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to someone for life because you’re in love is what doesn’t make sense,’ he retorted.
    Crikey, whatever happened to romance? Cassie shook her head. ‘Well, if you ever decide that doing a checklist together isn’t quite enough, remember that Avalon can help you plan your wedding.’
    ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said. ‘I imagine Natasha would like a wedding of some kind, but she’s a very successful solicitor, so she wouldn’t have the time to organise much herself.’
    Of course, Natasha would be a successful solicitor, Cassie thought, having taken a dislike to his perfect girlfriend without ever having met her. She was tempted to say that Natasha would no doubt be too busy being marvellous to have time to bother with anything as inconsequential as a wedding, but remembered in time that Avalon’s business relied on brides being too busy to do everything themselves.
    Besides, it might sound as if she was jealous of Natasha.
    Which was nonsense, of course.
    ‘I certainly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Jake went on. ‘Weddings are unfamiliar territory to me.’
    ‘You must have been to loads of weddings, mustn’t you?’
    ‘Very few,’ he said. ‘In fact, only a couple. I lived in the States until last year, so I missed out on various family weddings.’
    ‘I don’t know how you managed to avoid them,’ said Cassie. ‘All my friends seem have got married in the last year or so. There was a time when it felt as if I was going to a wedding every other weekend, and that was just people I knew! It was as if it was catching. Suddenly everyone was married.’
    ‘Everyone except you?’
    ‘That’s what it feels like, anyway,’ she said with little sigh.
    ‘Why not you? You’re obviously not averse to the idea of getting married.’
    ‘I just haven’t found the right guy, I suppose.’ Cassie sighedagain. ‘I’ve had boyfriends, of course, but none of them have had that special something.’
    Jake slanted a sardonic glance at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still holding out for Rupert Branscombe Fox?’
    ‘Of course not,’ she said, flushing with embarrassment at the memory of the massive crush she had had on Rupert.
    Not that she could really blame herself. What seventeen-year-old girl could be expected to resist that lethal combination of good looks and glamour? And Rupert could be extraordinarily charming when he wanted to be. He wasn’t so charming when he didn’t, of course, as Cassie had discovered even before Jake had kissed her.
    Whoops; she didn’t want to be thinking about that kiss, did she?
    Too late.
    Cassie tried the looking-out-of-the window thing again, but London was a blur, and she was back outside the Hall again, being yanked against Jake again. She could smell the leather of his jacket, feel the hardness of his body and the unforgiving steel of the motorbike.
    In spite of Cassie’s increasingly desperate efforts to keep her eyes on the interminable houses lining the road, they kept sliding round to Jake’s profile. The traffic was heavy and he was concentrating on driving, so she gave in and let them skitter over the angular planes of his face to the corner of his mouth, at which point her heart started thumping and thudding alarmingly.
    It was ten years later. Jake had changed completely. The leather jacket had gone, the bike had gone.
    But that mouth was still exactly the same.
    That mouth…She knew what it felt like. She knew how it tasted. She knew just how warm and sure those firm lips could be. Jake was an austere stranger beside her now, but she had kissed him. The memory was so vivid and so disorientating that Cassie felt quite giddy for a moment.
    She swallowed. ‘I had a major crush on Rupert, but it was just a teenage thing. Remember what a gawk I was?’ she said, removing her gaze firmly back to the road. ‘I have this fantasy that if I bumped into Rupert now he wouldn’t recognise me.’
    ‘I recognised you,’ Jake pointed out unhelpfully.
    ‘Yes,