Anything but Vanilla

chapter TWO



Ideas should be clear and ice cream thick. A Spanish Proverb

—from Rosie’s ‘Little Book of Ice Cream’

‘Do you mind?’ Sorrel asked, when he didn’t move or step aside to allow her through to the preparation room.

Alexander West was considerably taller than her, but not so tall—thanks to her four-inch heels—that she was forced to crick her neck to look him in the eye. A woman in business had to learn to stand her ground and, if she were ever to be made Chancellor of the Exchequer, her first act on taking office would be to make four-inch designer heels a tax-deductible expense.

‘Actually, I do,’ he said.

Terrific. A businessman would understand, be reasonable. Alexander West might be a travelling man who could, no doubt, make himself understood in a dozen languages, but he wasn’t talking hers.

Never mind. She hadn’t got this far without becoming multi-lingual herself...

‘Please, Mr West...’ she began, doing her best to ignore his disintegrating T-shirt, his close-fitting jeans, the scent of warm male skin prickling her nose, loosening her bones...

It was tough being a woman in business. Tough running events. A woman had to use whatever tools came to hand. With banks it was her ability to put together a solid business plan; with clients it was her intuitive understanding of what they wanted; with uncooperative staff at hotels she occasionally had to resort to the sharp edge of her tongue, but only as a last resort. The most effective tool in the box she’d always found to be a smile and this wasn’t the moment to hold back. She gave him the full, wide-screen, Technicolor version she’d inherited from her mother. The one known in the family as ‘the heartbreaker’, although in her case the only heart that had suffered any damage was her own.

‘Alexander...’ She switched to his first name, needing to make an ally of him, involve him in her problem. ‘This is important.’

She had his attention now and his smile faded until all she could see was a white starburst of lines around those hot blue eyes where they had been screwed up against the sun. Like a tractor-beam in an old science fiction movie, they drew her towards the seductive curve of his lower lip, pulling her in...

‘How important?’ he asked. His voice, dangerously soft, grazed her skin and mesmerized; her breath snagged in her throat as the warmth of his body wrapped around her. When had she moved? How had she got close enough to feel his breath against her cheek?

Bells were clanging a warning somewhere, but her mouth was so hot that she instinctively touched her lower lip with her tongue to cool it.

‘Really, really...’ her voice caught in her throat ‘...important.’

Even as her brain was scrambling an urgent message to her feet to step back his hand was at her waist, sliding beneath the skimpy top, spreading across her back, each fingertip sending shivery little sparks of pleasure dancing across her skin. Arousing drugging sensations that blocked the danger signals and, as he lowered his mouth to hers, only one word was making it through.

‘Yes...’

It murmured through her body as his lips touched hers, slipping through her defences as smoothly as a silver key turning in a well-oiled lock. Whispering seduction as his tongue slid across her lower lip, dipped between her teeth and her body arched towards him wanting more, wanting him.

She lifted her arms but as she slid them around his neck he broke the connection, lifting his head a fraction to look at her for a moment and murmur, ‘Not raspberry...’

Not raspberry?

He was frowning a little as he straightened so that he was looking down at her. Five-inch heels. She needed five-inch heels...

‘And not that important.’

As his hand slid away from her she took a step back, grabbed behind for the freezer for the second time, steadying herself while her legs remembered what they were for. And for the second time that morning wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

‘Not important?’ No, not that important...

Oh, God! Forget raspberry—if she ever blushed she wouldn’t be raspberry, she’d be beetroot. It was the skirt all over again, only that had been him looking. This had been her losing all sense as her wayward genes, the curse of all Amery women, had temporarily asserted themselves and reason, judgement, had flown out of the window. It was that easy to lose your head.

Just one look and she had wanted him to kiss her. Wanted a lot more. Stupid, crazy and rare in ways he couldn’t begin to understand, Alexander West had read something entirely different into her motives. Had thought that she was prepared to seduce him to get what she wanted...

‘It’s just ice cream,’ he said, dismissively.

Just?

‘Did you say “just ice cream”?’

Focus on that. Ice...

‘How did you get in here?’ he demanded, irritably, ignoring the question. ‘The shop isn’t open.’

The change of mood was like a slap, but it had the effect of jarring her senses back into place.

