Anything but Vanilla...

‘There’s no one else here.’

‘And closing it is your best shot?’

‘It would take a large injection of cash to settle with the creditors and someone with a firm grip on the paperwork at the helm.’ He didn’t look or sound optimistic. Actually, he looked as if he was about to go to sleep propped up against the freezer door.

‘How much cash?’

‘Why?’ He was regarding her sleepily from beneath heavy-lidded eyes that looked as if they could barely stay open, but she wasn’t fooled for a minute. She had his full attention. ‘Don’t tell me you’re interested.’

‘Why not?’ He didn’t answer, but she hadn’t expected him to. He had her down as an idiot who thought she could get what she wanted in business by flirting. A rare mistake. Now she was going to have to work twice as hard to convince him otherwise. ‘At the right price I could be very interested, although on this occasion,’ she added, ‘I won’t be paying in cash and will definitely require a receipt.’

Sorrel heard the words, knew they had come from her mouth, but still didn’t believe it. She didn’t make snap decisions. She planned things through, carefully assessed the potential, worked out the cost-benefit ratio. And always talked to her financial advisor before making any decision that would affect her carefully constructed five-year plan.

Not that she had to talk to Graeme to know exactly what he would say.

The words ‘do not touch’ and ‘bargepole’ would be closely linked, followed by a silence filled with an unspoken ‘I told you so’. He had never approved of Ria.

Maybe, if she laughed, Alexander West would think she’d been joking.

‘You’re a fast learner,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that.’

Too late.

‘How generous.’ Possibly. Of course, it could have been sarcasm since he wasn’t excited enough by her interest to do more than lean a little more heavily against the freezer. For a man whose aim in life was to keep moving, he certainly didn’t believe in wasting energy. Presumably his exploration was confined to the local bars set beneath palm trees on those lovely beaches.

‘What kind of figure were you thinking of offering?’ he asked.

Thinking? This was not her day for thinking...

‘I’ll need to see the accounts before I’m prepared to talk about an offer,’ she said, her brain beginning to catch up with her mouth. ‘How long is the lease? Do you know?’

‘It’s not transferable. You’d have to negotiate a new lease with the landlord.’

‘Oh...’ She was surprised he knew that, but then it had been that kind of day. Full of surprises. None of them, so far, good. ‘No doubt he’ll take the opportunity to increase the rent. They’ve been low at this end of the High Street but footfall has picked up in the last couple of years.’ There had been a major improvement project with an influx of small specialist shops attracting shoppers who were looking for something different and were prepared to pay for quality. Knickerbocker Gloria had been a vanguard of that movement and had done well out of it. Very well. Which made the sudden collapse all the more surprising. ‘No doubt he’ll want to take advantage of that.’

‘It’s taken a lot of money to improve this part of the town. He’s entitled to reap the benefit, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so. Who is the landlord?’ she asked. ‘Do you know?’

‘Yes.’ The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. ‘I am.’

With her entire focus centred on the tiny crease that formed as the embryonic smile took form, grew into a teasing quirk, her certainty on the putty question was undermined by a distinct slackening around her knees and it took a moment for his words to sink in.

He was...

What?

‘Oh...Knickerbocker Gloria...’ She pulled a face. ‘So that’s my foot in my mouth right up to the ankle, then?’

The smile deepened. ‘I’ll bear in mind what you said about increasing the rent.’

‘Terrific.’ She was having a bad day and then some.

‘I’m always open to negotiation. For the right tenant.’

‘Is that how Ria managed to get such a good deal?’ she asked.

‘Good deal?’

He didn’t move, but her skin began to tingle and her mouth dried...

‘Her rent is very...reasonable.’ There was no point dodging the bullet. The words had come out of her mouth even if she hadn’t meant them in quite the way they’d sounded. Or maybe she had. The thought of Ria haggling over money was too ridiculous to contemplate. ‘Even for the wrong end of the High Street.’

‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘You’re moving from the suggestion that she’s paying me for services rendered, to me subsidising her, likewise?’

There were days when you just shouldn’t get out of bed. This was rapidly turning into one of them.

Forget ankle. They were talking knee and beyond.

‘You’re not...?’ she said, unable to actually put the thought into words.

‘I’m not. She’s not. I don’t understand why you’d think we were.’ His eyebrow rose questioningly.

‘The fact that she sent for you when she was in trouble and you came,’ she suggested.

‘We’ve known one another a long time.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s more than that.’

His shoulders shifted in an awkward shrug that in anyone else she would have put down to embarrassment. ‘I have a responsibility to her.’

‘Because you’re her landlord?’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘I don’t doubt it. I found her weeping over the last card you sent her.’

‘Damn.’ He sighed. ‘That wasn’t about me but it does begin to explain what’s been happening here.’

‘Does it?’ She waited but he was lost in thought. ‘When can I see the accounts?’ she asked, finally.

He came back from wherever he’d been in his head. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Don’t I look serious?’

‘Seriously?’ He took a long, slow look that began at her shoes, travelled up the length of the white coat with a long pause at her cleavage before coming to a rest on the unflattering hat. ‘Sorry,’ he said finally, reaching out and removing the offending headgear. ‘There is no way I can take you seriously in this thing.’

‘Seriously,’ she repeated, not so much as blinking despite a heartbeat that was racketing out of control at the intimacy of such a gesture. The man was an oaf—albeit a sexy oaf—and she refused to let him fluster her. Okay, it was too late for that; she was flustered beyond recovery, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow him to see that.