by Lucy Parker
Nestled on the cloth was a small glass deer. The Arielle Aubert sculpture from Middlethorpe Grange.
“How did you—?” The words rasped from her parched throat. She touched the deer’s head, cupped trembling fingers protectively over its fragile body.
Dominic was still very tense. He was watching her with that shrewd closeness, obviously unsure of the wisdom of this gesture. “Lady Middlethorpe is a far nicer human being than her husband. When I rang and explained that the little glass deer in her gallery would mean a great deal to someone, she was happy to sell it to me. She brought it to the bakery herself.”
He moved one shoulder in a quick jerk. “You said the deer brought back more good memories than pain, but if it’s going to make things worse, I’ll return it to her.”
Sylvie stood frozen.
Then, lifting the deer to her cheek, she lowered her head and went down to the floor. On her knees, hunching over. And she cried. Not light, polite tears. The sort of heavy, deep sobs that hadn’t wracked her body for over a decade.
Dominic was also rendered momentarily motionless. She heard him swear viciously, before he was down on his knees beside her.
“God,” he said. “My darling.”
He wrapped his arm around her head, tucked his head back against her, and they crouched there together. The lights in the trees danced around them, eerie shadows flickering around the walls.
It was a short, violent release. As the sobs dwindled to the occasional hiccup, Sylvie’s nose was running and the beginnings of a headache pressed between her brows. With her head on his shoulder, she said croakily, “I always thought you were the rigid one. Like I was this soul of spontaneity. When, really, I’ve played it so safe since Mallory died.”
“You put all your finances into a food business in London,” Dominic murmured. “That’s hardly playing it safe.”
“I don’t mean work.” She scrubbed her wrist under her eyes. “When Sugar Fair struggles, obviously the stress is huge, and it would gut me if I lost it. But it can’t . . . shatter me.”
Holding the deer close, she watched the ghostly shapes moving amidst the leaves.
“That night in the hospital, when Mallory was gone, I felt as if I’d been cut adrift. I’ve never felt out of control like that. My biggest safety net was gone.” A sharp pain in her chest. “But I had Jay. I had my friends. And I . . . kept going. I rebuilt a life. One day at a time.” She exhaled. “But I’ve realized now how much I’ve protected myself because I didn’t think my heart could survive another loss like that. And when Jay . . .”
She stopped, and felt Dominic stiffen.
He said nothing, however, and she went on haltingly, “Suddenly, I might be losing Jay, and I’ve been completely knocked off my feet by what’s happening between you and me, and it hit home how—”
“How badly you could be hurt again.”
“It was . . . horrific, the first time.” She picked her way very carefully now. Neither of them had ventured into direct “L-word” territory yet, and she’d just wept all over him. She needed to be honest, but self-consciousness was prickling. “I suspect it would be even worse now.”
His arm tightened reflexively.
“Thank you for the deer,” she said. “It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.”
“If it’s going to make you sad—”
“No.” She looked into the little carved eyes. It had a more piquant expression than Mallory’s, a glint of mischief that made her smile. “No.”
The lighting scheme in the Dark Forest was changing, softening to a warm glow, the spooky effects fading into flitting fireflies and the gentlest rustling whisper of the trees.
Evidently, Mabel was making a few adjustments upstairs.
Over the rustling, Sylvie heard the snick of the automated door lock clicking into place—keeping out any further visitors.
Mabel had definitely earned that Christmas bonus this year.
With his hand tucked up under her messy hair, his palm warm against her neck, Dominic kissed her cheek and the corner of her mouth. Sylvie turned her head obligingly, and their mouths met.
Unlike the usual flare of passion, desire was a slow burn, flickering under a surge of comfort and growing intimacy.
She carefully set the deer aside and Dominic took her all the way down to the floor, the kiss starting to deepen as the hardness of his body lowered onto hers, his hands slipping up under her top as he pressed closer.
They slid away layers of clothing, undoing buckles, lifting and arching. Their skin was a bare, shivery glide against each other when he belatedly hesitated, removing his lips from her throat.
“What’s wrong?” she asked huskily, her hips moving just a little restlessly against his shirt, spread on the ground beneath them as an impromptu, inadequate blanket.
“You’re still upset.” A bit of sex growl nonetheless roughened his voice. “It’s in your eyes, and I can feel it in your body. I don’t want to take advantage if you—”
“I want you.” It came out as more of a significant, final statement than she’d intended. But she meant it, in every respect. More quietly, holding his gaze, she murmured, “I want you.”
As they continued to look into each other’s eyes, seeking something and mutually finding it, Sylvie took his hand and brought it to her mouth. His breath coming faster, he slipped his first two fingers between her lips and she wet them, a sensual tug, before she slid his hand down her body.
In the dim, dancing light, under the trees, he stroked her as they lay side by side, heads turned to watch the tiniest changes in each other’s expressions. The hitches in breathing, the deepening flush in their cheeks and chests. Sylvie arched her head back with a small sound when he carefully slipped a finger inside her. Blindly, she reached for him, ran her own hand down his slightly damp abdomen.
“Can I—”
“You can touch me wherever you want.” A rasp. “Whenever you want.”
