Battle Royal

by Lucy Parker

  His eyes never left hers as he raised a hand and let the bubble come to rest on his palm. This was a finer solution than the Sorceress bubbles, would never stand up to a filling, but it was much hardier than a soap bubble.

  He ran his thumb over it, so carefully. “Pretty.”

  “Small pockets of beauty, everywhere you look. I hope it’s much more beautiful wherever Mallory is now, but this world has a lot to offer.” Sylvie wasn’t aware of moving, but suddenly she was standing in front of him, touching a fingertip to the bubble.

  She had the fleeting thought that they probably looked like a pair of fortune-tellers, hovering over a crystal ball. Looking for portents of the future.

  Dominic lightly tossed the bubble back into the air, and they watched it turn and bob in a peaceful current.

  Her pulse was a rapid flutter in her throat, a darker thrum low in her abdomen. Nerves, and—not really arousal, her emotions were still too torn on the surface, but that disquieting wanting that kept creeping up on her.

  The rise and fall of his chest had quickened. On the table, their fingertips brushed, and they both looked down, Sylvie’s breath catching as his index finger ran, so lightly, along hers.

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze back to his. He was close enough that she could see the finest of the lines around his eyes, whispering away from short, incredibly thick lashes. Those eyes were locked on hers, intent, shadowed, growing darker as she watched.

  Without breaking that contact, they both moved, crossing a distance both tiny and significant. Their lips touched. Soft. Gentle. Coming apart just long enough that she drew in a shaky breath and felt his fingers tighten on hers, before their mouths were sliding back together, as surprisingly easily as interlocking a puzzle piece.

  It was still featherlight and almost dreamy, as if she’d sent her mind floating in a flagon of Midnight Elixir again. His skin was silky, his lips parting a little, just starting to coax hers open. Shivers slipped down her spine, and she moved a little restlessly on the stool, pushing the pads of her fingers against the wooden tabletop, pressing her thighs together.

  A tiny sound rose from her throat as the kiss very briefly deepened, and she lifted her hand. Hesitated.

  Dominic raised his head, his breathing as unsteady as hers. They stared at each other. Before Sylvie could pull back, his warm hand closed around hers and he drew her palm to his cheek. Swallowing, she cupped the strong bone there, feeling the rough abrasion of his stubble beneath her skin.

  Her gaze dropped to his lips. They were still slightly parted. She ran her thumb across the full lower curve and felt his quick inhalation.

  Even when his phone rang, vibrating on the countertop, it barely intruded into her warm haze.

  Dominic had gone very still. For just a second, his forehead leaned against hers and their noses nudged, the tiniest nuzzle.

  Then he was reaching for his phone and a tinny voice on the other end wound out to her ears. One of his suppliers had canceled a weekend shipment at the last minute.

  He hesitated, looking at her. His expression was guarded, but there was still a trace of heat there.

  Also, a fair whack of how the hell did this happen, which—ditto.

  Her fingers were still trembling.

  That first soft touch of Dominic’s mouth—why did it feel like turning the corner in the labyrinth and finally, finally seeing a glimmer of the right path?

  She managed a half smile. “Business happens. Go deal.” They couldn’t seem to tear their eyes from each other. Quietly, not quite certainly, and not even sure which of them she was talking to, she said, “This is okay.”

  Another flicker in his expression.

  Something twinkled in her peripheral vision, and she realized with some surprise that the bubble was still drifting in the lights.

  It felt as if an hour had passed since she’d sent it toward him, not merely minutes.

  Dominic’s mouth was set tautly.

  Small pockets of beauty.

  Without a sound, in a tiny sparkle of glitter, the bubble burst.

  Sylvie hoped that wasn’t an omen.

  Chapter Ten

  Middlethorpe Grange, Surrey

  Haunted by rumors of discontented spirits for over seven hundred years. Throughout the centuries, locals spoke of lights in the wood, voices in the dark, words on the walls. Legend foretold of a dark, chilling force that would someday strike wide the door as the people cowered in fear—

  “I mean, to be fair, Dominic did knock first.”

