She felt warm and fuzzy when he stepped to the outside of the footpath. ‘Grandad always told me to walk on the outside when walking with a lady. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do, or something.’

‘How’s that?’ Jo asked.

‘I think it’s in case a car comes hurtling at us and mounts the pavement. I shall gallantly lay down my life to protect you because that’s what gentlemen do.’

‘Really?’ Jo asked, intrigued by this ages-old etiquette.

‘I think so,’ Lorcan said. ‘Or it might be in case a car drives through a puddle. In which case, I’ll be the one soaked and covered in mud, and you’ll be grand. It’s not quite as dramatic, but a gallant act all the same.’

Jo laughed. ‘Indeed. Thank you for your impeccable manners. Harry would be proud.’

Lorcan coloured a little and Jo felt a little spark of something in the pit of her stomach. It was a connection she had totally not expected, but it felt just right. She didn’t think anything of it when, as they walked, she found her hand in Lorcan’s. Bizarrely, it felt perfectly natural, and more than that, it just felt nice. Jo wondered how long it had been since she had held someone’s hand? Someone who wasn’t Clara.

When they reached the bottom of her street, she stopped and looked up at him. He was head and shoulders taller than her and even though she was a proud, independent woman, just as Beyoncé had taught her, in that moment she enjoyed feeling doll-like beside him.

‘If you ever feel like throwing any of your belongings out of your bag again just to attract my attention, that might be cool,’ Lorcan said.

Jo narrowed her gaze. ‘As if! I bet you secretly unzipped my bag when I wasn’t looking.’

‘You got me,’ he laughed, with his hands up in a surrender pose. ‘I never could resist the allure of free tampons and MAC lipstick.’

‘I thought as much,’ Jo said, and she laughed – all embarrassment at the earlier incident now setting the scene for a moment – a blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment – of something more than hand-holding and friendship.

‘Take my number,’ Lorcan said. His voice was soft and low. The jokey, laddish tone was all but gone.

Jo looked up, and damn it, it might have been the sunset, or the four cocktails on an empty stomach, but she swore his eyes actually twinkled.

Having forced a breath into her lungs, Jo reached for her phone and handed it to him. ‘Here! Add it in there.’

He tapped in his details and handed the phone back to her. ‘I’ll check you out on social media too. What do you use? Twitter? Facebook? Is Insta your addiction? Let me think… you’re a TikTok girl?’