by Liz Fielding
Mini marshmallows, nuts…
Elle had a distant memory of an ice cream studded with marshmallows, her mother’s laughter…
‘He was a magistrate, too,’ she said. ‘And a parish councillor. A pillar of the community.’
‘Stiff collar, stiff manners and a stiff upper lip,’ he commented with perfect understanding.
Finally, a response to something other than a direct question.
‘I couldn’t say. I never knew him.’ Then, frowning, she looked up from a box of multicoloured sprinkles. ‘Do you have a problem with respectability?’
His response was the slowest of shrugs. She waited and, finally, he said, ‘It’s nothing but a façade constructed to cover a multitude of sins.’
‘You really think that?’ she asked, jerked out of her carefully orchestrated build-up of family history to justify her trust issues. Not that they needed justifying, she reminded herself. She had a family to protect and had every right to be cautious.
‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know it to be true,’ he said.
‘Strange. While you lack the collar, you’ve got the stiffest lip, the stiffest neck I’ve ever encountered.’
That caught him off guard. Surprised him. His recovery was swift but she’d cracked the mask.
‘Maybe I have a problem with narrow-minded people who see anyone who isn’t like them as a threat,’ he said. ‘Who look the part but don’t live it.’
Oh, now that was telling. Did he see himself as an outsider? Why?
‘I can go along with that,’ she said carefully, ‘but certain rules are made for the common good. There are some things you can’t take on trust.’ She thumbed an imaginary smear off the hygiene certificate fixed to the interior of the van. ‘Even Basil understood that.’ Then, turning back to the carton of ice cream mix, ‘I wonder if they do this in strawberry.’
She knew he was watching her, eyes narrowed, not sure what she was up to. That made two of them. Her common sense genes, the ones she’d inherited from the magistrate, and from Grandpa, were urging her to let it go. Let him go.
But suddenly she wasn’t so sure about those respectable citizens any more. The ones she had worked so hard to emulate.
What kind of people cut off a member of their family? Wiped him out of existence?
‘Sean?’ she prompted, refusing to be ignored.
‘Yes, strawberry and chocolate too,’ he told her. Voice clipped, determined not to be drawn in.
‘But not everyone likes strawberry ice cream, do they?’ She raised an eyebrow, inviting his opinion, then, when he didn’t offer one, ‘Perhaps it would be safer to simply add a few drops of cochineal to the vanilla.’
‘Cochineal?’
‘It’s a natural food colouring. Made from crushed beetles.’
‘What are you talking about?’
She didn’t rush to answer but put the carton down and turned her attention to the machine, lifting the lid to peer inside, letting her fingers play over the controls.
He said nothing.
She pulled on a lever.
‘Lovage Amery,’ he warned.
‘La, la, la…’ she sang, just like her grandmother when she was pretending not to hear. And laughed as, just like that, she discovered how her grandmother had got her nickname.
Sean swore under his breath as he stepped up, grabbed her wrist before she did any damage.
But that was the point of the exercise. To get him inside the van with her. Listening to her. Talking to her.
He’d watched her exploring the interior of the van, reeling him in with her mindless chatter and her come-and-stop-me-if-you-dare exploration of the machinery.
He’d been taken in by the blush, but while she might, impossibly for a grown woman, seem much too innocent for that luscious mouth and gorgeous body, she was nobody’s fool.
It had finally occurred to her to challenge Basil’s motives in asking for her help. Or, rather, her grandmother’s help. Fair enough. He’d be asking questions if some stranger pitched up on his doorstep selling him a story about a long lost relative, burdening him with a high maintenance vehicle and a lot of hard work for little or no reward. Looking for the catch.
But he didn’t care what she thought about Basil. Elle had changed his motives, his probity and, even after all these years, it was like being back in school, taunted with his background. Not one of us. Not in the local primary school where his father’s title had been the barrier. Not at the expensive boarding school either, where his mother had been the problem. A cold draught on the exposed nerve of tooth.
‘Crushed beetles?’ he asked as she turned to him, her face all did-I-do-something-wrong? innocent.
Her eyes betrayed her. They glinted with something that matched the unconscious sex appeal. Threw out a reckless challenge that suggested there was someone else hidden inside her head, someone entirely different to the face she showed the world. Which of them, he wondered, would turn up if he did what he’d been thinking about ever since she’d opened the front door yesterday afternoon? If he put his arms around her and kissed her? The outraged innocent? Or the woman he’d glimpsed behind those eyes?
‘It’s pink food colouring,’ she said. ‘Completely natural. No E numbers. Pink ices for the Pink Ribbon Club?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
He was thinking about her breath against his mouth, the softness of her skin, his fingers sliding through that silky mane of hair…
There were tiny florets of lilac caught up in it, he noticed. He’d watched her from the window as she’d buried her head in the bush and the scent of the flowers mingled with warm skin and the herby tang of shampoo. He wanted to lay his face against her neck and breathe it in.
‘I think you’d have to label it unsuitable for vegetarians,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the food hygiene certificate. Rules… He had rules about sticking to women who understood that he didn’t do emotional attachment. Commitment. Who just wanted to have fun.
