Anything but Vanilla... by Liz Fielding

warmth feathered his cheek as the edge of the white coat caught on his chair and then she put her hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she wobbled on those ridiculous heels.
    ‘Oops...’
    ‘Can you reach?’
    ‘I’ve got it. Thanks.’
    He waited, holding his breath, willing her to move but, having found what she was looking for, she remained where she was, apparently transfixed by the invoices piling up in front of him.
    ‘Are those all unpaid bills?’ she asked, horrified.
    He removed another final demand from its envelope and placed it on one of three piles. ‘It’s not quite as bad as it looks,’ he said.
    ‘It isn’t?’
    She smelt amazing. Warm skin, clean hair mingled with starched white cotton, vanilla, chocolate... Something else... He struggled against the urge to turn and pull her close, bury his face against the silk and breathe deeper. Effort wasted as she bent over his shoulder to take a closer look at the bills. Sun-warmed strawberries. That was it. Not raspberries, but strawberries. One of those dark red varieties, full of flavour, dripping with juice that would stain her mouth...
    ‘I’m using a triage system,’ he said, desperate for any distraction from thoughts of hot, juice-stained lips... ‘Those on the left are the original invoices, the ones in the middle are reminders and these...’ he tapped the pile with the letter opener; he needed to do something with his hands ‘...are final demands.’
    ‘Oh, dear God. Poor Ria.’ The strappy thing she was wearing fell away as she bent to pick up the electricity bill, offering him a glimpse of softly mounded breasts in creamy lace cups. Had she no control over her clothing? Shouldn’t she have buttoned up the white coat?
    There had to be rules...
    ‘Praying won’t help,’ he said, even as he offered up a God-help-me on his own account, ‘but the telephone has already been cut off so I suggest you get cracking on your sorbet before the electricity company follows suit.’
    His attempt to send her scurrying back to the prep room failed. ‘I’ll go across to the bank and pay it now.’
    ‘Why would you do that?’ he asked, making the mistake of looking up and discovering that her lips were barely a breath away from his own.
    Ripe, red, sweet...
    For a moment her eyes, misty green beneath long dark lashes, connected with his and a fizz of heat went straight to his groin as the air filled with pheromones. His reaction must have telegraphed itself to her because, with a tiny hiss of breath, she straightened, took half a step back.
    It wasn’t the reaction he had expected. He’d assumed that getting close was part of her plan, but apparently he’d misread her and now he was the one being tormented by X-rated images of those long legs, that hot body and sweet strawberry lips...
    ‘Because I can? You can deduct it from the rent,’ she said, recovering before him.
    ‘Nice try, but then the business will owe you money.’
    ‘As well as ice cream. I know, but I can’t run the business without electricity, Mr West. Or did you really think I was just stringing you along until I’d finished this order?’
    ‘It had crossed my mind,’ he said abruptly, plucking the invoice from her hand and returning it to the pile.
    ‘Well, uncross it. I’ve got another business function next week,’ she said, the sharpness of her voice undermined by the faintest wobble on the word ‘function’. Despite her swift move out of the danger zone, the heat had not been all one way. The thought that she might be suffering too went some small way to easing his own discomfort...
    ‘Another function?’
    ‘You needn’t sound so surprised,’ she said. ‘A local company holding a gala dinner has commissioned us to provide miniature ice-cream cones late in the evening. When everyone is hot from dancing,’ she added, presumably in case he didn’t get it.
    He got it. He was hot...
    ‘I’ll rephrase that,’ he said. ‘I was hoping that you were