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the shop behind them, and he settled her into the luxury of the passenger seat before going round and sliding behind the wheel. The car purred to life andslid out seamlessly into the traffic, and she settled back against the seat and allowed herself to be pampered.
    Soft music flowed around them, and as he drove they chatted about this and that. He was so easy to talk to, she thought, with his teasing sense of humour and his ready wit, but there was so much more to him, such depth and breadth and a wonderful human warmth that drew her like a moth to a flame.
    Don’t start having fantasies about him, she warned herself, but it was pointless. Every moment in his company she felt herself drawn closer to him, and by the time they arrived at his house she knew she was in deep trouble.
    For the first time in her life, she realised, she was in serious danger of falling in love. Not lust, not a teenage crush or the hopeful dreams of a lonely young mother, but love.
    And only a fool would allow herself to fall in love with a man who was so clearly out of reach.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I T WAS a wonderful house. Snuggled into the side of a hill off a winding country lane, the old half-timbered barn looked out over the gently rolling farmland to the woods on the far side.
    Autumn colour was just beginning to touch the leaves, and Cait guessed that in a few weeks the blaze of colour would be spectacular. In between, the land was freshly ploughed, the turned earth like rich, dark chocolate, and in the distance she could see a tractor moving slowly across a field, seagulls swooping and fluttering in its wake like the tail of a kite.
    She breathed deeply of the fresh country air and thought of Josh and Milly stuck in the middle of London, surrounded by all those fumes, and she wanted to cry for them.
    Owen opened the door and held out an arm to her, beckoning her inside with a smile. ‘Come on in—dogs, get down!’ he said, and the dogs subsided, wagging round them both and sniffing her with interest. ‘They’re just checking you out, they won’t hurt you,’ he told her, not that she needed reassuring. She guessed she was more in danger of being licked to death. ‘This one’s Daisy, the other one’s Jess. Say hello nicely, girls.’
    Cait looked at them, identical chocolate Labradors, and wondered how on earth he could tell the difference.
    ‘Different collars,’ he explained, reading her mind, and she laughed and patted them, introducing herself and trying to learn the difference, and then she straightened up and saw the interior of the barn, and fell in love all over again.
    ‘Oh, wow,’ she said softly, her breath almost taken away. They were in a lobby near one end, and through the open doorway she could see a wonderfully cosy sitting room at the end nearest her, and then beyond an open studwork partition the dining room soaring to the roof, with huge windows on both sides stretching up to the eaves.
    A massive stove squatted between the two rooms, a gleaming stainless steel stovepipe emerging from the top of it and stretching up towards the roof. At the far end of the dining room two steps rose to the kitchen, with more open studwork to divide it from the central area.
    ‘Come on in,’ he said.
    She followed Owen through the cosy and inviting sitting room into the central dining room, and tilting her head back she looked up into the great beamed vault of the roof. The ends were divided off with closed studwork, the beams still visible, so that over the kitchen and sitting room were two rooms, presumably bedrooms, and between them a walkway was suspended from the tie beams by steel rods, accessed by a sweeping spiral staircase in gleaming steel.
    It was a fascinating mix of ancient and modern—sort of high tech meets country, Cait thought, and then she moved her head and caught a glimpse of the view through the wall of glass, and she was spellbound.
    ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous!’ she said with feeling.
    ‘You like it?’ he asked,