by Sunshine
Then a second bolt of alarm hit her. What had happened after the kiss? She scrambled around in her brain for an answer, but came up with a complete blank. Her heart fluttered haphazardly with the possibilities until she cracked open her left eye and experienced a huge whoosh of relief – she was still lying on the sofa in his lodge, fully clothed, and covered in a soft fleecy blanket. She inhaled a deep breath and her nostrils filled with the delicious aroma of freshly ground coffee beans and dog-breath. This time she opened her eyes properly to be met by a long pink tongue reaching out towards her nose.
‘Euew!’
‘Ah, and a good morning to you too, Sleeping Beauty. Coffee?’
‘Ah, yes, please.’
Zach handed her a steaming mug of her favourite Blue Mountain coffee and a warm croissant. She devoured her breakfast in seconds, brushing the flakes from her lap to an appreciative Binks.
‘Sleep okay?’
‘Yes, yes, I did, thank you.’
Heat rushed into her cheeks. She glanced at Zach, but he simply gifted her with his usual cheerful smile accompanied by a side order of mischief.
‘Need a lift back to the studio or are you up for joining me and Binks for an early-morning stroll through the grounds? It really is the best time of the day.’
‘A walk sounds lovely.’
‘Okay. The bathroom’s through there. See you outside in a couple of minutes.’
Millie locked the bathroom door and expelled a long sigh. A pendulum of emotions swung through her chest, starting with regret that she hadn’t grabbed the opportunity to take things further with Zach. The only explanation was that she had felt so relaxed and content in his company that she had succumbed to the exhaustion caused by the traumatic events of the night and drifted off into a blissful sleep. Oh, God! Had she been snoring?
But did she really want what could only be a brief holiday fling with Zach? Yes, Poppy and Jen would be over the moon to hear that she had taken their advice about moving on. And yes, a no-strings-attached Caribbean romance would certainly help to heal the cracks in her heart, especially with someone as gorgeous as Zach who made her senses zing with pleasure. She could still feel the remnants of the passion their kiss had instilled, like a glowing ember of desire that would take very little to be rekindled. Maybe if they had met at Claudia’s UK cookery school branch in the Cotswolds, things could have been different?
However, if she was honest with herself, their blossoming friendship meant so much more to her than a convenient stepping stone towards her recovery from heartbreak and she did not want to risk spoiling what they had achieved. Zach had been the first person outside her family she had opened up to about the way Luke had ended their relationship. She hadn’t felt ashamed, or judged, when she had unloaded the burden she had been carrying in her chest like a block of concrete for months. Zach had simply listened, and shared some of his own history, and that had been all it took to make a difference.
She stared at herself in the mirror. She still looked like Amelia Harper, with her wild corkscrew curls and the irritating sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of her nose, but she felt like a different person; lighter, freer, happier. The whole day stretched ahead of her and she was excited to see where it took her. She jumped into the shower, luxuriating in the warm water, washing away the last vestiges of tiredness and the awkwardness of what had happened last night, both with Marc and her disclosures to Zach about what had happened with Luke. Now that she had told her story once, and had not been ridiculed by her audience, she felt as though she could do it again. The pain was still there, but it had shrunk to a pebble instead of a boulder and a surge of gratitude for Zach’s personal brand of sarcasm and wit flooded her veins. Whilst she was in St Lucia, she would trade romance for friendship every time.
She had just finished towel-drying her hair when she heard a sharp bark from outside the window.
‘Millie! Millie! We have to go!’
‘Okay.’
‘Hurry up. We’ve got to get down to the Parrot. Now!’
The urgency in Zach’s voice told her that something was wrong.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked when she saw Zach was already waiting for her in Tim’s Roadster.
‘Jump in. I’ll tell you on the way.’
Within seconds, they were heading down the hill towards Soufrière and Zach was filling her in on a conversation he’d had with Dylan whilst she was in the shower.
‘So no one’s seen Marc since he left the restaurant last night?’
