Anything but Vanilla

chapter TWELVE



All I really need is love, but a little ice cream would do to be going on with.

—Rosie’s ‘Little Book of Ice Cream’

Sorrel looked up at Alexander, her eyes huge. ‘You don’t understand.’

Actually, he did. She didn’t do this, and neither did he. This was his cue to get up and walk away. He’d planned to drive to Wales this afternoon and find Ria, but he didn’t even have to do that. She’d be back in her own good time and what happened next was Sorrel’s decision, not his. Graeme Laing would be there to stop her doing anything foolish.

He could be on a flight back to Pantabalik tonight. It should be easy.

It had always been easy in the past. Even when he’d been engaged to Julia he couldn’t wait to get back.

But he’d tried walking away from Sorrel and, as if he’d been held on a piece of bungee, he’d bounced straight back.

He didn’t do this, but he took her hand and said, ‘Ria had a baby.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But she hasn’t...’ Then, ‘She wouldn’t...’

‘No. My father gave her the money to dispose of his indiscretion but you’re right, she didn’t.’

‘But...’

‘She was very young and she was sure that once he saw the baby he’d want it. Ria is borderline bi-polar, high highs, low lows. She took her newborn son and presented him to his father on a dizzy high. You can imagine his reaction.’

‘Poor Ria.’

‘She collapsed with post-partum psychosis. Delusions, self-harm... The baby was taken from her, she was sectioned and by the time she had recovered her mother and my father had arranged for the baby to be adopted. She’s been trying to find her son, my brother, ever since.’

‘That’s how you met?’

‘I found letters from Ria, from her mother, amongst his papers after his death. He’d paid her mother...’ He broke off.

‘You contacted Ria? Hoping to find your brother?’

‘Yes. If they’d gone through the proper channels I could have registered with them in case he ever decided to search for his mother. But it was a private arrangement and he was taken abroad.’

‘Alexander...’ Her hand tightened around his fingers. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish she’d trusted me enough to tell me.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not you, Sorrel. She never talks about it. She still feels terrible guilt.’

‘She shouldn’t.’

‘No.’

‘I’m glad she had you to support her.’

‘I’ve done what I can. Tried to make amends. I hoped that the ice-cream parlour would give her a focus.’

‘I can see why she loves you.’

‘I love her, too. But not like this,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’

Like this?

Sorrel heard the words and Alexander was looking at her so intently that for a moment she thought he meant something more than the sexual frisson that had been burning up to the air between them from the moment they’d set eyes on each other.

Which was ridiculous. He hardly knew her.

She hardly knew him and yet her entire world was in turmoil. She couldn’t think, could hardly breathe. It was as if she had been in suspended animation and had suddenly woken, seventeen again and on the brink of something amazing...

‘Like this?’

Heart pounding, she reached out and touched his face where the lengthening shadows threw into relief the scars that ran in faint lines from his temple to his jaw, followed their path with her lips, trailing soft kisses across his cheek, the stubble of his beard sparking tiny flashes of electricity that buzzed through her. As her fingers reached his mouth she paused, raised her lashes and looked at him.

He would leave, she knew that, but he wouldn’t steal her heart: she was giving it to him. Here, now, this was her day.

‘Forget the pub,’ she said. ‘We can send out for pizza, but right now the only thing I want to eat is you.’

She didn’t wait for his answer, but caught his lower lip between hers, sucking it in, wanting to taste him, devour him, and he responded like a starving man offered a feast.

The kiss consumed them both and she had no idea how they made it up the stairs to the small apartment she’d created for herself beneath the eaves.

She was only conscious of his mouth, of his hands beneath her skirts, on her thighs as, stumbling in their haste, she backed up the stairs, leading the way, pulling his shirt over his head, desperate to see, to touch what had until now been no more than tantalising glimpses of silken skin.

They tumbled through the door to her bedroom, breathless, laughing as he unzipped her dress. It fell in a whoosh of green cotton and white petticoats in a heap around her feet, leaving her standing in a white-and-green polka-dot bra, matching pants and lacy-topped hold-up stockings. And suddenly neither of them was laughing.

‘Pretty...’ His voice was thick as he stroked away the straps and kissed the curve between her neck and shoulder. She leaned towards him, wanting more, and he slipped the hook so that the bra joined her dress. His thumb lightly touched a painfully tight nipple, then his tongue, and she gasped as the shock of it went through her like a lightning rod. ‘Very pretty...’

‘Alex...’ His name was a plea. She wanted to feel him, see him, possess him, and he lifted her, taking her down onto the bed with him.