Words that she might have taken lightly from another man.
That meant a very great deal from him.
His head jerked to the side as she teasingly ran her fingers down his erection, cupped him, curved her thumb and forefinger as far as she could around his length.
Neither of them had a condom or any real desire for penetration. They lay for a long time just touching each other, looking at each other, existing in a bubble of slow, lazy, helpless pleasure and unbelievable closeness.
Their lips were just touching when she cried out, and he went rigid against her when she got her breath back and slid down to take him in her mouth.
She had no idea how long it was later when they sat together under her favorite tree, Sylvie tucked between Dominic’s legs as he rested back against the trunk, her cheek nestled on his chest.
“I need to finish my proposal,” she murmured, her whole body feeling deliciously limp and lethargic.
His muscles, however, tensed. He stretched out an arm toward the crumpled pile of clothing and extracted his phone. “About that.”
She sat up, curling her legs to the side, and stared in horror at the news headline on the screen as he recounted the call from Rosie. But when he got to the part about Pet, she reached up and curled her arms back around his neck, a tight hug of comfort.
“She wouldn’t do that,” she said quietly, kissing his throat.
“I knew that the moment I said it, but the damage is done.” The words were bleak and grim. “To a far greater extent than I realized.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “She left the bakery before I did. I don’t know if she’s coming back.”
She puffed out a breath. What a total sodding disaster all round. “She’ll come back,” she said with certainty. “She loves you.”
He jerked his head to the side, not quite a shake, but a negation, nonetheless. She held his veiled gaze. “She loves you,” she repeated, and after a moment he touched her cheek.
And very unsubtly changed the subject. “Sylvie.”
The seriousness in his tone and renewed tautness in his body warned her. “What did you mean about losing Jay?”
She couldn’t respond immediately. With the way she felt about Dominic, it was—and should be—completely natural to talk to him about something that was eating away at her like a corrosive burn.
It also felt like the most colossal betrayal of Jay’s feelings.
No matter how dismayed she was by his threat to leave the business, she cared, very much, about that.
And bluntly, she still found it totally surreal, such a shift in viewpoint, to realize he was even looking at her like that. Vocalizing the surreal—it suddenly solidified into reality before a person was necessarily ready to cope.
She continued to hesitate; and in the end, as he’d done so many times lately, he made it easy for her.
Dominic pulled away far enough that she could see his face and he hers. His expression was nothing like what she’d expected.
Gentleness. Sympathy. The sudden burning of tears caught her by surprise.
He bent and touched his mouth to hers. “He’s in love with you.”
It wasn’t a question.
Her fingers curled into the scattering of hair on his bare chest. “He says he is.” She shook her head slightly. “He’s family to me. I thought I knew him to his core. I thought I knew us. How could I not even notice?”
“Because he’s family to you,” he reiterated simply, his thumb moving in a featherlight stroke.
“In the true meaning of the word, to me, which has nothing to do with biology. And which is unconditional. Forever.” She searched his eyes. “Did you know?”
“I wondered. The way he looked at you.”
One tear slid free. “Dom, he’s already slipping away.”
He caught the tear with his lips. His forearm flexed, warm and strong, when she wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
“Sylvie.” He spoke very low, their browbones touching. “I don’t know what to say. It’s less surprising to me than it is to you.” When she lifted her gaze, he smiled faintly. “Nobody understands better where he’s coming from than me.”
She’d experienced multiple emotions after Jay’s confession, none of them positive. When Dominic spoke, however—butterflies.
Or perhaps, like the pinpoint lights flitting around the walls, “fireflies” were a better description. Bright little sparks of joy, lighting up the darkness.
She’d fallen so much in love with him that it hurt.
“Where is he now?” Dominic asked, his voice going husky in response to whatever he saw flashing in her eyes then.
“I don’t know. He asked for some space. Time off.”
In an absent reaction to the caw of the raven clock on the wall, they had both stirred to get up. The raven popped out to announce the fifty-minute mark in each hour and no other time. The utter randomness had appealed to her for this room. That particular caw meant that the last of the staff should be signing out upstairs, and she needed to make sure her Midnight Elixir cake sample was secure for tomorrow before she locked up.
At this point, who bloody knew what was going to happen with the royal wedding, but—she had to have faith in Rosie and Johnny. And right now, all she could do was fulfill her part of the commitment.
She had a responsibility to the people upstairs to see this through.
She had a responsibility to herself to bloody rock this.
They had almost finished dressing when she voiced the last painful revelation about Jay. “He talked of pulling out of Sugar Fair.”
This time, Dominic went completely rigid. Not in the good way that usually culminated in mutually shaking thighs.
“He what?” His voice was sharp. He was not impressed, and was still informing her of that fact, as if she hadn’t already said three times she agreed it wasn’t acceptable to throw that at her and at the business, and that it bordered on emotional blackmail, when they entered the kitchen—and almost walked straight into a wrathful dandelion.
A patronizing description of a human being, nevertheless accurate as Penny faced them with streaks of red in her cheeks. She was so cross that her hair seemed to be quivering, yet even in her towering rage she maintained that vague vibe, as if one strong puff of breath would send her thoughts scattering every which way.
