For just a moment, he’d actually enjoyed verbally sparring with her. Through the last couple of months everyone had been treating him with kid gloves, stepping on eggshells around him. But not Lily. The more he’d needled her, the more outraged she’d been, the more she gave back, and he’d relished it. Fed it even. He wanted that instead of the grief suddenly simmering between them.

Looking about the garden, he honestly couldn’t identify the ‘damage’ she’d identified. It certainly looked better than it had the last time he’d been there when it had been storage for broken bits of machinery older than his own father.

Thankfully she threw the shears into the basket – she’d got a little too close with the sharp edges and he’d been worried for a moment that he’d be forced to take an unmanly step back. They landed beside what looked like half a forestry of herbs, peppered with rose heads, a few handfuls of a strange orange berry, and other bright little flowers.

‘What are you planning to do with all of those?’ he asked, the sight somehow making this exchange even more surreal.

‘A parsley oil. For herb-crusted lamb. And I’m toying with the idea of a sea buckthorn reduction, as we’ve had such a good crop of it this year.’

‘There’s a penchant for parsley oil and sea buckthorn reduction in Hawke’s Cove, is there?’

‘Hawke’s Cove might not be London, or New York, or Singapore, Henry, but we do eat down here, in case you’d forgotten.’

‘Been reading up on me, have you?’ he asked, an absentminded arrogance covering genuine curiosity, because he didn’t think it had been a coincidence that she’d reeled off a list of his apartment locations throughout the world.

‘What?’ she asked as a blush rose to her cheeks.

‘You just picked those destinations out of thin air, then?’

‘No, your father told me that’s where you’ve been living.’

This time, she looked more defiant when bringing up Blake, but as he held her gaze, her head slipped forward and she hid behind several strands of thick dark hair that had escaped the messy bun held in place by the … yup. Definitely chopsticks.

‘And I happen make a very good parsley oil, thank you.’ How she managed to sound both prim and defiant at the same time was a wonder to Henry.

He turned away with the excuse of looking around the garden before he could do something stupid, like acknowledge the fact that verbally sparring with her had made him feel more alive than anything else had in the last month or so. But by the time he returned his gaze to hers, he wished he’d already left. Sincerity and compassion harpooned him to the spot.

‘I am sorry about your father.’