‘Good point. Pink sprinkles, then?’ Her face relaxed into the smile she’d been fighting, lifting the corners of her mouth in careless enticement.
In his head he had rules, but his body was responding on instinct, urging him to make a move. Telling him that she wanted it as much as he did. That if he kissed her it wouldn’t just make his day. It would make hers, too.
‘Pink sprinkles it is,’ he managed, hanging onto his concentration by his fingernails. Keeping his eyes level with the top of her head.
That was when he saw the ladybird taking a precipitous walk along a silky strand, the perfect distraction until it slipped and fell, tiny legs waving, no doubt wondering what the heck had just happened.
‘Wouldn’t it be perfect if you could buy pink chocolate flakes?’ she said.
One minute you were minding your own business, quietly milking the greenfly and the next, wham, you were in the dark, your world turned upside down.
Pretty much the way Elle must be feeling right now. Although he was beginning to suspect that her world hadn’t been that great to begin with.
‘You can get white ones so pink shouldn’t be such a stretch. Sean?’ she prompted.
‘Hold still,’ he said, releasing her hand so that he could gently part her hair to set the ladybird free to fly away.
Her forehead puckered in a frown. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Extracting a real live beetle. If you will stick your head in a bush you must expect to attract the local wildlife.’
It was her cue to squeal. Fling herself into his arms. All she said was, ‘Don’t hurt it.’
‘I’m doing my best, but it’s all tangled up. You’ll have to come closer.’
‘Is it all right?’ she asked anxiously, leaning into him.
‘Give me a minute,’ he muttered. More than a minute because, while she was showing no sign of girly nerves, both he and the ladybird were in a whole heap of trouble.
The bug, being a bug, didn’t know it had to follow Elle’s example o
f zen-like calm, keep still and co-operate. Instead, it panicked, getting into deeper trouble as it tried to right itself. And Sean’s hands were beginning to shake so badly that he was only making things worse.
‘You were telling me your family history,’ he said in an effort to distract himself from the warmth of her breath against his chest. Her breast nestling against his arm. ‘Your grandfather,’ he prompted. ‘Bernard inherited the house?’
‘As far as I know.’ She looked up. ‘The official version of family history is that he was an only child. Did he buy his brother out? I wonder. Or was Basil cut out of the will.’ She was shaken by an involuntary shiver that telegraphed itself through his body. Elle was clearly a lot more upset at the discovery that her respectable elders weren’t quite what they seemed than she was prepared to say. At least he’d had no illusions to shatter. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Can you move a little to the right?’ he requested, his voice emerging through cobwebs that seemed to be blocking his throat.
‘I barely knew him. My grandfather,’ she added as she shifted a little, leaning closer so that more of her was in contact with more of him. ‘He wasn’t the kind of grandpa who sat you on his knee and read to you. Played Happy Families on a wet Sunday afternoon. I don’t think he was a happy man.’
‘Maybe he had a guilty conscience,’ he suggested.
‘Maybe. Would this be easier if we went outside?’
‘Just keep still,’ he said, putting his arm around her to keep her from moving away just as the ladybird finally got with the plot and crawled onto his finger. ‘What happened when he died?’
‘Nothing much. He left us all pretty well provided for and being a single mother wasn’t that big a deal by then. Although three different fathers did tend to raise eyebrows.’
‘Three?’
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘History. We don’t look a bit alike. Sorrel has red hair and under the black dye Geli is white blonde.’
While her hair was the colour and shine of the chocolate sauce Basil used on his ices.
‘It must have been hard when she died,’ he said. ‘Your mother.’
‘It knocked us all sideways for a long time, but then Gran met someone. Andrew. At least that’s what he said his name was. He was charming, well-mannered and he made the world seem a brighter place for a while. It felt like we’d turned a corner. I’d scraped through my exams and had a place in the local college, a future, plans…’
She stopped, taking a moment to gather herself.
‘It was all a con, of course.’
Of course.
‘He parted Gran from her cash with the ease of a fishmonger filleting a trout, promising her the kind of interest rates that disappeared a decade ago. All very hush-hush, naturally. She was one of the lucky ones but she had to keep it to herself or everyone would pile in. Spoil it.’
‘And once he had it all, he disappeared,’ Sean finished for her.
At some point during the wind up of her story, the point she’d been trying to make about why she couldn’t just trust him, his other arm had found its way around her so that he was holding her close.
‘She must have realised pretty quickly, but the first I knew about the whole sorry mess was when I opened the door to a strange man who asked if I was Lovage Amery.’ She pulled back her head, looked up into his face. ‘I said yes, just as I did to you yesterday, and found myself holding a brown envelope.’
Sean remembered the way she’d avoided taking the one he’d been holding. Putting her hands behind her back.
‘Was it a summons?’
‘The first of many. Gran had been hiding the final demands from the utilities, the credit card companies, most for cards he’d applied for using her name…’
He muttered something under his breath as he realised what had happened.
‘…and of course the letters from the bank. He did a pretty good job of forging her signature to clear out everything she hadn’t already handed over. She’d been hoping against hope he’d come back before she had to face up to the truth.’