Nothing she had done with a fumbling teen had prepared Sorrel for this. She wanted to throw herself on him, grab the moment, but the siren instinct, as old as Eve, was clamouring through her veins and, curbing the urgency to know, to be complete, she lowered her lips to a chest spattered with sun-gilded hair.

It tickled her lips as she feathered soft kisses down his throat, along his collarbones and he seized her as she flicked her tongue over his nipples.

‘Wait!’ she commanded. ‘Wait...’ She wanted him to remember this when he was on the other side of the world, up to his neck in jungle or lying on a hammock, or walking along a tropical beach. She wanted to remember this when that was all he was—a memory.

He grinned as he lay back, relaxed, arms stretched above his head, surrendering himself. ‘Help yourself.’

Afterwards, he held her until she came back down, opened her eyes onto a new world.

‘For a woman who’s waited so long,’ Alexander said, ‘you were in an almighty hurry.’

Oh, God... ‘I’m sorry. Did you...?’

‘I most certainly did,’ he said, before looping his arm around her to pull her close, so that her head was on his shoulder and they were lying together, ‘but next time we’ll take it slower. Did you say something about pizza?’

Next time... She absorbed the fact that he wanted to do it again. ‘I’m sorry about dinner.’

‘I’m not. While you owe me dinner, I have a built-in excuse to keep coming back.’

‘You don’t need an excuse,’ she said. ‘You can come any time.’

He grinned. ‘Give me a minute. I’m not a nineteen-year-old.’

‘No, thank goodness.’

He glanced at her, but his call to the pizza parlour was answered at that moment and he concentrated on ordering, checking what she liked. Only when that was done did he turn to her and say, ‘Okay. We have thirty minutes. Do you want to tell me about it?’

She shifted a limb that felt boneless. ‘About what?’

‘How you come to be the last twenty-three-year-old virgin in Maybridge. Possibly in the entire county.’

‘I’m not...’ He raised one of those expressive eyebrows. ‘I wasn’t...’

‘No? I have to tell you that the nineteen-year-old who was there before me didn’t make much of an impression.’

‘No?’ She thought about the very thorough job that Alexander had done and grinned. ‘No.’ Heady on the scent of fresh sweat, so relaxed that she was glued to the bed and aware that she was wearing a grin that would have put the Cheshire cat to shame, she said, ‘Actually he was eighteen. I was seventeen and utterly besotted.’

‘Lucky guy.’

‘I thought I was the lucky one. He was captain of rugby, had a place at Oxford and he’d chosen to take me to the end-of-year school party.’ She was going to be his summer girl, the envy of every other girl in village... ‘He’d got hold of the key to the mat store at the back of the gym, but he was a little...over-eager. And then someone was tapping on the door. Apparently he wasn’t the only one with ambitions that night.’

‘Are you saying that your disappointment was so intense that you didn’t bother again?’

‘Well, it wasn’t quite what the romance novels I’d read had led me to imagine. Awkward, fumbling...’ Not like this. ‘But I imagine, given the chance to practise, we’d have got our act together.’

‘No doubt.’ He smoothed a damp strand of hair from her forehead. ‘Believe me, if that was your first effort, I can’t wait to see what you’ll do when you’ve hit your stride.’

She grinned. ‘Maybe we should...’ she danced her fingers down his breastbone ‘...you know. Just to make sure?’

He clamped his hand over hers, holding it where it was. ‘You’re not sure?’

She could feel his heart beating beneath her palm. A solid, regular thump that her own racing pulse picked up. It steadied.

There was going to be a next time. There was no rush...

‘You can’t blame a girl for trying,’ she said, blowing on his sweat-slicked skin. ‘I’ve got a lot of time to make up.’

‘Quality, not quantity is the way to go. Tell me why it’s taken you so long to try again?’

‘Do I have to?’

She didn’t want to talk about the past. She’d been clinging to it like a drowning woman to driftwood for too long but, having cast adrift so spectacularly, she wanted it done with. If she told Alexander now, she would never have to think about it again. Never look back, only forward.

‘I’ve told you mine. It’s your turn.’

She twitched her shoulders. What did it matter? She’d never told anyone, not even her sisters, carrying the shame of it inside her, but it had all happened so long ago.

‘Okay. He’d been to a school disco, had a few swigs from a bottle of vodka someone had smuggled in and, when he got home a little bit high on mission accomplished, he did what any eighteen-year-old boy would do.’

He frowned, clearly not getting it.