‘No. When he didn’t turn up for his morning shift, Lottie tried calling him but he’s not answering his mobile,’ said Zach. ‘She was so angry with him for ditching you that she went storming round to his flat to give him a piece of her mind but there was no sign of him.’
‘Maybe the call he got was from a girlfriend and he… erm… he decided to spend the night with her?’
‘It’s certainly possible, but it’s nine o’clock. He should have been at the Purple Parrot for his shift at eight. And something else Dylan said is strange. Apparently when Lottie asked Andrew whether he knew where Marc was he tore into her like a lion denied his lunch, telling her he was Marc’s boss not his keeper. Something’s going on.’
When they reached the outskirts of the town, Millie remembered that Ella would be arriving at the villa to whip up the very last chocolate-infused recipe on their list before they photographed it and sent it with a celebratory email to Claudia. She left a quick message on her voicemail to let her know she was safe and would catch up with her a little later than expected. She also added an undisguised plea for Ella to appeal to Fitz’s slumber-drenched conscience to see if that would speed up the work rate on the kitchen. There were only two days remaining and Millie knew it would take a miracle to finish on time, but she had other things to occupy her mind right now. One trauma at a time!
They arrived at the Purple Parrot and found a parking space in the alleyway that separated the bar from the bicycle-rental shop next door. Instead of using the front door of the bar they jogged around the back. Millie stumbled and tripped over the untied lace of her Sketchers, and Zach shot out an arm to catch her before she fell head first onto the ground. She looked over her shoulder to see that her carelessness had dislodged the lid of a wooden crate crammed with produce.
Millie exchanged a look with Zach. Instead of rubbing her ankle to disperse the pain, she bent forward to investigate further.
‘Oh, my God!’
‘What?’
‘These crates are filled with cocoa pods. What does Andy need two crates of cocoa pods for?’
Zach removed one of the pods. As he lifted it from the box, the pod fell open in his hand. The leathery exterior had been left perfectly intact, but its white fleshy interior had been carefully scraped out to leave just an empty shell.
‘Hi, guys. Am I glad to see you!’ declared a harassed Lottie. ‘Dylan and Ryan have gone up to the Blue Oyster to ask if anyone saw where Marc went after he left Millie stranded there last night.’
‘Lottie, what are these doing here?’ asked Zach, still staring at the cocoa pod nestled in his palm.
‘Oh, Andy uses the liquidized flesh in the Andy’s Blast cocktail – delicious! Now let’s go. I promised we’d do a sweep of the bars.’
They strode past the colourful shops displaying their wares to the tourists who had begun to emerge from their hiding places, fingering the brightly dyed sarongs, the flimsy beachwear, the carved mahogany masks. But Millie didn’t notice any of these retail diversions. A sense of dread had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach and the hackles on the back of her neck cautioned her instincts that something was not how it should be; that Marc hadn’t meant to leave her after all and that something awful might have happened to him.
They arrived at Marc’s studio flat above a local barber’s shop on the outskirts of Soufrière and Lottie’s expression reflected Millie’s hesitation.
‘You know, Dylan’s never liked Marc,’ Lotti
e murmured almost to herself, her face pale and pinched.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Zach.
‘Just that he loaned Marc his boat a couple of times over the summer and Marc never returned it when he said he would. And then Dylan found out he was taking the Nigella without asking. At night.’
‘What? And you didn’t think to tell us about this before? Or Millie?’
‘Well, I kind of assumed he had been using it to, you know, impress the ladies. To take them on a moonlit sail to some secluded cove, to make love under the stars. You know how it is. Hey, maybe they’re still there. Robinson Crusoe-style?’ She tried to smile, but Millie could see she was uncomfortable.
Zach hammered on the door. ‘Marc!’
The barber meandered to his doorstep and gazed languidly at them, chewing rhythmically on a mouthful of tobacco leaf, his lined face fixed in an expression of contentment.
‘Hey, man. Calm the noise. He’s not there.’
Zach ignored him and knocked again, but there was no reply. Before Millie and Lottie knew what was happening, he had put his shoulder to the door and given it a sharp shove.
