‘It’s not messy,’ Phin protested. ‘It’s comfortable.’

‘Yes, well, comfortable or not, we’re going to have to clear up before Imelda and the photographer get here.’

I started to gather up the papers scattered over the sofa, but Phin grabbed them from me. ‘Whoa-no, you don’t!’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll never find anything again if you start tidying. I thought we agreed the idea was to let readers see me at home?’

‘No, the idea is that readers have a glimpse of what their lives could be like if only they shopped at Gibson & Grieve all the time,’ I reminded him. ‘You’re a TV personality, for heaven’s sake! You know how publicity works. It’s about creating an image, not showing reality.’

Ignoring his grumbles, I collected up all the mugs I could find and carried them through to the kitchen. I was glad to have something to do to take my mind off the still buzzy aftermath of that kiss. I was desperately aware of Phin, and the intimacy of the whole situation, and at least I could try and disguise it with briskness.

‘We’ll need to offer them coffee,’ I said, dumping the dirty mugs on the draining board. ‘Have you got any fresh?’

‘Somewhere…’ Phin deposited a pile of newspapers on a chair and opened the fridge. It was like a cartoon bachelor’s fridge, stacked with beers and little else, but he found a packet of ground coffee, which he handed to me, and sniffed at a carton. ‘The milk seems OK,’ he said. ‘There should be a cafetière around somewhere, too.’

It was in the sink, still with coffee grounds at the bottom. I dreaded to think how long it had been there. Wrinkling my nose, I got rid of the grounds in the bin and washed up the cafetière with the mugs.

‘What sort of state is the rest of the house in?’ I asked when I had finished.

‘I haven’t quite finished unpacking from Peru,’ Phin said as he opened the door to his bedroom.

‘Quite’ seemed an understatement to me. There were clothes strewn everywhere, along with various other strange items that were presumably essential when you were hacking your way through the rainforest: a mosquito net, a machete, industrial strength insect repellent. You could barely see that it was an airy room, sparsely but stylishly furnished, and dominated by an invitingly wide bed which I carefully averted my eyes from.

Phin had no such qualms. ‘That’s where we make mad, passionate love,’ he said. ‘Most of the time,’ he added, seeing me purse my lips and unable to resist teasing. ‘Of course there’s always the shower and the sofa-and remember that time up on the kitchen table…?’

‘It sounds very unhygienic,’ I said crisply. ‘I’d never carry on like that.’

‘You would if you really wanted me.’

‘Luckily for you,’ I said, ‘I’m only interested in your mind.’

‘Don’t tell Glitz that,’ said Phin, his eyes dancing. ‘You’ll ruin my reputation.’

‘They’re not going to be interested in our sex life, anyway.’

‘Summer, what world are you living in? That’s exactly what they’ll be interested in! They’re journalists on a celebrity rag. I can tell you now this Imelda won’t give two hoots about our minds!’

I lifted my chin stubbornly. ‘The interview is supposed to be about you as a potential family man, not as some sex symbol.’

‘You know, sex is an important part of marriage,’ he said virtuously. ‘We don’t want them thinking we’re not completely compatible in every way.’

‘Yes, well, let’s concentrate on our compatibility in the living room rather than the bedroom,’ I said, closing the bedroom door. ‘We’ll just have to hope that they don’t want to come upstairs.’

Anxious to get away from the bedroom, with all its associations, I hurried back downstairs.

‘We’re going to have to do something about this room,’ I decided, surveying the living room critically. ‘It’s not just the mess. It looks too much like a single guy’s room at the moment.’

I made Phin clear away all the clutter-I think he just dumped it all in the spare room-while I ran around with a vacuum cleaner. It didn’t look too bad by the time I’d finished, although even I thought it was a bit bare.

‘It could do with some flowers, or a cushion or two,’ I said. ‘Do you think I’ve got time to nip out before they get here?’

‘Cushions?’ echoed Phin, horrified. ‘Over my dead body!’

‘Oh, don’t be such a baby. A couple of cushions wouldn’t kill you.’

‘Cushions are the beginning of the end,’ he said mulishly. ‘Next thing I know I’ll be buying scented candles and ironing my sheets!’

‘Sheets feel much nicer when they’re ironed,’ I pointed out, but he only looked at me in disbelief.

‘I might as well be married. I’ve seen it happen to friends,’ he told me. ‘They meet a fabulous girl, they’re having a great time, and then one day you go round and there’s a cushion sitting on the sofa. You know it’s the beginning of the end. You can count the days before that wedding invitation is dropping onto your mat!’

