Battle Royal

by Lucy Parker

  What a time to be alive and probably looking like something that had recently dragged its way out of a tomb.

  And how fortunate that her mind and body appeared to have lost all interest in any other man. She was no longer dancing around it, as she sat here in his crumpled sheets, with her bed-hair sticking to her face and a vile taste in her mouth. She was absolutely mad about Dominic De Vere.

  “Of course we can manage. You rest up. But are you sure you’re up to working on the show tonight?”

  She didn’t even want to think about tasting baked goods right now. One bonus of the night episode, however—most of the eating was done by the guest panel. She could probably get away with a handful of minuscule bites for the camera.

  The acid on her tongue was a sour burn.

  “I signed a contract. I’ll see it through.”

  “They’re lucky to have you.” The warmth of Jay’s response made her smile faintly. “Okay. Go back to sleep. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Bye, Jay. Love you.” She ended the call as Dominic came into the room, Pet following behind him with a bunch of gerbera daisies in her hands. The flowers were beautifully arranged and tied with a polka-dot ribbon.

  When her eyes met Dominic’s, the flip-flop in her stomach had nothing to do with dodgy cheesecake. She lowered her lashes for a second, feeling a rush of that ridiculous shyness that sometimes caught her off guard lately when he looked at her. When he’d been a total stranger, she’d gone toe-to-toe with him without a second thought. Now she knew him intimately—for God’s sake, she’d sucked on the man’s cock like a lollipop and was still blushing like a Regency deb.

  “I heard your voice,” he said, “so I thought it was safe to let your visitor in. Although foisting Pet and Humphrey on you—you’ve already got an upset stomach; you don’t need a migraine.”

  “Oh, ha-ha,” Pet said. She thrust the bunch of flowers at Sylvie. “I hope you’re feeling better. You look awful,” she added, with the blunt brutality of a soigné twentysomething.

  “What an effusion of warmth and compassion. Florence Nightingale walks again.” Dominic came over to the bed and, after the slightest pause, bent to kiss Sylvie’s cheek. Very low, with just a tinge of roughness to cover his glaring discomfort, he murmured, “You always look beautiful.”

  Sylvie had to blink away yet another stupidly wet burn in her eyes.

  Still with uncharacteristic awkwardness, he said something about tea and left her with Pet. The Road Runner had made slower exits from a room.

  Self-consciously, she looked down at the flowers on her lap. She gently stroked a petal. “These are lovely. Thank you so much, Pet.”

  The side of the mattress compressed, and when she raised her head, Pet was smiling at her. It was a genuinely affectionate smile, but just slightly twisted.

  “It’s been pretty obvious since he kept that silhouette of you on his desk,” Pet said. “Dorian Gray couldn’t take better care of a portrait than Dominic. Someone tried to touch it with dirty hands last week and he reacted like a dragon guarding his hoard.”

  Sylvie couldn’t help a small smile in return, but she said frankly, “It sounds like there’s a looming ‘but.’ Is this the precursor to a warning from a protective sister?”

  Pet snorted. “Please. Like Dominic needs me running interference for him.” She played with the end of the bouquet ribbon. So inaudibly that Sylvie may not have been meant to hear, she muttered, “I still don’t know that he needs me at all.” She looked up. “It looks like he’s taking good care of you. I know he cares a lot about his people in his own . . . brusque way, but to be honest, I didn’t expect him to do such a good Nightingale impression. He almost cuddled you.”

  There was, again, an odd little edge to those words.

  “Pet,” Sylvie said, and hesitated. This felt beyond overstepping.

  “You’re partly responsible for scoring me an invite to a royal ball,” Pet said. “Unless you leave my brother for a man who smiles more than once a month, we’re buds for life, you and me. Go on.”

  “Dominic’s told me just a little about when he was younger.”

  Pet’s smile faded, and Sylvie selected her next words very carefully. “I know he finds it difficult sometimes to . . . to physically show he cares.”

  “And yet that doesn’t seem to be an issue with you,” Pet said, apparently before she could stop herself. She bit her lip.

  Yeah—that was what Sylvie thought she’d seen in Pet’s manner.

