Tempted by Trouble by Liz Fielding

Author:Liz Fielding
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-05-04T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Forget love. I’d rather fall in ice cream.

—Rosie’s Diary

SEAN took his time over the coffee. The lesson, he reflected, was never to ask a question to which you didn’t want to hear the answer. He was practised at that. Good at keeping things light. People at a distance. Never digging beneath the surface to find out what made them tick. Taking care never to expose his own inner thoughts or feelings.

Elle challenged that in him. She told him stuff that he didn’t want to know. Intimate, private stuff that seeped into his psyche, settled in the small dark spaces of his mind that had been left unoccupied. Stirring up the dust, disturbing the cobwebs.

He’d walked away from her yesterday, determined to stay away until Saturday morning. At the garden party, he rationalised, they’d be too busy to do more than pass out ice creams, take the money. And she’d be off to work as soon as he’d dropped her off and brought Rosie back to the barn.

Except Rosie wasn’t coming back with him. And Elle was here right now.

He’d walked away, determined to put time and distance between them, but she’d come with him, lodged in his mind, stirring his body in ways that refused to be ignored. Driving him from his bed in the early hours to sit on the dock, his feet in the cold water of the river.

She’d been there when he woke.

His first thought had been of Elle, wondering what she was doing. How it would feel to turn and see her lying beside him. Hair tumbled over her pillow, lips soft, her lashes lying against her cheek. Every part of her totally relaxed in the total trust of complete surrender that letting go of consciousness in the presence of another person involved. It was why he never stayed overnight with any woman but always slept alone in his own bed. Refusing to give up that control to anyone.

It was why he’d fled the back of the van the minute they’d set the ice cream in action, leaving her to follow or not as she chose.

The memory of their last encounter in that small space was too vivid. The desire too intense.

He picked up the mugs. It would pass.

It always passed. His father, his half-brothers and-sisters demonstrated the fact on a regular basis. They were not a family with any emotional staying power.

And Elle was an emotional minefield. Best avoided but, if that was impossible, to be handled at long distance with the utmost caution.

He followed her through the living room, expecting to find her stretched out on one of the chairs on the terrace. But no. Typically, she’d ignored the obvious option and was down on the dock, leaning back, propped up on her hands, face to the sun, shoes off and legs dangling over the edge. Invading his space and filling his head with images that he wouldn’t be able to get out of his mind. That would stay with him, haunt him, torment him.

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