‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Cassie, stung. ‘Maybe I did want to make him notice me, but it worked, didn’t it?’

‘You’re not asking me to believe that you’re Rupert’s latest girlfriend?’

Cassie lifted her chin. ‘Believe what you want,’ she said. ‘It happens to be true.’

But Jake only laughed. ‘Having sex with Rupert doesn’t make you his girlfriend, as you’ll soon find out,’ he said. He reached for his helmet again. ‘You need to grow up, Cassie. You’ve wandered around with your head in the clouds ever since you were a little kid, and it looks like you’re still living in a fantasy world. It’s time you woke up to reality!’

‘You’re just jealous of Rupert!’ Cassie accused him, her voice shaking with fury.

‘Because of you?’ Jake raised his dark brows contemptuously. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘Because he’s handsome and charming and rich and Sir Ian’s nephew, while you’re just…just…’ Too angry and humiliated to be cautious, she was practically toe to toe with him by now. ‘Just an animal.’

And that was when Jake really did lose the temper he had been hanging onto by a thread all day. His hands shot out and yanked Cassie towards him so hard that she fell against him. Luckily his bike was still on its stand, or they would both have fallen over.

‘So you think I’m jealous of Rupert, do you?’ he snarled, shoving his hands into the mass of curls. ‘Well, maybe I am.’

He brought his mouth down on hers in a hard, punishing kiss that had her squirming in protest, her palms jammed against his leather jacket, until abruptly the pressure softened.

His lips didn’t leave hers, but he shifted slightly so that he could draw her more comfortably against him as he sat astride the bike. The fierce grip on her hair had loosened, and now her curls were twined around his fingers as the kiss grew seductively insistent.

Cassie’s heart was pounding with that same mixture of fear and excitement, and she could feel herself losing her footing again. A surge of unfamiliar feeling was rapidly uncoiling inside her, so fast in fact that it was scaring her; her fingers curled instinctively into his leather jacket to anchor herself.

And then—the bit that would make her cringe for years afterwards—somehow she actually found herself leaning into him to kiss him back.

That was the point at which Jake let her go so abruptly that she stumbled back against the handlebars.

‘How dare you?’ Cassie managed, drawing a shaking hand across her mouth as she tried to leap away from the bike, only to find that her cardigan was caught up in the handlebars. Desperately, she tried to disentangle herself. ‘I never want to see you again!’

‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to.’ Infuriatingly casual, Jake leant forward to pull the sleeve free; she practically fell back in her haste to put some distance between them. ‘I’m leaving today. You stick to your fantasy life, Cassie,’ he told her as she huddled into her cardigan, hugging her arms together. ‘I’m getting out of here.’

And with that, he calmly fastened his helmet, kicked the bike off its stand and into gear and roared off down the long drive—leaving Cassie staring after him, her heart tumbling with shock and humiliation and the memory of a deep, dark, dangerous excitement.

Ten years later

‘JAKE Trevelyan?’ Cassie repeated blankly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I wrote his name down. Where is it?’ Joss hunted through the mess on her desk and produced a scrap of paper. ‘Here—Jake Trevelyan,’ she read. ‘Somebody in Portrevick—isn’t that where you grew up?—recommended us.’

Puzzled, Cassie dropped into the chair at her own desk. It felt very strange, hearing Jake’s name after all this time. She could still picture him with terrifying clarity, sitting astride that mean-looking machine, an angry young man with hard hands and a bitter smile. The memory of that kiss still had the power to make her toes curl inside her shoes.

‘He’s getting married?’

‘Why else would he get in touch with a wedding planner?’

‘I just can’t imagine it.’ The Jake Trevelyan Cassie had known wasn’t the type to settle down.

‘Luckily for us, he obviously can.’ Joss turned back to her computer. ‘He sounded keen, anyway, so I said you’d go round this afternoon.’

‘Me?’ Cassie looked at her boss in dismay. ‘You always meet the clients first.’

‘I can’t today. I’ve got a meeting with the accountant, which I’m not looking forward to at all. Besides, he knows you.’

‘Yes, but he hates me!’ She told Joss about that last encounter outside Portrevick Hall. ‘And what’s his fianc'ee going to think? I wouldn’t want to plan my wedding with someone who’d kissed my bride-groom.’