Tempted by Trouble (15 page)

The pink kettle was still hot and she found her grandmother, straw gardening hat tilted at a saucy angle, in the morning room, enjoying a cup of tea.

She wasn't alone.

‘Oh, there you are, Elle,' her grandmother said. ‘Sean tells me that he's heard from Basil.'

‘Yes. He sent a postcard.'

‘Really? Where from?'

‘Brighton,' she said shortly, picking up the teapot. Sean rescued it before she dropped it and poured tea into a waiting cup.

‘You're harder to get rid of than a bad penny,' she said ungratefully.

‘You're not the first person to say that. Let me see your hand,' he said calmly.

‘It's nothing,' she said, not wanting him to touch her, but, as she jerked away, she knocked it on the table, cried out. ‘Owww… That hurt.'

‘Not as much as Freddy's broken nose, if that helps,' he said wryly.

‘No…' Okay, she'd hit him and maybe there had been a bit of a crunch, but… She shook her head. ‘No.'

‘You didn't see the blood. Come on, let's get some ice on this.' Sean kept hold of her wrist as he walked through to the kitchen, then rummaged around in the freezer until he found a tray of ice cubes. ‘Rolling pin?'

Her hand was throbbing now and she didn't argue. ‘First drawer.'

He tipped the ice on a tea towel and battered it until it was crushed, then, supporting her hand from beneath, he pressed the ice pack against the swelling.

‘I can hold it,' she said dully, focusing on his neatly knotted
tie, the perfectly ironed shirt. Not his usual working clothes. He'd been going somewhere, she thought, and had stopped by to give her the good news. Then, when he didn't let her go, ‘If I broke Freddy's nose, he'll be the one coming after me for assault,'

‘Nonsense. He'll tell everyone he tripped over the step.'

‘He won't let me off that easily.'

‘He'd be wise to consider it, or it might become a reality.'

‘Don't! Please,' she said tightly.

‘You're protecting him?' he bit out.

‘No.' She shook her head, then forced herself to look up. Be bold, honest, true. ‘I'm protecting
you
.'

His head went back as if she'd slapped him, knocked the breath out of him and for a moment neither of them spoke.

‘Don't you have an estate to run?' she asked him.

He nodded, clearly relieved to be offered an escape. ‘I should have been in Melchester an hour ago.'

‘Then go.' Still he hesitated. ‘I'll be fine.'

‘You have my number…' He stopped as if realising that the offer to ride to her rescue was a hollow thing. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘There's no need, Sean. Sorrel and I can manage the wedding.'

‘You won't be able to load up, or drive Rosie with that hand,' he pointed out. ‘What time are you leaving?'

‘Twelve. I have to pick up the freezer stuff from the cash and carry.'

 

Sean made it to the gate before the pain hit him, brought him to a halt. The realisation of what he'd lost. No, what he'd thrown away.

What kind of man was he?

He could empathise with a dead duckling suffocating in a plastic bag, but people… His mother, his ever increasing family. To them he was judgemental, harsh, cold as January charity.

All the while he'd been congratulating himself that he'd
opened up to his family, made big strides in being a man who Elle could trust, rely on, he'd been fooling himself.

When it mattered, when he'd seen Elle locked in Frederickson's arms, even though he knew her, knew what kind of woman she was, he'd instantly leapt to the wrong conclusion. Seeing only what he'd expected to see.

‘Love them, keep them safe. Whatever they do.'

Her words mocked him.

He'd moved nowhere. He was still thinking of himself, of how
he
was being hurt. And yet, even when he'd let her down in the worst way, Elle was still more concerned for him than herself. Concerned that, in an attempt to redeem himself, he would be the one charged with assault.

‘I'm protecting you…'

Three little words shattering the barrier layered on over the years with each loss. A barrier against feeling anything. It came at him now like a whirlwind being sucked into a vacuum. Battering him, tearing at him, cutting him.

‘You have my number…'

Hollow words indeed.

He took a deep breath and began to walk back across the village to where he'd left his car. Time to put that right.

