‘I’m a nice guy.’ He flashed her one of his brilliant smiles before adding, ‘Purely selfish reasons. I haven’t got time to rush you off to Accident and Emergency with a finger in a bag of peas.’ He shuddered. ‘I’m not sure my nerves can stand another day wondering which of your fingers you’re going to chop off.’

In spite of herself Hannah laughed. ‘I wasn’t that bad.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘OK, I was.’

‘Which is why I’m going to give you a lesson.’

He opened one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out a knife. ‘This will do – not perhaps as sharp as mine.’

‘I could use one of yours.’ She indicated the briefcase on the table.

‘Over my dead and buried body. You’ll not be touching them.’

‘Why? Have they got diamond-encrusted handles or something?’

‘No.’ He shook his head in mild disbelief as if he couldn’t believe she really didn’t know. ‘But chefs are very territorial about their knives. We always use our own and rarely let anyone touch them. At least I don’t. You don’t want some ham-fisted eejit dulling your blade.’

Hannah rolled her eyes. Talk about precious. Although, admittedly, she had a special fountain pen she used at work to annotate things, so perhaps there was a similarity.

‘I saw that.’

‘You were supposed to.’

‘Now, watch.’ He took an onion from the basket and sliced it in two, deftly peeling off the skin. ‘Keep the point on the board and lift and slice.’

She watched as he demonstrated with a swift seesawing action, while using the middle joints of his fingers as a guide for the knife. Of course he made it look effortless.

‘Now you try. Take it slow.’

She picked up the knife and tentatively arranged her hand like his around the onion, trying to copy his slicing motion. Getting confident, she forgot to keep her hand crabbed over the onion and took a chunk out of her thumbnail.

‘Eek!’ she squeaked.

‘Keep it slow to start with.’

‘I thought this was supposed to help me speed up.’

‘Even at this speed you’re more effective than you were. Economy of movement is what you’re after.’

She had another go, this time more slowly.

‘No, like this.’ Stepping behind her, he put his arm parallel to her arm and a warm, firm hand over hers to guide the movement. ‘Here.’ He gently gripped her hand and steered the knife with a steady seesawing motion backwards and forwards. Conscious of his closeness, she tried to relax at his touch but all she could think of was the smell of him and feel of his big, solid body up against hers. Her breath caught in her chest and she did her best to ease it out slowly so he wouldn’t notice. Every nerve ending was aware of him, standing to attention, breathlessly waiting for any movement from him.