Max nodded.

‘So what happened? When you showed, was there a row? I couldn’t get a word out of her when she turned up at the airport.’

‘There wasn’t a row, because we never met up. There was a misunderstanding before we could do so.’

The deep interest in Gleeson’s eyes wasn’t prurient and Max added, ‘She thought I’d arrived intending to marry someone else. It wasn’t true.’

‘And she doesn’t know that yet?’

‘Nope. That’s why I’m here.’ He took a docket out of the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it across. ‘Before I flew into Berlin, I obtained permission to marry. Having a German father and having been born in Berlin, there’s a loophole in the non-fraternization regs that my superiors have been able to take advantage of. The thing is, I have to be back in Berlin by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Needless to say, I want Lotti with me so I can take advantage of the permission to marry before some busybody hotshot rescinds it.’

Chuck Gleeson knew all about busybody hotshots and he knew all about being in love—as the silver-framed photograph on his desk testified.

‘I think,’ he said affably, handing the marriage-permission docket back to Max, ‘that we need to do a little negotiating. I’m happy for you to whisk Lotti off to Berlin and make an honest woman of her, but I’d like her to return here and continue working for me until I find a suitable replacement for her. If such an arrangement suits Lotti, are you happy with it?’

Max nodded.

Chuck Gleeson grinned. ‘There’s just one little hiccup in your plans so far,’ he said. ‘And that is, you haven’t yet asked her to marry you. She might say no.’

‘She might,’ Max said, ‘but I’m pretty sure she won’t.’

‘Well, you’re just about to find out, Major,’ Chuck said, amusement thick in his voice, ‘because here she comes.’

Max spun round to face the door.

At first, she didn’t see him. She was carrying two enamel mugs of coffee and was concentrating on not spilling them.

It was four years since he had last seen her and though there were hollows beneath her cheekbones that hadn’t been there before and though she had lost weight and her petite figure wasn’t as voluptuously curvaceous as it had once been, in other ways she hadn’t changed at all.

Her hair, almost as dark as her mother’s, was still defiantly worn in a style distinctly her own. Instead of being shoulder length so that it could be worn in a smooth pageboy bob or, more practically, drawn away from her face and pinned in a roll at the nape of her neck, her thickly waving dark hair swung jauntily at jaw-length. She was wearing a cream cotton dress brightly patterned with scarlet poppies, the V neckline emphasizing the curve of her breasts. Her curiously foreshortened face was still as beautiful to him as it had ever been, her mouth still as generously wide, her nose still as pleasingly small.