‘He dumped his clothes on the floor for his mother to pick up and wash.’ Something Alexander wouldn’t know about, she realised. ‘I don’t suppose you did that at boarding school.’

‘No, but I’m getting the picture. She found a packet of condoms?’

‘With one missing.’

‘So? She had to assume that at his age he’d be trying to get into some girl’s knickers. At least he was taking precautions.’

‘It wasn’t what he was doing, Alexander, it was who he was doing it with. My mother had three children by three different men. I look a lot like her except for my hair. She was blonde...’

‘She assumed you were going to follow in her footsteps?’

‘Three girls without a father to their name, living on their own with only a slightly dotty grandmother who’d lost all her money to a con man? Her imagination was working overtime and she packed him straight off to his uncle in America for the summer.’

‘Presumably he could have said no.’

‘Me, or the summer at Cape Cod with hundreds of girls who would fall for his...’ she adopted an American accent ‘...“cute” English accent.’ At the time it had felt like a knife being stuck into her heart, but it had happened a long time ago. ‘Which would you have chosen at eighteen?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘I might have been besotted, Alexander, but I imagine he thought much the same as his mother.’

‘Oh? And what was that?’

Exactly what his mother had thought was made very plain when she’d turned up at his house the following morning.

‘That I was a little tart who’d lumber her son with an unwanted baby. Presumably that’s why he’d picked me as his date in the first place. The tart bit...not the baby. He was smarter than that.’

‘Well, you certainly showed them. Or did the rest of the village mothers keep their sons on leading strings?’

‘If they did, it backfired. I could have dated any boy in the school that last year.’ She could laugh about it now, but at the time she had just felt dirty... ‘I finally understood why Elle didn’t date.’

‘She didn’t?’

‘We have a family song... “Oh tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you? There are a few, kind sir, But simple girls, and proper too...”’ She began cheerfully enough, but then her voice faltered... ‘Our family attracts scandal like wasps to a picnic.’

‘There’s more?’

She shrugged. ‘Basil ran off with his girlfriend’s brother and was written out of the family history by his father and brother. Grandma realised too late that she didn’t like the man she was about to marry...’

‘Too late? It isn’t too late until the vows are made.’ The teasing look vanished and there was an edge to his voice.

She raised her hand to his cheek, turned his face towards hers.

‘Better to admit the mistake before the wedding,’ she said.

For a moment he resisted, but then raised a wry smile. ‘You’re absolutely right. You can’t expect a woman to hang around waiting for months, years...’

He will leave...

‘What was her name?’ she asked.

The only sound was that of a blackbird in the lilac below her window, the catch of her breath in her throat, and it seemed like for ever before he said, ‘Julia. Her name was Julia. She decided my best man was a better bet.’

His bride and his best friend. Could it be any worse?

‘I left him to help her organise the wedding. He was there with her, talking to the vicar, choosing the venue, doing all the stuff I should have been doing instead of being on the other side of the world playing Tarzan.’

‘She said that?’ she asked, shocked.

‘She was angry. She had every right to be. And maybe a touch defensive.’

‘More than a touch, I’d say. She must have known what you were doing when she agreed to marry you.’

‘She’d assumed that I’d stop. Join the board of WPG. I may have given her that impression. I may even have believed it.’ He glanced at her. ‘It’s not a mistake I’d make again.’

‘No.’

Message received and understood.

He would leave...

A long peal on the door bell broke the tension.

‘That will be the pizza,’ he said.

‘If we don’t answer, maybe he’ll leave it on the step.’

‘And miss out on a tip?’

He leaned into a kiss, then flung his legs over the bed, pulled on his shorts and grabbed his wallet.

For a moment she lay back against the pillow, waiting for him to return. When he didn’t immediately return, she panicked. This was all new to her. He was probably waiting for her to come down.

She scrambled out of bed, grabbed a handful of clothes and ran for the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, scrambled into a T-shirt and jeans.

When she returned to the bedroom to drag a brush through her hair Alexander was lying back against the pillows. Shorts unbuttoned at the waist, ankles crossed, a pizza box unopened on his lap.

‘You’re overdressed,’ he said.

‘I get indigestion if I eat in bed,’ she said. Which was true. ‘And the dogs need walking.’ Also true.

‘And your family could come home any time.’

‘I hadn’t actually thought about that, but, yes, I don’t suppose Gran will want to stay out late.’

‘Okay.’ He was on his feet in one fluid movement. ‘We’ll eat, we’ll walk and then...’ he said, taking her hand and heading for the stairs.

