Anything but Vanilla(37)

‘I never leave home without it. We’ve a lot to learn from the past as well as primitive societies.’

‘And that’s what you do?’ she asked. ‘Find the plants that people have been using for centuries and bring them home to find out what it is that makes them so special?’

‘We’re losing them at a frightening rate. Losing them before we even know they exist. It’s a race against time.’

‘They’re a lot more important than rare orchids, I guess.’

‘More important,’ he agreed, but then his face creased in a broad grin. ‘But nowhere near as erotic.’

* * *

‘No one is going to miss you driving down the High Street in that,’ Alexander said a couple of hours later as Sorrel opened the rear doors of her van so that he could load up the ices.

‘That’s the general idea,’ she said, pausing momentarily to admire Geli’s artwork. The van was black, with Scoop! drawn in loops of vanilla ice along each side and with a celebratory firework explosion of multicolour sprinkles, bursting in a head-turning display from the exclamation point to splatter the roof and the doors. It never failed to make her smile. ‘And it means that you won’t have any trouble following me,’ she said, going back inside to fetch more ices.

‘Following you?’ he asked, doing just that and reaching to take big cooler containers she was carrying.

‘Home...’ They were both hanging on to the container and much too close. ‘For supper?’ They were much too close. If she moved her fingers an inch their hands would be touching. If she touched him he would kiss her again...

She surrendered the load to him, turned and grabbed another container from the freezer, letting her face cool before following him to the van. He’d pushed his load deep inside and took hers and did the same with that.

‘How are we doing?’ he asked.

We. He was saying it now...

‘Um... A couple more trips should do it.’ He took the last load out to the van while she collected her bag, double checked that everything was switched off and set the alarm. ‘Where are you parked?’ she asked.

‘I’m not. Ria took the car and I was too bushed to go home last night. I walked in.’

‘You walked?’ It was the best part of two miles from Ria’s cottage and lesser mortals would have called a taxi.

‘I needed to stretch my legs.’

‘Obviously. No more than a gentle stroll in the park for a man who spends his days hacking through the jungle.’ The tension that had gripped her throughout the day had eased now that everything was ready and she couldn’t resist teasing him a little.

‘I took the short cut along the towpath. A walk along the river at dawn is a good start to any day.’

‘And no bats or mosquitoes to spoil the pleasure.’ Only the newly hatched ducklings and cygnets being shepherded along the bank by their parents, the white lacy froth of cow parsley billowing over the path and blackbirds giving it their all.

‘You have to walk along there in the evening if you want to see bats,’ he said. ‘Pipistrelles dipping and diving as they chase the insects.’

‘Yes...’ How long since she’d done that? Taken a run along the towpath in the morning before the day was properly awake. Walked along it in the evening, not thinking, not planning, not doing anything but absorbing the scents, the sounds around her? ‘We get them in the garden at dusk.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Maybe you’ll get lucky this evening.’

‘Will I?’

Alexander saw the touch of colour heat her cheeks as she realised what she’d said and he felt an answering heat low in his groin. For a moment neither of them moved, then Sorrel looked away, took her jacket from a hanger and slipped it over the silky top.

It should have made concentrating a whole lot easier but the image was imprinted on his mind and if she’d been wearing a sack he’d still see a tendril of escaped hair curling against her neck, her smooth shoulders, the silk clinging to her breasts.

That colour should have looked all wrong with her hair, but it was as spectacularly head-turning as the van. As spectacularly head-turning as the view of her legs as she slid behind the wheel.

When he didn’t walk around and climb in beside her, she peered up at him. ‘What’s up, Doc? Don’t tell me that you have a problem with women drivers?’

‘If I said yes, would you let me drive?’