Air conditioning. Right. So how come it was so hard to breathe?

‘I was half-expecting you to turn up on a motorbike,’ she said chattily, to conceal her nervousness.

‘It’s just as well I didn’t, with all those bags you’ve brought along with you.’ Jake checked his mirror, indicated and pulled out into the traffic.

‘I always fancied the idea of riding pillion,’ said Cassie.

‘I don’t think you’d fancy it all the way down to Cornwall,’ Jake said, dampening her. ‘You’ll be much more comfortable in a car.’

Under normal circumstances, maybe, but Cassie couldn’t imagine anything less comfortable than being shut up with him in a confined space for seven hours. They had barely left Fulham, but the car seemed to have shrunk already, and she was desperately aware of Jake beside her. Her eyes kept snagging on his hands, strong and competent on the steering wheel, and she would find herself remembering how they had felt on her arms as he had yanked her towards him.

Turning her head to remove them from her vision, Cassie found herself looking awkwardly out of the side window, but that was hard on her neck. Before she knew it, her eyes were skittering back to Jake’s side of the car, to the line of his cheek, the corner of his mouth and the faint prickle of stubble under his jaw where he had wrenched impatiently at his tie to loosen it.

She could see the pulse beating steadily in his throat, and for one bizarre moment let herself imagine what it would be like to lean across and press her lips to it. Then she imagined Jake jerking away in horror and losing control of the car, which would crash into that newsagent’s, and then the police would come and she would have to make a statement: I’m sorry, officer, I was just overcome by an uncontrollable urge to kiss Jake Trevelyan.

It would be in all the papers, and in no time at all the news would reach the Portrevick Arms, where they would all snigger. Village memories were long. No one would have forgotten what a fool she had made of herself over Rupert, and they would shake their heads and tell each other that Cassandra Grey never had been able to keep her hands off a man…