Tempted by Trouble

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.