Battle Royal

by Lucy Parker

  “Is Jay here?” Sylvie was relieved that her voice sounded relatively normal.

  Or maybe not.

  Mabel’s eyes narrowed.

  All she said, however, was “He’s in the office.”

  No sarcastic rejoinder. No referring to Jay by any of her many and varied pejoratives.

  “Thanks.” Steeling herself once more, Sylvie slipped through the bookcase and walked quickly down the hallway. She could hear Jay’s voice before she reached the office, and when she let herself in, he was on the phone.

  He was standing at the window, looking out at their inspiring view of the moldy brick wall opposite, and didn’t turn around. But beneath his crisp suit, his broad shoulders stiffened.

  Sylvie stood for long enough that self-consciousness didn’t so much creep in as throw open the door, sashay across the room, and make itself at home on the couch.

  Quietly, she went to her desk and set down her bags. She unzipped her work tote and removed a folder, opening it to look down at the sketches she’d made last night, throwing everything she had into the distraction of Rosie and Johnny’s cake.

  For the wedding that might or might not still go ahead. With relationships crashing and burning all over the place right now.

  Forty-eight hours ago, she’d been making gorgeous love with Dominic on his kitchen table. On the premise that it was a home environment, so not infringing any health and safety regulations. She’d opened her eyes to admire his face as he came, and had instead looked over his shoulder and seen Humphrey on the kitchen counter, viciously shredding teabags into Dom’s lovingly tended sourdough starter. New discovery: when she started giggling on the veriest cusp of an orgasm, it did something fantastic to her pelvic muscles.

  She’d suddenly realized then how truly happy she actually was. Happier than she’d been in years. Perhaps ever.

  Jay was schmoozing one of their overseas suppliers. He sounded completely normal, joking, laughing, but he still hadn’t turned his head.

  She ran her fingers over the sketch, remembering a gut-punchingly beautiful bronze statue in a frosty garden. Wrought by the hands of another woman who’d been desperately in love. Desperately happy.

  Blithely unaware of how soon she would lose it all.

  As she closed the folder, Jay ended his call and appeared to brace himself.

  He turned. Placed the phone carefully on his desk. Finally looked at her. “How was the final?”

  So even, so hatefully polite.

  “Bit of a disaster, really. Jay—”

  “I’ve been looking at the rosters. One of our groups for the Dark Forest tonight canceled; I’ve rescheduled the other. And I’m going to be taking some leave for a few days.”

  Her mouth felt dry. “We’re submitting the Albany proposal tomorrow. And then it’s the ball.”

  “I’m not going to the ball.” Something flickered in his eyes. “And this proposal has turned into more your thing than mine. Yours and his, ironically, despite the fact he’s meant to be our competition in this situation, not your collaborator.”

  At the coldness in his voice, Sylvie internally flinched. She couldn’t refute the accusation. “This proposal is for a contract that will significantly benefit the business. Our business. You have as much investment as I do in this panning out.”

  He was playing restlessly with a ballpoint pen on his desk. It slipped out of his fingers, skittering across the wood in a sound that obviously irritated both their exposed nerves. He turned away sharply. “As to that . . .” His jaw worked. “I may need to . . . reassess my position in the business going forward.”

  She was honestly incapable of speech for a moment. His eyes dragged to hers.

  “What does that mean?” she said at last, tight with disbelief. “You’re pulling out of Sugar Fair?”

  One of his shoulders moved in the barest glimmer of a shrug.

  It was enough to provoke an unexpected echo of emotion within her. Through her sadness and horror and fear, a small bubble of anger rose.

  “This wasn’t just our dream, Jay. This is our livelihood, and the livelihood of every member of our staff. You can’t just throw all that in the bin because . . .” She cut herself off.

  “Because I’m in love with you, and you’re infatuated with the emotionless bastard across the street?” Reciprocal temper was threaded through every biting word.

  “He’s not emotionless,” she couldn’t help saying very quietly.

