Tempted by Trouble. Liz Fielding

      

       About the Author

      LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain. Seven of her titles have been nominated for RWA’s RITA®; and she has won the Best Traditional Romance in 2000, the British Romance Prize in 2005 and the Best Short Contemporary Romance in 2006.

      Tempted by Trouble

      Liz Fielding

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      ISBN: 978-1-408-91746-6

      TEMPTED BY TROUBLE

      © 2011 Liz Fielding

      Published in Great Britain 2020

      by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

      All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

      By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

      ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

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       Contents

       Cover

About the Author

       Title Page

       Copyright

Note to Readers

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

       Life is like ice cream: you have to take it one lick at a time.

      —Rosie’s Diary

      ‘LOVAGE AMERY?’

      If ever there had been a moment to follow Gran’s example and check her reflection in the mirror before she opened the front door, Elle decided, this was it.

      On her knees and up to her rubber gloves in soapy water when the doorbell rang, she hadn’t bothered to stop and fix hair sliding out of its elastic band. And there wasn’t much she could have done about a face pink and shiny from a day spent catching up with the housework while everyone was out, culminating in scrubbing the kitchen floor.

      It was the complete Cinderella workout.

      She couldn’t afford a fancy gym membership and, as she was always telling her sisters, cleaning was a lot more productive than pounding a treadmill. Not that they’d ever been sufficiently impressed by the argument to join in.

      Lucky them.

      Even sweaty Lycra had to be a better look than an ancient shirt tied around the waist with an equally geriatric psychedelic tie. Sexier than the jeans bagging damply around her knees.

      It wouldn’t normally have bothered her and, to be fair, the man standing on the doorstep hadn’t made much of an effort, either. His thick dark hair was sticking up in a just-got-out-of-bed look and his chin was darkened with what might be designer stubble but was more likely to be a disinclination to shave on Saturday, when he didn’t have to go