn't remember telling him about her name, or asking him about his own. He might have told her his surname, but if he had, she hadn't remembered it. She remembered only his slow, sure hands on her skin and the strange sense of coming home as she had walked barefoot across the sand towards him.

'But what?' said Mal again. He didn't remember her. He wasn't racked by memories. His heart wasn't booming in his ears at the thought of what they had once shared. He was just standing there with that inscrutable look on his face, waiting for a flustered stranger to answer his question.

'Nothing,' said Copper. Realising that she was still clinging to the verandah post, she let it go hurriedly. 'I mean, I…I was expecting an older man, that's all.'