‘Oh, that’s ridiculous!’ said Perdita, exasperated, but aware that a tiny part of her was pleased to be prodded out of her self-consciousness. ‘I made a point of not taking over, in fact. I wasn’t chairperson once.’

‘No, but who decided that a chairperson was needed in the first place?’ asked Ed. ‘Who put forward a candidate every time and got everyone to agree?’

‘Well…that’s only because they were wasting time,’ she said defensively. ‘I just wanted the team to succeed. That’s not the same as bossing everyone around!’

‘Perhaps not, but you’ve got to admit that you’re a hard woman to resist,’ he said, and, although he didn’t actually smile, the corners of his eyes creased and, as her gaze met his, Perdita felt her heart jerk alarmingly.

She pulled her pashmina tighter around her throat. ‘You don’t seem to have any problem resisting me,’ she said crisply to disguise her sudden, embarrassing, breathlessness. ‘Maybe I won’t be able to resist you,’ she added, and then wished that she hadn’t. There were too many double meanings to all this talk of resistance and it unnerved her. ‘Nobody seems to think that would be a problem, do they?’

Ed’s gaze rested on her. The vividly coloured scarf was the perfect foil for her dark colouring. With her glossy hair, expressive face and those bright, dark eyes, she reminded him of a rather cross robin. At forty, she was far from the youngest woman on the course, and she was by no means the prettiest either, but there was a vivacity to her that made it hard to look at anyone else when she was there.

Perdita wasn’t at all what he had been expecting. He had heard glowing reports of her efficiency, and her CV was undeniably impressive, but neither had done anything to prepare him for the reality of her. He had imagined an intensely professional, rather serious woman, dedicated to a career rather than to a family-and yes, maybe he had assumed that because he knew that she was single, Ed thought, rather ashamed of his own prejudices-but Perdita was nothing like that.