Instinctively Alice’s arms reached round him and she spread her hands over his back. It had been so long since she had held him, so long since she had felt the solidity and the hardness of the body she had once known as well as her own. She had forgotten how much she missed the feel of him and the wonderfully warm, clean, masculine scent of his skin.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Will echoed her thoughts in a ragged voice. ‘I don’t want to miss you again.’

‘Will…’ Alice was reeling, shocked by the emotion surging between them and the power of her own response.

‘I’m going to Belize next week to work on the reef,’ he went on, taking her face between his hands. ‘Come with me,’ he said with an urgency she had never heard from him before. ‘Come with me and marry me, Alice. We need each other, you know we do. Clive has got his big, fat bonuses to keep him warm. He won’t even notice you’re gone. Say you’ll come with me, and we can spend the rest of our lives making each other happy.’

And the truth was, Alice remembered by Beth’s pool in St Bonaventure, that for a moment there she hesitated. Every fibre of her body was clamouring to throw herself back into his arms and agree.

And every cell in her brain was clanging a great, big warning.

She had the security she had yearned for at last. She had a good job, and in a year or two she would be in a position to get a mortgage and buy her own flat. Wasn’t that what she had always wanted? A place of her own, where she could hang up her clothes in a wardrobe and never have to pack them up again? She was safe and settled. Did she really want to give that up to chase off to the Caribbean with Will, no matter how good it felt to kiss him again?

‘Say yes,’ Will urged her, encouraged by her hesitation.

Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

She would never forget the expression on his face then. Alice felt as if she had struck him.