Battle Royal

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Battle Royal Page 34

by Lucy Parker


  “Then—yes.”

  She had been fiddling with the top of her bandage, but her head lifted. “Really?”

  “Really.” He smiled faintly. “Does this mean you want to work in the bakery full-time, too?”

  “Oh God, no.” Her return smile was rueful. “As fond as I am of you, bro, I don’t want you as a boss. And as I’ve said, approximately six hundred times, I like being a PA, and there’s no full-time vacancy in your joint.”

  “That’s fortunate,” a new voice said from the door, and they all turned as Rosie and Johnny knocked belatedly on the frame and came quietly in.

  They were flanked by Johnny’s huge, muscular, silent PPO, who stopped at the door. He was as towering and menacing as ever—and he was holding, in one massive hand, a tiny teddy bear.

  Sylvie tore her gaze from the incongruous sight as Rosie went on, “Johnny is in need of a new PA. A full-time, permanent position with excellent renumeration and travel opportunities, that we’d like to offer to you.”

  Pet had gone understandably flustered, having the royals arrive at her sickbed. At that, her mouth literally dropped open.

  “We already checked you out and you have fantastic credentials. You also have a lovely personality, we both feel comfortable with you, and I suspect you’d not only be very good at this job but enjoy it very much.” Rosie’s hand went out and linked securely with her fiancé’s. “And you might have saved the life of the man I love tonight.”

  When they looked at each other, their faces said everything.

  Rosie finally recollected they weren’t alone in the room and dragged her eyes back. “Tonight put a lot of things in perspective. It was a pretty strong reminder of what’s truly important. What I was lucky enough to find and will never throw away. And I can never thank you enough.”

  Pet shook her head. “You don’t have to thank me. But what’s going to happen to Helena?”

  The security team had taken Helena out of the room before the police were called, but they hadn’t needed to restrain her. After she’d cut Pet, she’d gone completely limp, her face frighteningly empty.

  Even in the horror of it all, Sylvie had felt intensely sorry for her, and a similar concern was evident in Pet’s voice.

  It was Johnny who answered. “She will get the help she needs.”

  Looking at him now, standing tall and exuding both protectiveness and compassion, Sylvie thought there was every chance he would defy expectations and become an indispensable asset to the royal family.

  There was no doubt at all he would be a loving and supportive husband to the woman beside him.

  “And I told the fucking leech press trying to take photos of Helena and Pet exactly what I thought of them,” Johnny added.

  Rosie winced slightly.

  Of course, there was an equal chance that Pet would have her hands full working for Johnny, if she took this job. By the look on her face, that contract was going to be signed.

  Behind the royal couple, in the shadow of the door, Johnny’s PPO took a step forward, and Rosie turned with a start.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m sorry. This is Matthias Vaughn, the head of Johnny’s protection team. He’s off shift now, but he wanted to speak to Pet.”

  Pet’s eyes widened as Matthias came farther into the room, within sight of the bed.

  The bodyguard stood looking at her, his wide chest rising and falling a little too quickly, the only sign of disturbed emotion in his body.

  “If I’d been doing my job correctly, you wouldn’t be here now.” He had one of the deepest voices Sylvie had ever heard. His words were clipped, not wasting a syllable. “I apologize.”

  “It was a split-second distraction, an unavoidable human reaction to the fire alarm,” Rosie began, and Matthias shook his head in an abrupt motion.

  “That ‘split-second distraction’ can be—and tonight almost was—the difference between life and death. I made an error. It won’t happen again.” He looked back at Pet as he repeated, his voice defying the laws of physics and anatomy to become even deeper, “It’s my fault you were hurt.”

  He paused—and then he thrust his hand out.

  The room had gone very quiet.

  Pet’s eyes traveled from his face to the little teddy bear on his palm. It was wearing a waistcoat with a teeny-weeny pocket square.

  At Sylvie’s side, Dominic’s eyebrow had lifted. She watched with total fascination as the very tips of Matthias’s ears turned red.

