The thought was annoying. She shouldn’t care. She didn’t care! She’d known him all her life and he was the one of the few people she always felt comfortable with, but that had all changed the day of the wedding.

The memory of that had her reaching behind her for her hood. She tugged it over her head in the hope that it might act as a shield.

He frowned. ‘Are you cold? Because you can have my coat.’ He was already starting to shrug it from his shoulders but she stopped him.

‘I’m not cold. My coat is in my luggage because I always overheat in airports. It’s just my head. My head gets cold. You lose most of your heat through your head. You’re a doctor. You should know that.’

‘Um –’ he pulled a face and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘That’s a myth.’

‘It is? That isn’t a thing?’

‘Not exactly, although of course it’s important to bear in mind the effects that cooling the face and head can have on systemic cardiovascular reflex responses, particularly in elderly people.’

She loved it when he delivered random facts. ‘Elderly? I’m twenty-eight.’

‘I know how old you are, Becks.’

Of course he did. He knew everything about her.

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, wishing she was more comfortable in awkward social situations. This was one of those occasions where, given the choice, she would have shut herself away with just her laptop for company.

‘I’m keeping my hood up anyway. In case my head is the exception. I might be suffering from premature ageing. Or maybe my head gets colder because my hair is short.’

‘It’s cute. You look good with short hair.’

He was trying to make her feel better. Trying to ease the embarrassment he knew she was feeling.

Since the wedding she’d avoided him as much as she could. The last thing she’d expected was to come face to face with him in a busy airport but given her current run of bad luck she probably should have anticipated it.

It was time to implement her extraction protocol.

She was great at melting away without anyone noticing, mostly because she wasn’t the sort of person people noticed in the first place but in this case melting anywhere wasn’t easy because Will was looking at her in a slightly strange way and it was unsettling because he always seemed to see so much more than most people.

‘Honestly, I’m fine. I’ll need a car when I’m up there anyway. I was going to hire one at the airport so that I can be independent because my mother’s car has a habit of breaking down at inconvenient moments.’