He didn’t visibly flinch but the hall, like the rest of the house, was desperately in need of a coat of paint. It was also piled up with discarded shoes, coats and all the other stuff that teenagers seemed to think belonged on the floor. And of course, her rubber gloves.
That was the bad news.
The good news was that he couldn’t see where the carpet had been chewed by the dog that had caused them all so much grief.
‘Vintage,’ she repeated sharply, forcing him to look at her instead of the mess behind her. ‘Well, it would certainly fit right in around here. There’s just one small problem.’
More than one if she was being honest and honestly, despite the fact that the aged family car had failed its annual test and she was desperate for some transport, she wasn’t prepared to take possession of a vehicle that was short on seats and heavy on fuel.
Walking, as she was always telling her sisters, was good for you. Shaped up the legs. Pumped blood around the body and made the brain work harder. And they all had a duty to the planet to walk more. Or use public transport.
She walked. They used public transport.
There was absolutely no chance that either of her sisters would consider using the bike when it meant wearing an unflattering helmet and looking, in their words, ‘like a dork’ when they arrived at school and college, respectively.
‘Which is?’ he prompted.
She didn’t bother him with the financial downside of her situation, but kept it simple.
‘I don’t have a Great Uncle Basil.’
Finally a frown. It didn’t lessen the attraction, just made him look thoughtful, studious. Even more hormone-twangingly desirable.
‘You are Lovage Amery?’ he asked, catching up with the fact that, while she hadn’t denied it, she hadn’t confirmed it either. ‘And this is Gable End, The Common, Longbourne.’
She was slow to confirm it and, twigging to her reluctance to own up to the name, the address, he glanced back at the wide wooden gate propped wide open and immovable for as long as she could remember. The letters that spelled out the words ‘Gable End’ were faded almost to nothing, but denial was pointless.
‘Obviously there has been some kind of mistake,’ she said with all the conviction she could muster. Maybe. Her grandmother might well know someone named Basil who needed somewhere to park his ice cream van, but he wasn’t her uncle, great or otherwise. And, even if she’d wanted to—and she didn’t—she had no time to take on an ice cream round. End of, as Geli was so fond of saying. ‘Please take it away.’
‘I will.’ Her relieved smile was a fraction too fast. ‘If you’ll just help me get to the bottom of this.’
‘Some kind of muddle in the paperwork?’ she offered. ‘Take it up with Basil.’
‘It’s not a common name. Lovage,’ he said, ignoring her excellent advice.
‘There’s a good reason for that,’ she muttered.
One of his eyebrows kicked up and something in her midriff imitated the action. Without thinking, Elle found herself checking his left hand for a wedding band. It was bare, but that didn’t mean a thing. No man that good-looking could possibly be unattached. And, even if he was, she reminded herself, she wasn’t. Very firmly attached to a whole heap of responsibilities.
Two sisters still in full-time education, a grandmother who lived in her own make-believe world, and a house that sucked up every spare penny she earned working shifts in a dead-end job so that she could fit around them all.
‘You don’t like it?’ he asked.
‘No … Yes …’ It wasn’t that she didn’t like her name. ‘Sadly, it tends to rouse the infantile in the male, no matter how old they are.’
‘Men can be their own worst enemies,’ he admitted. Then said it again. ‘Lovage …’
This time he lingered over the name, testing it, giving it a deliciously soft lilt, making it sound very grown-up. And she discovered he didn’t need the smile to turn her bones to putty.
She reached for the door, needing something to hang on to.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ she snapped, telling herself to get a grip.
The man was trying to lumber her with a superannuated piece of junk. Or, worse, was a con artist distracting her while an accomplice—maybe Basil himself—slipped around the back of the house and made off with anything not nailed down. Well, good luck with that one. But, whatever he was up to, it was a cast-iron certainty that flirting was something that came to him as naturally as breathing. And she was being sucked in.
‘If that’s all?’ she enquired.
‘No, wait!’
She hesitated a second too long.
‘Right name. Tick. Right address. Tick—’
‘Annoying male, tick,’ she flashed back at him, determined to put an end to this. Whatever this was.
‘You may well be right,’ he agreed, amused rather than annoyed. Which was annoying. ‘But, while you might not know your Great-Uncle Basil, I think you’re going to have to accept that he knows you.’ He looked down at the envelope he was holding, then up at her. ‘Tell me, are you all named after herbs in your family?’
She opened her mouth, then, deciding not to go there, said, ‘Tell me, Mr McElroy, does she … it,’ she corrected herself, refusing to fall into the trap of thinking of the van as anything other than an inanimate object ‘does it go?’
‘I drove her here,’ he pointed out, the smile enticing, mouth-wateringly sexy. Confident that he’d got her. ‘I’ll take you for a spin in her so that I can talk you through her little eccentricities, if you like,’ he went on before she could complete her punchline, tell him to start it up and drive it away. ‘She’s a lovely old girl, but she has her moods.’
‘Oh, right. You’re telling me she’s a cranky old ice cream van.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ He leaned his shoulder against the door frame, totally relaxed, oblivious of the fact that the rose scrambling over the porch had dropped pink petals over his thick dark hair and on one of those broad shoulders. ‘Shall we say she’s an old ice cream van with bags of character?’
‘Let’s not,’ she replied, doing her best to get a grip of her tongue, her hormones, her senses, all of which were urging her to forget her problems, throw caution to the wind and, for once in her life, say yes instead of no. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McElroy—’
‘Sean—’
‘I’m sorry, Mr McElroy,’ she reiterated, refusing to be sidetracked, ‘but my mother told me never to take a ride with a stranger.’
A classic case of do as I say rather than do as I do, obviously. In similar circumstances, her mother wouldn’t have hesitated. She’d have grabbed the adventure and, jingle blaring, driven around the village scandalising the neighbours.
But, gorgeous though Sean McElroy undoubtedly was, she wasn’t about to make the same mistakes as her mother. And while he was still trying to get his head around the fact that she’d turned him down flat, she took a full step back and shut the door. Then she slipped the security chain into place, although whether it was to keep him out or herself in she couldn’t have said.
He didn’t move. His shadow was still clearly visible behind one of the stained glass panels that flanked the door and, realising that he might be able to see her pinned to the spot, her heart racing, she grabbed the rubber gloves and beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the kitchen.
Today