by Liz Fielding
She opened her mouth, then, deciding not to go there, said, ‘Tell me, Mr McElroy, does she…it,’ she corrected herself, refusing to fall into the trap of thinking of the van as anything other than an inanimate object ‘does it go?’
‘I drove her here,’ he pointed out, the smile enticing, mouth-wateringly sexy. Confident that he’d got her. ‘I’ll take you for a spin in her so that I can talk you through her little eccentricities, if you like,’ he went on before she could complete her punchline, tell him to start it up and drive it away. ‘She’s a lovely old girl, but she has her moods.’
‘Oh, right. You’re telling me she’s a cranky old ice cream van.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ He leaned his shoulder against the door frame, totally relaxed, oblivious of the fact that the rose scrambling over the porch had dropped pink petals over his thick dark hair and on one of those broad shoulders. ‘Shall we say she’s an old ice cream van with bags of character?’
‘Let’s not,’ she replied, doing her best to get a grip of her tongue, her hormones, her senses, all of which were urging her to forget her problems, throw caution to the wind and, for once in her life, say yes instead of no. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McElroy—’
‘Sean—’
‘I’m sorry, Mr McElroy,’ she reiterated, refusing to be sidetracked, ‘but my mother told me never to take a ride with a stranger.’
A classic case of do as I say rather than do as I do, obviously. In similar circumstances, her mother wouldn’t have hesitated. She’d have grabbed the adventure and, jingle blaring, driven around the village scandalising the neighbours.
But, gorgeous though Sean McElroy undoubtedly was, she wasn’t about to make the same mistakes as her mother. And while he was still trying to get his head around the fact that she’d turned him down flat, she took a full step back and shut the door. Then she slipped the security chain into place, although whether it was to keep him out or herself in she couldn’t have said.
He didn’t move. His shadow was still clearly visible behind one of the stained glass panels that flanked the door and, realising that he might be able to see her pinned to the spot, her heart racing, she grabbed the rubber gloves and beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the kitchen.
Today was rapidly turning into a double scrub day and, back on her knees, she went at it with even more vigour, her pulse pounding in her ears as she waited for the bell to ring again. It didn’t.
Regret warred with relief. It was a gorgeous May day and the thought of a spin in an ice cream van with a good-looking man called to everything young and frivolous locked up inside her. Everything she had never been. Even the scent of the lilac, wafting in through the kitchen door, seemed hell-bent on enticing her to abandon her responsibilities for an hour and have some fun.
She shook her head. Dangerous stuff, fun, and she attacked the floor with the brush, scrubbing at the already spotless quarry tiles, taking her frustration out on something inanimate while she tried to forget Sean McElroy’s blue eyes and concentrate on today’s problem. How to conjure two hundred and fifty pounds out of thin air to pay for Geli’s school trip to France.
There was nothing for it. She was going to have to bite the bullet and ask her boss for an extra shift.
Sean caught his breath.
He’d been having trouble with it ever since the door of Gable End had been thrown open to reveal Lovage Amery, cheeks flushed, dark hair escaping the elastic band struggling—and failing—to hold it out of a pair of huge hazel eyes.
Being a step up, she’d been on a level with him, which meant that her full, soft lips, a luscious figure oozing sex appeal, had been right in his face.
That she was totally oblivious of the effect created by all that unrestrained womanhood made it all the more enticing. All the more dangerous.
Furious as he was with Basil, he’d enjoyed the unexpected encounter and, while he was not fool enough to imagine he was irresistible, he thought that she’d been enjoying it, too. She’d certainly been giving as good as she got.
It was a long time since a woman had hit all the right buttons with quite that force and she hadn’t even been trying.
Maybe that was part of the attraction.
He’d caught her unawares and, unlike most women of his acquaintance, she hadn’t been wearing a mask, showing him what she thought he’d want to see.
Part of the attraction, all of the danger.
He’d as good as forgotten why he was there and the suddenness of her move had taken him by surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been despatched quite so summarily by a woman but the rattle of the security chain going up had a finality about it that suggested ringing the doorbell again would be a waste of time.
He looked at the envelope Basil Amery had pushed through his door while he was in London, along with a note asking him to deliver it and Rosie to Lovage Amery.
He’d been furious. As if he didn’t have better things to do, but it was typical of the man to take advantage. Typical of him to disappear without explanation.
True, his irritation had evaporated when the door had opened but, while it was tempting to take advantage of the side gate, standing wide open, and follow up his encounter with the luscious Miss Amery, on this occasion he decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
It would take more than a pair of pretty eyes to draw him into the centre of someone else’s family drama. He had enough of that in his own backyard.
A pity, but he’d delivered Rosie. Job done.
CHAPTER TWO
Take plenty of exercise. Always run after the ice cream van.
—Rosie’s Diary
ELLE, hot, flustered and decidedly bothered from her encounter with Sean McElroy, found her concentration slipping, her ears straining to hear the van start up, the crunch of tyres on gravel as it drove away.
