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