Anything but Vanilla... (6 page)

‘Here’s your bacon roll, Alex...’ Her voice died away as she saw him, head on his arms, fast asleep on Ria’s desk.

His shoulders appeared to be even wider spread across the desk, his back impossibly broad. His glossy hair had slipped over his face, leaving just a glimpse of a strong jaw and chin, the stubble of a man who hadn’t bothered to shave that morning throwing the sensuous curve of his mouth into stark relief. Even the thought of running her fingertips over his cheek triggered a prickle of awareness, a melting heat, shocking in its intimacy.

‘Memo to self,’ she murmured under her breath as she stepped back, away from temptation. ‘Make the coffee stronger.’

* * *

‘Thanks for the roll.’

Sorrel, whizzing up cucumbers in the blender, jumped as Alexander turned on the tap and rinsed out his mug before upending it on the draining board.

‘No problem.’ She glanced sideways at him. His cheek was slightly pink and crumpled where his head had been resting on his arm and there was a deep red imprint on his face where the heavy winder of his wristwatch had dug in. It was an old steel Rolex very like the one her grandfather had worn and which Elle had sold, along with anything else of value her family had owned.

The con man who’d left them destitute had been too smart to steal anything physical, but it had all gone anyway. First he’d stolen their security. Then their family history written in the marks on the Sheraton dining table where generations had propped their elbows, the Georgian silver brought out for celebrations, the wear on a carpet her great-grandfather had brought back from Persia. Along with the jewellery, no more than a glittering memory in old photographs, and the precious things collected over two centuries, it had all gone to the salesrooms to pay off the overdraft, the credit cards he’d applied for in their grandmother’s name. Fraud, of course, but she had signed the forms...

‘Feeling better after your nap?’ she asked.

It came out rather more snarkily than she’d intended but she should be at Cranbrook, checking that everything was in place in the Conservatory for tomorrow, instead of here, putting cucumbers through a blender.

Not his fault, she reminded herself.

‘Marginally.’ Muscles rippled under his T-shirt as he rotated his right shoulder to ease the muscles. ‘It’s going to take a couple of days for my body to catch up with this time zone.’

‘Really?’ Her mouth was unaccountably dry. She ran her tongue over her teeth, a trick Graeme had told her was used by nervous speakers to help her with early client presentations. ‘What time zone is your body loitering in?’

Well, it would have been rude not to ask.

‘Somewhere around the international date line,’ he said. ‘On an island you won’t have heard of.’

‘One with long white beaches, coconut-shell cocktails and dusky maidens in grass skirts?’ she suggested. Well, she’d seen the postcards. ‘Far too many distractions to waste time writing home, obviously.’

‘Thick jungle. Mosquitoes as big as bats, bats as big as cats,’ he countered, ‘and no corner shops selling postcards or stamps.’

‘Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun,’ she replied, covering her surprise pretty well, considering. Because it didn’t. Sound like fun. ‘You need to have a serious talk with your travel agent.’

‘I don’t think Pantabalik has made it onto this year’s must-visit list of tourist venues.’

‘I can see why,’ she said, her irritation evaporating in the unexpected warmth of his smile. Apparently ‘exploring’ wasn’t, as she’d assumed, a euphemism for living the life of a lotus-eater, but something rather more taxing. ‘So where did that last postcard come from?’

‘An airport transit lounge.’

‘You have been having a bad time. Maybe you should give your body a break and go home to bed.’

‘Thanks for your concern, but my body is used to surviving on catnaps.’ He rotated his left shoulder.

‘Don’t...’ The word slipped out.

‘What?’

‘Do that.’ The tongue-teeth thing was working overtime. ‘Your T-shirt won’t stand the strain.’

Forget his T-shirt, it was her blood pressure that was about to blow...

He turned his head and looked down at his shoulder, poking at the split with his finger, and shrugged. ‘Sweat rots the cotton.’

‘Too much information,’ she said, tearing her eyes away as the gap lengthened, grabbing the heavy jug of puréed cucumber to mix it with measured amounts of crème fraîche, lime juice and salt.