  She grimaced, feeling as if she were walking on very fragile ice. She didn’t want to break Dominic’s confidence; nor did she want to put any pressure on Pet here, but—“Pet . . . If you went out there right now and gave him a hug, I honestly think it would make his whole fucking month.”

  Pet looked at her unblinkingly. And then she lifted one eyebrow, and again looked so like Dominic it was momentarily startling. “How to put this tactfully . . . You haven’t been inhaling buckets of cold medicine or anything? He’d be legging it down the street before I’d finished raising my arms.”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “He wouldn’t.”

  Pet just shook her head.

  Sylvie touched the slim, curled fingers. “He does need you in his life. Very badly, I think.”

  The other woman’s face worked for a moment before she got herself under control, the frothy, flirty exterior slipping back into place.

  They sat in silence.

  And then Humphrey, who had been snoring against Sylvie’s knee, bolted up and screamed.

  Both she and Pet jumped violently.

  The cat, totally unbothered at the close of his dramatic scene, plunked himself back down and went back to sleep.

  Sylvie hadn’t even known a cat could make that sound. Hyenas, maybe. The odd owl. Mabel, the time Jay had accidentally used her best brush to touch up a spot of paint in the staff bathroom.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Pet had recovered from the fright and just looked annoyed. “She leaned on your tail for two seconds, Boggart,” she said to Humphrey. “She didn’t go after you with a chain saw. Jesus Christ.”

  Dominic came back into the room with a mug in each hand. “Who sat on Iago?”

  “Me,” Sylvie said, fighting a smile. She took the mug he offered. “And you’re both awful.”

  “Slow sips,” he warned. “Your stomach needs time to recover. And I don’t think you should be going to the studio tonight.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Stubborn.”

  “Pot and kettle, De Vere.”

  Pet moved to sit cross-legged and pulled out her phone, thumbing open an app. “I’m glad you’re feeling a bit better, because I’ve got an email from Kathleen Maple-Moore, your Jessica’s younger sister.”

  Sylvie paused with the tea mug halfway to her mouth, and Dominic turned his head sharply.

  “Kathleen inherited Primrose Cottage after Jessica’s death and must have changed its name,” Pet went on, scrolling down her screen. “She runs amateur art classes from there now and hires out studio space.” She lifted her head and smiled at them. “I’ve booked us in for a tour on Friday.”

  Humphrey’s snores echoed through the room. It was like a cross between a wheezy donkey and a rusty seesaw. Hee-haw. Hee-ho.

  It was Dominic who got over the blank surprise first. His eyes narrowed. “You had your headphones on in the car. You said you were listening to your book.”

  “I turned it off to eavesdrop,” Pet said with absolutely no shame. “Everyone was being very furtive at that meeting. I was unacceptably confused.”

  Sylvie eyed the phone. Clearly, Dominic had told his sister nothing on this subject, and Pet hadn’t seen the photographs Sylvie had taken at Abbey Hall—as far as she knew. Patent mistake to underestimate the sheer balls of Petunia De Vere. But she probably hadn’t had access to the envelope with the Oxford address. “If the name of the property is different, how do you know it’s Primrose Cottage?”

 
“And what do you mean, you booked ‘us’ in for a tour?” Dominic added pointedly.

  “Maple-Moore is hardly a common name. And there are very few members of the family living in England. Most of them are still in Ireland, FYI. Jessica was born in County Clare. Once I found Kathleen’s website, I ran the records of her property and found it was legally retitled twenty-six years ago. It took about ten minutes. I’m a very good PA,” Pet said with a roll of her long-lashed eyes. “Incidentally, I’m currently your PA.” A pointed aside to her brother. “And this concerns bakery business.”

  Complacently, she finished, “Also, Primrose Cottage is now Petunia Park. Which is even more twee, frankly, but I took it as cosmic confirmation that I ought to tag along.”

  Tucking his hands into his pockets, Dominic raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  Sylvie couldn’t help a giggle, which turned out to be a mistake. Her abused abdomen was not sufficiently recovered. She puffed out her cheeks at the twinge of residual nausea.

