She opened the door to find Flynn standing there, his nakedness taking her breath away and making her weak with longing. Maybe they should stay home, make love all night and all day tomorrow; she could forget about the meeting, forget about everything except this unbelievably beautiful man. She could… but she couldn’t.

‘I’ll go get dressed,’ she said, reaching up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

They walked hand in hand to the restaurant. As Jodie had expected, the staff made no comment on their being an hour and a half late, greeting her with obvious pleasure before showing them to their table.

‘You come here a lot, I gather,’ Flynn said, taking his seat.

‘It’s close, it’s good, so yes, I suppose I do. Actually,’ she amended, ‘I usually get a takeaway. Sometimes if friends come to visit, I’ll take them here but more often we’ll meet in the city.’

They ordered wine and food and sat sipping the wine when it arrived and chatted about nothing in particular. It was only when the food was finished and the second bottle half-drunk that Flynn put his glass down and reached across the table to clasp her hand.

‘We hardly know each other but strangely I feel something’s troubling you.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine, but I am a good listener.’

She thought she’d been doing such a good job hiding her worry about the next day. The amazing sex, the lovely evening, and more wine than she normally drank had certainly pushed it to a tiny corner of her mind but now and then she could feel it reminding her it hadn’t gone away.

‘It’s a work issue,’ she said, trying to make light of it.

‘Tell me.’ His eyes intent on hers, his hand still holding hers tightly.

She shrugged, took a sip of her wine, and gave him a quick summary of the accusation against her.

Flynn frowned. ‘Okay, so this resident… Daisy… she doesn’t take medication, you were merely dropping in on her to see she was comfortable?’

‘Yes, that’s it. She doesn’t see many people during the day especially if we’re busy so I like to drop in when I can.’

‘But you were under pressure, would it be a case that you had the next person’s medication in your hand and put it down for a second to speak to Daisy and simply forgot about it?’

It was one of the scenarios Jodie had considered. It would have been so unlike her to be that careless but she supposed it was possible.

‘This Daisy–’ Flynn was still mulling over it ‘–would she have been likely to have picked them up and taken them?’