How could she have got it so badly wrong?
Because if there was one dessert that she could not resist it was chocolate profiteroles.
A shiver of anticipation swept through Daisy as she considered how long it would take her to dash to her car with her wet dress and pretend that she hadn’t changed her mind. It would only take a few minutes, and she could drive away and put this whole crazy idea down to a near-miss.
There was not an ounce of fat on his back. Each muscle and sinew seemed defined and pumped as he worked. The last time she had seen a body like that was on TV one evening, when she’d been flicking channels and had come across a swimming contest where the male swimmers were explaining the different strokes. Topless. Wearing small trunks.
That had been on film. Seeing it for real only a few yards away was quite a different matter. Max was not a professional dancer, or an athlete in any way, but if he ever wanted a change in direction he could be. She would even write the recommendation herself.
Were men born with shoulders like that?
At least Max was wearing pants.
As she watched, dry-mouthed, it was a guilty pleasure simply to take a moment to watch as his biceps and the muscles in his back and shoulders moved as he swept the bucket of water up and tipped it over his long blond hair.
He really was spellbinding.
She was ogling the man she was going to be working with over the next few days.
Oh, boy.
Why, oh, why did she always have to lust after the handsome ones who were so far out of her league as to be on another planet? She had been here before. Okay, a chocolate shop in Paris was not exactly the same as a country garden in deepest English countryside, but it was just the same. One look. One smile. And she was right back to being a girl from nowhere who was putty in the hands of a powerful gorgeous man.
In other words—she was pathetic.
She had learnt from her mistake with Pascal and knew precisely what she had to do. Accept the fact that she was attracted to this man and get on with her work. No touching. Simple.
She would handle this her usual way. By keeping him distant. That was the thing.
Max was going to help her take a step closer to opening her own chocolate shop and making the dream she had shared with her precious father come true. He had sacrificed so much for her—she owed it to her dad as well as to herself to give this contest everything she had.
If she was really lucky Max would keep his top on.
And if he didn’t?
Just at that moment he whipped a towel from the back of a garden chair and turned around. And looked at her.
Really looked at her.
As though he was seeing her for the first time and he liked what he saw. His eyes met hers, and for the first time in her life Daisy knew beyond any doubt what it felt like to be the object of a man’s total admiration and respect. Her heart and her mind sang.
The smile lines at the sides of his mouth lifted up and he nodded. But his eyes never left hers.
‘Nice outfit,’ he commented. ‘It looks a lot better on you than me.’
‘Undoubtedly true, but thank you all the same. I’m considering giving your chocolate another chance—but first there is something you need to know.’
He gave her a lazy smile and wrapped the towel around his shoulders before stretching both arms onto the back of the chair. ‘Go ahead. I’m all yours.’
Daisy paused for a moment, then lifted her chin, heart thumping. ‘Okay. Short version,’ she replied. ‘You already know that my dad was a baker, but he loved chocolate. People used to come for miles to order special chocolate birthday cakes, and even a couple of chocolate wedding cakes—but they were not so popular back then as they are now.’
Her hands stilled and she lowered the bowl holding her wet dress onto the patio.
‘But he was never satisfied with the block chocolate he bought from the local wholesaler. So every week there would be deliveries arriving in the post from suppliers with strange foreign names. From South America, Africa, Belgium.’ She looked up at Max and nodded. ‘I had the best stamp collection in my school, and for a while I thought Flynn’s bakery was going to become Flynn’s Bakery and Chocolate Shop.’
As Max watched, her throat seemed to tighten, and she turned away from him and licked her lips.
‘But somehow it didn’t happen. When I asked him about it, he said that business had fallen away and we didn’t have the money to invest in more chocolate work. He was a single dad doing the best he could. He’d come back to it later.’ Daisy coughed and shook her head. ‘He died of cancer three years ago, and I found the recipe I showed you earlier tucked into the back of a chocolate recipe book. He had been working on the perfect mixture for his own brand of chocolate for years and never told me.’
Max took a breath, as though he was about to offer his condolences, but stayed silent, letting her talk, letting her tell him in her own way.
She reached into her overall pocket and pulled out the precious piece of paper she had rescued from Delores. She turned around to face Max. ‘So you see, this is not just about the contest. This is personal. I want to honour his memory in the best way I can, and this is the way I can do it. That means that you are going to have to prove to me that I can trust you. Because you will not be given a third chance. Not with me.’ Daisy smiled and blew out hard. ‘And now I have become stupidly sentimental. And very bossy. Crazy, huh?’
She lifted her hand to wipe away a tear from her cheek, and gasped as the paper fluttered to the patio stones.