It was all nonsense, she told herself, mopping up the suds, sitting back on her heels. She’d never heard of anyone called Basil Amery. It had to be a mistake. But the silence bothered her. While she hadn’t heard the van arrive, she hadn’t been listening. She had, however, been listening for it to leave.
The sudden rattle of the letter box made her jump. That was the only reason her heart was pounding, she told herself as she leapt to her feet. She wasn’t in the habit of racing to pick up the post—it rarely contained anything but bills and she could wait for those—but it was an excuse to check that he’d gone.
There were two things on the mat. The brown envelope Sean McElroy had been holding and a bunch of keys. He couldn’t, she told herself. He wouldn’t… But the key fob was an ice cream cornet and she flung open the door.
Rosie was still sitting on the drive, exactly where he’d parked her.
‘Sean McElroy!’ she called, half expecting him to be sitting in the van, grinning at having tricked her into opening the door.
He wasn’t and, in a sudden panic, she ran to the gate, looking up and down the lane. Unless he’d had someone follow him in a car, he’d have to walk, or catch a bus.
She spun around, desperately checking the somewhat wild shrubbery.
Nothing. She was, apparently, quite wrong.
He could.
He had.
Abandoned Rosie on her doorstep.
‘If you’re looking for the van driver, Elle, he rode off in that direction.’
Elle inwardly groaned. Mrs Fisher, her next door neighbour, was bright-eyed with excitement as she stepped up to take a closer look at Rosie.
‘Rode?’
‘He had one of those fold-up bikes. Are you taking on an ice cream round?’ she asked.
The internal groan reached a crescendo. The village gossips considered the Amery family their own private soap opera and whatever she said would be chewed over at length in the village shop.
‘Sorry, Mrs Fisher, I can hear my phone,’ she said, legging it inside, pushing the door shut behind her. If she’d left it open the woman would have considered it an invitation
to walk in.
She sat on the bottom of the stairs holding the envelope, staring at the name and address which was, without doubt, hers.
Then she tore it open and tipped out the contents. A dark pink notebook with ‘Bookings’ written on the cover. A bells and whistles cellphone, the kind that would have her sisters drooling. There were a couple of official-looking printed sheets of paper. One was the logbook for the van, which told her that it was registered to Basil Amery of Keeper’s Cottage, Haughton Manor, the other was an insurance certificate.
There was also a cream envelope.
She turned it over. There was nothing written on it, no name or address, but that had been on the brown envelope. She put her thumb beneath the flap and took out the single sheet of matching paper inside. Unfolded it.
Dear Lally, it began, and her heart sank as she read her grandmother’s pet name.
Remember how you found me, all those years ago? Sitting by the village pond, confused, afraid, ready to end it all?
You saved me that day, my life, my sanity, and what happened afterwards wasn’t your fault. Not Bernard’s either. My brother and I were chalk and cheese but we are as we’re made and there’s nothing that can change us. Maybe, if our mother had still been alive, things would have been different, but there’s no point in dwelling on it. The past is past.
I’ve kept my promise and stayed away from the family. I caused enough heartache and you and Lavender’s girls have had more than enough of that to bear, losing Bernard and Lavender, without me turning up to dredge up the past, old scandals. The truth, however, is that I’m getting old and home called. Last year I took a cottage on the Haughton Manor estate and I’ve been working up the courage to write to you, but courage was never my strong point and now I’ve left it too late.
I have met your lovely granddaughter, though. I had lunch at the Blue Boar a couple of months ago and she served me. She was so like you, Lally—all your charm, your pretty smile—that I asked someone who she was. She even has your name. And here, I’m afraid, comes the crunch. You knew there would be a crunch, didn’t you?
Rosie, who by now you’ll have met, is a little hobby of mine. I do the occasional party, public event, you know the kind of thing, just to cover the costs of keeping her. The occasional charity do for my soul. Unfortunately, events have rather overtaken me and I have to go away for a while but there are people I’ve made promises to, people I can’t let down and I thought perhaps you and your granddaughter might take it on for me. A chance for her to get out of that restaurant once in a while. For you to think of me, I hope. Sean, who brings this to you, will show you how everything works.
I’ve enclosed the bookings diary as well as the phone I use for the ice cream business and, in order to make things easier for you, I’ve posted the change of keeper slip to the licence people so that Rosie is now registered in your name.
God bless and keep you, Lally.
Yours always,
Basil
Elle put her hand to her mouth. Swallowed. Her great-uncle. Family. He’d been within touching distance and she’d had no idea. She tried to remember serving someone on his own, but the Blue Boar had a motel that catered for businessmen travelling on their own.
Haughton Manor was only six or seven miles away but she had to get ready for work and there was no time to drive over there this evening. Find out more. Neither could she leave it and she reached for the phone, dialled Directory Enquiries.
‘Lower Haughton, Basil Amery,’ she said, made a note of the number and then dialled it.
After half a dozen rings it switched to voicemail. Had he already left? What events? Scandal, he’d mentioned in his letter… She left a message, asking him to call her—he’d pick up his messages even if he was away—left her number as well, and replaced the receiver. She was rereading his letter, trying to make sense of it, when the phone rang. She grabbed for it, hoping that he’d picked up the message and called back.