She needed two hands to lift it and he said, ‘Let me do that.’

She didn’t argue as he took it from her, not meeting his eyes as she stepped back out of the forbidden zone of warm male flesh, disintegrating clothing, a ripple of heat that lapped against her, disturbing the order of the universe whenever he was too close.

‘Thank you,’ she said, concentrating very hard on the mixture, determined to block out the thought of him sliding naked between Ria’s lavender-scented sheets, only to be assailed by the image of him stretched out in a hammock slung between trees hung with lianas, his golden body glistening with sweat beneath a gauzy mosquito net...

Whatever was the matter with her?

Her universe was fixed. Centred. Planned out to the last detail. For the moment her focus was Scoop!
In a year or two she’d marry Graeme in the village church, live in the Georgian rectory next door that he’d recently bought. It would take that long to renovate it to his exacting standards. Which not only covered stationary but signalled his intention of settling down in the vicinity of her office, her family. It was solid, real...

‘I wouldn’t sleep much with oversized mosquitoes and bats flying around, either,’ she said. Concentrate on the bats... ‘What were you doing there? In Pan...?’

‘Pantabalik.’

‘Pantabalik. You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’ She glanced at him. Geography was a safe subject.

‘I was on a plant-hunting expedition.’

‘Plant hunting?’ she repeated, startled. ‘How very...’

Unlikely... Unpredictable... Unexpected...

‘How very what?’ His eyebrows invited all kinds of indiscretions.

‘How very Victorian,’ she said, primly, turning off the machine and, reaching for a plastic spoon from a pot on the work surface, she dipped it into the mixture and tasted it. Creamy, with a big hit of cucumber, but something was missing... ‘I have this image of you wearing a pith helmet as you hack your way through the undergrowth hunting for a fabled species of orchid.’

‘A hat is essential. You never know what is going to fall out of a tree.’ She glanced up and saw the betraying kink in the corner of his mouth. Felt a responding flutter... ‘Personally I favour a wide-brimmed Akubra, but each to his own.’

Oh, yes. She could see him in something wide-brimmed and battered from hard wear... ‘And the orchid?’ she asked.

‘Sorry. Not my thing.’

She shrugged. ‘Shame. There’s something so erotic about orchids...’

Exotic
... She’d meant to say ‘exotic’, but correcting herself would only draw attention to the word and make things ten times worse. Turning quickly back to the mixture before he could say something outrageous, she changed the subject.

‘I followed the recipe Ria used for the original, but she must have added something else to the sample she gave me to take to Jefferson’s.’

‘The magic.’

‘Yes...’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately I don’t have a wand to wave over it, so if you have something a little more tangible in the way of suggestion I’d be grateful.’

‘Does it matter? I mean, who’s tasted it besides you and someone in Jefferson’s marketing department?’

‘Actually, it was Nick’s wife who tasted the ices and made the final selection.’

‘In that case you are in trouble.’

‘No question.’ Nick Jefferson was married to Cassie Cornwell, the famous television cook, and she’d certainly notice that something was missing. ‘And even if it hadn’t been someone who knew the difference, this is not what I promised them.’ She took another spoon from the pot and scooped up a little. ‘Any ideas?’ she asked, offering it to him.

SIX

A balanced diet is an ice cream in each hand.

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

Sorrel had assumed Alexander would take the spoon from her but instead he leaned forward and put his lips around it. His hair fell forward and brushed against her wrist, goosing her flesh, and he put his hand beneath hers to steady it when it began to shake. Then he raised heavy lids to look straight into her eyes.

They were dangerously close.

It was a rerun of that moment when he’d been opening Ria’s bills. He’d turned to look at her then and the down on her cheek had stirred as if he had touched her, the effect rippling through her body in ever widening circles, like a pebble dropped into still water. It was utterly physical, her body bypassing the brain, whispering seductively,
‘Forget safe, forget dependable. Forget Graeme...’