  “I . . .” It was not impossible this was the first time the man had ever been remotely flustered. “The gift shop was closed. They didn’t have much at the corner shop—”

  His fingers closing around the bear, his hand started to fall away.

  Pet shot forward, sticking her own hand out and almost dislodging the drip in her arm.

  After another hesitation, Matthias stepped forward to give her the bear, and she lay back against the bed, holding the toy tightly against her chest.

  “Thank you.” Her smile was sudden and blinding, and the bodyguard moved one shoulder in a rough, apparently uncontrollable jerk.

  With a stiff nod, he bowed to Rosie and retreated very quickly from the room.

  Pet had been determined to find a new path. Wherever her life went after today, it was shaping up to be interesting.

  Rosie smoothed out her smile before she addressed Sylvie and Dominic, slipping back into her professional princess gloss. “We’ve made a decision about the cake.”

  Sylvie drew in her breath. She hadn’t expected that, not tonight. Her eyes went immediately to Dominic, and they exchanged a long look.

  Whatever happens, it changes nothing between us.

  They didn’t even need to say the words aloud.

  “I know it’s late and it’s been a sh-shit of a night,” Johnny said, “but we wondered if you’d like to accompany us back to St. Giles. We won’t take up much of your time.”

  “We’re happy to schedule a meeting for tomorrow.” Rosie spoke emphatically on that point. “But a lot of things seem to have come to a pass tonight. Lines have been drawn. It seems fitting that this part of the journey also now comes to a close.”

  She looked at the three of them. At Johnny.

  “And I hope,” she said, “that the best parts of our respective stories begin from here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Primrose Room, St. Giles Palace

  The end of one journey.

  And the beginning of all the rest.

  “Thank you for coming here so late,” Rosie said in the quiet, almost shocking serenity of a comfortable sitting room in a rear wing of the palace. She’d walked straight past the businesslike efficiency of the Captain’s Suite and brought them to this little haven of warm light and surrounding bookcases. Much of the floor space was taken up by a grand piano, there were framed music awards on the walls, and she hadn’t needed to tell them that the room had once belonged to Patrick. She settled herself more comfortably in her chair, spreading her papers and tablets out on the table between them. “We looked at both of your proposals and tasted your samples of the Midnight Elixir cake.”

  “For ‘tasted,’” Johnny put in, “read: ‘ate every crumb.’ We loved them both. It was hard to choose between them.”

  Rosie picked up an iPad. “Impossible to choose between them in the case of the utmost-tier flavor. We don’t have the developed dessert palates that the two of you do, but quite frankly, your Midnight Elixir cakes tasted identical to me.”

  She tapped the tablet screen, bringing up two images, positioning them side by side. “And your designs . . .”

  Sylvie leaned in, her attention immediately going to the unfamiliar sketch, the De Vere panel. At her side, Dominic was intently studying her own submission.

  “It’s evident which drawing came from which mind,” Johnny said with a small grin, and certainly, the sparkling pâte de verre flowers and spiraling tiers of Sylvie’s cake said “Sugar Fair” as distinctly as the clean line
s and elegant piping pointed to De Vere’s. “But . . .”

  But at the essential level, the cakes were remarkably similar. They had both chosen a stained-glass effect, constructed entirely from blown sugar, each tier designed to catch the light and cast a shimmering cascade of color. Peony poppies, primroses, and petunias glittered within the sugar glass.

  And on the highest tier, the Midnight Elixir cake, they had both incorporated a trinity knot.

  Rosie had a photo of Jessica’s sculpture on the table. She rested her fingers on the stained-glass knot, where it was kept safe, held forever in the joined bronze hands.

  “I always loved this sculpture,” she said softly. “But I never knew the identity of the artist. Patrick was forever in that part of the grounds, but I didn’t ever want to disturb his privacy while he was there.” Very lightly, she stroked the photograph, where the foreheads of the bronze figures touched, and echoed Dominic’s own sentiment about the work. “I can see why it gave him comfort. I just wish . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.