  —Sylvie Fairchild

  “Not amused.”

  —Dominic De Vere

  During Sylvie’s first stint on Operation Cake, the stately home episode had been shot at the property that was also used as a stand-in for Rosings Park in the latest adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Extremely grand, well heated, and the dining room had a chocolate buffet. She’d been so busy she hadn’t even searched Middlethorpe Grange online, but her expectation had been something similarly Austenian.

  In reality, the Grange was a Gothic monstrosity more suited to Bram Stoker. And under a glum gray sky, the surrounding fields scattered with a light dusting of early snow, it was an inconveniently long commute to work on a Monday and a reminder that her own poky little flat was at least warm.

  She had a private driver, but the car ran into three backups in traffic, and it was already midmorning by the time she sat down in a makeup chair. The hair and makeup team had set up in a hideous stone-walled parlor, in which some Middlethorpe of old had indulged his melancholic streak by hanging massive, scowling gargoyles from the ceiling. She assumed there was a suitably bloodthirsty curse attached to their removal or disturbance; otherwise, there was no excuse for not ripping them down and trying a nice plant.

  Zack picked up a concealer bottle and looked between her sleep-deprived face and the leering monstrosity beside her. His fingers fluttered in feigned confusion. “I’m sorry, which is the patient?”

  “Ha-ha,” Sylvie said, but a small grin broke through. He wasn’t wrong—at this rate, the bags under her eyes would be drooping to her clavicle by the final.

  She’d spent much of the weekend with Sugar Fair’s most difficult customer, a wealthy Mayfair businesswoman with five daughters. Each daughter celebrated her birthday with a party so extravagant that there had actually been cause, at the fourteen-year-old’s gala festivities on Sunday, for somebody to whisper, “What carat do you think those diamonds are?”

  In reference to the birthday girl’s straw. Her diamond-encrusted straw, which probably cost more than Sylvie’s annual rent.

  The mother was an absolute nightmare, and every time Sylvie had to deal with her, she seriously debated the benefits of a reclusive lifestyle in which human contact was limited to pizza delivery and fictional characters.

  And when she hadn’t been changing a million details at the last minute, and usually changing them all back again when Madame reverted her whims, she’d been thinking about Friday night in the Dark Forest.

  She could still feel the pressure of Dominic’s lips, the strength of his fingers, the hard warmth of his chest beneath her palm.

  “The smudge-proof claims of that lipstick have been highly exaggerated. If you don’t stop touching your mouth,” Zack said, swatting her hand away before he continued circling a blush brush over her cheekbones, “I’m feeding you to Quasimodo’s chums here. What’s with you today? Visions of wedding cakes dancing in your head?”

  His wiggling eyebrows invited expansion on that topic. Sugar Fair had been officially mentioned as a possible contender for the Albany contract in yesterday’s tabloids. De Vere’s was still leading the odds at the bookies’ by a massive margin, but nobody could say the gutter press wasn’t thorough when it came to wild speculation. Several reporters had come sniffing around the shop floor over the weekend. They’d all zeroed in on Mabel, sitting quietly at her table carving sweet little candy kittens. Young, female, probably naïve and easily flattered—a prime target to bull
y into a stammering disclosure.

  Sylvie had almost felt sorry for them.

  Silencing the first queries with a delicately raised finger, Mabel had paused for three majestic seconds before slamming the blade of her sharpest knife into the cutting board and resting her chin on the handle. Her gentle smile had lowered the temperature of the room about thirty degrees.

  She’d torn them to shreds and strewn the remnants of their egos like confetti.

  “We spent a fucking fortune decorating this place,” Jay had commented with reluctant admiration. “Ruins the vibe when you have grown men almost pissing on the floor.”

  Restlessly playing with the tube of lipstick on the table, Sylvie glanced up at Zack. For all his garrulous delight in gossip, she would actually trust him to be circumspect. After that burst of glee when they’d first discussed the possibility, he hadn’t breathed a word of her intentions on set. However, her lips were now contractually zipped.

