Anything but Vanilla... (9 page)

Time to bail before this got even more complicated and he did something really stupid that would end in a world of regret.

He dragged his hands over his face in a gesture of weariness that was not entirely faked. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m already in trouble,’ he said. ‘The day has caught up with me and I’m going to fall asleep with my face in your grandmother’s pie.’

Sorrel’s shiver as she slid the key into the ignition, started the engine, had nothing to do with the fact that she’d been digging out her ices from the depths of Ria’s freezers. It had everything to with the way that Alexander had been looking at her. A look that had bloomed, warm and low in her belly, and sent shivers of anticipation racing down her thighs. Shivers that every shred of sense told her were wrong, wrong, wrong.

So why did it feel so right?

‘You have to eat,’ she said, tugging on her seat belt, knowing that she was playing with fire, but unable to stop herself from striking the matches. ‘A good meal is the least I owe you for rescuing my cucumber ice cream. And saving my nails.’ She looked up and in that moment she knew exactly what he was doing. His reluctance had nothing to do with tiredness, or being driven by a woman. He was simply trying to find a polite way to excuse himself from the invitation that she’d thrown at him, and hadn’t given him a chance to refuse.

That was her. Organising, a bit bossy... Well, she had to be if she wanted to get anything done. But this was different.

All day they’d been fencing with one another, touching close, kissing close. They weren’t kids. They both understood how easy it would be to step over a line that should not, must not be crossed.

There was her life plan to consider and he probably had someone, somewhere waiting for him. He’d been kind, more helpful than she’d had any right to expect, but that was all. The kiss had meant nothing.

Ignoring a sharp little tug of disappointment, she said, ‘On the other hand, gravy in the eyebrows is never a good look and, although I wouldn’t have said anything, it’s obvious that you’re in desperate need of some beauty sleep.’

That provoked a wry smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. Get in. I’ll drop you at Ria’s.’

‘No need. It’s out of your way and I need to loosen up. I’m not used to sitting at a desk all day.’

It wasn’t—out of her way—but despite an almost overwhelming desire to drag him home, feed him and tuck him up beneath her duck-down duvet so that he could sleep the clock round in comfort, she could see that he meant it and she kept her mouth shut as he took a step back.

She should be grateful.

She wasn’t the mother-earth type, brewing up herbs, making her own bread, creating out-of-this-world ices like Ria. Her world involved spreadsheets and cost accounting and a five-year plan that would put her name alongside the legendary local businesswomen Amaryllis Jones, Willow Armstrong, Veronica Kavanagh, who’d paved the way, who were her inspiration.

Besides, any man who travelled in places where there was no mail service had to be capable of taking care of himself. Meanwhile, she had worlds to conquer, millions to make. Falling in lust with a man on the move was absolutely the last thing in the entire world she was ever going to do.

She shut the van door, lowered the window. ‘You’re quite sure? About the lift? I wouldn’t want you passing out on the footpath.’

‘Quite sure. Please give my apologies to your grandmother. I have no doubt that her pie will be wonderful, but I wouldn’t do it justice.’

‘Actually, when I said a good meal, I had my fingers crossed. Dinner with The Herbs tends to be a bit of a gamble. You may have had a lucky escape,’ she said as she put the van into gear. ‘Thanks for your help, today, Alexander. I really appreciate it and if you do hear from Ria will you ask her to call me?’

‘Give me your number.’ He took out his phone and programmed it into the memory, then nodded briefly, stepped back.

She sat for a moment, just looking at him until she realised that he was waiting for her to leave. He still had his phone in his hand and was probably going to call a taxi the minute she’d gone.

She gave him a little toot and eased out into the traffic. It was slow moving and Alexander passed her while she was waiting for the traffic lights to change.

He must have seen the van but he didn’t slow or look around. She, on the other hand, watched him, a rather large lump in her throat, as he ate up the distance with a long, effortless stride. Then an impatient toot from behind warned her that the lights had changed and she was forced to turn with the one-way flow of traffic that would take her home.

