Just Desserts (Sweet Temptation, Book 3)

by Ashley Lister

  Charlotte didn’t let him finish speaking.

  ‘Before we make any other decisions, we need to know if you two will be comfortable working together.’

  Bill glanced again at Trudy.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘I’m able to work with anyone,’ Bill declared proudly. ‘I’m known for being gregarious and social and –’

  ‘You can work with anyone?’ Harvey broke in. He didn’t bother trying to hide his disbelief. ‘You’ve cancelled three episodes of your show because you didn’t like the guests that had been lined up.’

  ‘That was different,’ Bill assured him. ‘Two of those guests were known celebrity drug-users. You know I’ve got no time for pillocks that mess around with drugs.’

  ‘And the other one?’ Harvey pressed.

  ‘He was a politician.’ Bill shrugged. ‘But, other than those few choice examples, I genuinely can work with anyone.’

  Charlotte rounded on him. ‘I heard,’ she began, ‘on the first night you had Trudy working here, you punched a sous chef unconscious.’

  ‘He wasn’t a sous,’ Bill said stiffly. ‘He was only a commis chef. And there were circumstances that provoked that one. I didn’t just start punching him. He’d threatened me with a knife.’

  ‘Bill disarmed him,’ Trudy said helpfully.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘And, after he’d knocked him unconscious, Bill only kicked him a few times.’

  ‘That’s probably not helping my case much,’ Bill said quickly.

  ‘Is it really fair to say you can work with anyone?’ Harvey asked.

  Bill shook his head. ‘OK. That’s probably not as true as I’d like it to be.’ He stared solemnly at Charlotte and said, ‘But, for the sake of a wedding between my best friend and his beautiful betrothed, I’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure I can work properly with Ms McLaughlin.’

  Trudy stiffened at the formality of the address. This was the way he had always addressed her when they were playing kinky power games. It was a phrase that never failed to send the inner muscles of her sex trembling with need. It was a phrase that always made her blush as she was embarrassed by her own furious desire for him and the domination he offered.

  ‘This is your wedding we’re talking about,’ Bill went on. He flicked his gaze between Harvey and Charlotte as he sipped his coffee. ‘It shouldn’t be a day when you worry about the differences that exist between Trudy and me. It should be a day when you’re happy and secure being surrounded by people you know and love.’

  Harvey seemed satisfied by the sentiment.

  ‘Would you be comfortable with that, hon?’ Charlotte asked.

  Trudy nodded. ‘Thank you for asking me to be chief bridesmaid. It would be an honour to accept.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Bill agreed.

  He stood up and reached across the table to embrace his friend. Charlotte and Trudy followed his example and hugged. When it came to cordially swap partners, Trudy had no problems with hugging Harvey. He was her friend and agent and she knew he was the perfect man for Charlotte. But she could sense the unease that crackled between Bill and Charlotte when they stiffly embraced.

  Bill had never been a big fan of Charlotte’s driven personality and Charlotte had not been happy with Bill after he apparently severed his relationship with Trudy and remarried his ex-wife. Charlotte looked almost relieved when her mobile rang and she had to break their hug to take the call.

  ‘Hi, Daryl,’ she said brightly. ‘Are you OK?’

  When Trudy saw Charlotte frown, she strained to hear what was being said.

  ‘Slow down, hon,’ Charlotte said. ‘One word at a time.’

  Trudy mouthed the question, ‘Is everything OK?’

  Charlotte shrugged.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she told Daryl. ‘Trudy and I can get down to HQ and make sure everything’s running smoothly. If this is important to you –’

  She paused.

  ‘Well, if Trudy needs a lift down to the studio this evening I’ll do that for her. You’re not the only one who can drive a car.’ She forced a small laugh. ‘I’m sure I…’ Her voice trailed off as though she had just discovered she was talking to herself. She pulled the phone away from her ear and studied it for a moment before slipping it into her pocket.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Trudy asked.

