Tempted by Trouble

by Liz Fielding

  It was just her. Looking back, analysing it, it was all there. The obsession. She was his little virgin. His… But then Sean had turned up and suddenly she’d been snatched away from him. Spoiled…

  Just thinking about it made her feel sick. Talk about sticking your head in the sand.

  Sean arrived dead on time the following morning, wearing his Scoop! T-shirt, looking good enough to eat. The slightly haggard look just made him appear all the more dangerous.

  He knocked on the back door and, unlike Mabel, who rushed in, he waited politely on the step.

  ‘Here he is,’ Geli cried as Mabel ran around her feet, hoovering up the crumbs she’d made getting herself some lunch. ‘The hero of the hour.’

  ‘What? No…’

  Geli took one look at them, said, ‘Walkies!’ and, grabbing a sandwich, raced after Mabel.

  ‘Some hero,’ Sean said bitterly. ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘As little as possible. Shall we go?’

  This was as bad as she’d thought it would be. Worse. If there had been anyone else available to help her, she’d have called to tell him that she didn’t need him. Should have called him anyway. But her hand was stiff and the pain went right up to her shoulder; also, she hadn’t been able to quite give up on the hope that somehow, when she saw him, it would be all right.

  Wrong.

  In those few minutes when he’d thought she was Freddy’s willing victim, when she had seen just how fragile a relationship could be, something had broken inside her.

  Trust. There had to be trust. But she’d leapt to the wrong conclusion when she’d seen him following Charlotte from the Pink Ribbon Club Garden Party. How could she blame him for disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes?

  ‘How’s your hand?’ he asked as she reached up to take Rosie’s key from the hook.

  ‘Fine.’ She flexed it without thinking, then wished she hadn’t. ‘Thanks to your first aid.’

  He beat her to the key, took her hand and looked for himself. The swelling had gone down, but there was a painful black bruise where a blood vessel had broken.

  He covered it with his own hand. ‘I’m sorry, Elle. I should have been the one with the sore knuckles.’

  The hand covering her own bore no sign of damage and she reached for the other to reassure herself. ‘So what did you do to him?’ she asked. ‘Freddy.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘You must have done something. His receptionist brought me a large cheque and an apology less than an hour after you left.’

  ‘Maybe he realised just how much trouble he was in,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe he had some help,’ she said knowingly.

  He shrugged. ‘I just had a little chat with him. Laid out his options. Reminded him just how bad a sexual harassment case would be for business. Brought up some of the finer points of employment law.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I employ seventy-odd people, Elle. I do know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘That’s it? Only Jenny, the receptionist who brought the cheque, said he’d been taken to the local A&E.’

  And she’d lain awake all night imagining Sean under lock and key.

  ‘All I did was talk to him, Elle. He blustered for a bit, but he soon saw reason, wrote a cheque to cover the salary you were owed and the compensation that would have been awarded by an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal. He wrote the apology I dictated, leaving no one in any doubt what he was apologising for.’

  ‘That must have been more painful than his nose,’ she remarked.

  ‘You didn’t see it.’

  ‘And you don’t know Freddy,’ she declared, then blushed.

  He laid a palm against her hot cheek. ‘Neither did you.’ Then, ‘Once he’d despatched his receptionist, I ran him down to A&E to be patched up. And what do you know? I was right. He told the nurse that he tripped over a step.’

  ‘Sean…’

  ‘And, just so that you don’t have to avoid that end of the village, you’ll be glad to know that he’s left his deputy manager in charge. The Blue Boar is going on the market from today and in the meantime he’ll be taking a long vacation. For his health.’

  She swallowed. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t say a thing…’

  A shadow crossed his face and she wanted to reach up, put her arms around him, tell him not to beat himself up. Turn her face, press her lips against the cooling hand. Before she could succumb to the temptation, he let go. Just as well.

  Nothing she could say or do would change the way he was feeling right now. There was only one person who could forgive Sean for the mistake he’d made. Himself.

  It made her heart ache for him. Not with pain, but with love. For a man who’d made such a big journey, found his family, opened himself up to risk. The pain would come, though, because in that instant she understood that without him there would be a cold, hollow place inside her. One that she would feel all her days.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go and stock up with lollies. Make this a wedding that no one will ever forget,’ she said.

  Unlikely, Sean thought later. Her hand might be sore but it hadn’t stopped her giving the bride everything she wanted.

  She was wearing a full-skirted calf-length dress in silvery-grey and white stripes with a black velvet belt to emphasize her waist, with little white lace gloves and a tiny black hat. Crisp, gorgeous, no one would have known from her big smile what she’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

  After the ceremony, in the little Greek temple at Melchester Castle, she’d presented the bride with an ice cream wrapped in some frilly silver thing so that it looked like a bouquet, decorated with silver sprinkles and with a white chocolate flake that had been sprayed with edible silver food paint.

  The bride removed the flake, gave it to her new husband with the words, ‘On our first date, Steve, you gave me your chocolate flake. Now I’m giving you mine. Life is for sharing and this is my pledge that I’m going to share all of mine with you. All the better, all the worse. All the chocolate.’

  ‘Is that all it takes?’ Sean asked as Elle rejoined him inside Rosie. ‘A chocolate flake?’

  As they watched, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place as he broke it in half and handed one piece back to his bride before sucking the ice cream off the half he was holding.

  Just as well there was a rush from the guests to get their own ices and he had his hands full or he might have shed one himself.

  How could he have ever doubted her when he’d recognised that rare innocence…? No. That was wrong. Not innocence. What made her different was a lack of guile. There was no calculation in what she did. She felt; she responded. More like her child-of-nature mother than she would want to believe.

