He held out a colander beneath the lip of the large pan as if worried she might drop the heavy weight. People were surprised by the amount of strength it took to run a kitchen, and Lily had come up against enough male chefs proclaiming the ‘weaker sex’ hardly up to the task, she didn’t need it from Little Lord – Henry.

‘I could hold this all day,’ she said defiantly, refusing yet to let loose the water – even at the risk of ruining the pasta.

‘Don’t doubt it for a second.’ His response was immediate, sincere, and strangely without offence. Most men, like her ex-fiancé, somehow saw the assertion of female equality as an assault on their masculinity.

‘I just don’t want to ruin the pasta,’ she said as she navigated the pasta and water into the colander.

He passed the handles of the sieve into her grasp and Lily was thankful that the steam from the water disguised the blush as the shiver of awareness tingled up her arms again. Ignoring it – and satisfied that she hadn’t ruined the pasta while proving a point she evidently hadn’t needed to make – she shook the linguine back into the pan and poured over the crab sauce, tossing it together and then into the bowls on the pass. Her eyes on the pasta, she reached for the container of parsley and watercress, and heaped a generous portion into the bowls, before presenting them to Henry. Finally looking up, she noticed the large smile across his features.

‘What?’

‘The way you move around the kitchen … it’s like … a ballet?’ he said, as if almost embarrassed about his description. But pleasure flowed from within her, because that’s how it felt. Knowing that everything was ready, prepared and in position. There was a rhythm to how she moved around the kitchen that no one had noticed before.

He picked up the bowls as she grabbed a bottle of the Bacchus and headed back into the restaurant where he placed them down at opposite settings and pulled out a chair for her. She poured them each a glass of wine, slightly reluctant to sit, to encourage the strange intimacy of being the only two people in her restaurant.

If he noticed, he didn’t say, instead inhaling the delicious scent wafting up from the steaming bowl and groaning appreciatively around the large forkful of dinner he’d placed in his mouth. She sat down in the chair with a thunk, trying to dislodge the images in her mind. Images of bedsheets and bodies.

Stop. It!

‘So why cooking?’ he asked, not even having swallowed.

‘Anyone ever tell you it was rude to talk with your mouth full?’

‘Multi-tasking. Too delicious,’ he said, gesturing to her with his spoon circling in the air.