When they arrived at the restaurant, Rick had plucked an expensive-looking carrier bag out of the boot of his car and given it to her. To her astonishment there was a beautiful black dress inside the bag and a pair of sexy high-heeled shoes for her to change into. ‘I said it was a special evening,’ he said when she’d returned from the ladies now wearing the dress and shoes. ‘And you look every bit as special as I knew you’d look in that dress.’

‘I’ve never worn anything quite like this before,’ she said, glowing in his admiration. ‘I feel so different. Not like me at all.’

‘You look perfect,’ he said. ‘And very sexy. I’m wondering now whether to abandon dinner and just take you straight back to my place and undress you.’

She giggled. ‘And what a waste that would be,’ she said, ‘after all the trouble you’ve gone to. And anyway, I’m starving.’

It was much later and after she’d told Rick about the generous donor she’d nailed down towards the end of her shift, and which meant she hadn’t just met her week’s target, but far exceeded it, that he told her what his surprise was. He’d made her wait right until their dessert was served, despite her pleas for him to tell her.

As his hand crept across the table to take hers, for a crazy moment she thought he was about to spring a ring on her and propose.

‘I want you to move in with me,’ he said, his hand then reaching up to her hair and tucking it behind her ear. ‘I think we both know that’s the stage our relationship has reached now, don’t we?’

Chapter Seven

Along with a small task force from the village, Naomi was helping to give St Saviour’s a spring clean. They had secretly agreed to wait until Veronica Carlyle, their vicar, had gone away for a three-day Christian Leadership conference before they undertook the job. It was a case of while the cat was away the mice would play. With Veronica around their progress would be seriously hampered by her worrying about Health and Safety issues; she was a real nit-picker for doing things by the book.

St Saviour’s didn’t attract the number of tourists that nearby Holy Trinity in Bosham did, which had the honour of being the oldest known place of worship in West Sussex, but records showed that St Saviour’s was probably built in the late eleventh century. With fourteenth-century windows and some nicely carved Elizabethan pews, it was a simple country church and Naomi was inordinately fond of it. It was where Willow had been christened, and where Martha and Tom had married, and of course Colin’s funeral had been conducted here, before his body was taken away to be cremated. It had been a full house for him, every one of the Elizabethan pews filled, which would have pleased him immensely. He did always like to be the centre of attention. Doug from the sailing club had given the eulogy and said that Colin, being Colin, had gone out on a high. ‘For anyone who had known him,’ Doug had said, ‘making such a dramatic exit from life was wholly in keeping with the man he’d been, enjoying himself right to the end. We’ll all miss him.’