  Pet studied her with alarm. And edged back a few inches. “Are you feeling poorly again? Did you say cheesecake was the culprit?” Yes, and she would thank everyone never to mention the word again. “Dominic said it came from the Starlight Circus. Whose owner, by the way, put up a trash post about De Vere’s on Facebook this morning.”

  Sylvie stopped counting the rhythm of her deep breaths. She looked up. “He what?”

  Pet was thumbing through her apps again. “Someone tagged me. Don’t worry—he sounds like a moaning dickbag. Nobody will take it seriously. But you must have pissed him right off, big brother.”

  She turned the phone around and handed it to Sylvie.

  Sylvie read the post with increasing fury. While skating around the edges of libel, Darren had insinuated a number of things about quality control at De Vere’s—ragingly ironic from the man selling salmonella. He’d thrown around terms like “overrated” and “overpriced,” and he’d called Dominic a “hulking thug who dominates the industry with all the integrity of a Corleone.”

  First of all—Dominic was not “hulking.” He was broad-shouldered, huge-handed, and terribly elegant.

  And secondly, Oh, I think not.

  Ignoring the lingering weakness in her limbs, Sylvie calmly handed Pet back her phone and reached for her own. She started typing and soon found the number she was looking for.

  Dominic had scanned the Facebook post with no interest at all. “Who are you calling?”

  “The Food Standards Agency.” She lifted the phone to her ear. “I think Darren is due a surprise inspection.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hartwell Studios

  The Operation Cake semifinal.

  Will a single dish survive intact? Will any contestants make it to the final?

  We’re all undoubtedly on the edges of our seats.

  Dominic knew Sylvie was still hoping for some epic romantic ending to the series, no doubt with Emma and Adam embracing beside their future wedding cake as the credits rolled. But unless the couple commenced a grand seduction scene in the next half hour, those hopes were sinking fast.

  Emma’s chance of making it to the final currently looked slim. She’d had a decent night initially, with relatively minor errors—a concave soufflé and a separated topping on her toasted marshmallow butterscotch pie. But her star dish, a gingerbread dollhouse, should have pushed her close to the top of the leaderboard tonight.

  It currently lay scattered across the studio floor, shattered into at least fifty pieces.

  “I’m so sorry,” Libby apologized again, her hands to her mouth as the two women stood amidst the biscuit carnage.

  “It was my fault.” Emma was still clutching the empty platter on which the previously impressive structure had rested, her knuckles taut. She was clearly wresting back tears. “I tripped.”

  A piece of the dollhouse had rolled to rest against Dominic’s shoe. He picked it up, laying it against his palm. It was a miniature Tiffany lamp, constructed entirely from molten sugar. The candy “glass” had cracked, but he could still see the structural lines. Slightly clumsy in places, but—

  “Really quite beautiful,” he said, turning it to watch the light shimmer and sparkle through translucent pink sugar that reminded him of Sylvie’s hair. Crouching, he collected a few intact pieces from the wreckage—a gingerbread table, a beam covered in spun sugar cobwebs, a fondant teapot—and carefully set them on Emma’s tray. She let out a long, shaky sigh. “Visually, it was a triumph, Emma.” As he spoke, her wet eyes jerked to his face, widening. “One of the best bakes of the season. I’m truly sorry that we can’t award you the points.” It was engrained in the competition rule book—they could only score what was placed on the judging table, or in tonight’s case, the banquet table. Emma had literally fallen short by about four feet. “Nevertheless, you should be very proud of yourself tonight.”

  She swallowed hard, but gave him a quavering smile. Sylvie and Adam had also bent to salvage what they could of the dollhouse; and Sylvie paused where she crouched, a piece of tiled roof in her hand. She looked worryingly ill still, her face sheet-pale, but she was looking thoughtfully at Dominic—and as Emma straightened her shoulders and touched a finger to the Tiffany lamp, Sylvie skewered him without warning. She had a variety of smiles, and he’d always been able to tell whether she liked the recipient by which she pulled from her repertoire. He’d been on the receiving end of Sylvie smiles from both ends of the scale over the years, but very few people were ever hit by her ultimate weapon, the one that seemed to start in her heart and encompass her entire being.