It was only when she was pulling into the drive that the ‘out of your way’ penny dropped. He hadn’t asked for Scoop!’s address, but it was on the sub-lease he’d prepared. He must have Googled Scoop! at some point during the day—she’d have done the same thing in his place—and, having discovered that the office was on the Haughton Manor estate, he’d assumed that she lived there, too.

‘Wrong sister, Mr West,’ she murmured, feeling just a touch smug. ‘Not quite as smart as you think you are.’

* * *

Alexander headed for the river, stopping only to pick up fish and chips that he took to a bench beside the water, tossing more to the ducks than he ate himself. Wishing that he’d gone with Sorrel to share a family supper. It had been a very long time since he’d eaten home cooking.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the pie that he’d wanted to taste.

Either the jet lag was worse than usual or he’d been in the jungle too long. Without a woman for too long. The heat had been there from the moment she’d turned around. A two-way glow that should have made it one easy step to the kind of brief fling that, when all the stars lined up, he indulged in on his flying trips home.

This morning the stars had appeared to be in perfect alignment but he’d known from the moment his lips touched hers that he’d made a mistake.

There had been nothing bold about her response to his kiss. Her lips had trembled beneath his tongue, her response a melting sigh, rather than a bold welcome. He’d known enough women to recognise that she was not the ‘brief fling’ type and brief was the only kind he could offer. A relationship conducted by satellite was never going to work. He’d tried it and had the returned engagement ring and Dear John letter to prove it.

He’d done his best to turn the kiss into an insult, hoping to send her running, but she’d had too much to lose and now his head was filled with the image of a body a man could lose himself in, a wayward curl that would not lie down, a soft giggle that made him hard just thinking about it.

He balled the paper, tossed it into a bin and set off along the towpath, walking the long day at a desk out of his bones. Walking off the restless energy of a libido on the rampage. Already missing her quick smile, her eagerness, her passion.

How many times today had he come close to repeating that kiss?

In his head he’d taken her on Ria’s desk, against the freezer, his ice-cold lips against hot, hard nipples.

Maybe, he thought as he strode out in the gathering dusk, he’d misread the signals. Maybe if he went to Cranbrook Park tomorrow she’d repeat the invitation. Except that she didn’t expect him to turn up to lend a hand at the Jefferson event. He’d seen the exact moment when she’d got the message, taken a mental step back and let him off the hook with her graceful exit.

A wise fish would ignore the siren voice whispering ‘This one...’ in his ear and swim away while he had the chance and, kicking his shoes off, he plunged into the river.

NINE

A little ice cream is like a love affair—a sweet pleasure that lifts the spirit.

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

Sorrel transferred the ices to the chest freezer in the garage, shooed the dogs who rushed to meet her out into the garden and stepped into a kitchen filled with the smell of pastry burning.

‘Hello, darling? Busy day?’ Grandma asked as she turned from laying the kitchen table. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘Friend?’ She checked the oven, turned down the temperature before the pie was incinerated and made a mental note to make an appointment to have her grandmother’s eyes tested. ‘Oh, you mean Alexander,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t make it, Gran. He sends his apologies.’

‘Alexander? Who’s Alexander?’

‘Graeme...’ She jumped at the sound of his voice, turning guiltily as he appeared from the hall. Which was ridiculous. She had nothing to feel guilty about. She hadn’t betrayed him. Only herself... ‘I didn’t see your car.’

‘It was such a pleasant evening I decided to walk over from the rectory.’

‘Really? It must be catching.’ He frowned and she quickly shook her head. ‘Nothing. Sorry...I didn’t expect to see you this evening. How is it going over there?’

‘Slowly. Perfection can’t be rushed.’

‘I suppose not.’ Was that why he was taking his time with her? Because she wasn’t yet perfect?