It didn’t take them long to search the place and it was true, Marc wasn’t there. Whilst every available surface in the bedroom looked like the preparation area for a church jumble sale, it was clear that the bed had not been slept in. He hadn’t made it home. However, their brief visit was more than enough time to register a gigantic 3D TV that hung on the wall like a work of art, and a plethora of shiny new high-tech kitchen appliances. It looked as though Marc had plenty of spare cash to indulge in his love of gadgets. Something didn’t add up.
They made their way back to the Purple Parrot in silence, each of them nursing their own fears for Marc’s safety. Millie was about to follow Zach and Lottie into the bar when she decided to make a detour and take another look at the cocoa pods in the crates at the back door.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ called Zach, running to catch up with her.
Millie picked her way carefully down the narrow walkway between the bar and the shack next door, but when she reached the steps all the boxes had vanished. She opened her mouth to express her surprise, but Zach was already sprinting towards the beach. She joined him in the dash, just in time to catch a glimpse of the motorboat chugging around the headland jutting out into the bay to their left. Millie didn’t know why, but something told her that the crates were on board. She ran to the water’s edge, Zach at her side, and realized it wasn’t Marc at the helm as she had suspected, but Andrew.
Chapter Eighteen
Zach and Millie made their way back up the beach, ignoring the curious stares of the sunbathers and the diners enjoying a late breakfast on the veranda of the Purple Parrot. The sound of Zach’s mobile ringing prevented Millie from asking for his view on what they had just witnessed.
‘Hello?’
Zach stopped in his tracks and found Millie’s eyes, the expression on his face the most serious she had seen it. She longed to slip her palm into his, to reacquaint herself with the closeness they had shared the previous night, but until they knew where Marc was, she didn’t want to stray into the unchartered territory of exploring where she and Zach went from there.
‘Okay, thanks for letting us know, Dylan. Millie and I are on our way to the Parrot. We’ll see you there in a few minutes.’
‘What? Have they found Marc?’
‘Yes. Ryan found him unconscious in a ditch at the side of the road to Castries. He’s fine. Ryan wanted to take him to the clinic to get his cuts and bruises checked out, but he refused so he took him to the police station instead where he sang like a canary to Leon. Apparently, he was kidnapped from outside the restaurant last night.’
‘Oh, my God! Kidnapped?’
‘Yes. Then taken for a drive, knocked on the head and dumped by the roadside.’
‘But… but why?’
‘I think we just found our mystery cocoa-pod thief.’
‘Marc? I thought, well, I thought Andy…’
‘I’m going to make a couple of calls. Catch you in a bit.’
They had reached the steps up to the veranda and Zach sauntered towards the street whilst Millie made her way into the Purple Parrot and took a seat on a stool at the bar. Lottie poured her a glass of home-made lemonade before running off to serve a table of Scandinavian tourists whilst Dylan performed the role of temporary bartender. Millie beamed at him, overwhelmingly pleased that the ridiculous scheme had nothing to do with him. As she watched on, Lottie skipped back to the bar to gather her customers’ order, and her heart melted when Dylan leaned over to drop a kiss on her friend’s forehead. A few minutes later, Zach joined them and downed his drink in one gulp.
‘I’ve just spoken to Leon. The police have intercepted Andy and are escorting him back to the station. After what happened to him last night, Marc’s been enthusiastic in his determination to spill the details of Andy’s involvement in the drug-smuggling trade.’
‘But why ask Marc to steal a few measly cocoa pods? It’s crazy.’
‘Andy was using cocoa pods to smuggle cocaine. He needed a ready supply, but couldn’t risk buying them in the quantities he needed so he began to collect them himself from Claudia’s plantation when she wasn’t there. A few stray cocoa pods wouldn’t be missed. If he was stopped in the jeep, he had a ready excuse about using the flesh in his ‘signature’ cocktails. If he was intercepted in the dinghy, he’d say he was taking a shipment to a pal in a bar in Martinique to earn a few extra dollars. Who would suspect they were stuffed with cocaine worth thousands of dollars?