I rolled my eyes. I was feeling much better by that stage. I always find cleaning very comforting.

‘Oh, very well, it’s not as if we’re supposed to be married,’ I conceded. ‘You’ll just have to look as if you’re keen enough on me to be considering a cushion some time soon.’

‘I think I can manage looking keen,’ said Phin, and something in his voice made me glance at him sharply. Amusement and something else glimmered in the depths of those blue eyes. Something that made my breath hitch and my heart thud uneasily in my throat. Something that sent me skittering right back to square one.

I moistened my lips, and cast around wildly for something to say. ‘Shouldn’t you go and change?’ To my horror, my voice sounded high and tight.

‘What for?’ said Phin easily. ‘They want to see me at home, don’t they?’

‘Well, yes, but you might want to look as if you’ve made a bit of an effort. You haven’t even got any shoes on. You look as if you’ve just rolled out of bed,’ I said, and then winced inwardly, wishing I hadn’t mentioned bed.

‘That’s what we want them to think,’ said Phin. ‘And, now you come to mention it, I think you’re the one who needs to do something about your appearance.’

‘What do you mean?’ Diverted, I peered anxiously into the mirror above the mantelpiece. Anne and I had spent hours the evening before, going through the clothes heaped on my bed and trying to pick just the right look. It had to be sexy enough for me to be in with a remote chance of being Phin’s girlfriend, but at the same time I wanted it to fit with Gibson & Grieve’s new family-friendly image.

‘And you mustn’t wear black or white next to your face,’ Anne had said bossily. ‘It’s very draining in photographs. You want to look casual, but sophisticated, elegant, but colourful, sexy, but sensible.’

In the end we had decided on a pair of black wool trousers with a silky shirt I had worn to various Christmas parties the previous December. It was a lovely cherry-red, and I had painted my nails with Anne’s favourite colour, Berry Bright, to match. I had even clipped my hair up loosely, the way I wore it at the weekend. I thought I looked OK.

‘What’s wrong with how I look?’ I asked.

‘You look much too neat and tidy,’ said Phin, putting his hands on either side of my waist. ‘Come here.’

‘What are you doing?’ I asked nervously as he drew me towards him.

‘I’m going to make you look as you’ve just rolled out of bed, too. As if we rolled out of bed together.’

Lifting one hand, he pulled the clip from my hair so that it slithered forward. ‘You shouldn’t hide it away,’ he said, twining his fingers through it. ‘It’s beautiful stuff. I thought it was just brown at first, but every time I look at it I see a different colour. Sometimes it looks gold, sometimes chestnut, sometimes honey. I swear I’ve even seen red in there…it makes me think of an autumn wood.’

I was speechless-and not just because of his closeness, which was making me feel hazy. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. I didn’t want to look into his eyes to see if he was joking or not. I was afraid that if I did I would lose what little grip I still had on my senses.

‘Very poetic,’ I managed.

‘But it’ll look even more beautiful tousled up,’ said Phin-and, ignoring my protests, he mussed up my hair before turning his attention to my shirt. ‘And, yes…I think we’ll have to do something about this, too. There are just too many buttons done up here, and they’re all done up the right way! That won’t do at all.’

Very slowly, very deliberately, he undid the first two buttons and looked down at me, his eyes dark and blue.

‘No, you still look horribly cool,’ he said, which must have been a lie because my heart was thundering in my chest and I was burning where those blunt, surprisingly deft fingers had grazed my skin. I opened my mouth, but the words jammed in my throat, piling into an inarticulate sound that fell somewhere between a squeak and a gasp. He was barely touching me, but every cell in my body was screaming with awareness and I couldn’t have moved if I had tried.

‘I may have to work a bit harder on this one…’ he went on and, bending his head, he blew gently just below my ear. The feel of it shuddered straight down my spine and clutched convulsively at its base. In spite of myself, I shivered.

‘Mmm, yes, this may just work,’ said Phin, pleased, and then he was trailing kisses down my neck, warm and soft and tantalising.

I really, really didn’t want to respond, but I couldn’t help myself. It was awful. It was as if some other woman had taken over my body, tipping her head back and sucking in her breath with another shudder of excitement.

My heart was thudding in my throat, and I could hear the blood rushing giddily in my ears.

‘You see where I’m going with this,’ murmured Phin, who was managing to undo another couple of buttons at the same time. ‘I mean, we did discuss how important it was to make it look as if we found each other irresistible, didn’t we?’