‘When I saw Basil in the village shop last week he asked if I’d take a look at his tax return so I thought I’d drop in and do it this evening. Kill two birds with one stone.’

‘Oh? Who’s the other bird?’

He frowned. ‘You seem a little edgy, Sorrel.’

‘Do I? It’s been a difficult day.’ Although not as difficult as it might have been thanks to Alexander. She forced a smile. ‘It’s very kind of you to help Basil.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s no trouble and I thought it would save you the bother of phoning me.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ She’d put the opera so far in the back of her mind that she’d forgotten. ‘I haven’t had a chance to check the dates, yet.’

‘Well, you can do that now. And you wanted to talk about the ice-cream parlour?’

‘Isn’t that three birds?’ she said. And two of them appeared to be her. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’

He should have laughed. Alexander would have laughed. Graeme merely looked confused.

She shook her head. ‘Sorry. You’re right. I do, Graeme. I’m going to ask Ria if she’d be prepared to go into partnership with me. I’ve had this absolutely brilliant idea—’

‘Partnership? Are you mad?’ he said, cutting her off before she could elaborate.

‘Possibly. It’s been a long day...’

‘You’re tired?’

Actually she wasn’t tired, she was stimulated, elated, excited and didn’t want to have cold water thrown over her idea.

‘...and it’s going to be a long day tomorrow. To be honest all I want to do right now is have a long soak and an early night.’

‘Really? That’s not like you,’ he said, disapprovingly. Definitely not perfect... Clearly women who wanted to be world-class businesswomen didn’t indulge themselves in a long soak in the bath when there were decisions to be made, ice-cream empires to conquer. But then most of them wouldn’t have been on their feet all day producing the goods. And she did her best thinking in the bath. ‘Very well. We’ll have dinner tomorrow night. We can talk about it then.’

Uh-oh. She recognised that tone of voice. It was the ‘must do better’ voice. Talking about it meant talking her out of whatever silly idea she’d come up with.

‘I’d prefer to leave it until the beginning of next week, Graeme. I’ll have a better idea of the situation by then.’

‘The situation seems clear enough...’ He stepped back as the latest canine addition to the menagerie that had crept back into the kitchen began sniffing around his shoes.

‘Midge! Out!’ she said sharply and Midge, affronted, shook herself thoroughly, sending a cloud of white hair floating up to cling to Graeme’s immaculate charcoal suit before she retreated to the step where she flopped down, blocking the door.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ he exclaimed, irritably brushing at his legs. ‘Your sister needs to grow up, Sorrel. This is your home, not an animal sanctuary.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said—she’d been apologising for Geli’s waifs and strays for so long that it had become an automatic response—but honestly, any man with a particle of common sense would have changed into something casual before coming to call on a household with a large floating dog and cat population.

Alexander, in soft jeans and an old T-shirt, wouldn’t have been twitchy about a few dog hairs. The thought crept, unbidden, into her head and she slapped it away. She was not going to compare them. Not to Graeme’s disadvantage.

He might not be prepared to come and mix ice cream with her but he’d been there when she’d needed someone with experience to hold her hand as she’d launched Scoop! out of the shallow little pond of Rosie-based parties and into the deeper, more dangerous waters of major events.

While Elle and Geli had been happy to carry on as they were, he had understood her drive, her need to become a market leader, and encouraged her.

He’d been a guest lecturer on start-up finance during the final year of her degree, and she’d known, the minute he’d stepped up to the lectern, that he fulfilled everything she sought in a man.

Tall, slim, his hair cut by a famed London barber, his shirts and shoes handmade, his bespoke suits cut in classic English style, he passed the ‘well groomed’ and ‘well dressed’ test with a starred A.

His reputation as a financial wizard was already established, so that was his career sorted, and his property portfolio included a riverside apartment in London, a cottage in Cornwall to which he’d added the Georgian vicarage in Longbourne, when it came on the market.

