Our fingers briefly touched as I passed him a mug of coffee and I snatched my hand away, almost upsetting the contents. Thankfully Ned didn’t seem to notice. I looked at him, tousled and rugged, and thought the best thing I could do would be to put a bit of distance between us until I got over my night-time fantasy fest. I swilled my empty mug under the tap and put it in the dishwasher.

‘Are you and Bandit going for a run?’ I asked.

Bandit’s ears pricked up, but Ned slowly shook his head.

‘I can’t,’ he groaned, sliding off the stool again. ‘Not when my head feels like this. I don’t think I’m even going to be able to manage the pounding of the shower.’

‘Have a bath then,’ I suggested, swallowing hard as an image of his wet freckled skin and water running down the length of his tattooed back filled my head. ‘I’ll take Bandit for a walk,’ I offered, desperate to get away. ‘It won’t be the same as a run, but at least he won’t be going stir crazy by the end of the day.’

‘Thanks,’ Ned smiled weakly. ‘That would be great and could you open the gate when you go out? That way everyone can let themselves in if I fall asleep again.’

I shot him a look.

‘I’m kidding,’ he said. ‘I’ll be raring to go once the painkillers have kicked in.’

‘Good,’ I sighed, ‘because I won’t be coming to wake you up in the bath.’

Ned grinned, looking more like his usual self.

‘You’ve already seen me soaking wet and wrapped in a tiny towel,’ he teased. ‘I can’t imagine there would be many more surprises.’

For the sake my sanity, I chose to ignore that.

After opening the gate, Bandit and I walked around the plantation. I could see that Ned and David had recently made a start moving some of the potted trees about, no doubt getting them in the most logical order for delivery and collection.

In just a couple of weeks the business would be beyond busy and in just over a month many of the trees would be indoors, decorated and adored then, after fourteen sparkling days, they would be back at Wynter’s, patiently marking out the next fifty weeks.

Thinking of other people’s trees and how they decorated them, pulled my thoughts back to the family one. Ned had been right to point it out and I felt bad that it was still languishing in its pot. I might still have had plenty of time to get things done, but the sooner the tree was sorted, the better.

‘Come on, Bandit!’ I called, striking off in a different direction to the one I had been thinking of going in.