Anything but Vanilla... Read Online Free PDF Page B

problems there was no harm in playing the guilt card ‘...you’ll have two insolvencies on your conscience.’
    ‘If you relied on Ria,’ he replied, unmoved, ‘you deserve to sink.’
    ‘That’s a bit harsh.’ She had always been aware that there was an element of risk working with Ria, but until now she’d been managing it. Or thought she had.
    ‘It’s a harsh world.’
    ‘So you’re going to let the taxman take us both down?’
    ‘If we don’t pay our taxes, Miss Amery, everyone loses.’
    ‘I pay mine!’ she declared, furiously. ‘On the dot. Along with all my bills. What about you?’
    ‘What about me?’
    ‘Well, you’re never here, are you? Do you have a job, Mr West, or do you just live on handouts from gullible women?’
    ‘Is that what you think? That I’m the reason Ria is in trouble?’
    His voice, soft as cobwebs, raised the gooseflesh on her arms. Had she got it totally wrong?
    Renowned for being calm in a crisis, she was totally losing it in the face of the kind of body that challenged her notion of what was attractive in a man. Slim, elegant, wearing bespoke tailoring...
    He was so not her type!
    Not in a million years.
    She mentally hung a Do Not Touch notice around his neck, counted to three and took a deep breath.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’ The ability to hang on to a calm demeanour in the face of disaster was a prime requisite of the events organiser, but right now she was running on her reserve tank with the red light flashing a warning. ‘Can we at least check and see if she’s made the sorbet?’ she suggested, resisting the urge to rub her hands up and down her arms to warm them and instead reaching for a white coat and slipping it on. Settling a white trilby over her hair. A statement of intent. ‘It has a very short shelf life and by the time you and the Revenue sort out the paperwork it will be well beyond its best-before date. So much sorbet down the drain. A waste of everyone’s money.’
    ‘I’m sure you’re only worried about yours.’
    He was losing patience now, regarding her with undisguised irritation, and she regretted her rush to cover up. The slightest shrug would have sent a strap sliding from her shoulder.
    It wasn’t the way she did business, but then he wasn’t the kind of man she usually did business with. Any distraction in a crisis... Now she was aware of the danger she would stay well out of reach.
    ‘If you insist,’ she continued, using the only other way of grabbing his attention that was open to her, ‘I’ll pay for it again.’ Heavy stress on the “again”. ‘I’d rather lose money on this event than my reputation.’
    He didn’t leap to accept her offer despite the fact that it would help pay the outstanding tax bill.
    ‘That would be in cash, too, of course.’ And, since this was her mistake, it would be taken from her own bank account. She would have to forget all about that pair of pink Miu Miu sandals at the top of her shoe wish-list. There were always more shoes, but there was only one Scoop! Her sister had created it and she wasn’t going to be the one to lose it. ‘Since Ria’s bank account has presumably been frozen,’ she added, as a face-saving sop to his pride.
    She assumed it would go straight into his back pocket but she’d already insulted him once—in response to gravest provocation—and doing it again wasn’t going to get her what she wanted.
    She held her breath and, after what felt like a lifetime, he moved to one side to allow her to pass.
    She crushed her disappointment that cash would move him when her appeal to his sense of fair play had failed. That a lovely woman should be in thrall to a man so unworthy of her. Not that she was surprised. She’d suffered the consequences of men who took advantage of foolish women.
    Wouldn’t be here but for one of them.
    Once they’d checked the drawers of the upright freezers in the kitchen, however, she had a bigger problem than Ria’s inevitably