  And she’d never been infatuated with Dominic. She’d detested him. She loved him. Fleeting infatuations were a silly, fun phase of her life that had now passed. There was nothing transient about her feelings.

  Which was exactly why she was so scared.

  None of which she said aloud. She was upset, stressed, and honestly, starting to feel a little betrayed in return, but she hoped she wasn’t cruel.

  “Jay.” She met his shuttered gaze. “I didn’t mean to undermine the way you’re feeling right now. I would never intentionally do that. But—you’re my best friend.” She saw the look that crossed his face. “Maybe that sounds inadequate to you right now. Maybe to you, that’s nothing.” She swallowed painfully. “It’s not nothing to me. You’re one of the most important people in my life, and you have been for over thirty years. You’re my family. I’ll always love you. I’ll always be here for you. My—” Her voice broke, and she had to pause to steady her breathing and herself. He was watching her intently, the beginnings of a faint sheen in his eyes. “My love isn’t romantic, but it’s deep and true. It’s valid and it’s yours forever, and I can’t let you devalue that, either.”

  She gripped the edge of the desk. “I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know what to say.”

  Jay looked down. He closed his eyes. “I just— I need some time.”

  A repetition of what he’d said before—but the change of tone made them very different words. That visceral sharpness was gone. What was left was torn and almost gentle, and it made her eyes prickle.

  That core of ice in her chest started to crack.

  Her response was soft and raw. “Okay.”

  The door clicked quietly shut behind him.

  And she breathed in, and out, and went to where she’d always sought solace these past three years.

  Her own field of petunias.

  Under the branches of her favorite tree in the Dark Forest, she sat and watched the light play through the leaves and over the stone walls.

  Her head was tilted back and her eyes were closed when Mabel came quietly down the stairs and stood looking at her thoughtfully.

  Moments later, the front door jangled as her assistant left the building.

  Chapter Nineteen

  De Vere’s

  The Midnight Elixir cake on the bench was an appetizing color—difficult to achieve with this blend of ingredients—and had a perfect crumb texture. It was also delicious.

  Dominic stood with his hands propped against the counter, his mind tightly directed on the task at hand. He’d managed to fix the oven in record time, and Liam was escorting the finished cakes to their banquet destination. He’d considered taking them himself, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Magnolia Lane because Sylvie was across the street and she was hurting.

  She also wanted to be alone, and he was respecting her wishes, so the reasoning was illogical.

  Regardless. His jaw set firmly, he pulled out a fresh bowl and started making another batch of the batter, slightly adjusting the ingredients.

  Pet spoke from the kitchen door. “What’s wrong with that one?”

  “Too much pomegranate.”

  Her high heels tapped as she walked to the bench, picked up the knife there, and cut herself a small sliver of cake. She took a bite, chewing slowly. “Dominic,” she said after she’d swallowed. “Even for you, this is a ridiculous level of perfectionism. This cake is superlatively good. Why are you wasting more time and ingredients?”

  He measured out the spices without a reply.


  She sighed. “Oh, hell. What’s gone wrong with Sylvie?”

  A bolt of emotion made it through. Frustration borne of uncertainty and helplessness, which resulted in a very cool “I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  Pet leaned against the wall. “Did you have a fight?”

  He glanced up at her. She was biting her upper lip.

  “Pet, I don’t mean to be rude—”

  “No, I’m sure you don’t usually mean to be rude,” she obviously couldn’t help inserting.

  “—but I don’t want to talk about this.”

  She looked at him very directly then. “Yeah. There’s always been a habit, in this family, of not talking about a lot of things. And maybe we should.”

  He set down the egg in his hand and straightened, but before he could reply, his phone rang. The name on the screen wasn’t the one he was hoping for, and certainly not the one he was expecting.

  Marigold. The code name Sylvie had entered into both of their phones.

  He swiped to accept the call. “Dominic De Vere.”

