‘I certainly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Jake went on. ‘Weddings are unfamiliar territory to me.’

‘You must have been to loads of weddings, mustn’t you?’

‘Very few,’ he said. ‘In fact, only a couple. I lived in the States until last year, so I missed out on various family weddings.’

‘I don’t know how you managed to avoid them,’ said Cassie. ‘All my friends seem have got married in the last year or so. There was a time when it felt as if I was going to a wedding every other weekend, and that was just people I knew! It was as if it was catching. Suddenly everyone was married.’

‘Everyone except you?’

‘That’s what it feels like, anyway,’ she said with little sigh.

‘Why not you? You’re obviously not averse to the idea of getting married.’

‘I just haven’t found the right guy, I suppose.’ Cassie sighed again. ‘I’ve had boyfriends, of course, but none of them have had that special something.’

Jake slanted a sardonic glance at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still holding out for Rupert Branscombe Fox?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, flushing with embarrassment at the memory of the massive crush she had had on Rupert.

Not that she could really blame herself. What seventeen-year-old girl could be expected to resist that lethal combination of good looks and glamour? And Rupert could be extraordinarily charming when he wanted to be. He wasn’t so charming when he didn’t, of course, as Cassie had discovered even before Jake had kissed her.

Whoops; she didn’t want to be thinking about that kiss, did she?

Too late.

Cassie tried the looking-out-of-the window thing again, but London was a blur, and she was back outside the Hall again, being yanked against Jake again. She could smell the leather of his jacket, feel the hardness of his body and the unforgiving steel of the motorbike.

In spite of Cassie’s increasingly desperate efforts to keep her eyes on the interminable houses lining the road, they kept sliding round to Jake’s profile. The traffic was heavy and he was concentrating on driving, so she gave in and let them skitter over the angular planes of his face to the corner of his mouth, at which point her heart started thumping and thudding alarmingly.