Jared said nothing. She didn’t like to dismiss him, not when he had just pressed what looked like a substantial tip into her hand – even if it hadn’t come specifically from him. But she wished he would leave.

‘I should let you get to bed,’ Jared said, finally releasing the deadlock. He began backing into the corridor with a final lingering glance.

Connie took a deep breath. ‘Yes, long day tomorrow,’ she said, her voice faint. She waved the envelope. ‘Thank you so much for this.’

She breathed a sigh of relief as she let the door go. But Jared had stopped and was holding it back with the flat of his hand. As if in slow motion – a second seeming to stretch into eternity – he stepped forward and dropped a very gentle, very composed kiss on her mouth. A strand of his hair brushed her cheek. She had time to be shocked, time to clock the faint tang of mint on his breath and also to feel a sharp tingle at the touch of his lips against her own. On some unacknowledged level she had known what he was going to do, but she’d done nothing to stop it.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, sweeping his hair back, no trace of awkwardness in his eyes. He reached out, his fingers briefly pressing the bare skin above her elbow, then slowly walked off down the corridor.

Her door slammed shut. Connie was stunned. She walked unsteadily over to the window, fanning herself with the envelope still clutched in her hand and taking big gulps of cool night air. She could feel a warm vibration washing through her body and swallowed, trying to compose herself. What just happened? she asked herself, leaning her hot cheek against the smooth cold of the glass door. She knew she should feel guilt, knew full well she could have avoided the kiss. But right now all she felt was a breathless arousal.

6

Connie was up before dawn with a muzzy head and scratchy eyes. She’d barely slept, and began packing without her usual care. Normally she loved the process of filling a case with the utmost precision until it was a work of art with its neatly arranged layers, no space unemployed. But today she was hardly aware as she folded and piled and squashed her clothes any old how into the small wheelie.

It was going to be a long day, herding her passengers, plus luggage, tickets and passports – which someone always managed to mislay – onto the bus, then the train to Paris, across the city in another bus, then settling them into the hotel, before getting them back on the Eurostar in the morning. But she could cope with that. What she was really dreading was seeing Jared.