‘I’ll find you a clothes brush,’ she said, in an attempt to make up for her momentary irritation.

‘Don’t bother, it’ll have to be cleaned.’ And not looking up, said, ‘Who’s Alexander?’

‘Alexander...?’ Could he read her thoughts? For a woman who never blushed, her cheeks felt decidedly warm, but she had been bending over the oven. ‘No one,’ she said. ‘Just a friend of Ria’s.’

‘One of those hippie types, no doubt.’

‘Is Alexander a hippie? Does he wear beads?’ Her grandmother smiled at some long-ago recollection. Then, with a little shake of her head, she said, ‘I need some parsley.’

‘I’ll go and cut you some.’ Welcoming the chance to step back from a loaded atmosphere, Sorrel took the scissors from the hook, stepped over Midge and cut some from the pot near the back door.

‘Well?’ Graeme asked, staying safely on the other side of the dog. ‘Is he?’

‘A hippie?’ She made herself smile, less pleased with his slightly possessive tone than she should have been. Less pleased to see him than she should have been. She needed time to distance herself from Alexander, from the feelings he’d aroused, from some tantalising vision of what she was missing... ‘Having only seen them in old news clips, Graeme, I have no idea,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you mean New Age?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Yes, she was rather afraid she did. ‘Well, he wasn’t wearing flares, or flowers in his hair.’ Edgy? She was balancing on the blade of the scissors slicing through the herbs... ‘He’s giving Ria a hand sorting out the Knickerbocker paperwork.’

‘Typical. I can imagine how that’s going.’

Why was he so annoyed? Did she have a big sign stamped on her forehead saying ‘Kissed’...?

‘Maybe, if you were nicer to her, she’d have called you,’ she said, unable to resist winding him up a little.

He made a noise that in a less dignified man she would have described as a snort, but, instead of ignoring a business so small that it was beneath his notice, he seemed to take Ria’s laissez-faire attitude to business, her lifestyle, as a personal affront.

‘I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,’ she said, rinsing the parsley under the tap, giving it a shake and handing it to her grandmother. She didn’t bother to tell Graeme that Alexander was a West. She didn’t want to talk about him. At all. ‘Not that it’s any of our business.’

Something she’d been telling herself, without any noticeable effect, all day.

‘If you’re planning on getting involved, it’s very much your business,’ he pointed out. ‘And if he’s helping her, shouldn’t Ria be the one feeding this man?’

‘She’s away.’

‘Away? Where?’

‘Dealing with a family emergency,’ she said, without a blush. ‘Without Alexander’s co-operation tomorrow’s event would have been a disaster, Graeme. Offering him a meal was the least I could do.’

‘You shouldn’t get involved.’

She didn’t bother to point out that he was contradicting himself, merely said, ‘I am involved. I need Ria. Scoop! needs Ria.’

‘Why? Anyone can make ice cream. You did it yourself, today.’ Something warned her not to tell him that Alexander had pitched in and helped with that, too. ‘Don’t even think of a partnership with that woman,’ he warned. ‘All you need is the equipment and you’ll get that at a knock-down price in a creditor sale.’

Shocked, for a moment she couldn’t think of a thing to say. But it was clear now why he’d been interested when she’d broached the idea of taking over the ice-cream parlour. He hadn’t considered Ria’s distress or Nancy and her little girl without an income. All he’d seen was a business opportunity. Simple economics. And clearly he expected her to feel the same way.

‘I was using Ria’s recipes,’ she reminded him. ‘They are her intellectual property.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Sorrel, it’s not rocket science.’

‘No...’ It was magic.

‘It’s a little ahead of schedule but you have to seize opportunities when they come your way,’ he continued.

‘Carpe diem?’
she suggested. The dangerous edge in her voice passed him by but her grandmother lifted her head and met her eye. ‘The fish thing seems all the rage today.’

