The guy was in need of a shave and haircut and a shopping expedition, but he was utterly gorgeous. So gorgeous she realised she had spent the past twenty seconds staring, and paraphrasing Byron, as if she hadn’t seen a man this beautiful before. Up close. In the flesh.

A low, lazy hum of awareness settled in her belly.

No, she thought, feeling more panicky at that thought than any other so far, not now. Not like this. I’m not ready. Her mind shook back and forth vehemently, which her head would have done if she hadn’t wanted to keep both eyes on every move of Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous-To-Her-Equilibrium.

She blinked and thought back to what they had been arguing about. Had he really just suggested…? She raised her shoes to a battle ready position again. ‘What do you mean it’s all yours?’

His enigmatic eyes narrowed slightly and she bit her lip, hoping he had no clue of the thoughts streaming unchecked through her obviously chlorine-addled head.

‘My name is Hudson Bennington III. Everyone just calls me Hud,’ he said, holding out his right hand and continuing to close in on her. ‘My Aunt Fay once lived here. I summered here as a child. And she left it all to me when she died. Ask in town if you don’t believe me. I’m certain there will be those who remember.’

She stared at his outstretched hand, then into his eyes, but she found them far too unsettling so she ignored both and bent to quickly pull her heavy boots on instead, the sudden movement jarring at the rigid muscles in her bad leg. She winced and straightened. She didn’t dare waste further time lacing them up.

‘Well then, I’d better head back to town right now and double-check,’ she said. ‘A girl can’t be too careful.’

She grabbed her towel and moved around the other side of the pool, away from Hudson Bennington III and his dark eyes, and bedroom hair, and rugged elegance, and gentleman’s hands, and disturbing Byronesque handsomeness, towards the exit.

If this guy was who he said he was, if he was back to claim the land as his own, her daily swims would be no more. No more revelling in the bliss of floating, of feeling unencumbered, light and vigorous. And if she’d felt panic earlier, it was nothing compared with the all-encompassing dread that filled her at that thought.

‘You don’t have to run off just yet,’ he said, his deep voice calling after her.

But Kendall spilled out into the bright light and walked as fast as her shaking legs would carry her.

She ducked into the pine forest and looked over her shoulder just the once to find Hud standing outside the pool house looking for her, hands on hips, eyes straining. But she knew this part of the world too well and by now she would be no more than one of a thousand shadows between the trunks.

As she picked up her pace, her persistent limp became more pronounced with each step back to town.

Hud ran a hand over his face and stared into the tree line. He had been hot on her heels as she’d left the pool house and then suddenly…she was gone.

A woman who lived locally. A woman with a mouth and an attitude pluckier than he would have expected in a mermaid if he’d ever given it any thought. A woman who up close had skin like porcelain, eyes the colour of the sky before a storm and hair the colour of red wine.

And a woman who, for the too few minutes she’d been near him, had put out of his mind every single thing he’d come back to Claudel in order to forget.

Kendall hit the edge of the pine forest and stopped to check if anybody was out in the main street of Saffron. She didn’t want anyone to see her in an inside out, back to front dress, unlaced shoes and sopping wet hair.

It had taken almost all of the three years she’d lived in Saffron for the locals to look past the limp and get over whispering behind their hands about how it had happened. The car accident. A young man’s death. Her missing months afterwards. Now she had become the steady, dependable, sensible fact checker for the local newspaper. And she was determined to keep it that way.

When she spotted a break in the dawdling morning traffic she looked right, then left, then right again, before darting across Peach Street, through the garden gate and into the two-storey cottage she shared with Taffy.

The noise she made kicking off her shoes and throwing her wet towel over the back of a chair in the hall was enough for Taffy to look up from her spot at the kitchen table. Her Sunday newspaper dropped in a show of slow motion dawning, her eyes grew wide as saucers and she coughed on her honey-covered English muffin. ‘What on earth happened to you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Kendall continued up the stairs. She wished she could take them two at a time, but she’d walked so fast into town her damn leg now thrummed.

‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ Taffy’s voice slunk up the stairs behind her, followed by thunderously healthy footsteps.

Kendall burst into her room. Her deaf schnauzer, Orlando, looked up at the flurry of movement and then dropped his sweet snout back on to his paws.

Taffy came into Kendall’s bedroom and leant against the door-jamb, hooking one bare foot along the other calf. ‘So,’ she said, ‘was there a sudden rainstorm? At the market? Because that’s where you told me you were going, remember. To the market to look for fresh meat for tonight’s dinner.’

‘And…’ Kendall said, twisting her damp hair into a low bun and searching madly through the pile of washing on the tub chair in the corner of her room for a fresh towel.

‘And…I see no evidence of meat. Only wet hair and a dress that seems to be inside out.’ Taffy spilled into the room, her hand to her heart. ‘Oh, Kendall! Please tell me fresh meat was code for—’

Kendall threw up her hands and screwed up her eyes to cut out the disturbing images in her head—images of a tanned forearm, a sinewy wrist with a smattering of dark hair and a watch that looked as if it had lived through three world wars. ‘Taffy! Stop!’

Taffy sat on the corner of Kendall’s bed and licked honey off her fingers. She then buttoned her lip and waited for Kendall to simply talk.

Sick of feeling like a bedraggled cat, Kendall tore her dress over her head and wrapped herself in the towel, feeling strangely as if she were back in the pool house again. On show. She didn’t like it. Once upon a time she’d revelled in it. Being the centre of attention. The class clown. Not any more. ‘Do you want to go out while I get changed?’

Taffy shook her head. ‘Tell me about the meat.’

Kendall’s instinct was for self-protection. But this was Taffy. Taffy who’d taken her in at the time in her life when she’d most needed a friend, when the family she’d come to love as her own had left her out in the cold. Besides, she’d already been sprung by the one person who meant her secret getaway couldn’t be a secret any more.

She slumped down on to the bed next to her friend. ‘I was swimming.’

‘At the falls?’

‘No. At Claudel.’

‘The old house? But how? The place is decrepit.’

Kendall shrugged. ‘Not so much. Not the pool house at least. Not any more.’

Taffy shook her head and half laughed at the same time. ‘What have you done now?’

Kendall leant over and buried her face in her palms. ‘I found it on one of my forest walks. It’s the most beautiful building, Taff. And it was just so sad seeing it falling apart like it was. I got this crazy compulsion to make it like new again. Now I’ve cleaned the place up, the floor tiles look like bottled glass. And the marble benches are like something out of a Grace Kelly movie.’

‘Whoa, back up a sec. You cleaned?’

Kendall laughed into her hands, then sat up straight, unpeeling her hands from her face. ‘I more than cleaned, Taff. I filled it. Chlorinated it. Kept it pristine. Perfect. And visited every day for the past two years. The moment I saw it, I kind of just…had no choice.’