She swallowed, looking up at him again and knowing that with every breath she was coming apart, stitch by stitch. Her gaze fell to the handprint on his cheek and instinctively her own hand followed it there. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, her voice held aloft as though carried on a sob.

He didn’t move for a moment, his eyes never leaving her, as though he didn’t trust her not to slap him again or bolt at the slightest stir; but then his hand covered hers on his cheek and he turned his face into it, kissing her palm.

The simplicity of the act, the tenderness in it, the intimacy . . . no one had ever kissed her there before. It was so unexpected, that the tears she had been holding in abeyance suddenly dropped like a curtain on a play, streaming in silent floods down her cheeks.

Without a word, he pulled her in to him and, cupping her face in his hands, staunched her tears with kisses. And kiss by kiss, her sobs steadily became gulps, and then gasps, and then they were lost—

‘What are you thinking about?’

His deep voice rumbled against her ear, tickling her. She always had liked lying on top of him, her cheek pressed to his broad chest as she listened to his heartbeat. From where they were, she could see their clothes in a tangle on the floor, Madrid still going about its business outside the windows. It was only their world that had stopped.

She smiled and turned to face him, playfully digging her chin into his chest and wiggling it side to side, before coming to rest on her overlaid hands. ‘I was thinking about our first time together.’ He was lying on a couple of pillows, his arms splayed out behind his head. Up close, she could see age was suiting him. The delicate, pretty boy features of his adolescence were heavier; he was classically handsome now, and later, in his forties or fifties, when the sharp angularity of his features began to soften and droop a little, she could see he would be rugged. He would always be a beautiful man.

He arched an eyebrow. ‘In the boathouse?’

‘You remember?’

‘Of course.’

She smiled, the memories like an afterglow. ‘Do you ever think about it?’

‘Not really.’

The abruptness of the admission shocked her. ‘Oh.’

‘What’s the point? It’s . . . painful.’

She looked at him, seeing the honesty in his green eyes. Tenderly, she kissed his chest. ‘You always were pragmatic. You haven’t changed.’

‘You have.’

‘Have I?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Absolutely. Where’d all your spark go? You were so . . . polite back there. No use of irony or the F-word at all. I had to keep checking it was really you.’

‘Ha-ha. It’s called being professional.’

He gave a wry grin. ‘I never thought you would end up being a professional.’

‘Hey!’

‘Professional party girl, maybe.’

‘I object to that!’ She flicked one of his nipples and he laughed again, catching her arms easily as she tried to do the same to the other one, and flipping her off him onto her back. There was playfulness in the movement but something else too, simmering below the surface.