‘I’m just starting a new job. I don’t want everyone knowing I have baggage.’ She pressed her finger hard, trying to stop the bleeding, exasperated with herself. ‘It won’t affect my work.’

‘No one is suggesting that it would. Everyone has baggage, Jenna. You don’t have to wrap it up and hide it.’

‘Yes, I do. For Lexi’s sake. I’ve seen couples let rip at each other through their kids and there is no way I’m going to let that happen. I refused to let it be acrimonious. I refuse to be a bitter ex-wife.’

‘So you grit your teeth and shed your tears in private?’ Ryan took her hand and strapped a plaster to her finger.

‘Something like that.’ She’d bottled up the humiliation, the devastation, the sense of betrayal—the sense of failure. All those years people had been waiting for her to fail. And she’d failed in spectacular style.

Feeling the familiar sickness inside her, Jenna snatched her hand away from his. ‘Sorry. I’m talking too much. If you’re sure you still want it, I’ll make you that coffee.’

‘I’ll make it. You press on that finger.’

Watching him perform that simple task with swift efficiency, Jenna couldn’t help comparing him with Clive, who had never made her a cup of coffee in all the years they’d been together. ‘Do you live far from the practice, Dr Mc—Ryan?’

‘In the old lighthouse, three bays round from this one. You can walk there in twenty minutes along the coast path.’

Jenna remembered what Mrs Parker had said about him living like a hermit. ‘The views must be fantastic. If I had a lighthouse, I’d have my bedroom right in the top so that I could look at the view.’

‘Then we think alike.’ He poured fresh coffee into two mugs. ‘Because I have a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from my bedroom.’

For some reason Jenna had a vision of Ryan sprawled in bed, and she felt a strange flutter behind her ribs, like butterflies trying to escape from a net.

‘Lucky you.’ Her image of leaning against his shoulder for comfort morphed into something entirely different. Different and dangerous.

She stood up quickly. ‘Why don’t we drink this in the garden?’ The fresh air would do her good, and the kitchen suddenly seemed far too small. Or maybe he seemed too big. Something was definitely out of proportion.

‘Why did you have to leave your home?’ He followed her outside and put the coffee down on the wooden table. ‘Couldn’t you have bought him out?’

‘He sold the house.’ She felt her hair lift in the breeze and breathed in deeply, smelling the sea. ‘He put it on the market without even telling me. I was living there with Lexi, and then one morning I woke up to find three estate agents on my doorstep.’