Tempted by Trouble. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ troubles of the world and tall enough not to make her feel awkward about her height, which had been giving her a hard time since she’d hit a growth spurt somewhere around her twelfth birthday. With a voice that seemed to whisper right through her bones until it reached her toes.

      Even now they were curling inside her old trainers in pure ecstasy.

      He epitomised the casual, devil-may-care, bad-boy look of the travelling men who, for centuries, had arrived on the village common in the first week of June with the annual fair and departed a few days later, leaving a trail of broken hearts and the occasional fatherless baby in their wake.

      Trouble.

      But, riveted to the spot, her hand still in his, all it needed was for fairground waltzer music to start up in the background and she’d have been twirling away on a fluffy pink cloud without a thought in her head.

      The realisation was enough to bring her crashing back to her senses and, finally letting go of his hand, she took half a step back.

      ‘What do you want, Mr McElroy?’

      His eyebrows lifted a fraction at the swift change from drooling welcome to defensive aggression.

      ‘Not a what, a who. I have a delivery for Lovage Amery.’

      Oh, no …

      Back to earth with a bump.

      She hadn’t ordered anything—she couldn’t afford anything that would require delivery—but she had a grandmother who lived in a fantasy world. And her name was Lovage, too.

      But all the questions tumbling out of her brain—the what, the who, the ‘how much?’ stuff—hit a traffic jam as his smile widened, reaching the parts of her that ordinary smiles couldn’t touch.

      Her pulse, her knees, some point just below her midriff that was slowly dissolving to jelly.

      ‘If you’ll just take this …’

      She looked down and discovered that this delectable, sinewy package that had those drooling hormones sitting up and begging for whatever trouble he had in mind was offering her a large brown envelope.

      The last time one of those had come calling for ‘Lovage Amery’ she’d taken it without a concern in the world, smiling right back at the man offering it to her.

      She’d been younger then. About to start college, embark on her future, unaware that life had yet one more sucker punch to throw at her.

      ‘What is it?’ she asked, regretting the abandonment of the rubber gloves. Regretting answering the door.

      ‘Rosie,’ he said. As if that explained everything. ‘You are expecting her?’

      She must have looked as blank as she felt because he half turned and with a careless wave of the envelope, gestured towards the side of the house.

      She leaned forward just far enough to see the front of a large pink and white van that had been backed up towards the garage.

      She stared at it, expecting to see some disreputable dog sticking its head out of the window. She’d banned her sister from bringing home any more strays from the rescue shelter. The last one had broken not only their hearts, but what remained of their bank balance. But Geli was not above getting someone else to do her dirty work.

      ‘Where is she?’ she asked. Then, realising this practically constituted an acceptance, ‘No. Whatever Geli said, I can’t possibly take another dog. The vet’s bills for the last one—’

      ‘Rosie isn’t a dog,’ he said, and now he was the one looking confused. ‘That’s Rosie.’

      She frowned, stared at the picture of an ice cream sundae on the van door, little cones on the roof, and suddenly realised what she was looking at.

      ‘Rosie is an ice cream van?’

      ‘Congratulations.’

      Elle frowned. Congratulations? Had she won it in one of the many competitions she’d entered in a fit of post-Christmas despair when the washing machine had sprung a leak on the same day as the electricity bill had arrived?

      Surely not.

      She hadn’t had any warning of its arrival. No phone call. No letter informing her of her good fortune. Which was understandable.

      This would have to be the booby prize because, desperate as she was, she wouldn’t have entered a competition offering a second-hand ice cream van as first prize.

      She wouldn’t have entered one offering a new ice cream van, but at least she could have sold it and bought a new washing machine, one with a low energy programme—thus dealing with two problems at once—with the proceeds.

      While unfamiliar with the latest trends in transport, even she could see that Rosie’s lines were distinctly last century.

      Already the sorry owner of an ancient car that had failed its annual MOT test with a list of faults a mile long, the last thing she needed was to be lumbered with more scrap.

      ‘Congratulations?’ she repeated.

      ‘You appear to have twenty-twenty vision,’ he teased.

      ‘A very old ice cream van,’ she pointed out, doing her best to ignore the gotcha grin, the faded black T-shirt clinging to those enticing shoulders and figure out what the heck was going on.

      ‘Actually, she’s a nineteen sixty-two Commer ice cream van in her original livery,’ he said, without a hint of apology. On the contrary, he seemed to be under the impression that it was a good thing.

      ‘Nineteen sixty-two!’

      It beat the wreck in the garage, which had rolled off the assembly line when she was still in primary school, by thirty years. That was a stripling youth compared to Rosie, which had taken to the road when her grandmother was still in school.

      ‘The old girl’s vintage,’ Sean confirmed. ‘She’s your Great-Uncle Basil’s pride and joy, but right now she’s in need of a good home.’

      As he said this, he looked over her shoulder into the house, no doubt intending to emphasize the point.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