She’d taken an involuntary step back, shocked by such a powerful response to a man whom, while undeniably attractive, she was not predisposed to like. But lust had nothing to do with liking. It was an unthinking, mindless, live-now-pay-later physical response to the atavistic need of a species to reproduce itself. A lingering madness, as outdated, as unnecessary, as troublesome as the appendix. It meant nothing.

And yet, with his palm cradling her hand, face-to-face, the effect was amplified; not so much a ripple as a tsunami...

Even as she floundered, out of her depth, going under, he released her hand, turned away, reached for his mug and filled it from the tap.

That was what she needed, too. Water. Lots and lots of cold water...

She had to settle for drawing in a deep, slightly ragged breath while his back was turned.

‘Was it that bad?’ she asked, needing to say something, pretend that nothing had happened. His throat rippled disturbingly as he drained the water and she swallowed, too. ‘The ice cream?’

He glanced at her, then at the cup. Shook his head. ‘No. Not at all. You just have to get past the expectation that it will be sweet.’ He appeared to be completely unaware of the effect he’d had on her, thank goodness. ‘How are you serving it?’ He nodded towards the ice cream.

‘Oh... A teaspoonful squished between tiny triangle-shaped oatmeal biscuits so that it looks like a miniature sandwich.’ He pulled a face, unimpressed. She began to breathe more easily. ‘You don’t approve?’

‘I’ve tasted some oatmeal biscuits that closely resembled cardboard.’

‘These won’t.’ And gradually she eased back out of the quicksand of feelings running out of control, climbing back onto the firmer ground of the stuff she understood. ‘I picked them up this morning along with your bacon roll. Peter produces all our baked goods. Biscuits, tuiles, brandy snaps.’

‘Our?’

‘Scoop! is a family business. My older sister started it with the unexpected gift of a vintage ice-cream van. My younger sister—the animal lover—is an art student. She does the artwork for the PR and runs the website.’

It was probably best not to mention her grandmother, who helped style their events, or her great-uncle Basil, a fabulous maître d’ at the big events and, when called upon, happy to don a striped blazer and straw boater to do a turn for them on an ancient ice-cream bicycle that he had lovingly restored.

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What do you do?’

‘Me?’ She was the one who was going to turn their brand into a household name but she decided that, rather like the extended family, in this instance it was an ambition better kept private. Alexander’s eyebrow, like her pulse rate, had been given more than enough exercise for one day. ‘I’m the one who’s stuck here making ice cream when I should be in the newly restored Victorian Conservatory at Cranbrook Park, ensuring that the ice-cream bar is installed and fully functioning and that everything is in place for a perfect event.’ The eyebrow barely twitched. ‘Meanwhile, for your information, the biscuit we chose bears no resemblance to cardboard but is a thin, crisp, melt-in-the-mouth savoury oatmeal shortbread.’

‘If Peter Sands baked it, I’m warming to the idea.’

‘You know Peter?’

‘I wouldn’t have a bacon roll from anyone else.’

‘Great,’ she said, not sure whether he was serious, or simply winding her up. The latter, she feared. Unless... ‘You’re his landlord, too, aren’t you?’

‘I am, but I don’t sleep with him, either,’ he said. ‘In case you were wondering.’

‘No.’ She wasn’t wondering that. Not at all. ‘As for the florist, the delicatessen and the haberdashery in between...’

He shifted, as if she’d caught him off guard, and suddenly everything clicked into place. It wasn’t just this corner. The entire area had been given a makeover three or four years ago. Cleaned up, refreshed, while still keeping its old-fashioned charm.

‘Ohmigod! You’re
that
West!’

‘No,’ he said, waiting for her to catch up. ‘
That
West died in nineteen forty-one.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said, crossly. Maybridge had been little more than a village that had grown up around a toll bridge when James West had started manufacturing his ‘liver pills’ in a cottage on the other side of the river. The gothic mansion built in the nineteenth century on the hill overlooking the town by one of Alexander’s ancestors was now the headquarters of the multinational West Pharmaceutical Group. ‘Your family built this town. Could I feel any more stupid?’