  As on a previous occasion, he’d expected to be dealing with the snotty condescension of Edward Lancier and instead got the woman herself.

  “Mr. De Vere—” Rosie began.

  “Dominic,” he said with just a hint of dryness. They’d worn this routine to death.

  “Dominic,” Rosie amended after the briefest of pauses. There was an extremely odd note in her voice. “I apologize for the interruption while you’re no doubt working. But I’ve been unable to make contact with Sylvie. Her phone appears to be off.”

  Yes. He’d discovered that piece of intel himself.

  “May I ask,” Rosie went on, and the chill in the words made Lancier seem a comparative teddy bear, “if you’ve looked at a news site in the past hour?”

  Again, not what he’d expected. He met Pet’s inquiring glance and nodded at the iPad on the bench. “News,” he said under his breath, and she immediately grabbed the tablet and started tapping.

  Seconds later, he saw her shape the word Fuck.

  She turned it around to show him the screen. Under a screaming bold headline—Who’s Been a Naughty Boy, Then?—was the photograph of Johnny and his curly blonde assailant, last seen on Sylvie’s phone. And on Pet’s phone.

  It looked even more incriminating in close-up, splashed all over the worst of the tabloids.

  He echoed Pet’s brevity. “Christ.”

  “I assume you’re currently looking at a photo of Johnny having some ‘alone time’ in the garden.” Despite the sarcastic words, Rosie’s tone was very level. “We were tipped off this morning that the story was going live today but were unable to halt it in time. My team have been investigating the source of the photograph—and at the moment, I’m told all roads are leading back to Sugar Fair.” For the first time, her incredible control wobbled. The princess cleared her throat. “I don’t believe Sylvie would go to the tabloids about us.”

  “She wouldn’t.” Dominic’s eyes lifted from the photo on the screen to Pet’s worried face. “But we do have the original of that photograph.”

  There was a brief, taut silence at the other end of the line. “I see,” Rosie said, and then: “I can’t talk about this now.”

  Tightly, matter-of-factly, she proposed a private meeting the following evening at St. Giles, after they’d delivered their final cake proposals, before the ball.

  That she was going ahead with the ball at all, with speculation likely exploding all over the country . . .

  In a way, it was a pity Rosie wasn’t higher in the line of succession, because he suspected she’d make one hell of a queen.

  He ended the call, still looking at Pet.

  “Oh, gosh,” she said, digging her teeth into her lip again as she read through the accompanying article. “Poor Rosie. Poor Johnny. The stuff they’ve written is vile. It’ll be everywhere by now. How the hell did they get the photo?”

  She looked up—and stilled.

  Pet was a source of perpetual motion and energy, the extent to which was only recognizable when she went absolutely motionless and quiet.

  “God.” In its sudden absence of all expression, her voice was impersonal. Almost unrecognizable. “You think it was me.”

  “Not deliberately. Certainly not maliciously. But did you show someone, or leave your phone somewhere where a friend might have seen it, a boyfriend . . .” He cut himself off at the look that came into her eyes.

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Silly, flighty, careless Pet, right? The queen of bad decisions. It’s not like I’ve consistently proven my discretion and loyalty for weeks on end now.” Pet folded her arms, almost hunching into herself. “You really don’t know me at all, do you?” The words were very quiet, and all the more powerful and damning for it. “Did you ever really want to? That time you tried to see me when I was younger, was it just a guilt reflex? Because you left without a second thought?”

  Pet’s eyes went to the small mural on the opposite wall. The London skyline, out of step with the rest of the décor, painted on a whim by Sebastian during a surge of excitement over a big new contract. “I felt awful for years, for turning you away that day, when . . .” A wobble, rapidly steadied. “When I so desperately wanted to go with you, even then. It had been a slow transition with Gerald. He was so affable and affectionate in public. Behind closed doors, he criticized everything I did. It was never enough.” She blinked hard. “Whatever I did, I was never enough.”

  Dominic could hear the rhythm of their breathing in the quiet kitchen, in sync, equally light and ragged.

