Insofar as I’m aware, no one had ever used a second-degree burn as a flirtatious manoeuvre before. If this were a rom-com, Brody would have placed his hands around my waist and drawn me so close I’d be able to inhale the musky spice of his skin, taste his warm breath on my face and feel the pulse of lust stir in him as he gnawed his way through my lingerie with his teeth. But we weren’t in a film. We were two strangers, one of whom was still married and sneaking around behind her sisters’ backs, and the other, well, a misanthropic, possibly psychopathic doctor who’d butchered a man in surgery and had lost his leg to a landmine or a crocodile or a crazed girlfriend.

But then he looked at me with those piercing eyes and that crooked smile, and there it was – the pang of lust. Pang is putting it mildly. Calling it a pang is like saying that a meteor hurtling towards earth is only a little life-threatening.

‘The trouble is, I’ve been married to the same man for twenty-eight years. Harry was my boyfriend at school, for god’s sake. I’ve only been to bed with one other bloke since I got married, and that was a total disaster. It’s made me worry about how I look naked. I mean, I have had two children . . .’

‘Hey, I only have half a leg, so I think I trump you there. A stump trump.’

‘Okay, true. But the light’s so bad in here, I can’t see if I have any chin hairs, even with the illuminated make-up mirror.’

‘You have lights around your mirror?’ the doctor asked, amazed.

‘Yes, it’s on the dressing table.’

‘You have a dressing table?’

‘Yes, over there by the coffee machine.’

‘You have a coffee machine? I’m dying for a cup. Where’s the milk?’

‘In the fridge.’

‘You have a fridge?’

‘It’s by the walk-in wardrobe.’

‘You have a walk-in wardrobe?’

‘It’s next to the bathroom.’

‘You have a bath?’ Brody poked his head into my marbled ensuite, adding, ‘With bubble bath and expensive conditioner and a shower cap? Well, not anymore you don’t.’ As he stretched up to retrieve the little bottles of luxurious lotions from my shower shelf, a band of stomach showed between his jeans and his T-shirt – a taut, muscled band – and I was suddenly lighting up all over like a Christmas tree.

As Brody pocketed the toiletries, I joked, lamely, ‘I think you’re more aroused by my cabin than my curves.’