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.
‘It is normal business practice to issue one,’ he said.
She couldn’t be certain that he was mocking her, but it felt very much like it. He was pretty sharp for a man with such a louche lifestyle, but presumably financing it required a certain amount of ruthlessness. Was that why he felt responsible for Ria’s problems? She was full of life, looked fabulous for forty, but good-looking toy-boy lovers—no matter how occasional—were an expensive luxury.
‘You do have one?’
‘A receipt? Not with me,’ she hedged, unwilling to admit to her own rare lapse in efficiency. ‘Ria will have entered the payment in her books,’ she pointed out.
‘Ria hasn’t made an entry in her books for weeks.’
‘But that’s—’
‘That’s Ria.’
‘It’s as bad as that?’ she asked.
‘Worse.’
Sorrel groaned. ‘She’s hopeless with the practicalities. I have to write down the ingredients when we experiment with flavours for ice cream, but even then you never know what extra little touch she’s going to toss in as an afterthought the minute your back is turned.’
‘It’s the extra little touch that makes the magic.’
‘True,’ she said, surprised that someone who thought ice cream unimportant would know that. ‘Sadly, there’s no guarantee that it will be the same touch.’ While she wanted the magic, she also needed consistency. Ria preferred the serendipitous joy of stumbling on some exciting new flavour, which made a visit to Knickerbocker Gloria—the glorious step-back-in-time ice-cream parlour that was at the heart of the business—something of an adventure. Or deeply frustrating if you came back hoping for a second helping of an ice cream you’d fallen in love with. Fortunately for the business, the adventure mostly outweighed the frustration.
Mostly.
‘You have to learn to live with the risk or move on,’ Alexander said, apparently able to read her mind.
‘Do I?’ She regarded him with the same thoughtful look that he had turned on her. ‘Is it the risk that brings you back?’ she asked.
His smile was a dangerous thing. Fleeting. Filled with ambiguity. Was he amused? She couldn’t be certain. And if he was, was he laughing at himself or at her pathetic attempt to tease information out of him? Why did it matter? His relationship with Ria had nothing to do with her unless it interfered with her business.
It was interfering with her business right now.
He was standing in the way of what she needed, but she needed his co-operation. In a moment of weakness, she had allowed her concentration to slip, but she wouldn’t let that happen again. She didn’t care what had brought Alexander West flying back to Maybridge, to Ria. She only cared about the needs of her own business.
‘When it comes to ice cream,’ she said, not waiting for an answer, ‘Ria’s individuality is my biggest selling point.’
Having practically torn her hair out at Ria’s inability to stick to a recipe, she had finally taken the line of least resistance, offering something unrepeatable—colours and flavours that were individually tailored to her clients’ personal requirements—to sell the uniqueness of her ices.
It did mean that she had to work closely with Ria, recording her recipes at the moment of creation to ensure that she delivered the ices that her client tasted and approved and didn’t go off on some last-minute fantasy version conjured up in a flash of inspiration. It wasn’t easy, she couldn’t be here all the time, but it had been worth the effort.
‘Where is Ria?’ she asked, again. ‘And where’s Nancy?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘She has to drop her daughter off at school, but she should have been here an hour ago to open up the ice-cream parlour.’
‘She was, but, since there’s no possibility that the business will continue, it seemed kinder to suggest she use her time to explore other employment opportunities.’
‘Kinder?’ He’d fired her? Things were moving a lot faster than she had anticipated. ‘Kinder?’ she repeated. ‘Have you any idea how important this job is to Nancy? She’s a single mother. Finding another job—’
‘Take it up with Ria,’ he said, cutting her off in full flow. ‘She’s the one who’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ For a man so relaxed that he looked as if he might slide down the door at any minute, he moved with lightning speed. That capable hand was at her elbow as the blood drained from her face and long before the wobble reached her knees. ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’
‘Nothing. Bad choice of words.’ He knew, she thought. He understood that beneath Ria’s vivid clothes, her life-embracing exuberance, there was a fragility...
He was close again and she caught the scent of the lavender that Ria cut from her garden and laid between her sheets. Ria... This was about her, she reminded herself. ‘She can’t hide from the taxman.’
‘No, but, if you know her as well as you say, you’ll know that when things get tough, she does a good impression of an ostrich.’
That rang true. Ria was very good at sticking her head in the sand and not hearing anything she didn’t want to know. Such as advice about being more organised. About consistency in the flavours she sold in the ice-cream parlour, saving the experimental flavours for ‘specials’. ‘Have you any idea which beach she might have chosen? To bury her head in.’
‘That’s