He walked to the other side of the table and Jo’s palms started to sweat as he sat down and put the zip folder he had brought with him onto the desk.

‘First of all,’ he said, ‘thank you for letting me read this.’ He tapped the folder, and Jo realised this was the first time she had seen her work printed out.

‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ Jo stuttered, unable to pull her eyes away from the pages in front of her. ‘Libby is a friend of mine. Well, more than a friend really. She’s marrying my brother. He’s my adopted brother, you know. There’s a story there. Would be great in a book. But, anyway, she decided to send it on even though she’s only the first person who has read my work and I didn’t think it was ready for anyone to read. Not really.’

Ewan raised his hand and smiled. He had that soft, sexy smile that George Clooney perfected when he was in ER. There was a vague look of amusement on his face and Jo knew she had been rambling, yet she seemed powerless to stop herself.

‘I just wanted to say, it’s okay if you hate this. I mean, it’s the first book I’ve written, and I know it needs a lot of work. I definitely know the pacing could be a little stronger, and really, if you want, you can just spend these few minutes drinking your coffee instead of talking to me about it. We can pretend none of this ever happened.’

Ewan McLachlan laughed, his crow’s feet crinkling around his dark brown eyes. It was a warm laugh, and thankfully not the mocking kind that Jo had feared.

It didn’t stop her being aware she felt exposed. In fact, she couldn’t imagine she could ever feel more exposed even if she was sitting there in the nip in front of him.

Her faced blazed at that thought, and then she felt a momentary flare of panic that maybe, just maybe, Ewan could read minds and would have known exactly what image had just popped into her head. She looked away from him while she battered down her feelings of mortification.

‘Jo, take a deep breath,’ Ewan said. ‘I’m sensing nervousness. A lot of nervousness.’

She blinked at him again and nodded her head. She could feel a fine sweat breaking on the back of her neck.

‘I’m not here to tell you that what you’ve written is rubbish or amateurish. Not at all. Yes, it could do with some polish and the input of a good editor to tighten it up. And there’s some repetition that could be ironed out, but…’