 

Elle tried to work, concentrate on
Scoop!
Updated
Rosie's Diary
, picking at the keys one-handed, trying not to let herself think.

She'd been forced to tell her sisters and her grandmother what had happened with Freddy, so that they understood they had to stay away from the pub. In case the police did turn up to question her. She told them as little as possible about Sean's part in the events, but he'd walked her home, told her grandmother that there had been a bit of a unpleasantness. They knew he'd been there, had drawn their own conclusions.

She knew she should contact the police herself. Make a complaint, if only to protect some other girl. Except Freddy
wasn't like that with anyone else. Not even the sixth-form girls who worked at the weekend.

It was just her. Looking back, analysing it, it was all there. The obsession. She was his little virgin. His… But then Sean had turned up and suddenly she'd been snatched away from him. Spoiled…

Just thinking about it made her feel sick. Talk about sticking your head in the sand.

 

Sean arrived dead on time the following morning, wearing his
Scoop!
T-shirt, looking good enough to eat. The slightly haggard look just made him appear all the more dangerous.

He knocked on the back door and, unlike Mabel, who rushed in, he waited politely on the step.

‘Here he is,' Geli cried as Mabel ran around her feet, hoovering up the crumbs she'd made getting herself some lunch. ‘The hero of the hour.'

‘What? No…'

Geli took one look at them, said, ‘Walkies!' and, grabbing a sandwich, raced after Mabel.

‘Some hero,' Sean said bitterly. ‘What did you tell them?'

‘As little as possible. Shall we go?'

This was as bad as she'd thought it would be. Worse. If there had been anyone else available to help her, she'd have called to tell him that she didn't need him. Should have called him anyway. But her hand was stiff and the pain went right up to her shoulder; also, she hadn't been able to quite give up on the hope that somehow, when she saw him, it would be all right.

Wrong.

In those few minutes when he'd thought she was Freddy's willing victim, when she had seen just how fragile a relationship could be, something had broken inside her.

Trust. There had to be trust. But she'd leapt to the wrong conclusion when she'd seen him following Charlotte from the Pink Ribbon Club Garden Party. How could she blame him for disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes?

‘How's your hand?' he asked as she reached up to take Rosie's key from the hook.

‘Fine.' She flexed it without thinking, then wished she hadn't. ‘Thanks to your first aid.'

He beat her to the key, took her hand and looked for himself. The swelling had gone down, but there was a painful black bruise where a blood vessel had broken.

He covered it with his own hand. ‘I'm sorry, Elle. I should have been the one with the sore knuckles.'

The hand covering her own bore no sign of damage and she reached for the other to reassure herself. ‘So what
did
you do to him?' she asked. ‘Freddy.'

‘Do?'

‘You must have done something. His receptionist brought me a large cheque and an apology less than an hour after you left.'

‘Maybe he realised just how much trouble he was in,' he said.

‘Maybe he had some help,' she said knowingly.

He shrugged. ‘I just had a little chat with him. Laid out his options. Reminded him just how bad a sexual harassment case would be for business. Brought up some of the finer points of employment law.'

‘But…'

‘I employ seventy-odd people, Elle. I do know what I'm talking about.'

‘That's it? Only Jenny, the receptionist who brought the cheque, said he'd been taken to the local A&E.'

And she'd lain awake all night imagining Sean under lock and key.

‘All I did was talk to him, Elle. He blustered for a bit, but he soon saw reason, wrote a cheque to cover the salary you were owed and the compensation that would have been awarded by an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal. He wrote the apology I dictated, leaving no one in any doubt what he was apologising for.'

‘That must have been more painful than his nose,' she remarked.

‘You didn't see it.'

‘And you don't know Freddy,' she declared, then blushed.

He laid a palm against her hot cheek. ‘Neither did you.' Then, ‘Once he'd despatched his receptionist, I ran him down to A&E to be patched up. And what do you know? I was right. He told the nurse that he tripped over a step.'