Instantly Max swept down to pick it up, but as he stood up and presented it to Daisy she looked up into a face so full of sadness and regret and longing and understanding that her own heart took a second beat. Because at that second she felt a bond with this man she’d only known for a few hours which was so deep and so powerful that it made her dizzy.
Daisy was lost in those hypnotic blue eyes, wiping away sensible thought and replacing it with an unbidden desire to connect with this remarkable man.
This was probably why, without his asking permission or forgiveness, she allowed him to wipe away the single tear that had fallen onto her cheek with his thumb.
‘I am so sorry for your loss. I truly am. Thank you for telling me. And for giving me a second chance to show you that I can make this work. For you, me and your dad,’ he said seriously.
‘In that case,’ she replied with a small sniff, ‘if we are going to make some more chocolate this afternoon we had better start on the cleaning. So … Where do you keep your mop?’
CHAPTER SIX
‘WELL, that took a lot longer than I expected.’ Daisy sighed as she ducked her head to step down into the kitchen. ‘Your kitchen is so wonderfully cool. It’s bliss.’
‘Thanks. I’m glad that you like it,’ Max replied as he flung an arm out towards the kitchen table and chairs. ‘How about some coffee to keep us going? Hopefully we won’t have to spend another two hours cleaning after the next batch.’
‘Please. And don’t even joke about that.’ Daisy coughed and waved her arm around as dust flew up from every surface. ‘I … er … take it you haven’t been to the cottage for a while?’
‘I spent three weeks over the Christmas holiday here with Freya. Kate had booked a ski holiday with her new boyfriend,’ Max replied, then paused before shrugging. ‘Who is now her new fiancé, by the way, so it was down to me.’ He half turned towards Daisy as he filled the kettle and smiled. ‘Do you remember what the weather was like in January? The snow fell for five days without a break. It was the first time in years that the village was cut off—and you know what? It was wonderful. I would not have missed it for the world.’
‘Wonderful?’ Daisy looked at him in shock. ‘How did you manage with a little girl to amuse and take care of?’
‘My first stop on day one had been the supermarket, so we had a full refrigerator and store cupboard. We didn’t starve. It might sound weird, but even lugging logs to fe
ed the open fires turned into fun when I was pulling them on the same wooden sledge I used as a boy, through snowflakes the size of large coins falling vertically from the sky.’
‘You do make it sound rather magical.’ Daisy sighed again. ‘Your little girl must have adored it.’
‘It was magical, and Freya loved every second. The village had turned into a winter wonderland, which to a seven-year-old like Freya was like a fairytale come alive. Complete with snowball fights, sledging contests on the gentle hillside behind the house, and a real Christmas tree from the local forest. And you should have seen the snowmen we made.’
Daisy found a clear spot on the table to rest her elbows. ‘Freya is a very lucky girl. My January was rather different. You can imagine what a nightmare the snow is when you are being paid to create someone else’s wonderful New Year party. I spent every hour of the day working with Tara just to keep up with the orders. Then battling through the weather to make our deliveries. It was madness in the city.’
‘Freya and I are both lucky to have avoided that.’
Daisy stopped rummaging around inside her huge shoulder bag and glanced up at him. ‘I was admiring the photographs of Freya when I was getting changed. Do you manage to get back to see her very often?’
Max rested his hands on the back of a chair for a second, then lifted them away and raised them shoulder-high as he spoke. ‘Often?’ he repeated sadly, his eyebrows crunching down as creases formed on his brow. ‘As often as I can. But this last Christmas was pretty special.’
Max busied his hands pulling down mugs and plates from the shelves above the worktops. ‘Problem is, these days I spend most of the year in St Lucia so the cottage is left empty. It doesn’t like it. And the garden is a jungle.’
He looked up just as Daisy reached over and touched the first of two large hand-painted beakers hanging from hooks below the dresser shelves. He had to stop himself from jumping up and snatching the china from her fingers.
Freya’s favourite cup! His little girl would be heartbroken if anything happened to it.
‘It’s okay. I have some mugs here,’ he said quickly. ‘Would you prefer coffee or tea?’
‘Tea, please—if we have milk. Otherwise coffee would be fine,’ Daisy replied, and shuffled into a comfier spot on the padded seat cushion.
‘Oh, we have milk. There may even be cheese and crackers. And if we don’t want our own cooking tonight we could always have dinner at the local pub. The chef is Italian and some of his regional dishes are pretty good—especially the braised beef and … What?’ he asked as she looked blankly at him.
‘Dinner?’ Daisy looked at Max as though he had suggested running off to join the circus. ‘Why would I want to have dinner here?’
