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He looked pretty shattered, too, come to think of it...
Sorrel slammed the door shut on the images that thought evoked. It was going to take a lot more than a pair of wide, here-today-gone-tomorrow shoulders to impress her.
Oh, yes.
While her friends had been dating, she’d had an early reality check on the value of romance and had focused on her future, choosing the prosaic Business Management degree and vowing that she’d be a millionaire by the time she was twenty-five.
Any man who wanted her attention would have to match her in drive and ambition. He would also have to be well groomed, well dressed, focused on his career and, most important of all, stationary.
The first two could be fixed. The third would, inevitably, be a work in progress, but her entire life had been dominated by men who caused havoc when they were around and then disappeared leaving the women to pick up the pieces. The last was non-negotiable.
Alexander West struck out on every single point, she told herself as another stitch surrendered, producing a flutter of excitement just below her waist. Anticipation. Dangerous feelings that, before she knew it, could run out of control and wreck her lifeplan, no matter how firmly nailed down.
‘What, exactly, are you doing here?’ she demanded. If the cold air swirling around at her back wasn’t enough to cool her down, all she had to do was remind herself that he belonged to Ria.
She was doing a pretty good job of cool and controlled, at least on the surface. Having faced down sceptical bank managers, sceptical marketing men and sceptical events organisers, she’d had plenty of practice keeping the surface calm even when her insides were churning. Right now hers felt as if a cloud of butterflies had moved in.
‘That’s none of your business, either.’
‘Actually, it is. Ria supplies me with ice cream for my business and since she has apparently left you in charge for the day...’ major stress on ‘apparently’ ‘...you should be aware that, while you are in a food-preparation area, you are required to wear a hat,’ she continued, in an attempt to crush both him and the disturbing effect he and his worn-out seams were having on her concentration. ‘And a white coat.’
A white coat would cover those shoulders and thighs and then she would be able to think straight.
‘Since Knickerbocker Gloria is no longer in business,’ he replied, ‘that’s not an issue.’ Had he placed the slightest emphasis on knicker? He nodded in the direction of the cartons she had piled up on the table beside the freezer and said, ‘If you’ll be good enough to return the stock to the freezer, I’ll see you off the premises.’
It took a moment for his words to filter through.
‘Stock? No longer in... What on earth are you talking about? Ria knows I’m picking up this order today. When will she be here?’
‘She won’t.’
‘Excuse me?’ She understood the words, but they were spinning around in her brain and wouldn’t line up. ‘Won’t what?’
‘Be here. Any time soon.’ He shrugged, then, taking pity on her obvious confusion—he was probably used to women losing the power of speech when he flexed his biceps—he said, ‘She had an unscheduled visit from the Revenue last week. It seems that she hasn’t been paying her VAT. Worse, she’s been ignoring their letters on the subject and you know how touchy they get about things like that.’
‘Not from personal experience,’ she replied, shocked to her backbone. Her books were updated on a daily basis, her sales tax paid quarterly by direct debit. Her family had lived on the breadline for a very long time after one particularly beguiling here-today-gone-tomorrow man had left her family penniless.
She was never going back there.
Ever.
There was nothing wrong with her imagination, however. She knew that ‘touchy’ was an understatement on the epic scale. ‘What happened? Exactly,’ she added.
‘I couldn’t say, exactly. Using my imagination to fill the gaps I’d say that they arrived unannounced to carry out an audit, took one look at her books and issued her with an insolvency notice,’ he said, without any discernible emotion.
‘But that means—’
‘That means that nothing can leave the premises until an inventory has been made of the business assets and the debts paid or, alternatively, she’s been declared bankrupt and her creditors have filed their claims.’
‘What? No!’ As her brain finally stopped freewheeling and the cogs engaged, she put her hand protectively on top of the ices piled up beside her. ‘I have to have these today. Now. And the other ices I ordered.’ Then felt horribly guilty for putting her own needs first when Ria was in such trouble.
Sorrel had always struggled with Ria’s somewhat cavalier attitude to business. She’d done everything she could to organise her but it was like pushing water uphill. If she was in trouble with the taxman, though, she must be frightened to death.
‘That would be the champagne sorbet that you can’t find,’ Alexander said, jerking her back to her own problem.
‘Amongst other things.’ At least he’d had his ears as well as his eyes open while he’d been ogling her underwear. ‘Perhaps they’re still in the kitchen freezer?’ she suggested, fingers mentally crossed. ‘I don’t imagine that she would have been thinking too clearly.’ Then, furious, ‘Why on earth didn’t she call me if she was in trouble? She knew I would have helped.’
