Sand or no sand, he was right and she was pretty sure she was going to have a lovely bruise on her bum later. She tried to get up, mildly panicked when her left leg didn’t cooperate.

Seeing her struggling, Liam offered his hand.

She ignored it at first, determined to refuse any help. He had done more than enough. The sharp stabbing pain in her ankle had her stumbling though, as soon as she put weight on it, and without thinking, she grabbed onto his arm to stop herself from falling.

Dammit. She must have twisted it or something. This was not good.

‘You need to get that checked out. I can take you to the hospital.’

‘No!’ There was no way in hell she was getting in a car with Liam Quinn.

‘Home then?’

‘I’m fine,’ she muttered through gritted teeth, tentatively letting go of him and testing her balance. Standing was one thing. Her ankle hurt like a bitch, but as long as she kept the bulk of her weight on her right foot, it was bearable. Walking was going to hurt like hell, though.

‘Look, just stop being stubborn and let me help you, okay? I feel kind of responsible.’

‘Kind of?’ Hannah stared at him. ‘This is all your fault. If you hadn’t been stalking me—’

Her comment was met with a derisive snort of laughter. ‘I wasn’t stalking you.’

‘You were following me after I asked you to leave me alone.’

‘Look, we can argue about this all day, but while we do, the dogs are going to get bored and— Tank! Jesus, TANK. LEAVE HER ALONE!’

In the panic after her fall, Hannah hadn’t realised that Liam had let go of his dog’s lead and she looked around in alarm to see the giant beast sniffing after Cookie again. The little dog didn’t seem too stressed by it, having assessed and dismissed him as a threat.

‘They’re okay. He’s not bothering her.’

It did highlight the problem of how she was going to get the dogs home. She was responsible for her charges, and while she might be able to limp back to her flat alone, she would struggle to do it with the three of them on leads. She couldn’t leave them here.

Rosie was still in the flat. Hannah had left her asleep on the sofa. Would she answer her phone?

‘So what do you want to do? Tempting as you’re making it to leave you here, I won’t.’

Liam chanced a smile and Hannah scowled at him. They weren’t friends and she refused to play nice with him.

‘It’s fine. You can go. I’ll call my friend.’

She reached into her pocket for her phone and dialled Rosie’s number, annoyed when there was no answer and irritated that Liam was lingering instead of leaving as instructed.