  The pressure was starting to mount on the contract. The clock was ticking on their deadline. For all intents and purposes, she’d invented Midnight Elixir, and she still couldn’t produce an edible facsimile in cake form. And despite returning again and again to the photograph of Patrick and Jessica, with an odd, tugging fascination, she was no further forward on the design elements.

  There was every reason for Rosie’s wedding cake to keep her up at night.

  It would be a far more comfortable explanation for her exhausted jumpiness now.

  She forced herself still. He had a job to do, and she was being a pest. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”

  For the first time in a very long time, she’d lain in bed last night and experienced the physical ache of missing a particular person’s body, their touch, their scent. More personal than simply thwarted arousal, it was a feeling she’d never had for somebody she barely knew in a physical sense. It was something she associated more with a separation in a long-term relationship, when her body was used to sleeping entwined with another.

  Not with a man she’d previously have fancied chucking under a nonmetaphorical bus.

  And that light, whispering kiss was the least of the intimacy that had started to weave between them.

  Yesterday at the party, when she’d been unusually tired and frustrated, there’d come one moment when her patience had been stretched to the finest of threads—and her sudden instinct had been to call Dominic.

  As if in response to that thought, her phone buzzed on her lap, and she glanced down at the screen. Her heart jumped at his name on the display. He’d hit the traffic jams as well, but his car was well and truly stuck, and he was running late. She sent a quick reply, confirming she’d arrived safely.

  They were just simple, no-frills messages—thankfully he hadn’t broken out the emojis. If he ever smiley-faced her, she’d have to assume it was some sort of SOS and report his kidnapping.

  But still . . . He’d texted to let her know.

  If she were not a grown woman with increasingly crackly joints and white hairs in her eyebrows, these rapid developments might have distracted her from the job she was being paid to do today.

  Fortunately, she’d racked up a lot of life experience that included multiple short-lived infatuations, two serious relationships, and a failed one-night stand with a man who’d recognized her from TV and thought she’d find it hilarious if he smeared himself with icing and dipped his dick in sprinkles.

  She’d survived an encounter with Cupcake Cock. She was not going to be earth-shatteringly flustered by one tiny kiss.

  One tiny, really great kiss.

  Oh, look. Residual sex tingles. From a memory.

  This wasn’t potentially life-upturning at all.

  Zack was looking for somewhere to put his muslin cloth. He hung it from the clawed hand of the nearest gargoyle, like a Gothic towel rail. Addams Family chic. “This is all so weird,” he pronounced with great satisfaction.

  Yes. Yes, it was.

  With her eyebags sufficiently camouflaged, she followed a grip to the ballroom where the team was prepping for the day’s competition. Leaning against a pillar out of everyone’s way, she watched the contestants setting up their stations. The usual format was temporarily dropped for the location shoot. Instead of multiple rounds, the contestants would have five hours to produce four types of sweets—petit fours, sugar cookies, tartlets, whatever they chose. The selection had to include an occasion cake; it must adhere to the chosen theme, which this year was current West End musicals, and it must involve elements of sugar craft. Four years ago, this was the episode in which she’d topped the leaderboard, and she was hoping she’d see some spectacular art today.

  Emma was helping Adam unpack a variety of molds and stencils at his station. Their heads were close together and they were laughing. Transparently, endearingly smitten. Smiling, Sylvie’s gaze passed on, coming to a stop on Libby.

  At her counter, the redhead was efficiently sorting her ingredients for each component of her menu, checking them off against a handwritten list. She frowned suddenly, her finger pausing on the page. After a moment, she walked over to a neighboring station and spoke briefly to its habitant, Sid Khan, the jovial alien abductee. Libby beamed at the elderly man when he obligingly handed her a small box. Returning to her station with it, she caught wind of Sylvie’s scrutiny, and her eyes widened.

  Innocence personified.

  Aadhya came striding over, Mariana trailing languidly behind with a coffee cup perched on one elegant palm. The producer opened her mouth to speak, then followed the direction of Sylvie’s pensive stare. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a down on the poor girl, too.”

