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the shower. Instead of stepping into the vast double cubicle—Lucy Fitzgerald had spared no cash when it came to the luxurious renovations on this farm cottage—she leaned back against the door, closed her eyes and waited for her heartbeat to return to something approaching normal.
    It continued to bang against her ribcage, the echo loud in her ears for a long time. The encounter had left her on a high. She knew it was the effect of adrenalin, but as she struggled to tamp down the weird combination of exhilaration and antagonismcirculating through her veins the scene played on a loop in her head.
    Finally with a sigh she levered herself upright and walked into the shower, gasping a little as the cool needles of water hit her warm body. Face raised to the jets of water, she reached for her shower gel and began to lather her skin, rubbing until her body tingled, but Gianni Fitzgerald’s voice lingered, along with his slow, sardonic smile, the mixture of insolence and amusement in his attitude and the sensuality that came off him in sonic waves.
    When she emerged a few minutes later she felt satisfied she had washed Gianni Fitzgerald out of her hair figuratively speaking, now she had to do it in the practical sense and reclaim the cottage.
    After towel-drying her hair she pulled on the clothes she had grabbed from the top of her case. She was short of a bra, but that wasn’t a major problem. She was not exactly over-endowed in that area and the fabric of the denim-coloured cotton shirt she fought her way into was not exactly clingy. Her still-damp skin felt oddly sensitive as she hurriedly buttoned it up.
    She was dragging a comb through her thick, damp curls when from below she heard a bang and clatter. The kitchen, to her way of thinking the most impressive room in the cottage, was located directly underneath this room.
    Her brows twitched into a frown as she glanced into the mirror, connected with her overbright eyes and looked away again quickly.
    What was he doing now?
she asked herself when there was another loud bang. Mingled with the dismay she experienced at the thought of any breakages was a stab of real concern. Kitchens could be dangerous places for little boys.
    The kitchen in the cottage was at the back of the house. It opened out on to the courtyard of stone outbuildings. Shehad spent a happy hour exploring the large room the night before, discovering that the free-standing rustic-looking units hid some very unrustic state-of-the-art shiny appliances that had not come cheap. Clearly money was not an issue for Lucy Fitzgerald; though there was no clue in the place as to how she made her living, the woman herself had offered no information and Miranda had not liked to ask.
    ‘I don’t cook,’ the beautiful blonde had admitted when Miranda had expressed her admiration for the room.
    Miranda, secretly scandalised by the indifference—it seemed a criminal waste of a kitchen she would have lived in, given the chance—admitted she enjoyed cooking.
    ‘Well, the freezer’s full of ready meals, but if you want to cook anything from scratch go for it,’ her employer had offered, pulling open the door of a well-stocked store cupboard that made Miranda’s eyes widen and saying vaguely, ‘There’s stuff here. A friend brought in some things—I was going to teach myself the basics.’ She gave an attractive self-deprecating grimace and admitted, ‘But I never actually … well, anyway, feel free. There’s a local farm shop and a terrific fruit and veg man who calls … Quite cute actually, if you’re not spoken for …?’
    Miranda admitted she was not but did not go into detail and the other woman, respecting her privacy, had not pushed it.
    Pushing away the memory of the conversation with a lot more success than she had had with the surreal events of this morning, Miranda squared her shoulders and reached for the door handle.
    She walked in at the moment Gianni Fitzgerald tipped a dustpan full of broken