Well, it was too late now to worry about whether she’d done the right thing. Tomorrow she’d be picking up a hire car and driving to County Kerry on the other side of Ireland to start the six-week course. And now she was set on this strange new path, she ought to just kick back and enjoy herself.

With that she took another good glug of wine and settled into the chair to read. The wine was so good that when the charming waiter came by to offer another glass – of course he was charming, he was trying to sell her wine – she accepted without a second thought. In the warmth of the fire, nestled into the comfortable chair, she felt delightfully cosy and was starting to have trouble keeping her eyes open. The lively family party were taking their rather lengthy and quite emotional leave and as their voices died away, she set her Kindle down on her lap and closed her eyes.

She was having the most delicious dream when something disturbed her. The quiet clip of glass on wood. Opening her eyes, she blinked her way up to the surface and found herself looking into the most gorgeous set of intense blue eyes. Without thinking and feeling ever so relaxed thanks to her surroundings, she gave their owner her most dazzling smile.

‘Hello.’ Her voice came out in some sort of sultry purr that was about as far removed from her usual vocal range as humanly possible.

‘Hi, sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’ The owner of the gorgeous eyes shot her a disarming grin as if he were used to disturbing females and it actually didn’t bother him one iota. ‘I didn’t realise anyone was sitting here.’

Neither broke eye contact and something bright and sharp fizzed in the air between them.

Then he went and spoiled it when he glanced back over his shoulder at the sound of a carrying female voice and hurriedly dropped into the chair beside her. He was hiding.

She was still staring at him rather dreamily, wondering for a minute if she had conjured him up out of her imagination. With dark slashes of eyebrows over those vibrant blue eyes and dusky black stubble dotting his chin, he looked mad, bad, and dangerous to know, with a definite air of a pirate about him.

Hannah wanted to mentally slap herself. Talk about clichéd. Men did not look like pirates in anything but the movies and certainly not men of her acquaintance. See, this was what happened when you drank in the afternoon. Flights of fantasy were not Hannah Campbell’s bag but she couldn’t help smiling at him.

‘I won’t tell.’ She could feel her eyes twinkling at him, teasing and flirting in a most un-Hannah-like way. ‘If you put your feet up on the footstool no one will know you’re here.’