  ‘Daryl has some important business she needs to address,’ Charlotte explained. ‘She didn’t say what it was but she explained that it might take her all day. She wants me to drive you to the set of Master Baker this evening.’

  ‘How did she sound?’

  ‘Odd,’ said Charlotte. She tugged the keys from her pocket. ‘I’m going to head down to HQ now and make sure everything is in order. Are you coming with me?’

  Trudy nodded.

  Charlotte turned and gave Harvey a lingering kiss goodbye.

  Trudy made the mistake of catching Bill’s gaze. She could see that he was watching the couple kiss. She could see he knew that wasn’t an intimacy they could publicly share for the foreseeable future. When he caught sight of her watching him he mouthed, ‘I’ll call you.’

  She nodded silent understanding and then turned away before he could see the tear in her eye.

  8

  Bill’s words came back to her later in the evening when she was on the set of Master Baker and studying a pair of desserts. ‘There were circumstances that provoked that one. I didn’t just start punching him. He’d threatened me with a knife.’

  She didn’t know why the words seemed important, or why they should echo around her thoughts as though they were relevant. But they seemed to be stuck inside her mind like the refrain from some maddeningly catchy song.

  ‘I didn’t just start punching him. He’d threatened me with a knife.’

  Trudy vividly remembered the incident Bill had been discussing. She had been working in the kitchens of Boui-Boui and the Smurf, one of Bill’s commis chefs, had caused a scene.

  The commis chef wasn’t a particularly pleasant individual. He had a thin, angular face and an unlikeable sense of entitlement. He was always the last member of staff to arrive and the first to sneak out for a smoke break. If anyone was going to steal a last-minute sick day, it would be the Smurf. If anyone in the kitchen was going to make a vulgar comment or spread a piece of malicious gossip, it would be the Smurf.

  The Smurf was his nickname in the kitchen. Everyone called him the Smurf because his fingers were invariably blue with the kitchen’s detectable sticking plasters.

  ‘I didn’t just start punching him. He’d threatened me with a knife.’

  On that particular night, it seemed as though the Smurf had taken umbrage with the fact that Trudy was young and inexperienced, yet she had been brought into the Michelin-starred kitchen in the role of a high-ranking sous. Looking back on the situation Trudy could understand why any commis chef with career aspirations would be upset by such a development. But the Smurf had no real career aspirations and his reaction had gone beyond understandable annoyance.

  He had snatched one of the blades from the kitchen wall and threatened Bill.

  Watching the confrontation had been an unsettling experience.

  Bill had tried negotiating and offered him a couple of opportunities to back down and retract his threat but the Smurf seemed intent to cause trouble. Eventually, Bill had disarmed the Smurf, punched him to the floor and then notified the police.

  Bill spent a night in police cells as a consequence of defending himself.

  The action had earned him a reputation for being violent and volatile. Fortunately for Bill it was a reputation on which his agent was still trying to put a positive spin.

  The following day Trudy had been shocked to discover the Smurf had not been particularly angry at Bill for the way he ran his kitchen. The Smurf had been bribed by Donny to cause upset at Boui-Boui.

  ‘I didn’t just start punching him. He’d threatened me with a k
nife.’

  Trudy shook her head to try and drive Bill’s words from her thoughts. Remembering that evening brought back every unsettling emotion she had felt at the time. There had been anger, fear and distress and she couldn’t understand why her subconscious seemed to need a surfeit of those feelings spoiling her day.

  Instead of thinking about that morning’s conversation, or the drama of several months earlier in the Boui-Boui kitchens, she wanted to focus on the pair of desserts that sat in front of her.

  She was looking at a pastry-encased coffee muffin and a dacquoise. And she needed to make a decision as to which was the best.

  Trudy and Charlotte had spent a busy day at Sweet Temptation HQ. With Daryl absent they had both discovered how much work was done by the company’s most junior partner. To their shared surprise, and their private embarrassment, it seemed Daryl regularly did more than either Charlotte or Trudy managed on their most industrious and productive days.

