It was a very long way from Portrevick.

Cassie was still half-convinced that there must be some mistake, but no. There was an elegant PA, who was obviously expecting her, and who escorted her into an impressively swish office.

‘Mr Trevelyan won’t be a minute,’ she said.

Mr Trevelyan! Cassie thought of the surly tearaway she had known and tried not to goggle. She hoped Jake-sorry, Mr Trevelyan-didn’t remember her flirting with him in that tacky dress or telling him that she never wanted to see him again. It wasn’t exactly the best basis on which to build a winning client-relationship.

On the other hand, he was the one who had asked to see her. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he had any memory of those disastrous kisses? Joss must be right; he had probably forgotten them completely. And, even if he hadn’t, he was unlikely to mention that he had kissed her in front of his fiancée, wasn’t he? He would be just as anxious as her to pretend that that had never happened.

Reassured, Cassie pinned on a bright smile as his PA opened a door into an even swisher office than the first. ‘Cassandra Grey,’ the woman announced.

It was a huge room, with glass walls on two sides that offered a spectacular view down the Thames to the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye.

Not that Cassie took in the view. She had eyes only for Jake, who was getting up from behind his desk and buttoning his jacket as he came round to greet her.

Her first thought was that he had grown into a surprisingly attractive man.

Ten years ago he had been a wiry young man, with turbulent eyes and a dangerous edge that had always left her tongue-tied and nervous around him. He was dark still, and there were traces of the difficult boy he had been in his face, but he had grown into the once-beaky features, and the surliness had metamorphosed into a forcefulness that was literally breathtaking. At least, Cassie presumed that was why she was having trouble dragging enough oxygen into her lungs all of a sudden.