  Sylvie chose to focus on the last part of the accusation. “Too?”

  Aadhya’s eye roll was masterfully expressive. “Dominic. At our last meeting, he was typically obstructive. Just lounged there like a bloody Roman emperor, ready to turn his thumb down and condemn every idea I put forward,” she said with obvious lingering irritation.

  Sylvie had to suppress faint amusement. She wasn’t surprised Dominic hadn’t jumped for joy at whatever brain wave Aadhya had sprung on him. Just last Friday, she’d tried to push through the idea of thematic costumes for today’s shoot. Emma had been assigned Grease as her musical, so wardrobe could supply her with a Pink Ladies bomber jacket. And Adam Foley had Beauty and the Beast; wouldn’t he be a scream as Cogsworth? The health and safety officer had put her foot down then, painting a dire picture of what was likely to occur if Adam was forced to maneuver pots of boiling sugar around a minuscule work space while kitted out as an anthropomorphic clock.

  As much as Sylvie liked and respected Aadhya, it was an illuminating experience being on this side of the kitchen counter.

  “Having contributed absolutely nothing of use,” Aadhya went on, “he mildly suggested that I ought to keep an eye on Libby, because there ought to be a line between ‘manufactured soap opera bullshit’ and cheating.” She fixed Sylvie with a piercing look. “Do you suspect nefarious activity as well?” Her tone was not encouraging.

  “I suspect she’s a bully at best,” Sylvie returned matter-of-factly. “Nobody’s reacted quite as”—epically—“forcefully as Nadine, but I’ve seen some of the contestants giving her a wide berth.” Her gaze traveled back toward the contestant pool, but the lighting team had clustered in front of Libby’s station, unrolling a long spool of cable and blocking her view. “And admittedly, some people in this room are quite capable of setting their own ovens too high or leaving the freezer door ajar, but there do seem to have been an unusual number of incidents. She clearly misled Byron during the ingenuity challenge, even if he shouldn’t have been asking for help.” She drew her lower lip between her teeth in a brief tug. “It was the look in her eyes when that button wound up in his scone.”

  “It’s a competition,” Aadhya pointed out. “It’s natural to be privately relieved if a competitor does poorly.”

  “It wasn’t relief in her face,” Mariana said unexpectedly, watch
ing her tea swirl as she moved the cup. “It was satisfaction. Of the clever wee me variety.”

  “I haven’t received a single complaint from any contestant about Libby.” Aadhya looked faintly harassed. Sylvie wasn’t surprised about the radio silence behind the scenes. She recalled very well that with the grand final prize money at stake, nobody had wanted to rock any boats and prejudice their chances of winning. “Do you have any evidence the girl is waging some invisible scheme of sabotage and harassment?”

  “Not a scrap,” Sylvie said, and the producer’s response was crisp.

  “Then I hope you’ll retain an impartial view of her performance today and going forward. Excuse me; I need to deal with this latest disaster.”

  As Aadhya departed, Mariana supplied the necessary footnote. “There’s a problem with the electricity source in this wing. A real ace card, this place. Freezing cold, poorly lit, and ugly as sin.” She sipped her tea. “I wouldn’t dwell on Libby’s behavior. Unfortunately, there’s always going to be a rotten apple in the barrel. Have you seen the art gallery yet?”

  It took a moment to register the sudden change in topic. “No. What—?”

  “The Middlethorpe family have an extensive art collection in the third-floor gallery, and apparently the lady of the house has an especial interest in glass works. I know you also like pretty glass, although unless you can pour a bottle of wine into it, I don’t quite understand the appeal,” Mariana teased, before her face settled into softer lines. “Your aunt, nena—Mallory?” Her voice lifted into a tentative question. “You told me she was an artist, yes?” When Sylvie nodded silently, the older woman patted her arm. “Go have a look.”

  It was very tempting, but—they were supposed to be working here.

  Mariana correctly interpreted her second lip bite. “With the lighting gone kaput and Dominic stuck on the M4, we’re delayed at least half an hour. You might as well seize the opportunity for a quick peek.”