  Sylvie also looked down at those cupped metal hands and silently made her own last wish for the man and woman sitting together on the steps of Primrose Cottage, with love and laughter and life shining from their eyes. Two entwined souls, forever.

  Rosie coughed to clear the crackle in her throat. “Obviously, there are quite a few similarities between the cakes—surprisingly many.” She shot Dominic a quick smile. “I know this isn’t your own taste at all, and I really appreciate how much you set aside your own preferences for this design.”

  Dominic was not appreciative of being singled out there. “It’s a commissioned work, not my own birthday cake. Of course I design to suit the client.” High-level irritation.

  Rosie bit back a widening grin as she returned to her tablet. “We like elements of both cakes.” Whatever app she had scanned their designs into, she now started fiddling. In a center, separate panel, she pulled Sylvie’s lower tier. Dominic’s middle tiers. Sylvie’s top tier. She kept moving and shifting elements from each drawing.

  A little like being at school, watching a teacher attack a personal-best essay with a red pen.

  Finally, with a significant look, she put one finger on Sylvie’s trinity knot and another finger on Dominic’s trinity knot. She drew them into the central panel.

  The knots touched and locked together.

  And became a Serch Bythol.

  The symbol for everlasting love.

  “We’d like you to combine these designs,” Rosie said simply. “And we’re offering you a joint contract.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. Sylvie strongly suspected they were having the exact same silent reaction—mostly a sense of Yes, this is right, the perfect way to close one door and open another, with a single, meaningful collaboration.

  And a little bit of mutually competitive anticlimax.

  She was opening her mouth to agree, nevertheless, when Dominic took the tablet into his hand, looking closely at the drawing.

  “No,” he said.

  The eyebrows of both Rosie and Johnny shot up in unison.

  Sylvie watched him calmly. She had no idea what was coming next, and not the slightest qualm.

  “Over seventy percent of the details you’ve highlighted are Sylvie’s.” Dominic turned the screen back to face the couple. “The Midnight Elixir cake itself is based on a flavoring emulsion from Sugar Fair. And any remaining feature from the De Vere’s proposal that needs to be included, Sugar Fair is equally capable of executing. By merit, this is not our contract.”

  It possibly wasn’t royal protocol to stand up first, but it was getting on for midnight, after an incredibly tumultuous forty-eight hours that had culminated in the violent assault of someone she was coming to care about very much. Sylvie wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up in bed with Dominic.

  And tomorrow, together, they would start finalizing the details for this cake of all cakes.

  She got up from the table. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’m about to fall asleep where I sit. We’ll be available to discuss next steps at your earliest convenience. Or just to join in on a gaming tournament if asked. And we happily accept the offer of a joint contract.”

  Dominic had his freezing look on. He was clearly unaware that all it did was heighten her urgency to get to bed.

  She continued breezily. “Enjoy the experience, De Vere. After this collab, the moment we step foot on Magnolia Lane every day, the battle of the bakers continues.”

  Rosie was suppressing laughter, but she put out her hand. “Before you go . . .” Her smile fading, she chewed on her lower lip as she opened a folder on the table and very carefully removed a thin sheaf of papers. With a quick glance at Johnny, who put his hand on her back, she turned to Dominic. “Patrick wrote this a short time before he died. I’ve never shown it to anyone. And I’ve never heard it played. It was so personal to Patrick, I was the only one who’d know what it truly meant—and I think I was afraid,” she murmured. “I’d already seen his sadness over Jessica, and his music was always so—transportive. I was grieving and I couldn’t bear to be immersed in the depths of his pain.”

  At the top of the musical score, in Patrick’s distinctive handwriting, was the one swirling word. Jessie.

  “I know you’re a talented pianist. It was in your background check.” Rosie’s hesitation lasted only a moment. She squared her shoulders and inclined her head toward the piano. “Would you please play this for me?” Again, she looked at Johnny. “For us.”

  Dominic still looked slightly tense and irritated, and was clearly more interested in continuing their argument—which he obviously thought he’d win.

