‘Oh, we do this all the time at the station. You should see us some days in the canteen!’

Patrick laughed softly.

‘You’re crazy sometimes.’

‘It’s all this screwing.’

He glanced at her profile.

‘I don’t call what we do “screwing”, Kate. I call it making love. There’s a difference, you know.’

She turned her face slightly and looked into his eyes. ‘You’re very romantic, Patrick. What’s brought all this on?’

But she knew what had brought it on, they both did. Losing his child had made him realise that happiness was there for the taking, and when you took it you had to grab it with both hands tightly, because you never knew when it was going to be taken away again.

Taking her cigarette he placed it in the ashtray with his own and put this on the hearth. He pulled her into his arms.

‘I love you, Kate. I know we haven’t known each other that long, but admit it - admit you feel the bond between us?’

Kate searched his eyes. All she could see was honesty and caring. She felt an absurd lump in her throat.

‘Tell me you love me, Katie, make me happy.’ It was a plea. Patrick needed words of love from her tonight; he needed to resolve the feelings that had been gradually welling up inside him since he’d first laid eyes on her. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if he had met her under any other circumstances he would still have wanted her. It wasn’t the fact that she had been there from the first, at the worst time of his life, that attracted him to her. It was the attraction of two kindred spirits they had here, heightened by the heartbreak each had experienced.

Kate was telling herself that it was the burial of his daughter that had brought all this on, that he was unhappy and needed someone, but inside her a little voice was whispering: ‘He means it. It’s written in his eyes.’

She knew that if she voiced what she had felt in her heart since the first time she saw him, there would be no going back. He was a repoman, a violent repoman. He had fingers in more than enough dubious enterprises. But for all that, for all she knew about him, real and imagined, she wanted him.

He could drag her down with him in an instant. Their association would jeopardise everything she had worked for and held dear. But even knowing this, she still wanted him. She had never wanted anyone so much in all her life.

‘I love you, Patrick. I think.’

Her voice was low and husky, and he laughed.

‘Only think? Well, I suppose that will have to do for the time being.’