Free Tempted by Trouble by Liz Fielding Page B

counter, slid back the window, making it her own before she glanced back at him. ‘Neither of you knows a thing about me.’
    She’d banked on him following her. He didn’t fall for it. Didn’t move, didn’t speak. Simply waited for her to take a look around and then step out again so that he could drive away. And why wouldn’t he? She was the one who’d been vehemently insisting that she didn’t want to know.
    It wasn’t true, she discovered.
    She wanted to know everything. Wanted to know about her mysterious great-uncle. Wanted to know what her grandmother had done for him. Why he’d been wiped from the family memory. Where he’d been all these years. Wanted to know what made Sean McElroy tick.
    No. Scrub that last one.
    She examined the stacked up cartons containing cones and the plastic shells used to serve ice cream sundaes.
    â€˜Did Basil usually leave all these inside the van?’ she asked. Sean didn’t answer. She turned to look at him.
    â€˜I have no idea,’ he finally answered.
    â€˜His letter suggests he always intended to send Rosie here.’ She shifted the boxes of cones to uncover pallets containing litre cartons of UHT ice cream mix. She poked a hole in the shrink-wrap and removed one to take a closer look. ‘You did assume we were expecting her. A mistake anyone might make under the circumstances,’ she added mildly, looking down at him through the open window. And prompted a slight frown to add to the tightened jaw.
    Content that she’d re-established a connection, even if it was at the frowning end of the spectrum, Elle set the carton down on the serving shelf, leaving him to contemplate the fact that he wasn’t infallible while she explored the storage cupboards.
    â€˜Generations of my family have lived in Gable End,’ she said conversationally, filling the knowledge gap, then blinked at the powerful hit of chocolate as she lifted the lid on a box of flakes. ‘Basil must have grown up here.’
    She took one, bit into it. Used a finger to catch a crumb of chocolate on her lip, sucked it.
    â€˜My great-grandfather, Bernard’s father and apparently Basil’s too, was a stockbroker,’ she went on, continuing to explore the contents of the cupboard. ‘Did Basil tell you that?’
    â€˜We confined our conversation to the state of Rosie’s working parts.’
    Mini marshmallows, nuts…
    Elle had a distant memory of an ice cream studded with marshmallows, her mother’s laughter…
    â€˜He was a magistrate, too,’ she said. ‘And a parish councillor. A pillar of the community.’
    â€˜Stiff collar, stiff manners and a stiff upper lip,’ he commented with perfect understanding.
    Finally, a response to something other than a direct question.
    â€˜I couldn’t say. I never knew him.’ Then, frowning, shelooked up from a box of multicoloured sprinkles. ‘Do you have a problem with respectability?’
    His response was the slowest of shrugs. She waited and, finally, he said, ‘It’s nothing but a façade constructed to cover a multitude of sins.’
    â€˜You really think that?’ she asked, jerked out of her carefully orchestrated build-up of family history to justify her trust issues. Not that they needed justifying, she reminded herself. She had a family to protect and had every right to be cautious.
    â€˜I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know it to be true,’ he said.
    â€˜Strange. While you lack the collar, you’ve got the stiffest lip, the stiffest neck I’ve ever encountered.’
    That caught him off guard. Surprised him. His recovery was swift but she’d cracked the mask.
    â€˜Maybe I have a problem with narrow-minded people who see anyone who isn’t like them as a threat,’ he said. ‘Who look the part but don’t live it.’
    Oh, now that was telling. Did he see himself as an outsider?