‘And then?’

‘And then,’ he said, ‘I’ll kiss you goodnight and go home.’ He glanced at her. ‘We wouldn’t want the neighbours gossiping.’

‘Wouldn’t we?’

Disappointment rippled through Sorrel. Right now she didn’t care a hoot what the neighbours thought. Apparently she was a lot more like her mother than she’d realised.

She’d always thought she was strong, self-reliant, independent, but that wasn’t true. She was still leaning on Graeme instead of stepping out on her own; allowing him to dictate the pace at which her business grew instead of relying on her instincts. Playing safe with both her heart and her head.

Even now, when she’d momentarily broken out of her shell, she’d ducked straight back inside it like a snail the minute she wasn’t sure...

She should have been braver, waited until Alexander came back to her, and now he thought...

Actually, she didn’t know what he thought.

‘And we do have an early start in the morning,’ he said.

‘We do?’

‘If we’re going to Wales to hunt Ria down, we need to make an early start.’

‘You’re coming with me?’

‘No, you’re coming with me.’ They had reached the bottom of the stairs and he stopped as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Of course, if you came home with me tonight, it would save time in the morning.’

‘Stay with you?’ In his grace and favour apartment in the gothic mansion?

‘My fridge is better stocked and we won’t have to keep the noise down.’ He lifted his shoulders in one of those barely perceptible shrugs. They lived up to their billing and she wanted to run her hands along them, her cheek, her mouth...

‘What noise?’

‘You’re a bit of a screamer.’

‘I’m not!’

He rolled his eyes.

She’d screamed? She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror and discovered that she was grinning.

‘Maybe your flat would be best,’ she said. ‘On the time front, I mean. You’re a lot closer to the motorway.’

‘Good point.’

‘And you’re right—if your car was parked outside all night it would be all over the village by breakfast time.’

‘I thought you didn’t care.’

‘I don’t,’ she said, but Graeme should hear it from her, not from his cleaner. ‘But then there’s the screaming.’

* * *

‘Why didn’t your grandmother just return the ring and send your grandfather packing?’

‘You know how it is,’ Sorrel said, concentrating on scooping a string of cheese into her mouth.

They’d taken the pizza into the garden and were lying on the grass. She was aching in new places, a little sore, but it was a pleasant ache and she was feeling a deep down confidence that was entirely new.

Now Alexander had asked about her grandmother, prodding at an old wound, wanting to know why she’d gone ahead with the wedding, when his Julia had not.

‘No, tell me.’

She stared up at the sky, following the movement of a small fluffy cloud, anything rather than look at him, knowing that he was thinking about another woman.

‘The dress is made, the marquee has been ordered, the caterers booked,’ she said. ‘There are presents piling up in the dining room, crates of champagne in the cellar.’ She turned to him then. ‘It takes courage to defy expectations and call it off.’

‘Would you have gone ahead with it?’

‘I hope not, but it’s a different world and Gran had defied her family to marry my grandfather.’

‘Had she? He’d have been something of catch, I’d have thought.’

‘Not for the granddaughter of the Earl of Melchester. She was a debutante, one of the “girls in pearls” destined for a title, or at least park gates. Great-grandpa Amery was trade.’

‘Ouch.’

‘As I said, it was a different world, but kicking over the traces is a bit of a family failing.’ Was... Her generation had fought it. ‘The choice was going home, admitting she was wrong and settling down with some chinless wonder, or going through with the wedding. Having made her stand, she chose to live with the consequences. There’s no doubt he was as unhappy as she was.’

‘With more reason. He had to live with his conscience. After what he’d done to Basil.’

‘I imagine we were his penance. He lived with my mother’s lifestyle choice, kept us under his roof, safe and cared for if not loved.’

He took another piece of pizza. ‘Tell me about your mother.’

It was her turn to be silent for a while as she sifted through the jumble of memories, both good and bad. ‘She refused to conform to anyone’s rules but her own. She was pregnant at seventeen—the result of a fling with a showman from the fair that comes to the village on the first weekend in June. It set a pattern.’ She glanced at him. ‘We all have birthdays within ten days of each other.’

The corner of his smile lifted in a wry smile. ‘She must have looked forward to summer.’

‘Oh, she didn’t lack interest during the rest of the year. She dyed her hair in brilliant streaks, wore amazing clothes and jewellery that she made herself and turned heads wherever she went.’ The men looking hopeful, the women disapproving.

He glanced at her. ‘But?’

She shook her head. The local women had no need to worry. ‘When she wanted another baby, she chose someone who was just passing through.’

