‘I so much don’t need this conversation.’ She made to turn into the house, but he stepped forward and caught her shoulders. The action should have made her angry-and at one level it did-but then there was this other part of her…

He really was a ludicrously attractive male, she thought. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Well, why should she be when she had Lorna and Jack just through the screen door? But there was more than that. His grip felt somehow…okay.

It wasn’t the least bit okay. This was those damned hormones working again, she thought. She’d been a widow for too long.

But she had protection-against hormones as well as against marauding males. She hadn’t answered Jack, and Jack and Lorna had grown worried. Now the front screen slammed back and Jack was on the veranda. Jack was a wiry little man in his late seventies, tough as nails and belligerent to go with it. He was crippled with arthritis, but he didn’t let that stop him.

‘Who’s this?’ he growled, before Jenny could say a word. He stalked stiffly down the veranda, trying to disguise the limp from his gammy hip, trying to act as if he was going to lift over six feet of Guy Carver and hurl him off the property.

Guy dropped his hands from Jenny’s shoulders. He didn’t step away, though. He stood a foot away from her, his eyes filled with quizzical laughter.

‘You have a security system?’

‘I surely do,’ she answered, taking a grip of her wandering hormones and turning to face her in-laws. ‘Jack, Lorna-this is Guy Carver.’

Lorna was out on the veranda now. She’d pushed her wheelchair though the doorway, rolling to the edge of the ramp but no further. Lorna had once been a blousy, buxom blonde. Her hair was still determinedly blonde, and her eyes were still pretty and blue, but a stroke had withered one side of her body. One side of her face had very little movement and her speech was careful and stilted.

‘Mr Carver,’ she managed.