He sipped his wine, his gaze skating away from hers and then returning. ‘Laurel,’ he said at last, voice low as he took her hand in his. ‘Are we … are you comfortable here? With me?’

And Laurel realised it wasn’t so much tension she’d picked up on as anxiety – for her. A warm feeling washed over her. She answered softly. ‘I so appreciate your concern but if I wasn’t comfortable alone with you, I wouldn’t be here.’ She stretched forward and pressed a kiss on his lips. ‘I was attacked once. We’ve acknowledged that. Now let’s move on. I’m capable of perfectly normal interaction with a man.’ Though she did remember that when she’d slept with her ‘first’, Amie’s body shaming still fresh, she’d worried the boy would find her breasts ugly. Thankfully he hadn’t – and none of her subsequent lovers ever had, either.

She remembered wishing wistfully that her first had been Grady.

Grady still seemed to need reassurance. ‘Even with me?’

Her heart hurt for him, for his vulnerability, for his feeling the unfair and unkind taint of close association. ‘You’re not your brother. We need to acknowledge that, too.’

With evident relief, he kissed her. Relief turned to sweet, aching longing and then deep, aching heat. Soon, clutching their wineglasses, they drifted up the narrow winding stairs that opened onto a compact landing. His bedroom, however, was huge, with three dormer windows looking into the back garden and a beamed, uneven ceiling. While he switched on lamps and closed curtains, she gazed around. ‘I’d never have thought the rooms would be this big.’

‘The people who had Mistletoe Cottage before me knocked two bedrooms into one. The second bedroom is a box.’ He returned to her and, sliding a hand to her waist, asked conversationally, ‘Shall I undress you?’

Heat roared from the soles of her feet. Her voice emerged on a tremor. ‘Please do.’

He took her wineglass and stepped her into the pool of lamplight. Unhurriedly, he unthreaded her arms from her sleeves and pulled her sweater and T-shirt over her head in one go. ‘Lazy,’ she chided him. With a grin, he shucked off his own top, leaving his hair tossed, his eyes gleaming with anticipatory heat.

‘You’re so warm,’ she murmured, stroking his chest, feeling the downy softness of male body hair – always high on the list of things she liked. While his eyes half-shut at her touch, his fingers were busy unfastening her jeans, an activity she didn’t help by pressing her hips against the hardness of him and making him groan.

‘Jeans weren’t designed for sexy, mutual undressing,’ he murmured, when he’d recovered his breath.