‘At least you managed to hang onto the house,’ he said helplessly.
‘Only because Grandpa left it in trust for his grandchildren, so it wasn’t hers to lose. Gran has the use of it for her lifetime but even if she died it can’t be sold until the youngest of us is twenty-one. That’s Geli. She’s sixteen,’ she added, almost as if she was warning him that there was no hope of money coming from that direction—and who could blame her? ‘He never knew her, of course. Mum was still expecting Sorrel when he died. But maybe he understood Gran a lot better than we did.’
CHAPTER SIX
Everyone has a price. Mine is ice cream.
—Rosie’s Diary
‘YOU take after your grandfather.’
‘Do I?’ Elle pulled a face. ‘I’m sure you mean that kindly, but if you’d known him you’d understand that’s not a compliment.’
‘I just meant that you’re the responsible one. The one who worries about money. Takes care of everything. Everyone.’
Elle closed her eyes, remembering the embarrassment of the bailiff removing paintings, Great-Grandma’s jewellery— Andrew had packed her grandmother’s jewellery in his overnight case when he’d left ‘for a business meeting’. The wedding china, family silver, antique furniture had all gone. Anything that would raise hard cash until all the debts had been paid.
They were fortunate there had been so much, but it hadn’t felt like it at the time. When everyone stopped talking as she walked into the village shop each Monday morning to collect the child allowance from the post office after Gran had taken to her bed. Sticking her fingers in her ears, figuratively speaking, and la-la-ing until it had all gone away.
It had been the only cash coming in until she’d surrendered her place in college for a minimum wage job at the Blue Boar. Cleaning, working in the kitchen, before Freddy had moved her into the restaurant.
It had been the only job within walking distance from home. They hadn’t been able to afford bus fares or petrol for the car and she had to be near enough to get home if her grandmother needed her.
She knew now that Social Services would have helped but at the time she’d been so afraid that, with her grandmother turning her face to the wall, they would have taken Sorrel and Geli into care if she’d asked for help.
‘Responsibility wasn’t a choice, Sean.’
‘No.’ Then, again, ‘No. Look, don’t bother your head about all this,’ he said, holding her close. ‘I’ll keep Rosie until Basil turns up. And I’ll take care of Saturday too.’
‘So…what?’ She leaned back to look him full in the face, her hands on his chest. ‘Are you saying that you don’t need me after all?’
Oh, no, he wasn’t saying that. Holding her this way was stirring up the kind of basic need that had nothing to do with serving ice cream and if he didn’t let her go, right now, she’d know it too.
The difference being that he understood that it was no more than a temporary, self-serving need. Nothing more than a passing attraction. He only did ‘passing’ he had no understanding of any other kind of relationship.
Even while his body was demanding he go for it, his head knew that she wasn’t kind of girl to indulge in a light-hearted, no-strings, bed-and-breakfast flirtation; the kind a man could walk away from with a clear conscience.
Elle had suffered enough hurt in her short life and while she would, inevitably, get her heart broken sooner or later, he would not be the one responsible for that.
‘It’s Basil who needs you,’ he said, mentally distancing himself from her. ‘But you’re right, why should you put yourself out for a man you don’t know, have never met? Who has never done a thing for you?’
‘It’s a mystery,’ she said. ‘As inexplicable as why he came to us for help after forty years of silence. Any ideas about that?’
‘None whatever,’ he said. ‘But then family is not my specialist subject.’
‘Mine either, it would seem. But I do know that what you have you should hold on to. Love them, keep them safe, whatever they do.’
And there it was. Right there. The reason he needed to step away. If he hadn’t recognised her vulnerability within minutes of setting eyes on her, her belief in the importance of family, all the things he despised, would have sent up the kind of warning flares that a man who believed in nothing, no one, would do well to heed.
‘Like your grandfather. Like you,’ he said.
Take your hands off her now, McElroy.
‘Maybe. How’s the ladybird doing?’ she asked.
‘She gave up on me and rescued herself some time ago,’ he admitted.
Step back…
‘Did she?’ She smiled. ‘Well, good for her. She did a good job holding your attention while I explained why I have trust issues.’
‘You had me at crushed beetles,’ he admitted.
She smiled. ‘I knew that would do it.’
Let her go…
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I think you’re right about that. I’ll stick with the pink sprinkles.’
‘What makes you think you’ve got a say in the matter?’ she asked. ‘Rosie is mine, remember? It’s my name on the logbook.’
‘Are you telling me that you’re going to keep her?’
‘You had me at the Pink Ribbon Club, Sean. Just for Saturday. Lavender’s girls have a debt to pay them. All I need from you is a quick tutorial.’
That wicked little come-and-get-me glint was back in her eyes now that she’d broken down the barrier he’d instinctively thrown up. It was the look of a woman who had won hands down and left him out for the count. But the bell hadn’t rung yet.
His legs had ignored him, his hands were still resting just below her shoulder blades keeping her close, his thighs against her hips, and this time he’d didn’t waste time asking himself which woman would show up if he kissed her.
He had to know.
Her eyes widened slightly as his mouth slowly descended, giving her all the time in the world to say no, do what he’d be unable to do and step back.