‘She called me.’
‘And you came racing, ventre à terre, to rescue her?’ Her sarcasm covered a momentary pang of envy for such devotion. If he’d been devoted, she reminded herself, he’d have been here, supporting her instead of gallivanting around the world, beachcombing, no doubt with obligatory dusky maiden in attendance. Sending Ria the odd postcard when he could be bothered.
‘Hardly “belly to the earth”. I was in a Boeing at thirty thousand feet,’ he replied, picking up on the sarcasm and returning it with interest.
‘The modern equivalent,’ she snapped back. But he had come. ‘So? What are you going to do? Sort things out? Put the business back on a proper footing?’ she asked, torn between hope and doubt. What Ria needed was an accountant who couldn’t be twisted around her little finger. Not some lotus-eater.
‘No. I’m here to shut up shop. Knickerbocker Gloria is no longer trading.’
‘But...’
‘But what?’
‘Never mind.’
She would do her level best to help Ria save her business just as soon as the Jefferson job was over. Right now it was her reputation that was on the line. Without that sorbet, she was toast and she wasn’t about to allow Ria’s beefcake toy boy to stand in her way.
TWO
Ideas should be clear and ice cream thick. A Spanish Proverb
—from Rosie’s ‘Little Book of Ice Cream’
‘Do you mind?’ Sorrel asked, when he didn’t move or step aside to allow her through to the preparation room.
Alexander West was considerably taller than her, but not so tall—thanks to her four-inch heels—that she was forced to crick her neck to look him in the eye. A woman in business had to learn to stand her ground and, if she were ever to be made Chancellor of the Exchequer, her first act on taking office would be to make four-inch designer heels a tax-deductible expense.
‘Actually, I do,’ he said.
Terrific. A businessman would understand, be reasonable. Alexander West might be a travelling man who could, no doubt, make himself understood in a dozen languages, but he wasn’t talking hers.
Never mind. She hadn’t got this far without becoming multi-lingual herself...
‘Please, Mr West...’ she began, doing her best to ignore his disintegrating T-shirt, his close-fitting jeans, the scent of warm male skin prickling her nose, loosening her bones...
It was tough being a woman in business. Tough running events. A woman had to use whatever tools came to hand. With banks it was her ability to put together a solid business plan; with clients it was her intuitive understanding of what they wanted; with uncooperative staff at hotels she occasionally had to resort to the sharp edge of her tongue, but only as a last resort. The most effective tool in the box she’d always found to be a smile and this wasn’t the moment to hold back. She gave him the full, wide-screen, Technicolor version she’d inherited from her mother. The one known in the family as ‘the heartbreaker’, although in her case the only heart that had suffered any damage was her own.
‘Alexander...’ She switched to his first name, needing to make an ally of him, involve him in her problem. ‘This is important.’
She had his attention now and his smile faded until all she could see was a white starburst of lines around those hot blue eyes where they had been screwed up against the sun. Like a tractor-beam in an old science fiction movie, they drew her towards the seductive curve of his lower lip, pulling her in...
‘How important?’ he asked. His voice, dangerously soft, grazed her skin and mesmerized; her breath snagged in her throat as the warmth of his body wrapped around her. When had she moved? How had she got close enough to feel his breath against her cheek?
Bells were clanging a warning somewhere, but her mouth was so hot that she instinctively touched her lower lip with her tongue to cool it.
‘Really, really...’ her voice caught in her throat ‘...important.’
Even as her brain was scrambling an urgent message to her feet to step back his hand was at her waist, sliding beneath the skimpy top, spreading across her back, each fingertip sending shivery little sparks of pleasure dancing across her skin. Arousing drugging sensations that blocked the danger signals and, as he lowered his mouth to hers, only one word was making it through.
‘Yes...’
It murmured through her body as his lips touched hers, slipping through her defences as smoothly as a silver key turning in a well-oiled lock. Whispering seduction as his tongue slid across her lower lip, dipped between her teeth and her body arched towards him wanting more, wanting him.
She lifted her arms but as she slid them around his neck he broke the connection, lifting his head a fraction to look at her for a moment and murmur, ‘Not raspberry...’
Not raspberry?
He was frowning a little as he straightened so that he was looking down at her. Five-inch heels. She needed five-inch heels...
‘And not that important.’
As his hand slid away from her she took a step back, grabbed behind for the freezer for the second time, steadying herself while her legs remembered what they were for. And for the second time that morning wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
‘Not important?’ No, not that important...
