‘Where I come from, we don’t do casual – work, dress or sex.’ The lip curled prettily again. ‘Once bitten and all that. Working for Bay Austen taught me that.’

‘Yes?’ He realised Pax and her entourage were moving further away. Then he registered who Carly was talking about, his blood quickening angrily. ‘Bay Austen, you say?’

‘That man screws everyone,’ Carly said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t the first.’

‘He took advantage of you?’ Surprised at her frankness, Luca was appalled.

‘Promised me I could stay on at the farm shop and be first in line for a good job when they open the café there, instead of which I was put on a zero-hours contract with no hours.’

‘I see. That’s bad.’

A snort of rare laughter. ‘Did you think I meant he’d booty called me? I’m married with three kids. End of. My old man’s going to be a farrier soon.’

‘Good on him.’ Her fierce expression twisted his belly instinctively, unwanted and tight as a stitch, remembering that familiar tug of attraction he’d felt towards her when they’d first met. Unhappy wives were his forte, and his fool heart had hit the ground running, the race on to fix on someone to rescue like an over-zealous knight, unaware that his affections had already been ambushed.

He listened for the others as he hurried Carly around the yards, finishing up the day’s work, intermittently catching sight of Pax and her pink-haired friend herding children in the distance.

‘You got kids?’ Carly caught him by surprise as she watched him add more bedding to Beck’s stable, already box-walked to a grooved track. She hummed a tune that made the horse turn from his customary shadow statue at the back of the stable, ears pricked.

‘Not with me. So you like Beyoncé?’ he diverted clumsily, recognising the tune she was humming.

‘She’s okay, but my favourite music to work to is film tracks. You can’t beat Gladiator.’ She held open the door for him.

‘True enough.’

‘Or Last of the Mohicans. You know it?’ Carly started humming, ‘Dum ditty dum ditty dum ditty dum ditty da da da. Dum ditty…’

‘Stop dumming.’ He’d played it in Canada until his fingers were too numb to hold down the strings.

‘Am I that bad?’

‘At dumming, yes. At yard work you’re top-notch there for a beginner.’

‘And you’ll teach me healing?’ She scratched Beck’s nose through the stallion grille.

‘You don’t learn it, Carly. You feel it. What you’re doing right there, you have no idea how exceptional that is; he’d have anyone else’s fingers off.’

She grinned. ‘Ronnie reckons I’ll earn a fortune from these hands. They’re on bloody fire again today. Feel.’

He flinched as they landed on him like red-hot brands, a palm on each forearm, grey eyes cool by contrast.

‘Why’s that happening, then?’ she asked, removing them.

‘They’ll tell you when they’re ready.’ He turned away, fires sparking in his own palms, incubated in work gloves. He glanced across the yard to the white head of Beck watching him through the stallion grilles. How do you heal a rift like that between a horse and the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of a man?