‘Why? The name was dropped from the company after some scandal involving my great-great-grandfather and a married woman. You could stop a hundred people in the town and not one of them would know that the W in WPG stands for West.’

‘Maybe, but I did,’ she admitted. How could she not have made the connection? Too many other things on her mind... ‘I did a project on the town history for my GCSE. I got in touch with their marketing department and they gave me a tour of the place.’ She shivered. ‘All that marble and mahogany.’

‘And the building is listed so they can’t rip it out.’ It appeared to amuse him.

‘They have close links with the university, too. Research, recruitment.’

‘They’re proactive when it comes to headhunting for talent.’

‘I know.’ She was going to enjoy this next bit... ‘They offered me a place in their management scheme.’

‘And you turned it down?’ He sounded sceptical. Unsurprising, if rude. No one turned down an offer from WPG. But no one else had Scoop!

‘Why would I want to sit in the office of some giant corporation, moving figures around, when I could be dreaming up ways to make someone’s day with the perfect ice cream?’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I’d have thought a man who chose mosquitoes and bats over the boardroom would have understood that.’

‘Touché.’ He grinned appreciatively and she responded with a little curtsey.

‘Sadly, I don’t have the rents from half Maybridge to support my lifestyle.’

‘Who does? While my great-great-grandfather built this end of the High Street, his property portfolio, like WPG, is run by a charitable trust.’

‘So you’re not Ria’s landlord.’

‘I sit on the board of trustees.’

‘Which no doubt philanthropically supports your plant-hunting expeditions?’

‘All plant hunters need a patron with deep pockets. They do reap the benefits from my finds.’

‘So, what do you get out of it, apart from mosquito bites?’ she asked.

‘The glory?’ he suggested. ‘The fun?’

Which pretty much told her everything she needed to know about Alexander West. She might have got the wrong end of the stick when it came to his relationship with Ria, but she’d had him nailed from the start.

‘If fun’s your thing,’ she said, grabbing the opportunity to score another point, ‘you should have been at the Christmas party WPG threw at the children’s hospice in Melchester last year. They booked Rosie and we decked her out as Santa’s sleigh, flying in from the North Pole with ices for everyone.’

‘With you as Santa’s Little Helper, no doubt.’

‘Actually I was the ice-cream fairy.’ There was no point in denying her involvement, there was photographic evidence on their blog. There was no reason why he would bother to look up Scoop!, but it paid to cover all contingencies. ‘My sister was pregnant at the time so she couldn’t fit into the costume.’

He grinned. ‘I’m sorry I missed it.’

‘Me, too. You wouldn’t be giving me so much grief about our competence. Meanwhile, time is short. Would you care to venture an opinion on whether this recipe needs more lime, or a little mint perhaps?’ she asked, clutching at straws as she tried to recall the exact taste of the ice cream they had sampled in Cassie’s kitchen. Work out what ‘magic’ ingredient Ria might have added when she’d prepared the tasting samples.

‘Neither.’

He took the spoon she was still holding, turned it over and pulled it through his lips, sucking off every last trace of ice in a deliberately provocative manner. Or maybe she was reading things into his actions that she wanted to be there.

No, no, no! What was she thinking?

She resisted the urge to fan herself as he leaned back against the sink, tapping the spoon against that seductive lower lip, and thought for a moment.

Provocation was the last thing she needed...

‘What it needs,’ he said, after what seemed like an age while she held her breath, ‘is a touch of cayenne pepper.’

‘Cayenne?’ The word came out in a rush of breath. She knew all about chocolate and chilli—she and Ria had been working on that for their next event—but no... ‘A cucumber sandwich is supposed to be cool. The epitome of English sangfroid.’

The very opposite of what she was feeling right now.

‘You asked. That’s my opinion.’ He tossed the spoon in the bin, clearly not bothered one way or the other whether she took his advice. ‘I imagine you’ve tried calling Ria?’