‘I used the side door,’ she snapped, almost as shocked by his dismissal of ice cream as something anyone could take seriously as a sizzling kiss that had momentarily stolen her wits. And which he had swept aside as casually.

No way was she going to tell him that Ria had given her a key so that she could collect her orders out of hours. She wasn’t going to tell him anything.

It was only the absolute necessity of verifying that Ria had completed her order that kept her from doing the sensible thing and walking out. Once she knew it was there, she could come and pick it up later when he had gone.

‘It was locked,’ he countered.

‘Not when I walked through it.’ The truth, the whole truth and very nearly nothing but the truth. ‘Unlike the front door. You’re not going to get Ria out of trouble if you shut her customers out,’ she added, pointedly.

Alexander West gave her a long, thoughtful look—the kind that suggested he knew when he was being flimflammed. He might look as if he were about to fall asleep where he stood, but, as he’d just demonstrated, he was very much awake and apparently leaping to all manner of conclusions.

Not without reason where the key was concerned.

As for the rest...

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

‘I did pay for my order in advance,’ she said, doing her best to blank out the humming of her pulse, determined to divert his attention from a smile that had got her into so much trouble—and which she’d stow away with the suit, labelled not suitable for office wear, the minute she got home—along with her apparent ability to walk through locked doors. Just in case he took it into his head to use those long fingers, strong capable hands, to do a pat-down search.

Her body practically melted at the thought.

‘Maybe,’ she said, her voice apparently disconnected from her body and brisk as a brand-new yard broom, ‘since you appear to have taken charge in Ria’s absence, you could find the rest of it for me?’

Better. Ignore the body. Stick with the voice...

‘You paid in advance?’

Much better. He wasn’t just diverted, he was seriously surprised and his eyebrows rose, drawing attention to the hair flopping over his forehead and practically falling in his eyes.

Sorrel found herself struggling against the urge to lean into him, to reach up and comb it back with her fingers, feel the strength of that hot body against hers as she put her arms around his neck and fastened it tidily out of the way with an elastic band.

Fortunately, she didn’t have a band handy but, not taking any chances, she kept her fingers busy tucking a stray wisp of her own hair behind an ear. Then, just to be safe, she rubbed her thumb over the little ice-cream-cornet earring that had been a birthday gift from her ideal man, Graeme Laing. The well-groomed, totally focused man for whom travelling meant brief business trips to Zurich, New York or Hong Kong.

Travelling for business was okay.

‘It is normal business practice,’ she assured him.

‘“Normal” and “business practice” are not words I’ve ever heard Ria use in the same sentence,’ Alexander replied.

‘That I can believe, but I’m not Ria.’

‘No?’ Her assertion didn’t impress him. He didn’t even ask what kind of business she was in. Clearly his interest in her didn’t stretch further than her underwear. He had to have known—his kiss had left her clinging to the freezer for support, for heaven’s sake—that she had been lost to reality, but he hadn’t bothered to follow through, press his advantage.

He’d simply been proving the point that she would do anything to get her ice cream.

He had been wrong about that, too. She hadn’t been thinking about her order, or the major event that depended upon it. She hadn’t been thinking at all, only feeling the fizz of heat rushing through her veins, a shocking need to be kissed, to be touched...

She cut off the thought, aware that she should be grateful that he hadn’t taken advantage of her incomprehensible meltdown.

She was grateful.

Having got over his shock at Ria’s unaccountable lapse into efficiency, however, Alexander shrugged and the gap along his shoulder seam widened, putting her fledgling gratitude to the test.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Show me a receipt and you can take your ices.’

‘A receipt?’

That took her mind off his disintegrating clothing, and the sudden chill around her midriff had nothing to do with the fact that she was leaning against an open freezer.

‘It is normal business practice to issue one,’ he said.

She couldn’t be certain that he was mocking her, but it felt very much like it. He was pretty sharp for a man with such a louche lifestyle, but presumably financing it required a certain amount of ruthlessness. Was that why he felt responsible for Ria’s problems? She was full of life, looked fabulous for forty, but good-looking toy-boy lovers—no matter how occasional—were an expensive luxury.

‘You do have one?’