‘You can take on one of the students who work for you,’ he continued, ignoring her interjection. ‘They’ll all be looking for jobs when the school year finishes in a few weeks. You’ll be able to pick and choose and they won’t cost you more than the minimum wage.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I know Ria is your friend but there’s no room for sentiment in business, Sorrel. I can’t tell you how much I disliked seeing you involved with someone who treated her business as little more than a game. She’s run close to the brink of collapse a couple of times in the past. To be honest, I’ve been waiting for this.’

Clearly with some justification, but did he have to sound so satisfied that he had been proved right? So completely immune to the human cost?

‘This is your moment to take control. You can pick up her local trade and expand it. You’re building a strong brand image. You can capitalise on that.’

Apparently, while she’d been dealing with the practicalities, he’d been working out how to take advantage of the situation.

For her benefit, she reminded herself. He had no stake in this other than as her mentor. This was what she had always wanted. But not like this.

‘I’m sure what you say makes perfect sense,’ she said, ‘and we’ll talk about it when I can think straight, but right now if you don’t mind I’m going to take the dogs for a run across the common before dinner.’

‘I thought you were tired.’

‘I am...’ and she had a headache that was thumping in time to the whack of the knife through the herbs on the chopping block ‘...but I’ve been cooped up indoors most of the day and if I don’t get some fresh air I won’t sleep. I’d ask you to come with me,’ she added, ‘but you’d ruin your shoes.’

‘Yes...’ He appeared momentarily nonplussed at her dismissal, not because he wanted to come with her, but because he made the decisions. ‘What about the twenty-fourth?’ he asked.

She found her phone, ran through her calendar. ‘I’ve got a wedding on the twenty-fifth...’ A ready-made excuse.

‘Oh, well, if it’s going to be difficult—’

‘No!’ She’d invested years in this relationship. It was this, rather than some crazy fling with a man who would be gone in days, that she wanted. She wasn’t going to fall out with Graeme over an ice-cream parlour. She’d produce a business plan. Maybe talk to someone else. Get another point of view from someone else who’d done this. ‘I can manage.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll organise a car to bring you home.’

She knew he was conscious of being older than her, but there was taking things slowly and then there was the madness of kissing a man within moments of meeting him. She was not about to allow the fizzing heat that had erupted between her and Alexander West to derail her plans and sabotage the future she had mapped out so carefully.

‘Is that necessary? I’ll have to be in London the day after anyway.’ She waited.

Say it...

Ask me to stay...

‘Have you gone to brew that beer, Graeme?’

‘Basil...’ Graeme turned as her uncle came to see what was keeping him. ‘Sorry...I was just having a word with Sorrel.’

‘Oh, I didn’t see you there, sweetheart. Take your time. I’ll get the beers.’

‘No, we’re done here,’ Graeme said. ‘Call me when you’ve got time for a chat over the weekend, Sorrel. We’ll sort things out then.’

* * *

Alexander had arranged an early meeting with Ria’s accountant. The senior partner dealing with Knickerbocker Gloria had indeed been taken ill and his junior, overburdened and incapable of keeping Ria on a short rein, was more than happy to be relieved of the responsibility.

A line of credit to deal with any further bills had settled things at the bank. The ice-cream parlour was back in business, if only for a month. His next task was to put the accounts into some sort of order for Sorrel.

His assistant had emailed from Pantabalik to tell him that the rains had set in early and they were unable to travel any further upriver so it wasn’t the worst time in the world to be away. He could follow up the research in the laboratory. Finish a paper he’d been working on for
Nature
. There were a dozen things to keep him busy while he was in England.

He arrived at Knickerbocker Gloria to find the door open and everything ready for what looked as if it was going to be a good day for the ice-cream business. A customer was already discussing her requirements with a distinguished-looking man in a straw boater, who was taking her through the flavours on offer, offering a taste of anything that caught her fancy, making suggestions, full of information about the quality of the ingredients.