  She looked at him. “He used to say you’d turned your back on us. On me. That if you ever reached out, it would just be under obligation from Sebastian.”

  “That wasn’t true,” he said roughly. “It was never true.”

  Pet’s mouth tucked in at the side, a desperate attempt not to cry in front of him that made his chest hurt. “Mum used to keep a photo of you, did you know that? In her drawer.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “When I was little, I would go and look at it.” Pet pressed her thumb under her eye. “I’d tell you things.”

  There was a lump in his throat, as well.

  “Gerald found the photo and really kicked off right before my eighteenth birthday, right before you asked me to meet with you. Mum closed down. The whole thing was just . . . too much. So I told you I didn’t want to see you again, and I regretted it from that day forward.” She shook her head, and her eyes when she looked at him again were dark pools. “The thought of you, and Sebastian, and this bakery, was like a dream for me. This magical safe haven somewhere. A place that would be there, if I ever needed it.”

  The sound she made wasn’t quite a laugh, and had nothing to do with amusement. “This thing with Patrick and Jessica—of course I wanted to know more about them, it’s romantic and tragic and beautiful, but all I really wanted was to spend time with you. To get to know you better, when it’s been so hard to do that. And to get to know Sylvie, because it was obvious that she’s going to be a big part of your future.” Pet forced the words out and they hit like spears. “I would never, ever run around spilling out information that’s going to hurt you or anyone else. I would never be careless with something like that. Honestly, I’m gutted you would ever think I would.”

  He stepped forward instinctively, but she stepped back and lifted her hand. “No. Not now.”

  When Aaron pushed open the kitchen door, looking harassed, she took the opportunity to escape. Making it two for two on completely alienating the most important women in his life.

  He was going after her despite that cool warding-off when Aaron caught at his arm. “Sorry, Dominic,” he said, with a darting glance behind him. “I’ve said you’re busy, but she’s—”

  The diminutive figure of Sylvie’s assistant Mabel steamrollered past his hapless apprentice, waving him out of her way with an attitude that strongly reminded Dominic of his cat.

  She noticeably
looked him up and down, and audibly sighed. Her tone was, as usual, all sweetness and light. “Look, motherfucker. You gave her space when she asked for it. Clap, clap, well done, surprisingly sensitive. But she’s had time to be and to think.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “She’s in the Dark Forest. Move it. Your woman needs a fucking hug.”

  The Dark Forest

  Where two people both need a fucking hug.

  Sylvie was on her feet, on her way to find him, when she heard the footsteps on the stairs.

  She didn’t even question it was him.

  Her Dominic Bat-Signal kicking in.

  She was almost running when he strode through the door, and she flung herself at his chest. He caught her, pulling her in tightly, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “God. Dom. I’m sorry.” She buried her face in his throat, closing her eyes and breathing in the comforting scent of his cologne. His jaw was prickly against her temple, but the skin under her lips was so silky. He felt hard, and warm, and sexy. He felt like home. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head against her, his hand coming up to grip her head. “Don’t” was all he said.

  She could feel the damp warmth of her own breath against his neck. “It just—all hit me at once. I was totally overwhelmed.” She reached up and touched the sharp line of his cheekbone. “I hadn’t realized how much I’ve been keeping my life locked down. Safe. And suddenly, everything’s flipped upside down. Nothing’s what I thought it was, or what I expected to happen.”

  He pushed back her hair from her forehead and her hand drew down his body to press against his heart. There was something hard under the fabric of his jacket, a bump in the inner pocket. Momentarily distracted, she frowned.

  He realized what she was poking at, and her brows pinched closer at the change in his expression. Concern lined his face; it was joined now by caution. He hesitated, then he released her to reach inside his jacket.

  Without a word, he took out a small, well-wrapped bundle and handed it to her.

  With another quick glance upward, she took it and unfolded the layers of protective silk.

  And for a moment, she stopped breathing.