‘A receipt? Not with me,’ she hedged, unwilling to admit to her own rare lapse in efficiency. ‘Ria will have entered the payment in her books,’ she pointed out.

‘Ria hasn’t made an entry in her books for weeks.’

‘But that’s—’

‘That’s Ria.’

‘It’s as bad as that?’ she asked.

‘Worse.’

Sorrel groaned. ‘She’s hopeless with the practicalities. I have to write down the ingredients when we experiment with flavours for ice cream, but even then you never know what extra little touch she’s going to toss in as an afterthought the minute your back is turned.’

‘It’s the extra little touch that makes the magic.’

‘True,’ she said, surprised that someone who thought ice cream unimportant would know that. ‘Sadly, there’s no guarantee that it will be the same touch.’ While she wanted the magic, she also needed consistency. Ria preferred the serendipitous joy of stumbling on some exciting new flavour, which made a visit to Knickerbocker Gloria—the glorious step-back-in-time ice-cream parlour that was at the heart of the business—something of an adventure. Or deeply frustrating if you came back hoping for a second helping of an ice cream you’d fallen in love with. Fortunately for the business, the adventure mostly outweighed the frustration.

Mostly.

‘You have to learn to live with the risk or move on,’ Alexander said, apparently able to read her mind.

‘Do I?’ She regarded him with the same thoughtful look that he had turned on her. ‘Is it the risk that brings you back?’ she asked.

His smile was a dangerous thing. Fleeting. Filled with ambiguity. Was he amused? She couldn’t be certain. And if he was, was he laughing at himself or at her pathetic attempt to tease information out of him? Why did it matter? His relationship with Ria had nothing to do with her unless it interfered with her business.

It was interfering with her business right now.

He was standing in the way of what she needed, but she needed his co-operation. In a moment of weakness, she had allowed her concentration to slip, but she wouldn’t let that happen again. She didn’t care what had brought Alexander West flying back to Maybridge, to Ria. She only cared about the needs of her own business.

‘When it comes to ice cream,’ she said, not waiting for an answer, ‘Ria’s individuality is my biggest selling point.’

Having practically torn her hair out at Ria’s inability to stick to a recipe, she had finally taken the line of least resistance, offering something unrepeatable—colours and flavours that were individually tailored to her clients’ personal requirements—to sell the uniqueness of her ices.

It did mean that she had to work closely with Ria, recording her recipes at the moment of creation to ensure that she delivered the ices that her client tasted and approved and didn’t go off on some last-minute fantasy version conjured up in a flash of inspiration. It wasn’t easy, she couldn’t be here all the time, but it had been worth the effort.

‘Where is Ria?’ she asked, again. ‘And where’s Nancy?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘She has to drop her daughter off at school, but she should have been here an hour ago to open up the ice-cream parlour.’

‘She was, but, since there’s no possibility that the business will continue, it seemed kinder to suggest she use her time to explore other employment opportunities.’

‘Kinder?’ He’d fired her? Things were moving a lot faster than she had anticipated. ‘Kinder?’ she repeated. ‘Have you any idea how important this job is to Nancy? She’s a single mother. Finding another job—’

‘Take it up with Ria,’ he said, cutting her off in full flow. ‘She’s the one who’s disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’ For a man so relaxed that he looked as if he might slide down the door at any minute, he moved with lightning speed. That capable hand was at her elbow as the blood drained from her face and long before the wobble reached her knees. ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’

‘Nothing. Bad choice of words.’ He knew, she thought. He understood that beneath Ria’s vivid clothes, her life-embracing exuberance, there was a fragility...

He was close again and she caught the scent of the lavender that Ria cut from her garden and laid between her sheets. Ria... This was about her, she reminded herself. ‘She can’t hide from the taxman.’

‘No, but, if you know her as well as you say, you’ll know that when things get tough, she does a good impression of an ostrich.’

That rang true. Ria was very good at sticking her head in the sand and not hearing anything she didn’t want to know. Such as advice about being more organised. About consistency in the flavours she sold in the ice-cream parlour, saving the experimental flavours for ‘specials’. ‘Have you any idea which beach she might have chosen? To bury her head in.’

‘That’s not your concern.’

No. At least it was, but she knew what he meant. Since Ria had left him in charge he must have spoken to her and doubtless knew a lot more than he was saying.

