Into the storeroom and with the nous to bring the bolt across on the door behind him, Brennan turned and found her with her eyebrows suddenly raised but still ready to laugh, holding in fact it was a mop upright in a bucket, and with the wooden floor between them, all wet-blackened. The rest of it was a dusty place, with big box-shelving along two walls holding all kinds of odd gear and clothing.

He strode straight across the mopped boards, scuffing them up. It was although life wished to record these determined footprints. He took the young woman by the bare forearms, and immediately there was the sweet, rose scent. He felt her muscles stiffen at first, but he drew her unresisting over to the wall by the window yet along from that, into the one part of the room it would be hard to see from outside. The mop left unsupported flunked sideways in the bucket, at a sexy angle.

‘I’m Chris.’

‘I know. I’m Molly, at least round here. My real name is Mary Cecilia. Dougherty.’ She sounded it Dockerty.

‘That’s much nicer than Molly.’

He didn’t worry long for this broad voice, but searched her face as she searched his. He wanted to take her right back into the middle of the room where the parallelogram of late afternoon light fell, so he could see every tiny part of her face, every facet of the irises of her night-brown eyes, but that would be too dangerous. If he was hustling, he wasn’t needless. Her face had a nice unusual squareness of shape, softly rounded at the corners, with that colonial big-jawedness that delivered a generous sensual mouth and good teeth. She had a longish Celtic upper lip and just the broad side of a perfect small nose. And then there were the wide-spaced, crinkling, humorous eyes, slightly sloe-eyes. Her hair was blacker and curlier than his, and finer, her skin a little darker than his but with a touch of the mildest acne, which only made him care more. He wanted to tell her that, truly meaning it. With all else he was feeling, there was his assumption of her Irish race, her deeper kin…