  ‘You did an absolutely fabulous job,’ he said afterwards, as they headed back to Longbourne, silver ribbons fluttering from Rosie’s extremities. ‘I’ll tell Hattie she has to include you and Rosie in her wedding brochure.’

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

  About to say any time, anywhere, he realised just how hollow those words would sound to her.

  ‘You could do anything you wanted. You’re a natural, Elle.’

  ‘You pushed me, Sean. Made me go for it. I was scared witless. And angry.’ She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t realised how angry I was. With everyone. Basil was just one more person wanting to steal my life, but you…’ She touched his arm. It was the first time she’d reached out to him since he’d let her down and it went through him like an electric shock. ‘You gave it back to me.’ Then, as if afraid that she’d said too much, ‘Let’s hope Basil hasn’t changed his mind about Rosie now that he doesn’t think he’s about to die.’

  ‘Elle…’ He pulled over, brought Rosie to a halt in a small layby in a country lane. ‘I have to say something.’

  She waited. ‘I’m listening,’ she prompted over the ticking of Rosie’s engine. The sound of the generator.

>   ‘That’s my problem. I don’t have the words to tell you how I bad I feel. When I think what might have happened with Freddy…’

  ‘You stopped that. I wasn’t doing well there for a minute, but you gave me time—’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘You gave me time,’ she repeated, ‘to save myself. And you were coming back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I came out of the Blue Boar, you’d stopped walking away. You were facing me. Coming back for me. Why?’

  ‘Because…’ He stopped. It would be so easy to lie. So easy to say that he’d realised he was wrong and was coming back to save her. But only the truth would do. Everything that was in his heart. ‘I stopped because I was so angry with you.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I wanted to tear Frederickson apart with my bare hands, but it was you I was really angry with.’ Once the flood-gates were unlocked it all came pouring out of him. ‘Angry with you for letting any man do that to you. For not valuing yourself. For not punching him in the eye the first time he’d come on to you.’

  ‘That was the first…’

  ‘For not punching him in the eye the first time he touched you, held onto your arm a little too long. I wanted to shake you, Elle, tell you that you were a fool. Tell you that you are worth so much more than that. I wanted to shake you because you had made me believe and suddenly it was all falling apart. Shake you and hold you so that you’d know you never had to do that again. Hold you and tell you that I love you…’ And he stopped. That was it. Those were the words. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Enough to give me your flake?’ she teased shakily.

  ‘Enough to give you my life. Will you take it?’ he asked simply.

  Elle looked at him. How could you resist a man who’d lay himself bare like that? Mess up and admit it. Be so painfully honest that it hurt to watch. He’d come so far in the time she’d known him. He was always a big man, challenging life, making it back down. But he’d learnt to be kind to himself. Let people close enough to hurt and, when it had hurt, he’d still come back for more.

  She’d fallen in lust with him at first sight. Thought she’d grown to love him. But this feeling was bigger than that. They’d been good for each other. Each challenging the other’s fear and bringing out something shining and new in a few short weeks. What could they achieve in a lifetime?

  ‘Final answer?’ she asked.

  ‘That depends. Because I’ll go on asking until I get the right one.’

  There was a rap on the serving hatch. ‘Excuse me, but are you open? Only we’d like an ice,’ a voice said.

  Elle gave a little gasp and then burst out laughing.

  ‘We really are going to have to stop meeting like this,’ Sean said, hauling himself out of his seat. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, grinning. ‘But it will wait.’

  Rosie came to the wedding all gussied up in pink and white ribbons. Basil was in charge, decked out in a striped blazer and straw boater.

  Geli rode the ice cream bicycle in matching gear, handing out ice lollies to visitors to the estate as well as wedding guests.

  All Sean’s nieces, under the control of Sorrel, gorgeous in pale mint silk, were dressed in ice cream coloured tulle.

  In the Orangery Basil walked Elle through their friends and family as a harpist played ‘Greensleeves’, and delivered her to Sean.

  The ceremony was brief but moving and afterwards the word for the reception was definitely fun. Hattie had created a marquee that looked like a seaside show tent, flags flying. Olivia had found a Punch and Judy man to entertain the children. And there was candyfloss, bouncy castles, roundabouts and a ride-on train. There were donkey rides, too. And even a mini beach with buckets and spades.

  Sean, caught by Elle’s grandmother, looked around for Elle. She seemed to have disappeared and he wanted to slip away to the barn where they were spending the night before leaving for their honeymoon in the morning.

  He’d shared her with everyone for long enough.

  A mobile phone began to ring and Lally pulled it out of her pocket. ‘Hello? Oh, it’s for you,’ she said.

  ‘Me?’ He took the phone. ‘Sean McElroy?’

  ‘Remember you said when I had a free evening to call you?’

  ‘Vividly.’

  ‘Well, if you can find me, it’s your birthday.’

  He found her waiting for him in one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the river, a cold box at her feet.

  He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Is that ice cream you’ve got in the cool box?’

  ‘I’ve decided that today is your birthday, Sean,’ she said, lifting her arms and sliding them around his neck. ‘It’s time to unwrap your present.’

  He lifted her to her feet, held her. ‘Since I found you, my Elle, my Lovage, I’ve been reborn. Every day has been a gift.’ And his kiss was a promise that he would make it his life’s work to return the treasure a hundredfold.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0576-5

  TEMPTED BY TROUBLE

  First North American Publication 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Liz Fielding

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  For questions and comments about the quality of this book please contact us at Customer_eCare@Harlequin.ca.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.Harlequin.com