Anything but Vanilla.... Liz Fielding

For the right tenant.’

      ‘Is that how Ria managed to get such a good deal?’ she asked.

      ‘Good deal?’

      He didn’t move, but her skin began to tingle and her mouth dried...

      ‘Her rent is very...reasonable.’ There was no point dodging the bullet. The words had come out of her mouth even if she hadn’t meant them in quite the way they’d sounded. Or maybe she had. The thought of Ria haggling over money was too ridiculous to contemplate. ‘Even for the wrong end of the High Street.’

      ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘You’re moving from the suggestion that she’s paying me for services rendered, to me subsidising her, likewise?’

      There were days when you just shouldn’t get out of bed. This was rapidly turning into one of them.

      Forget ankle. They were talking knee and beyond.

      ‘You’re not...?’ she said, unable to actually put the thought into words.

      ‘I’m not. She’s not. I don’t understand why you’d think we were.’ His eyebrow rose questioningly.

      ‘The fact that she sent for you when she was in trouble and you came,’ she suggested.

      ‘We’ve known one another a long time.’

      She shook her head. ‘It’s more than that.’

      His shoulders shifted in an awkward shrug that in anyone else she would have put down to embarrassment. ‘I have a responsibility to her.’

      ‘Because you’re her landlord?’

      ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

      ‘I don’t doubt it. I found her weeping over the last card you sent her.’

      ‘Damn.’ He sighed. ‘That wasn’t about me but it does begin to explain what’s been happening here.’

      ‘Does it?’ She waited but he was lost in thought. ‘When can I see the accounts?’ she asked, finally.

      He came back from wherever he’d been in his head. ‘You’re serious?’

      ‘Don’t I look serious?’

      ‘Seriously?’ He took a long, slow look that began at her shoes, travelled up the length of the white coat with a long pause at her cleavage before coming to a rest on the unflattering hat. ‘Sorry,’ he said finally, reaching out and removing the offending headgear. ‘There is no way I can take you seriously in this thing.’

      ‘Seriously,’ she repeated, not so much as blinking despite a heartbeat that was racketing out of control at the intimacy of such a gesture. The man was an oaf—albeit a sexy oaf—and she refused to let him fluster her. Okay, it was too late for that; she was flustered beyond recovery, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow him to see that.

      He shrugged. ‘Seriously? You look like someone who said the first thing that came into her head.’

      ‘That is something I never do.’ Or hadn’t... Until now.

      Like the kiss, it was an aberration.

      A one-off.

      Not to be repeated.

      It was turning into quite a morning for firsts. None of them good.

      ‘On the form you’ve shown so far, I’d suggest that you never think before you speak.’

      He might have a point about that. At least where he was concerned. She’d been leaping to conclusions and speaking before her brain was engaged ever since she’d turned from the freezer and seen him watching her.

      His attention was all on her now as he spun the hat teasingly on a finger. She snatched it back but didn’t put it back on her head.

      ‘I’m having an off day,’ she said.

      ‘Just the one? You’ll forgive me if I suggest that on present form you’re not capable of running the business you already have, let alone taking on one encumbered by debt.’

      ‘Actually, I won’t, if it’s all the same to you.’ Her offer might have been somewhat rash, but she wasn’t going to let him slouch there and judge her on a completely uncharacteristic performance. He might have got closer to her than any man since Jamie Coolidge had done her the favour of relieving her of her virginity when she was seventeen, but he knew nothing about her. ‘My competence is no concern of yours. If I go to the wall, I won’t be texting you to come and rescue me.’

      ‘I have your word on that?’

      ‘Cross my heart and spit in your eye,’ she said, ignoring the shivery sensation that seemed to have taken up residence in her spine.

      ‘Crossing your fingers might be more useful,’ he suggested.

      ‘I can’t create a spreadsheet with my fingers crossed,’ she pointed out, sticking to the practicalities. The practicalities never answered back, never let you down, never took the fast road out of town... ‘You have to admit, this is the obvious answer to both our problems.’

      ‘I’m admitting nothing. Surely you could get your ice cream made somewhere else?’ he persisted. ‘You said that you have the recipes.’

      ‘Some of them,’ she admitted. Not nearly enough. Not the chocolate chilli ice Ria was supposed to deliver for a corporate shindig the following week. And they were experimenting with an orange sorbet for a wedding. She needed samples so that the bride could choose. ‘But I need more than recipes. I need equipment.’

      ‘Not much. Ria began making ices in the kitchen at home.’

      ‘Did she?’ How long ago was that? How long had Ria and Alexander known one another? It was always harder to pin an age on a man. They hit a peak at around thirty and, if they looked after themselves, didn’t start to sag until well into middle age, which was grossly unfair. He was definitely at a peak... Down, girl! ‘Are you suggesting that I might do the same?’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Perhaps because I’m not running a cottage industry, but a high-end events company?’ she replied. ‘And, since my ices are for public consumption, they have to be prepared in a kitchen that has been inspected and licensed by the Environmental Health Officer rather than one that closely resembles an annexe to the local animal shelter.’

      ‘Animal shelter?’ His bark of laughter took her by surprise. ‘For a moment you had me believing you.’

      ‘The animals are my sister’s province.’

      ‘Babies and animals? She has her hands full.’

      ‘A different sister.’

      ‘There are three of you?’ he asked, apparently astonished.

      ‘Congratulations, Mr West. You can do simple arithmetic.’

      ‘When pushed,’ he admitted. ‘My concern is whether the world can take you times three.’

      So rude!

      ‘No need to worry on the world’s account,’ she replied. ‘My mother dipped into a wide gene pool and we are not in the least bit alike in looks or temperament.’

      She could see him thinking about that and then making the decision not to go there.

      ‘Wouldn’t sister number three give you a hand scrubbing the kitchen down?’ he asked. He was beginning to sound a touch desperate. ‘Who would know?’

      ‘I would,’ she said, her determination growing in direct proportion to his resistance. As a last resort she could probably use the kitchens at Haughton Manor, but they didn’t have an ice-cream maker and why should she be put to even more inconvenience when she had a custom-built facility right here? ‘Anyone would think you don’t want me to rescue Knickerbocker Gloria.’