‘Sean…'

‘And, just so that you don't have to avoid that end of the village, you'll be glad to know that he's left his deputy manager in charge. The Blue Boar is going on the market from today and in the meantime he'll be taking a long vacation. For his health.'

She swallowed. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘Nothing. Don't say a thing…'

A shadow crossed his face and she wanted to reach up, put her arms around him, tell him not to beat himself up. Turn her face, press her lips against the cooling hand. Before she could succumb to the temptation, he let go. Just as well.

Nothing she could say or do would change the way he was feeling right now. There was only one person who could forgive Sean for the mistake he'd made. Himself.

It made her heart ache for him. Not with pain, but with love. For a man who'd made such a big journey, found his family, opened himself up to risk. The pain would come, though, because in that instant she understood that without him there would be a cold, hollow place inside her. One that she would feel all her days.

‘Come on. Let's go and stock up with lollies. Make this a wedding that no one will ever forget,' she said.

Unlikely, Sean thought later. Her hand might be sore but it hadn't stopped her giving the bride everything she wanted.

She was wearing a full-skirted calf-length dress in silvery-grey and white stripes with a black velvet belt to emphasize her waist, with little white lace gloves and a tiny black hat. Crisp,
gorgeous, no one would have known from her big smile what she'd gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

After the ceremony, in the little Greek temple at Melchester Castle, she'd presented the bride with an ice cream wrapped in some frilly silver thing so that it looked like a bouquet, decorated with silver sprinkles and with a white chocolate flake that had been sprayed with edible silver food paint.

The bride removed the flake, gave it to her new husband with the words, ‘On our first date, Steve, you gave me your chocolate flake. Now I'm giving you mine. Life is for sharing and this is my pledge that I'm going to share all of mine with you. All the better, all the worse. All the chocolate.'

‘Is that all it takes?' Sean asked as Elle rejoined him inside Rosie. ‘A chocolate flake?'

As they watched, there wasn't a dry eye in the place as he broke it in half and handed one piece back to his bride before sucking the ice cream off the half he was holding.

Just as well there was a rush from the guests to get their own ices and he had his hands full or he might have shed one himself.

How could he have ever doubted her when he'd recognised that rare innocence…? No. That was wrong. Not innocence. What made her different was a lack of guile. There was no calculation in what she did. She felt; she responded. More like her child-of-nature mother than she would want to believe.

‘You did an absolutely fabulous job,' he said afterwards, as they headed back to Longbourne, silver ribbons fluttering from Rosie's extremities. ‘I'll tell Hattie she has to include you and Rosie in her wedding brochure.'

‘I couldn't have done it without you.'

About to say
any time, anywhere
, he realised just how hollow those words would sound to her.

‘You could do anything you wanted. You're a natural, Elle.'

‘You pushed me, Sean. Made me go for it. I was scared witless. And angry.' She shook her head. ‘I hadn't realised how
angry I was. With everyone. Basil was just one more person wanting to steal my life, but you…' She touched his arm. It was the first time she'd reached out to him since he'd let her down and it went through him like an electric shock. ‘You gave it back to me.' Then, as if afraid that she'd said too much, ‘Let's hope Basil hasn't changed his mind about Rosie now that he doesn't think he's about to die.'

‘Elle…' He pulled over, brought Rosie to a halt in a small layby in a country lane. ‘I have to say something.'

She waited. ‘I'm listening,' she prompted over the ticking of Rosie's engine. The sound of the generator.

‘That's my problem. I don't have the words to tell you how I bad I feel. When I think what might have happened with Freddy…'

‘You stopped that. I wasn't doing well there for a minute, but you gave me time—'

‘Not enough.'

‘You gave me time,' she repeated, ‘to save myself. And you were coming back.'

‘What?'

‘When I came out of the Blue Boar, you'd stopped walking away. You were facing me. Coming back for me. Why?'

‘Because…' He stopped. It would be so easy to lie. So easy to say that he'd realised he was wrong and was coming back to save her. But only the truth would do. Everything that was in his heart. ‘I stopped because I was so angry with you.'