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on the screen, she added, “I’m just in the middle of something here. Can one of you get the door, please? There’s a bowl of sweets in the hall ready for them. Only a few, mind, or we’ll run out. Mo! Shut your dog in the boot room, for heaven’s sake! I can’t concentrate.”
    Danny caught Jules’s eye.
    “Told you,” he whispered. “She’s glued to that computer. It has to be online gambling.”
    Jules laughed but Danny pulled a face.
    “I’m not kidding. Where do you think Pa gets it from?”
    Mo Tremaine grabbed her dog’s collar and dragged the animal, still barking and straining to get to the door, into the boot room. “Shush, Cracker. It’s only trick-or-treaters! Shush, I said! Ashley, answer the bloody door before we’re all deafened.”
    Mo’s dark-haired husband raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? If I answer they’ll run a mile, surely? Frankenstein’s-monster property developer with the scar on his head and bald patch coming to get them? Arms outstretched as he tries to grab their parents’ cottages? “
    Ashley had undergone major surgery only weeks before, and part of his scalp was still shaven and criss-crossed with pink scars. With his stern, hawk-like profile and intense glittering eyes he was strikingly handsome. Shaven head and scars or not, he was hardly in the league of Frankenstein’s monster. Still, Ashley did have a fearsome reputation in Polwenna Bay. Although it had been softened a little by his recent marriage to Mo, it might well send the youngsters scuttling back into the village.
    “Stay put, Ashley. I’ll get it,” offered Issie, leaping to her feet and heading into the hall in a blur of braids and velvet.
    “Don’t you dare eat those sweets, Issie Tremaine! They’re for the children,” her grandmother called after her.
    “You know she will. She always does,” Mo grinned, and Alice laughed.
    “Of course I do. Why do you think I stocked up with extras?”
    Their family banter washed over Jules like a tide. The Tremaines were a noisy bunch, and were sometimes tricky and determined – but they were loyal to a fault, loved one another fiercely and always made her feel welcome. As she drank her soup she tuned in and out of the rise and fall of their chatter, broken now and again by more bouts of frenzied barking from the captive Cracker when there was another knock at the door. Family members flowed in and out of the kitchen, helping themselves to sausages and soup, and teasing one another. But throughout all of this Jules was so acutely aware of Danny that she could hardly concentrate on anything else.
    How was it possible, Jules wondered, that one person could become the sunshine of your entire world? That as hard as you tried you just couldn’t help longing to turn your face towards their warmth? Even when she wasn’t looking at him she knew exactly where Danny was. Her ears seemed to be perfectly attuned to his steady voice, rich and deep as the seams of copper that ran beneath the Cornish landscape. She could picture just how his head would tilt as he listened carefully to Jake, knew that his brow would crinkle thoughtfully as he considered his reply, and saw the way he ran his hand over his cropped hair as he began to speak. Even the hand was etched into her mind’s eye, large and strong, the back sprinkled with golden hair, the fingers square with short nails that had perfect half-moon cuticles.
    She’d memorised his hand? That was ridiculous. She was ridiculous.
    Jules bit into a piece of jacket potato, hoping that the hot buttery flesh would jolt her out of these thoughts, but instead managing to scald her tongue. Nothing, it seemed, was going to help her get over this foolish crush. She’d tried praying. She’d applied logic. She’d avoided him. Now she was even self-harming with steaming-hot food, but all to no avail. She was still totally and utterly in love with him.
    The tears that sprang into her eyes weren’t just from the scalding