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Looked like he’d found her weakness. He picked up one pair. The butter-soft kidskin was light as a feather. The label inside announced that they had been made in Paris.
    Curiosity got the better of him. Andy raised the leather to his face and sniffed. Another faint trace of her perfume. What would it feel like to be touched by someone wearing these, to enjoy the sensation of soft leather on his skin?
    ‘You’re definitely a pervert, McTavish,’ he muttered, before replacing the gloves and closing the drawer firmly.
    A cupboard revealed a footwear collection that wouldgive a shoe fetishist an orgasm. Neatly arranged were dozens of pairs of heels in all colours. He ran his fingertips over a pair of dark blue velvet knee-high boots and sighed. He could imagine the old Roz, the one he had met in Paris, wearing these and nothing else.
    The flat trainers puzzled him. The soles were thin and he couldn’t imagine they would give any support. Replacing them on the shelf, he opened the cupboard. A bulky pregnancy belly hung from a hook and next to it was the shapeless maternity dress Roz had been wearing earlier.
    ‘Holy fuck.’ He reached out to touch the latex costume. The moulded form was soft to the touch and bounced back when he removed his finger. It was heavier than Kevlar and must have been a bitch to wear. No wonder she looked worn out.
    The conniving wee Jezebel.
    Up to now, this mission had been business, but it had just turned personal: she had lied to him and deceived him. Roz Spring, or O’Sullivan, or whatever the hell she was calling herself, had invited a whole heap of trouble into her life and he wasn’t going to rest until he found her.

4
    ‘So what are we going to do about your appalling love life?’ Jake asked. He pushed a pallet loaded with bags of sugar in Roz’s direction and she pulled out two from the top. The packing centre in the food bank smelled of the recent consignment of lemons.
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with my love life,’ she told him. ‘As long as you don’t try to mess with it.’
    ‘Me?’ He tried to look harmless and injured, which was hard to do when you’re six and a half foot of Polish muscle. Most people who met him assumed he was the bouncer at the food bank, not a ridiculously over-qualified manager.
    ‘Not my fault you didn’t like the guy I set you up with.’
    ‘Alexander? He never stopped talking. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.’
    Jake cut open a box of tins. ‘With you in the room? He deserves a medal.’
    She stuck her tongue out at him. She didn’t talk that much.
    ‘What about Patrick? He’s a good listener.’
    ‘With bad breath and he has a tendency to grope.’ Of course, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. She disliked gropers.
    ‘You’re impossible to please.’
    The two women helping to pack food bags were listening in and sniggered.
    ‘I am not. You keep sending me weirdoes,’ she told Jake. The man was a sweetheart, but since he had married Kate, he had forgotten what dating was like.
    ‘Okay, Roz, tell me what sort of man you would like. Is he actually human? Does he exist?’
    She finished the bags she was working on and pulled over another bundle. ‘Of course he does. He’s tall, muscular, with long hair. Maybe blond. Blue eyes. Quiet, someone who listens. But who can make up his mind and take action when he needs to. Someone loyal.’
    She had this description off by rote. It had been her ideal of manhood for a long time.
    ‘So if Thor appears, I’ll give him your address,’ Natalya assured her. ‘In the meantime, back on planet Earth, are there any men here that you do like?’
    An image of a long, lean Irishman, with messy black hair and laughing dark eyes, pushed its way to the front of her mind. She had deliberately kissed him in the Savoy to throw him off-balance, but she was the one who had been dizzy ever since. Was it that he was a spectacularly good kisser? Or his sexy Irish accent? Or some secret Andy McTavish