‘Elle?’
It was her boss. ‘Oh, hello, Freddy.’
‘Don’t sound so disappointed!’
‘Sorry, I was expecting someone else. What’s up?’ she asked quickly, before he asked who.
‘We’re going to be short-staffed this evening. I was wondering if you can you drop everything and come in early.’
‘Twenty minutes?’ she offered.
‘You’re an angel.’ Then, ‘Would your sister be interested in doing a shift? She’s a smart girl; she’d pick it up quickly enough. I’m sure she could use the money.’
‘I’m sorry, Sorrel isn’t here, but I was hoping for some more hours myself,’ she added, taking advantage of a moment when he was the one asking for something.
‘You already do more than enough. I’ll have a word next time she drops in to the use the Wi-Fi. It wouldn’t hurt her to help out.’
‘She needs to concentrate…’ But Freddy had already hung up and she was talking to herself.
She read the letter again, then replaced it in the envelope and put everything in the hall drawer. She didn’t want her grandmother seeing the letter until Elle knew what the heck was going on.
There was nothing she could do with Rosie, but she’d be at work before anyone came home. She had until tomorrow morning to think of some good reason why it was parked in the drive.
Sean told himself that it was none of his business. That Basil was just a tenant who’d asked if he could keep Rosie at the barn since there wasn’t a garage at the cottage.
He’d only got dragged into the situation because he’d stayed overnight in London on the day Basil decided to do his disappearing act. And if Lovage Amery had been a plain middle-aged woman Sean wouldn’t have given the matter a first thought, let alone a second one.
Why Basil hadn’t just decided to leave Rosie with him was the real mystery. She was safe enough locked up in the barn.
Unless, of course, he didn’t intend to come back.
Or hadn’t actually gone anywhere.
He swore, grabbed a spare set of keys from the estate safe and drove across the park to Keeper’s Cottage.
He knocked, called out, then, when there was no answer, let himself in. Nothing seemed out of place. There were no letters ominously propped up on the mantelpiece. Only a photograph of a young woman wearing an outrageously short mini dress, white knee-length boots, her hair cut in a sharp angular style that had once been the height of fashion. Her large eyes were framed with thick sooty lashes and heavily lined. The gloss and polish, the expensive high fashion were as far from Lovage Amery as it was possible to be, and yet those eyes left him in no doubt about the family connection. Shape, colour were a perfect match.
So that was all right, then.
Basil must have had some bookings for Rosie that he couldn’t cancel and was lumbering his family with the responsibility. If they weren’t keen, it wasn’t his problem.
The light was flashing on the answering machine and after a moment’s hesitation he hit ‘play’.
Lovage Amery’s liquid voice filled the room. ‘Mr Amery? My name is Lovage Amery and I’ve just read your letter. I don’t understand. Who are you? Will you ring me? Please.’ And she left a number.
Genuinely had no idea who Basil was? On the point of reaching for the phone, the phone in his pocket rang.
He checked the caller ID. Olivia.
‘Sean, I’m at the barn,’ she said before he could say a word. ‘Where are you?’
The leap-to-it tone of the Haughton family, so different from the soft voice still rippling through him, evoking the memory of hot eyes that you could drown in. A dangerously appealing mouth. It was the kind of complicated response that should have sent up warning flares—here be dragons—but only made him want to dive right in.
Bad idea.
‘I’m on the far side of the estate,’ he said.
‘It’s nearly six.’ His half-sister’s pout was almost audible.
‘You know how it is, sis,’ he said, knowing how much she
hated to be called that. ‘No rest for younger illegitimate sons. Why are you here?’
‘It’s my home?’
‘Excuse me? The last time you were here was Christmas. You stayed for two days, then abandoned your children with their nanny for the rest of the holidays while you went skiing.’
‘They had a lovely time,’ she protested.
Of course they had. He’d made sure of it, sliding down the hill on old tea trays in the snow, building dens, running wild as he had, in ways that were impossible in their urban lives in London. But they would still have rather been with their parents.
‘Look, I don’t want to fight with you, Sean. I wanted to talk about the stables. I want to convert them into craft workshops. I know all kinds of people—weavers, candle-makers, turners, who would fall over themselves for space. Visitors to the estate would love to see demonstrations. Buy stuff.’ He laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded.
‘The idea that you would know what a turner did, let alone be acquainted with one.’
‘Wretch. Henry thinks it’s a good idea.’
‘That would be Henry who visits his estate twice a year. At Christmas…’ also to abandon his children before jetting off, although in his case to the Caribbean ‘…and for the shooting.’ And for the occasional extramarital weekend in the same cottage his father had used for the purpose. Like father, like son.
‘It’s his estate, not yours,’ she pointed out.
‘So it is. And he pays me to run it professionally. At a profit. Not as occupational therapy for women whose marriages are falling apart.’
Clearly she had no answer to that because she cut the connection without another word. That was one of the drawbacks of a mobile phone. You couldn’t slam it down to make your point.