  Daryl usually staffed the reception desk. She liaised between production and dispatch. She organised orders, payroll and invoicing. She invested time in marketing and promotion. Daryl even went out to get the lunchtime sandwiches. And she did it all while wearing designer fashions and fuck-me heels.

  ‘It’s no wonder she’s so bloody thin,’ Charlotte had grumbled during their lunch break. Charlotte had done the sandwich run and returned looking harried. She had only purchased half the stuff she had originally set out to buy and some of that was wrong. ‘I’d be as thin as Daryl if I could spend my day managing to do every damned thing without breaking a sweat.’

  Trudy nodded agreement and nibbled politely at the cheese and pickle sandwich Charlotte had given her. Trudy disliked the acidic flavour of pickle but she didn’t want to let Charlotte know that she was useless on the sandwich run.

  Overall the day’s production and distribution had gone smoothly. It had taken a lot of effort and, by the end of the day, both Charlotte and Trudy were exhausted.

  It had been particularly busy for Trudy because she was having to cover the majority of Daryl’s work on her own. Charlotte and Harvey were in the process of trying to negotiate the sale of Sweet Temptation products through supermarkets and fast-food outlets. Because this involved Charlotte making a lot of telephone conversations from the privacy of her office, Trudy had been left to single-handedly manage the reception desk and oversee production.

  She had also had to deal with an unexpected call from Mark.

  ‘I know it’s a little cheesy to call the place where you work,’ he explained. ‘But I wanted to make sure you were OK after our date the other night.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. ‘It was a lovely evening.’

  ‘Fancy doing it again?’

  He didn’t leave the question there. He suggested a movie followed by a meal at the pizzeria adjacent to the cinema. He made the offer sound like nothing more than a pair of old friends going out to share an evening’s food, company and entertainment.

  She was on the verge of stopping him to say that she couldn’t accept the invitation because she was seeing someone. She didn’t make the interruption because she knew, if she said that to Mark, Daryl would find out and want to know who she was seeing.

  ‘That sounds lovely.’

  She said the words quickly for fear that, if she thought about what she was saying, she would regret the idea and tell him that she wasn’t interested. It wasn’t that she wanted to have a relationship with Mark. She wanted to have a relationship with Bill. But the only relationship she and Bill could share was a secret one and a part of her seemed insistent that she deserved something more.

  ‘I can’t make it tonight,’ she told him. ‘I’m filming tonight. But I’m free tomorrow.’

  Mark sounded thrilled. They exchanged mobile numbers and agreed they would meet outside the cinema once Mark had confirmed the time for an appropriate movie.

  Not sure why she had agreed to the date, and wondering how she was going to explain this to Bill, Trudy tried to busy herself with handling calls and orders and not thinking about what she had done.

  She had started to do some of the necessary invoicing but the process was complicated and she was repeatedly interrupted by phone calls and queries. She finished the day exhausted and believing she hadn’t managed a half of what Daryl could usually achieve. More annoying than anything else was the fact that she hadn’t even attempted to do any of the jobs with Daryl’s usual flair for dressing in designer fashions. The woman was a powerhouse and Trudy wondered if they could make it company policy that Daryl was never again allowed to have time off.

  As soon as Sweet Temptation was closed for the evening Trudy and Charlotte drove to the Master Baker TV studios. Trudy spent an hour in wardrobe and make-up while her friend sat nearby, busying herself with phone calls, texts and tweets to Harvey. Charlotte shared occasional comments with Trudy, talking about the progress of the supermarket deals and the plans for her wedding, and mentioning her growing concern for Daryl.

  When filming finally began Trudy felt exhausted. She was weary from the excesses of a day when she didn’t think she’d stopped. She trudged like a zombie through the first hour’s filming and was only brought back to some semblance of lucidity when she was asked to judge the first round of desserts from a group of semi-finalists.

  The theme for the first of the semi-finals was coffee.

  The majority of contestants had produced variations on tiramisus and traditional coffee cakes. There was nothing inherently wrong with any of those desserts but, because each one was so similar to the other it was difficult to think of them as other than commonplace.

