Tempted by Trouble by Liz Fielding

she said, giving Sean a flint-eyed stare, ‘you can kiss your job goodbye.’
    â€˜Don’t be silly,’ Elle said uncomfortably, unwilling to get into any conversation that involved the word kissing—not when she could almost taste Sean on her lips. ‘I thought you were meeting up with some friends from school and going into Maybridge this morning,’ she said, dragging her mind back to reality.
    â€˜They decided to go to the multiplex in Melchester. Apparently, they’ve opened a new burger bar. Yuck, yuck, yuck.’
    â€˜Geli…Angelica…is a vegetarian.’ Elle finally risked a glance at Sean.
    â€˜Really? It’s a good thing you abandoned the crushed beetles option, then,’ he said, his face perfectly straight.
    Geli looked at him, looked at her, then said, ‘Too weird. I’m going to get something to eat.’
    â€˜Geli—’
    â€˜What!’
    â€˜There’s no milk,’ Elle reminded her.
    â€˜Don’t blame me!’
    â€˜Or bread.’
    She sighed dramatically, then flounced off towards the village.
    â€˜Is it always like this?’ Sean asked.
    â€˜Just an average day at Gable End.’ Apart from Rosie. Long lost uncles. And a kiss that was no more than a breath on her lips.
    â€˜I’d better go,’ Sean said. ‘I’ve already got you into enough trouble without making you late for work.’
    â€˜Don’t take any notice of Geli. I’ve worked for Freddy for seven years.’
    â€˜He’s a patient man.’
    â€˜Patient?’
    â€˜Although you would have been rather young for him when you first started. What is he? Forty? Forty-five?’
    Her cheeks heated up as she realised what he meant. ‘No, Freddy’s not interested in me in that way. It’s just Sorrel’s idea of a joke.’
    His eyebrows barely moved. ‘If you say so,’ he said, looking not at her, but at Rosie. ‘I never did get around to showing you how the ice cream machine works.’
    Maybe not, but he’d come very close to showing her plenty of other things. With her whole-hearted co-operation.
    Not that he seemed in any great hurry to resume the lesson where they’d left off—touching close, lips a murmur apart. And that was a Good Thing, she told herself.
    She might not have entirely escaped her mother’s live-now pay-later nature, but that didn’t mean she had to follow her example and lose her head over the first man to make her heart, and just about everything else, go boom.
    â€˜There’s no time now. Save it for Saturday,’ she said.
    â€˜Saturday?’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said, arranging her face in a faintly puzzled frown, ‘but didn’t you volunteer to be in charge of the sprinkles?’
    â€˜Did I?’ And there it was again. The barely-there smile that went straight to her knees.
    â€˜And afterwards you can take Rosie back to Haughton Manor and tuck her up in your barn until Basil turns up,’ she added, making an effort to be sensible.
    Something else he’d volunteered to do before they’d both forgotten about Rosie, ice cream, Basil…
    â€˜Oh, no! The letter!’
    Sean should have been feeling only one emotion as he watched Elle race back down the path, long legs, long hair flying, to retrieve Basil’s letter before her grandmother picked it up and read it.
    Relief.
    He’d come within a gnat’s whisker of losing control, but Elle had just given him a get-out-of-jail-free card and it was long past time to remove himself from the temptation of those luscious lips, the danger of entanglement in a situation that should have a dedicated commitment-phobe running a mile.
    â€˜Saturday it is, then,’ he said to no one in particular as he shut Rosie’s door, locked up, gave her a little pat. ‘I’ll come over early and make sure you behave yourself.’
    And he tried not to think about