I smile back. Dean wraps his arms round me. ‘I’ve wanted to do this all day,’ he murmurs in my ear.

I feel myself sigh and relax. ‘Me too.’

Our lips meet and we kiss hungrily.

‘Take off your clothes,’ Dean instructs. Perhaps he sees my eyebrows shoot up in surprise, because he laughs out loud. ‘Trust me. You’ll be safe here. No one comes here at night.’ He laughs again. ‘Except me.’

I feel a thrill of anticipation. ‘Okay.’ My fingers fumble as I start to open my shirt.

‘Here,’ Dean says. ‘Let me help you.’

I surrender as he peels off my clothes, covering me with kisses as he does so. He throws off his own clothes until we’re both naked and then he beckons me to follow him and we weave through some more rocks until we reach a small clearing that contains a clear pool of water. Steam is rising from the surface.

‘Good grief, this is fabulous.’

‘I thought you’d like it.’

‘I love it!’

Dean takes my hand and leads me into the water. My muscles are crying out for this. ‘Oh, it’s so warm.’

My lover joins me. ‘It’s a natural hot spring.’

‘It’s bliss.’

‘The villagers use it during the day, but now we have the place to ourselves.’

We float together and Dean takes me in his arms.

I kiss him, tasting the water on his lips. ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’

He kisses me again, long and hard, then smooths my damp hair from my forehead. ‘It’s supposed to have magical restorative properties.’

I lay my body along the length of his. ‘Mmm. Do you know,’ I say with a smile, ‘I’m sure I can feel something happening already.’

Chapter forty-seven

Chapter forty-seven

Neve had returned from Milan. And to say that there was an atmosphere between them was somewhat understating the fact. If it got any chillier between them, Jake was going to have to turn the central heating up to full blast. ‘Atmospheres’ seemed to be their speciality. He’d had days to think about what to say to her and still the words hadn’t managed to form coherent, meaningful sentences in his brain.

Neve had breezed in, all smiles, around ten o’clock, and when he hadn’t responded to her, she’d gone into a huff. His girlfriend had given him a perfunctory kiss on the lips and now was in the bedroom unpacking her case. He had an irrational urge to barge in there and go through the laundry basket to check her underwear for signs of illicit unions with Alec. Was this what she’d driven him to?