Oh, God! Forget raspberry—if she ever blushed she wouldn’t be raspberry, she’d be beetroot. It was the skirt all over again, only that had been him looking. This had been her losing all sense as her wayward genes, the curse of all Amery women, had temporarily asserted themselves and reason, judgement, had flown out of the window. It was that easy to lose your head.
Just one look and she had wanted him to kiss her. Wanted a lot more. Stupid, crazy and rare in ways he couldn’t begin to understand, Alexander West had read something entirely different into her motives. Had thought that she was prepared to seduce him to get what she wanted...
‘It’s just ice cream,’ he said, dismissively.
Just?
‘Did you say “just ice cream”?’
Focus on that. Ice...
‘How did you get in here?’ he demanded, irritably, ignoring the question. ‘The shop isn’t open.’
The change of mood was like a slap, but it had the effect of jarring her senses back into place.
‘I used the side door,’ she snapped, almost as shocked by his dismissal of ice cream as something anyone could take seriously as a sizzling kiss that had momentarily stolen her wits. And which he had swept aside as casually.
No way was she going to tell him that Ria had given her a key so that she could collect her orders out of hours. She wasn’t going to tell him anything.
It was only the absolute necessity of verifying that Ria had completed her order that kept her from doing the sensible thing and walking out. Once she knew it was there, she could come and pick it up later when he had gone.
‘It was locked,’ he countered.
‘Not when I walked through it.’ The truth, the whole truth and very nearly nothing but the truth. ‘Unlike the front door. You’re not going to get Ria out of trouble if you shut her customers out,’ she added, pointedly.
Alexander West gave her a long, thoughtful look—the kind that suggested he knew when he was being flimflammed. He might look as if he were about to fall asleep where he stood, but, as he’d just demonstrated, he was very much awake and apparently leaping to all manner of conclusions.
Not without reason where the key was concerned.
As for the rest...
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
‘I did pay for my order in advance,’ she said, doing her best to blank out the humming of her pulse, determined to divert his attention from a smile that had got her into so much trouble—and which she’d stow away with the suit, labelled not suitable for office wear, the minute she got home—along with her apparent ability to walk through locked doors. Just in case he took it into his head to use those long fingers, strong capable hands, to do a pat-down search.
Her body practically melted at the thought.
‘Maybe,’ she said, her voice apparently disconnected from her body and brisk as a brand-new yard broom, ‘since you appear to have taken charge in Ria’s absence, you could find the rest of it for me?’
Better. Ignore the body. Stick with the voice...
‘You paid in advance?’
Much better. He wasn’t just diverted, he was seriously surprised and his eyebrows rose, drawing attention to the hair flopping over his forehead and practically falling in his eyes.
Sorrel found herself struggling against the urge to lean into him, to reach up and comb it back with her fingers, feel the strength of that hot body against hers as she put her arms around his neck and fastened it tidily out of the way with an elastic band.
Fortunately, she didn’t have a band handy but, not taking any chances, she kept her fingers busy tucking a stray wisp of her own hair behind an ear. Then, just to be safe, she rubbed her thumb over the little ice-cream-cornet earring that had been a birthday gift from her ideal man, Graeme Laing. The well-groomed, totally focused man for whom travelling meant brief business trips to Zurich, New York or Hong Kong.
Travelling for business was okay.
‘It is normal business practice,’ she assured him.
‘“Normal” and “business practice” are not words I’ve ever heard Ria use in the same sentence,’ Alexander replied.
‘That I can believe, but I’m not Ria.’
‘No?’ Her assertion didn’t impress him. He didn’t even ask what kind of business she was in. Clearly his interest in her didn’t stretch further than her underwear. He had to have known—his kiss had left her clinging to the freezer for support, for heaven’s sake—that she had been lost to reality, but he hadn’t bothered to follow through, press his advantage.
He’d simply been proving the point that she would do anything to get her ice cream.
He had been wrong about that, too. She hadn’t been thinking about her order, or the major event that depended upon it. She hadn’t been thinking at all, only feeling the fizz of heat rushing through her veins, a shocking need to be kissed, to be touched...
She cut off the thought, aware that she should be grateful that he hadn’t taken advantage of her incomprehensible meltdown.
She was grateful.
Having got over his shock at Ria’s unaccountable lapse into efficiency, however, Alexander shrugged and the gap along his shoulder seam widened, putting her fledgling gratitude to the test.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Show me a receipt and you can take your ices.’
‘A receipt?’
That took her mind off his disintegrating clothing, and the sudden chill around her midriff had nothing to do with the fact that she was leaning against an open freezer.