‘A sperm donation? Only more fun than going to a clinic.’

‘She was big on fun,’ she said, then blushed.

He touched her cheek with his knuckles. ‘There’s nothing wrong with fun, Sorrel.’

‘No...’ She leaned against his hand for a moment. This wasn’t just fun, but that was for her to know... ‘She used to take us puddle-splashing in the rain,’ she said, ‘and when it snowed she’d take us up Badgers Hill and we’d all slide down on bin bags until we were worn out. Then we’d have tomato soup from a flask.’ Her eyes filled with tears even as she was smiling at the memory.

‘If if was so much fun, why are you crying?’ he said, wiping a thumb over her cheekbone, cradling her cheek.

‘Because I didn’t tell her.’ She looked up into those amazing blue eyes that seemed to see right through her. ‘I should have told her...’

‘You think she didn’t know?’

‘She sucked up every experience almost as if she knew she didn’t have much time.’ She swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘She loved life, lived every minute of it, seized every moment and didn’t give a fig what anyone thought.’

‘I envy you, Sorrel.’

‘Well, that’s new. No one has ever envied me for being the daughter of Lavender Amery before. There were times, when I was old enough to realise how different she was, that I waited until everyone had gone before I’d come out of school. When I hated her for being so different...’ The words tumbled out. ‘I wanted a mother who didn’t stand out, who was part of the group at the school gate.’ Who wasn’t standing on her own. ‘Just an ordinary mum.’

It was the first time she’d ever admitted that. Even to herself.

Alexander took her into his arms, then, held her. ‘That’s natural, Sorrel. Part of growing up. She’d understand.’

‘I know she would. That only makes it worse.’

‘We all feel a lingering guilt when someone dies. It’s part of living.’

‘It’s hard to live down that kind of start in a small place like Longbourne.’

‘No doubt, but it’s not about your mother, is it?’ The remains of the pizza were congealing in the box. ‘It’s about all the men in your life abandoning you.’

‘No...’ She swallowed. Yes... ‘Maybe. I’d never thought of it like that.’

‘So was the plan to become the Virgin Queen of ice cream?’ he asked, lightly enough, but it felt as if her life, her future, her choices were suddenly being questioned.

‘No. Of course not,’ she protested. ‘I was simply waiting for the perfect man to come along.’

‘Oh, right.’ He grinned. ‘Well, I can see why it’s been six years.’

‘No...’ She had to tell him. ‘I found him a long time ago. Graeme ticked all the boxes.’

‘Graeme Laing?’ He didn’t look particularly surprised.

‘He’s been my mentor since he gave a lecture at college and I stalked him for advice.’

‘Classic. I bet he didn’t know what had hit him.’

‘Maybe not, but he was kind.’ Flattered, amused even. ‘We go to parties, business dinners, I get to mix with high-fliers...’ Not that they ever treated her ‘little’ business as anything more than something amusing to keep the wife or girlfriend of someone as important as Graeme occupied when he had better things to do. But she watched them, listened to them, learned...

‘Does he know that he’s the chosen one?’

‘We have—had—a kind of unspoken agreement that we’ll get married eventually.’

‘When you’re grown up.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, defending her choice.

‘He’s very nearly old enough to be your father, Sorrel, which is no doubt why he spoke to you as if you were a child.’

‘I can see that it must look as I was searching for a father figure. Maybe I was. But he’s not a man to kiss and run.’

‘Not a man to do more than kiss, apparently. And he let me walk away with you without lifting a finger to stop me.’

‘He didn’t know—’ She broke off. Of course he did. The sexual tension had been coming off them in waves when he’d turned up this afternoon. Jane had been embarrassed it was so obvious, and, while Graeme’s emotional antenna was at half mast, he wasn’t stupid.

If there had been a flicker of the heat that had consumed her from the moment she’d set eyes on Alexander, they would have fallen into bed a long time ago. She’d pushed him yesterday and he had grabbed Basil’s interruption with both hands.

‘You’re right,’ she admitted. ‘He ticks all the boxes but one. There is no chemistry between us. No fizz.’ It was as if he wanted her as his wife, but couldn’t quite bring himself to make the commitment. Step over a line that he’d drawn when she was a new graduate and he was her mentor. And now it was too late. ‘The moment I set eyes on you...’ She tried to think of some way to describe how she’d felt. ‘Did you ever have popping candy?’

‘The stuff that explodes on your tongue?’

‘Well, that’s how I felt when I saw you. As if I had popping candy under my skin.’