  For a good five fucking seconds, he was almost prepared to believe in her spells and potions, because he literally couldn’t move.

  When Sylvie’s gaze traveled to his left, that gorgeous smile immediately slipped into a small scowl. Despite being absolved of guilt, Libby was still fluttering and tossing out apologies, keeping herself in the camera frame.

  In fairness, the collision had occurred so quickly that Emma might have tripped entirely by accident. Once again, there was no evidence to suggest otherwise, and even she seemed genuinely convinced of her own culpability.

  However, throughout his career—both in the kitchen and here on set—Dominic had encountered his fair share of life’s natural cheaters, the people whose sense of morality, if it existed at all, was easily overridden by ambition and greed. He recognized the behavorial patterns. He knew the verbal tells. And Libby wasn’t even a particularly subtle instance; nobody was legitimately that artless. She was consistently overacting the part, and unfortunately it usually worked on television.

  Aadhya called a break then, and Sylvie released a breath and reached for the nearest chair. When she almost stumbled because her legs were so weak, his patience snapped. He took a step forward, ready to carry her out of there and straight home to bed if necessary, but Chuck Finster had already broken away from the cluster of celebrity judges. The footballer leaned over her, his brow creased with obvious concern.

  He’d done a surprisingly decent job tonight. As each contestant presented their work, Finster had engaged them all in conversation, offering thoughtful, legitimate feedback. He was built more like a basketball player, standing over two meters tall, and possessed very symmetrical features for a man who’d taken a ball full to the face during the World Cup. When off the field, he raised millions of pounds for children’s charities and was reading history at Cambridge.

  And could still spare the time to guest-judge Operation Cake and flirt with Sylvie all night.

  “Are you growling?” Mariana asked mildly at Dominic’s side. Her gaze followed his as Finster stroked Sylvie’s shoulder with his thumb. Sylvie looked down at his hand. “Ah. Poor Chuckie. A veritable god amongst us mortals, yet he still hasn’t noticed he’s shooting his shot at a brick wall. When Sylvie’s not tottering about half-dead, she’s eye-fucking you.” Across the room, Sylvie firmly removed and returned Finster’s thumb. “No need for the jealous alpha wolf act.”
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  Coolly, he said, “Jealousy is a destructive, pointless emotion and a complete waste of energy.”

  “Fairly annoying, then, that it’s seeping from your pores right now?”

  “Very.” And apparently he could add pettiness to the score of new emotions Sylvie was foisting upon him, as she delivered a severe-looking comment and Finster’s handsome face fell.

  “Imagine thinking that woman is in any mood for seduction right now. She’s so pale her makeup looks like someone smeared lipstick on a porcelain doll. Is it definitely food poisoning or have you two been guzzling absinthe again?”

  He didn’t immediately reply. Sylvie had taken out a water bottle and was sipping from it slowly. Whatever she’d said to Finster had sent the footballer packing. Her eyes met Dominic’s over the bottle, and she lifted her free hand, touching it to her cheek in a quick gesture. More studio-speak. The sign for keep going. All good, carry on, continue filming, ignore the horny, overpaid athlete.

  Subtext: And drop the unexpected mother hen act; it’s freaking me the fuck out.

  When he narrowed his eyes, so did she.

  A little smile tugged at her mouth, and he couldn’t help the twitch of his own.

  When he turned back to Mariana, the amusement and teasing in her expression had faded. She looked at him silently for several moments before she said, “Do you know what’s strange? I would rank you as one of the most inscrutable people I’ve ever met. For the entire first year on this set, I wondered if you were adopting a deliberate persona. The requisite Demon King in the pantomime.”

  “I have as many failings as the next person. Possibly more—”

  “Since I’m the next person, definitely more,” Mariana mused.

  “But dishonesty isn’t one of them.”

  However, even as he heard himself say the words, his eyes were inexorably drawn back to Sylvie. She was sitting in almost exactly the location of her onetime workstation, where he’d seen her for the first time four years ago. When his usual brief glance across the new contestants had paused for three thudding heartbeats.