  So cute.

  He took the score from Rosie with the greatest of care, however, and looked down at it. As his eyes skimmed across the page, reading the notes, following the tempo, a faint frown tugged at his brows. He turned the page, his eyes lifting briefly back to the tense woman before him. “Yes. If you want me to, I’d be honored. But I’m not sure it’s what you’re expecting.”

  He crossed to the piano and sat down, placing the papers on the music stand before he pushed up the sleeves of his jumper. Sylvie just had time for a spike of lust—honestly, all Dominic had to do in the future was bring out his forearms and plop down at his piano, and half the work was done for him where foreplay was concerned.

  But as he set his long fingers to the keys and began to play, any light amusement faded. Patrick’s composition, the music that had poured from him in his dying days, the story of his life and his love, wasn’t the wrenching sadness Rosie had feared. It was deep and rich, first fast and lilting in tempo, then slow and passionate—a man falling in love, finding himself, seeing the world differently. Somehow, as Sylvie stood listening, the music twirling around her, she heard nothing but gratitude. The sheer thankfulness of having known her, of having been them. It didn’t matter for how long.

  It was happiness.

  It was joy.

  By the time the last note drifted away, as if a final bittersweet ghost had slipped out through the window and into the stars beyond, Rosie was in Johnny’s arms, her arms wrapped around his neck, her head buried against his shoulder.

  And her body free of every last scrap of tension.

  Dominic rose from the piano, looking at Sylvie. Silently, they left the other couple in their own world, following a security guard back through the halls of the eerily quiet palace.

  In the deserted courtyard outside, in the shadow of Abbey Hall, they stood on stone steps and looked at each other in the light of the streetlamps.

  The rain had stopped today after what seemed like weeks, the ground hardening with a thin layer of ice, and a hint of the moon shone through the dark clouds above.

  Dominic finally spoke. “Competitors at work. And outside of Magnolia Lane?”

  His face was difficult to read in the weak light and shadows, but his hands took hers, his
grip tightening immeasurably as she spoke.

  Simple words for something so wondrously immense. “On and away from Magnolia Lane, you’re my business rival. My friend.” Their fingers linked. “The man I’ve fallen in love with so hard that sometimes I look at you and I can’t breathe.”

  The look in his eyes was one she’d never forget. And there was a lump in her throat as he spoke.

  “You walked into my life, tipped it upside down, and when it finally righted—you were right there in the center. In a very short space of time, you’ve changed everything.” He lowered his head. Against her mouth, he said, with a lightness he obviously didn’t feel, “Bane of my existence four years ago. The best part of it now.”

  Her breath shuddered inward. “This really is . . . it. The real thing.”

  His hands came up to cup her cheeks and he kissed her again.

  She was kissing him back, but tears were a thick burn in her chest, and she had to break off to press her closed eyes against his neck. “Still a little scary.”

  His arms locking at the base of her spine, he rested his cheek on her head. “Still fucking terrifying.”

  “I’m so glad I saw your forbidding scowl on TV and decided to apply for Operation Cake anyway.”

  “Clearly, so am I, but don’t expect a follow-up that I’m grateful your version of Cupid’s arrow was a unicorn catapult.”

  Her laughter was echoed in his eyes as they stood entwined under the night sky, the ice glittering on the ground beneath their feet, the growing moonbeams slipping through the faint mist.

  Despite everything, as the Sugar Fair motto said, Vita est plena magices.

  Life is full of magic.

  Epilogue

  The cake stood towering and majestic on the gold state table. Six feet tall, it had come in at eight tiers, arranged to wind upward like the circular staircase that Rosie adored in St. Giles Palace. A photograph in the records at Abbey Hall had shown Rosie and Patrick sitting together on the landing, hand in hand, feet crossed. During her childhood, Patrick had apparently propped his great-niece on that banister and slid her down as they laughed and laughed, her mother and their advisors looking on in frozen disapproval. The cake stand had been designed to reflect the same Georgian carvings etched into that stairwell.

 

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