“How dare you have the Starlight Circus shut down,” she snapped, her hair wiggling more vigorously as a punctuation mark.
It was such a bizarre moment that it took a second to absorb the words.
“They shut it down?” Sylvie had vindictively hoped Darren would cop a whopping fine for his shoddy hygiene practices; she hadn’t dared to hope they’d actually hazard-tape the door.
Having consumed multiple foodstuffs from his bacteria den, she didn’t want to think too hard about how bad the kitchens must have been.
Otherwise—what a delightful twist in an otherwise shit of a day.
Between that and the orgasm, and the confirmation that she was utterly, bone-deep, soul-hard in love with the man beside her, it was definitely ending on an upward curve.
“Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to the hygiene failures and probably dangerous cost-cutting of your . . . boyfriend?” Dominic was using the face and voice most calculated to send Operation Cake contestants scurrying around corners. Sylvie could have told him not to bother—all variation in tone bounced off Penny like an impenetrable shield in a video game.
She also didn’t mention that the space between the concentric circles of Stern Dominic and Sexy Dominic was rapidly narrowing, lest he become perversely affable in response.
She looked sharply from his very icy face to Penny’s. “Boyfriend?”
“She was coming out of Darren Clyde’s kitchens the other night,” he said, without looking away from the other woman. “And made a very fast retreat when she saw you.”
“You’re connected with Darren?” Sylvie was trying to fit those pieces together in her mind. Failing miserably. “A relationship with Darren?”
What in the actual fuck was going on at the moment?
At this point, if Pet suddenly popped out from a corner and revealed herself a secret agent for MI5, she wouldn’t even blink.
“Why did you say it like that?” Penny asked defensively. “Why wouldn’t we be a couple?”
Sylvie just looked at her, totally wordless, before she turned to Dominic. “I don’t want to be alarmist, but I believed I’ve single-handedly cracked the space-time continuum. This is a parallel universe after all. And it’s very odd.”
“Penny Pops.” Dominic had decided to add verisimilitude to her theory by making nonsensical statements.
“I’m sorry? Pops what? Pops who?”
“On Clyde’s god-awful menu. There was an item called a Penny Pop. I assumed it was a nod to old-fashioned penny sweets.”
Penny had the almighty nerve to clasp her hands over her navel and sway in love-struck gratification. “No, it was a nod to me. In recognition of all my help with the development of the menu.”
Her intern might be falling out of her rage and back into walking dreamworld, but Sylvie was taking a swift turn down the path of being seriously pissed off.
“Did you take this job just to pass information along to Darren?”
Penny blinked at her. “Of course. But I did appreciate all that advice you gave me. I don’t really remember much of it, but . . .”
A shrug.
Sylvie lifted her hand to her temple. For Christ’s sake, said she in her head and Dominic aloud.
“It was Darren’s idea that I apply.” Penny looked suddenly proud. “But I’m the one who realized in the interview that if I said I had no family, either, you’d probably feel sorry for me. And you did.” She was patently delighted by her own manipulation.
Sylvie immediately slipped her hand sideways and pressed her palm against Dominic’s ribs as he took an instinctive step forward.
As tempting as it was to cheer him on, he really couldn’t chuck her
staff members out the window.
With a slightly aggrieved note, as if Darren had been claiming all the credit for their misdeeds, Penny added, “And it was my idea to get the photo off your phone and give it to that reporter.”
Sylvie’s breath caught, and Dominic went very still.
Behind Penny, the door to the shop floor had opened silently. Mabel stood there with a lollipop in her hand, also listening.
“It did get rid of her,” the intern pointed out, as if Sylvie ought to be grateful. Her smile widened. “She wasn’t interested in the cake at all after that. If you’re going to have such private discussions in your office, you really should have spent less on tacky kitsch and more on soundproofing.”
“You took the photo off my phone? You broke into my phone?” Sylvie’s voice lifted in pitch, and Penny lifted her nose.
“You left it on your desk, unlocked. Again, poor security, boss.”
At which point, she fucking tutted.
Sylvie breathed in deeply.
Rosie and Johnny’s relationship was being ripped to shreds, with the press and public pawing over the pieces like wild dogs.
The emotional chasm between Dominic and Pet had been torn even wider.
Apparently, Sylvie had been wasting time, money, and ingredients for months, constantly defending this woman to Jay.
And someone intimately connected to the Starlight Circus had just called her décor “kitsch.”
“Penny,” she said very calmly, with a smile just as vague, just as airy, and just as malicious, “get the fuck out of my home.”
Penny tossed her head—and froze as Mabel walked toward her, hips swinging, also smiling.
That smile had more eerie impact than every lighting effect in the Dark Forest combined.
The intern took a step back, but halted in momentary confusion when Mabel offered her the lollipop.
She took the candy skull automatically, and then shrieked as Mabel—tiny, deceptively delicate Mabel—made a blur of a movement with her foot and Penny tumbled across her shoulders.
Whistling, Mabel walked toward the back door and out into the alley, wearing Penny around her neck like a scarf. Through the window, Sylvie watched as her assistant calmly threw the intern into the dumpster.