‘Yes, of course. It was the first thing I did. Her mobile is unavailable. I’m assuming she’s switched off to avoid being hounded by creditors.’

‘Is that what you’d do?’

‘Me? I’d never let things get to this point.’

‘Never say never.’

‘I don’t suppose you know of any other number she uses?’ she asked, refusing to rise to this new provocation. He had no way of knowing why she would never let that happen and she certainly wasn’t about to tell him. ‘I keep a separate phone for personal calls.’

‘You have that many?’

‘It’s just more professional,’ she replied, leaving the number of calls she received to his imagination. Although come to think of it Graeme didn’t seem to get it, either. He always called her on her business number, even when he had tickets for the hottest opera in town. Was that how he saw her? Even now? She wasn’t the only young entrepreneur he helped. But she was the only one he took to dinners, social functions. The damned opera.

Until today that hadn’t seemed important. On the contrary. It was the perfect partnership. He was the perfect date. Elegant, intelligent and undemanding. She appeared to be his. Well dressed, intelligent—and undemanding.

It had seemed perfect, but suddenly a vast, empty space yawned in the centre of their relationship. Would Graeme drop everything and travel halfway across the world if she needed him?

‘No one could ever accuse Ria of being professional.’ Alexander’s voice broke into her thoughts.

‘No.’ That was the point: Graeme wouldn’t have to cross continents. He’d be there. She shook her head to clear it. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve only seen her with an old BlackBerry,’ she said, catching up. It didn’t rule out the possibility that she had another phone, of course. One that was kept for special calls.

Just because Alexander’s postcards were a rare event, it didn’t mean that they didn’t talk to one another when he was lying in his jungle hammock.

It was a thought that jarred, although... ‘How did you manage to receive a call from her, if you were in a mosquito-infested jungle?’ she asked.

‘Despite my Victorian occupation, I have a twenty-first-century satellite link to keep in touch with the outside world. But to answer your question, Ria has never mentioned another number to me. I was rather hoping you might know of one. She did trust you with a key.’

‘She trusts you with her bank account.’

‘It was a condition of bailing her out last time.’ He put the cup in the sink. ‘Maybe Nancy can tell you what the magic ingredient is.’

‘I’m not having much luck with phones today. Her number went straight to voicemail, too.’ Which was odd. She wouldn’t have switched it off if she was job-hunting. ‘Maybe the battery’s flat.’ It was that kind of day. ‘I’ve left a message but if she hasn’t called me back by three I’ll go along to the school and catch her there. You’ve no objection if I ask her to come in to work tomorrow?’

‘Would it make any difference if I had?’ She didn’t bother to answer that. ‘I thought not.’ He shrugged. ‘You can ask but you’ll have to pay her.’

‘Friday is a busy day,’ she pointed out, ‘and we’ve been promised a heatwave for the weekend. You’ll shift a lot of ice cream. If you talked to the Revenue, explain that you’ve got someone interested...’

‘Forget it. I’ll be talking to the bank and Ria’s accountant about winding up the business.’

‘Actually, I don’t think you’ll find him at his office. I’m sure Ria mentioned that he’d been taken ill. A stroke, I think. So that’s one thing you can cross off your list.’

‘He has a partner.’

‘Selling ice cream is a lot more fun,’ she assured him. ‘Really.’

‘Maybe, but I didn’t fly halfway around the world to stand behind an ice-cream counter.’

Which begged the question, why exactly had he flown halfway round the world? It was none of her business. At all.

‘Okay,’ she said, with what she hoped looked like a careless shrug, ‘if I can’t tempt you, I’ll pay Nancy, but I’m not a charity. If I’m paying rent for the premises and paying the staff, I’ll buy the ice cream and bank the takings.’

That raised a smile. ‘The first sensible thing you’ve said today.’

Actually, it wasn’t. Ria might have the magic touch with ice cream, but she was the one with an instinct for business. Her offer to buy Knickerbocker Gloria might have been a throwaway remark but, the more she thought about it, the more excited she became.