Tempted by Trouble Read Free Page A

of the security chain going up had a finality about it that suggested ringing the doorbell again would be a waste of time.
    He looked at the envelope Basil Amery had pushed through his door while he was in London, along with a note asking him to deliver it and Rosie to Lovage Amery.
    He’d been furious. As if he didn’t have better things to do, but it was typical of the man to take advantage. Typical of him to disappear without explanation.
    True, his irritation had evaporated when the door had opened but, while it was tempting to take advantage of the side gate, standing wide open, and follow up his encounter with the luscious Miss Amery, on this occasion he decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
    It would take more than a pair of pretty eyes to draw him into the centre of someone else’s family drama. He had enough of that in his own backyard.
    A pity, but he’d delivered Rosie. Job done.

CHAPTER TWO
    Take plenty of exercise. Always run after the ice cream van.
    â€”Rosie’s Diary
    E LLE, hot, flustered and decidedly bothered from her encounter with Sean McElroy, found her concentration slipping, her ears straining to hear the van start up, the crunch of tyres on gravel as it drove away.
    It was all nonsense, she told herself, mopping up the suds, sitting back on her heels. She’d never heard of anyone called Basil Amery. It had to be a mistake. But the silence bothered her. While she hadn’t heard the van arrive, she hadn’t been listening. She had, however, been listening for it to leave.
    The sudden rattle of the letter box made her jump. That was the only reason her heart was pounding, she told herself as she leapt to her feet. She wasn’t in the habit of racing to pick up the post—it rarely contained anything but bills and she could wait for those—but it was an excuse to check that he’d gone.
    There were two things on the mat. The brown envelope Sean McElroy had been holding and a bunch of keys. He couldn’t, she told herself. He wouldn’t… But the key fob was an ice cream cornet and she flung open the door.
    Rosie was still sitting on the drive, exactly where he’d parked her.
    â€˜Sean McElroy!’ she called, half expecting him to besitting in the van, grinning at having tricked her into opening the door.
    He wasn’t and, in a sudden panic, she ran to the gate, looking up and down the lane. Unless he’d had someone follow him in a car, he’d have to walk, or catch a bus.
    She spun around, desperately checking the somewhat wild shrubbery.
    Nothing. She was, apparently, quite wrong.
    He could.
    He had.
    Abandoned Rosie on her doorstep.
    â€˜If you’re looking for the van driver, Elle, he rode off in that direction.’
    Elle inwardly groaned. Mrs Fisher, her next door neighbour, was bright-eyed with excitement as she stepped up to take a closer look at Rosie.
    â€˜Rode?’
    â€˜He had one of those fold-up bikes. Are you taking on an ice cream round?’ she asked.
    The internal groan reached a crescendo. The village gossips considered the Amery family their own private soap opera and whatever she said would be chewed over at length in the village shop.
    â€˜Sorry, Mrs Fisher, I can hear my phone,’ she said, legging it inside, pushing the door shut behind her. If she’d left it open the woman would have considered it an invitation to walk in.
    She sat on the bottom of the stairs holding the envelope, staring at the name and address which was, without doubt, hers.
    Then she tore it open and tipped out the contents. A dark pink notebook with ‘Bookings’ written on the cover. A bells and whistles cellphone, the kind that would have her sisters drooling. There were a couple of official-looking printed sheets of paper. One was the logbook for the van, which told her that it was registered to Basil Amery of Keeper’s Cottage, Haughton Manor, the other was an insurance