  The two pieces that stood out for Trudy were a hazelnut-mocha dacquoise and an imaginatively fashioned coffee-flavoured bun encased in a pastry shell.

  The dacquoise was delicious. Consisting of layer upon layer of mocha-flavoured mousse over hazelnut meringue, it was a mouth-watering combination of tastes that had her convinced she had encountered the evening’s first winning dish.

  But the presentation of the coffee-flavoured bun in its pastry shell made her rethink that decision. The contestant had sculpted a small pastry handle and attached it to the side of the pastry shell so it looked like a coffee cup. The presentation had been completed with a swirl of whipped cream on the top, sprinkled with the faintest dusting of cocoa powder.

  She was consulting with Carlos and he shared her view that the two dishes were the best on display.

  ‘It has to be one of these two,’ she said firmly.

  He nodded agreement. ‘The coffee-cup appearance of the bun is cute enough to win,’ he said. ‘Whilst I think the dacquoise tastes divine, it looks shoddily put together.’ He laughed and added, ‘It looks like it’s been constructed during an earthquake by someone with Parkinson’s disease.’

  Trudy stared at him aghast.

  ‘You’re not going to say something that offensive on the show, are you?’

  Carlos shrugged. A small smirk played on his lips. ‘Is that too much?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Should I say it looks like it’s been made by a drunken sailor during a rough crossing?’

  She didn’t know why he needed to say anything unpleasant. The dish was a dacquoise. It was never going to look particularly tidy. She shook her head in disbelief and tried to think of a diplomatic way to tell Carlos he was being unkind.

  Before she could form the words, the triumphant contestants were brought on to discuss their creations. Trudy discovered that the dacquoise had been made by a young woman called Carol-Ann, a very strong contender since the earliest episodes of the show, with a likeable personality.

  The coffee cup had been produced by Donny’s mysterious friend Victor.

  Trudy gave Victor the warmest fake smile she could muster.

  Both contestants seemed delighted with the results and pleased that their dishes had been ranked so highly. The production team called a halt to filming while the technical team set up the evening’s n
ext round of the competition.

  Trudy excused herself from Carlos’s company and hurried back to make-up to find Charlotte. Her friend was just completing a phone call to Harvey. Trudy had to listen to Charlotte’s farewell kisses before she had a chance to talk.

  Eavesdropping on the intimate exchange made her smile.

  Charlotte and Harvey were ideal for each other and Trudy was delighted that her friend had found someone. Obviously it hurt to think that Charlotte was in a relationship that could be made public, whilst her involvement with Bill was being kept quiet like a shameful secret. Trudy brooded on that thought and wondered why she had been so foolish as to accept Mark’s invitation to go to the cinema and the pizzeria. She pulled out her phone, ready to send Mark a text and tell him that she wouldn’t be able to make the date.

  Charlotte said her final goodbye and severed the connection.

  ‘Did you want me?’

  Trudy put her phone away without sending Mark the text message. Dismissing the issue of her date from her thoughts she asked, ‘Do you know who Victor is?’

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘Which one’s Victor?’

  Linking arms and dragging her friend back to the studio, Trudy slyly pointed him out. ‘He’s the one sitting on his own over there,’ she explained. ‘He has the bald head and goatee beard.’

  She waited until Charlotte was looking in the right direction before saying, ‘I know him from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. When I saw him here last week he was in the studio with Donny.’

  ‘Donny?’ Charlotte couldn’t disguise the panic in her voice. ‘Is he still here?’

  ‘No,’ Trudy promised. ‘At least, I don’t think so. Donny was here last week but I haven’t seen him here this week.’

  Charlotte looked to be scouring the studio audience with her gaze. The ‘V’ on her brow was set at its deepest. She snorted with disgust as she glared towards one darkened corner of the studio.

  ‘Is that Donny over there?’ she asked softly.

  Trudy squinted where Charlotte was pointing and wondered if her friend was right. The figure she was indicating could have been Donny but he was far away and the lighting was poor.