‘We already know that Andy’s business has been slow all season. Everyone is suffering, tourist numbers are down, profits are flat. We know the bank refused him an extension on his loans. And he couldn’t sell up and go home, could he? What choice did he have? Anyway, he loves the Purple Parrot and St Lucia. He just needed the money and once he was in, he couldn’t get out.’
‘And I let Marc borrow my jeep! The scumbag. If I’d known what he was using it for I would never have agreed,’ said Dylan, his friendly face creased with anger.
‘What about Marc? Why did he get involved?’
‘Leon says he’s well known to the police in Jamaica. That’s why he turned up in St Lucia, to escape their interest. Apparently, they still want to question him.’
‘What?’ Millie pushed herself up straighter in her seat. ‘Oh, my God! I’ve just remembered. I told Marc about the disappearing cocoa pods last night. That was why he was making that call! It’s all my fault.’
‘No way is it your fault, Millie,’ declared Zach. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. You’ve actually been instrumental in the arrest of two criminals. Andy did it because he was desperate to save his business. I don’t condone what he’s done, but I can understand his motivation. Far worse is what Marc did. He’s been involved in the drug-trafficking trade for years and, although it pains me to say this, he probably only agreed to a date with you so he could switch on the charm and you would turn a blind eye to his magpie tendencies.’
‘Oh, God!’ moaned Millie, rubbing her hands over her face.
‘I wonder what’ll happen to the Purple Parrot?’ asked Lottie, fiddling with the friendship bracelet around her wrist as she contemplated the immediate aftermath of Andy’s actions. ‘I suppose I’ll be the new acting manager until we find out. Fancy a job, Millie? Head chef at the Purple Parrot, the best beach bar and restaurant in the whole of Soufrière?’
‘Wow, there’s an offer!’ smirked Zach, reaching out to squeeze Millie’s hand before spoiling the gesture by continuing with, ‘Shall we tell Lottie about your aversion to culinary orderliness?’
‘When is the Paradise Cookery School kitchen due to be finished?’ asked Dylan.
‘Tomorrow. And before you ask, no, there’s no way everything will be completed by then. There’s still all the painting to do, the hanging of the artwork, fixing the plinths, the cornices, the door handles, not to mention the cleanin
g – that will take a whole day at least.’
‘But all the heavy-duty stuff is done, right?’
‘Well, I suppose so, but even if Fitz and the guys work through the night – which they won’t, I’ve already asked them – it still won’t be finished. All the recipes have been triple-tested and approved by Claudia, but without the high-spec facilities the students are expecting, the Chocolate & Confetti course will have to be cancelled.’ Millie let out a long, ragged breath of regret. ‘Zach’s right. I seem to have a habit of attracting chaos and this project is no exception.’
Chapter Nineteen
Millie sipped her breakfast coffee on the veranda overlooking the pool, regretting the fact that she had not indulged in the promised daily swim in its cool, soothing depths. She marvelled once again at the perfection of the view, its verdant beauty a masterpiece framed by palm fronds swaying in the gentle breeze, compared to the nightmare pencil sketch of the kitchen behind her. The early-morning calm was interrupted by the intermittent whizz of an electric drill or the crack of a hammer, punctuated by the occasional squawk of a parrot leaping from the branches of a cocoa tree as Fitz and Alph continued with the mammoth task of finishing the renovations.
She surveyed the kitchen and her heart sank. It was Friday, the day the renovations should have been completed, but it was glaringly obvious there was no way the work would be finished on time. Vic had failed to turn up two mornings in a row and before that she had stumbled upon him in one of the hammocks sleeping off his hangover, snoring like a baby elephant. Fitz and Alph had done their best with one man down, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Nevertheless, the level of workmanship was superb. Fitz was a perfectionist, a true artisan, just not plugged into the same time zone as everyone else. Millie knew you couldn’t, and shouldn’t, rush quality, but that didn’t help when there was a deadline to be met and a group of six chocoholics about to arrive for the Chocolate & Confetti course in three days’ time expecting to be coached in the techniques of high-level gastronomy by a prestigious cookery writer in her Caribbean home.