A surprised chuckle escaped him. ‘Feisty, aren’t you?’

She shrugged again, feeling the adrenaline pump through her now that the crisis was over. So what if he’d seen her here with Mats? She owed him nothing – he’d made that perfectly clear. He’d won Hanna back and got exactly what he wanted.

Mats pulled her closer to him again, seeing the dark gleam in her eyes. ‘So, we’re hooking up, are we?’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘We are now.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

The darkness claimed him and his body jolted into sleep like he’d been pushed from a cliff. There was never complete refuge to be found for him here; a part of his brain – perhaps the only part that had remained alert enough to classify him as alive for all those years – always refused to surrender, a lone night-light burning in an empty house.

But the tension in his body softened, his fisted hands curling open like autumn leaves, the headaches that strapped around his brain unbuckling for the night. It would not be for long, this fitful oblivion – the irony of emerging from a coma an insomniac never failed to amuse him – but it would be enough to quieten the hounds that snapped at his heels, their relentless shadows crossing over him like blades in the sunlight. The accident might have passed, the trauma healed, but danger persisted, he knew. For a man who could neither taste nor smell well, he had an acute sense that it was still here, close at hand.

He moved through the blackness, wading through its different textures and shades, always searching for the speck of light that would grow if he turned towards it. And she would be there, as she always was, held within the brightness, her pale hair and lambent skin like beacons showing him the way. She had saved him, brought him back to life . . .

And now she was here. Far away, pressed against his body, he felt the silken slip of her against his flesh, the tickle of her breath, the warmth of her limbs tangled with his, and he fell deeper into the velvet where nothing existed. No light, no taste, no touch, no smell. Just a sound.

A . . .

Bell.

‘Knock, knock.’

She peered through the open door as Max looked up. He was sitting at the table, a coffee mug still steaming in front of him, reading yesterday’s paper. ‘Hey, Bell!’

He seemed pleased – and surprised – to see her, standing up as she came in and giving her a kiss on each cheek. ‘Long time no see.’

‘I know! Wow, you’ve really been looking after the place,’ she marvelled, looking around the spotless cabin like she’d been gone for ten years rather than two weeks.

He gave her a bemused look and she remembered what Hanna had said about her mother coming out this weekend. ‘All by my own hand, naturally. Coffee?’