‘I’ve been trying to organise her,’ she said, bitterly regretting that she hadn’t tried harder. She might not approve of the ‘postcard’ man, but she hated him thinking that she didn’t care. ‘It’s like trying to herd cats.’

That won her a smile that she could read. Wry, a touch conspiratorial, a moment shared between two people who knew all Ria’s faults and, despite her determination not to, she found herself smiling back.

‘Tell me about it,’ he murmured, then, as she shivered again, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Absolutely.’ But as her eyes met his the wobble intensified and she hadn’t a clue what she was feeling; only that ‘okay’ wasn’t it. Alexander West was too physical, too male, too close. He was taking liberties with her sense of purpose, with her ability to think and act clearly in a crisis. ‘I’m just a bit off balance,’ she said. ‘I’ve had my head in the freezer for too long. I stood up too fast...’

‘That will do it every time.’

His expression was serious, but his eyes were telling a different story.

‘Yes...’ That and a warm hand cradling her elbow, eyes the colour of the sea on a blue-sky day. A shared concern about a friend. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said, this time to distract herself.

He shook his head. ‘Not much. I got back late last night. The key was under the doormat.’

‘The key? I assumed...’ She assumed that Ria would have been on the doorstep with open arms. ‘Are you telling me that you haven’t seen her?’ He shook his head and the sunlight streaming in from the small window above the door glinted on the golden streaks in his hair. ‘But you have spoken to her? What exactly did she say?’

‘There was an electric storm and the line kept breaking up. It’s taken me three days to get home and she was long gone by the time I got here.’

Three days? He’d been travelling for three days? Where in the world had he been? And how much must he care if he’d travel that distance to come to her rescue? She crushed the thought. She wasn’t interested in him or where he’d come from.

‘Where? Where has she gone?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Someone must know where she is,’ she objected. ‘She wouldn’t have left her cats to fend for themselves.’

That provoked another of those fleeting smiles. ‘Arthur and Guinevere are comfortably tucked up with a neighbour who is under the impression that Ria is dealing with a family emergency.’

‘I didn’t think she had any family.’

‘No?’ He said that as if he knew something that she didn’t. He didn’t elaborate, but said, ‘This isn’t the first time she’s done this.’

‘Oh?’ That wasn’t good news.

‘She’s had a couple of close calls in the past. I had hoped, after the last time, she’d learned her lesson. I did warn her...’ Warn her? ‘It’s not fair on the people who rely on her. Suppliers, customers...’ Perhaps realising that he was leaving himself open to an appeal from her, he stopped. ‘She knows what’s going to happen and doesn’t want to be around to witness it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why else would she have taken off?’

Sorrel shook her head. He was right. There was no other explanation.

‘In the meantime nothing can leave here until I’ve made an inventory of the assets.’ As if to make his point, he finally moved and began returning the large containers of ice cream to the freezer.

‘Hold on! These aren’t assets.’ Sorrel grabbed the one containing tiny chocolate-cupcake cases filled with raspberry gelato. ‘These are mine. I told you, I’ve already paid for them.’

‘How? Cheque, credit card? I’ve been to the bank and Ria hasn’t paid anything in for weeks.’

She blinked. The bank had talked to him about Ria’s account? They wouldn’t do that unless it was a joint account. Or he had a power of attorney to act on her behalf. Was that what Ria had left for him?

She didn’t ask. He wouldn’t tell her and besides she had more than enough problems of her own right now. And the biggest of them was waiting for an answer to his question.

‘Not a cheque,’ she said. ‘Who carries a cheque book these days?’ He waited. ‘I, um, gave her...’ She hesitated, well aware how stupid she was going to look.

‘Please tell me you didn’t give her cash,’ he said, way ahead of her.

It had been a rare, uncharacteristic lapse from the strictest standards she applied to her business, but the circumstances had been rare, too. Alexander had no way of knowing that and with a little shrug, a wry smile that she hoped would tempt a little understanding, she said, ‘I will if you insist, but it won’t alter the fact.’

‘Then I hope,’ he said, not responding to the smile, ‘that you kept the receipt in a safe place.’

She had hoped he’d forgotten about the receipt. Clearly not.

Brisk, businesslike...

Busted.