She tilted her head slightly, and there was enough of an edge in her voice to drop the temperature in the room a few degrees lower.
‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding. I am driving back to London tonight, with some blocks of Treveleyn Estate chocolate. I hope that you did not expect me to work on the recipes here and travel back and forth to London every day.’
‘Oh, no. I would not expect you to do that.’ Max raised one eyebrow higher that the other. ‘I expected you to stay the night so that we can work on the recipes together here tomorrow. Sugar? Or are you sweet enough?’
Daisy sucked in a breath, because the way his eyes were totally focused on hers was making her dizzy, and the fact that he was holding out a sugar bowl at the same time only served to confuse her more.
‘So let me get this straight.’ She blinked and waved away the sugar. ‘First of all you have dragged me down to this back-of-beyond cottage, which took me ages to find, only to tell me that you expect me to make the chocolate. And now I find out that you expect me to stay the night so that I can …’
‘Work on the recipes first thing in the morning with fresh chocolate. I thought that it would save you the long drive to London tonight and then back again in the morning,’ Max replied with a smile in his voice, and passed her a steaming hot mug of tea.
Daisy broke eye contact and shook her head slowly from side to side, aware that her mouth had fallen open. She closed it with a snap. ‘You do know that you are impossible, don’t you? Contrary to common belief, not all women are mind-readers.’ She waved the fingers of her right hand across her brow. ‘Unless someone says the actual words, I have no way of knowing what is going on in that brain of yours. Which leaves me only one question.’
‘Please—ask away,’ Max replied, lifting his coffee towards her.
‘Do you have any other great thoughts that you want to share with me? Because I have no intention of staying the night. And I certainly have not come here to cook the chocolate.’
Daisy glanced around the tiny space around her, which was devoid of anything remotely resembling a worktop or catering equipment.
She was used to pristine shiny stainless steel counters, like the ones at Barone and in Tara’s catering unit. Right now the best she was going to find was a wooden butcher’s block and this small kitchen table.
The contrast was so enormous it wasn’t even funny.
‘Do you even have an oven that works? Because it is has taken me a year to collect together all of the specialist chocolatier’s equipment I need at Tara’s, and I am very picky about where I cook. Very. Picky. I had planned to spend most of tomorrow experimenting with the chocolate in a few standard recipes. In my own kitchen. Using my own equipment.’
She lowered her forearms back to the table, lifted her chin and stared at him down her nose. She could only do that because he had slouched down in his seat and was, for once, lower than she was.
‘But to do that I need to have a couple of kilos of this amazing chocolate I have been promised. No chocolate. No cooking. No contest. Am I getting through to you? Max? Because I suggest that we make the chocolate first, before we move onto grandiose plans of what to cook with it.’
In the silence that followed his eyes remained completely focused on the cup of black coffee he was holding, blowing on its surface.
It left plenty of time for her to attune herself to his body, and the way it responded to tiny changes in his movement.
The muscles in his arms below the sleeves of his small, tight T-shirt flexed and twitched in the action, and her poor heart thumped in tune with every beat of the pulse she could see in his neck. The faint breeze coming in through the kitchen window did nothing to dissipate the heat of this broad-shouldered man sitting only inches away, who was still looking at his coffee with those laser blue eyes.
And it annoyed her enormously that she felt a twinge of jealousy that he was not looking at her with that much rapt attention.
The seconds stretched and Daisy breathed in slowly, inhaling a complex blend of man, the floral perfume from the climbing musk roses which cascaded down around the window outside, and the old wood of the cottage. Dust and the scent of fresh-cut grass from his clothes wafted towards her as he shuffled on his seat, tilted his chair back and reached backwards for a small metal tin on the pine wood dresser to his side.
Unfortunately for Daisy that meant his body stretched back. His T-shirt lifted to display more of those tight abs, and the muscles inside his trousers clenched hard to keep him balanced.
That was more than could be said for her heart-rate.
Desperately trying to find something—anything—to distract her, Daisy clutched hold of her tea and took a long sip. And then another.
‘Try one of these,’ Max finally said, as the front legs of his chair reconnected with the tile floor. ‘Make you feel a lot better.’
Not so sure about that, Daisy thought, drinking down even more tea, and then realised that Max was holding out a biscuit tin.
She peered inside and saw two fairycakes in paper cases. There was a crude dollop of icing on the top of each one, and pink and purple sprinkles. So, all in all, just about the last thing she would have expected.
What was this man doing to her
? How many more surprises did he have up his sleeve?
Just when she thought she had a grip he did something which whipped the carpet out from under her feet.
She picked up one of the cakes and stared at it for a second, before peeling off the paper and biting into it.
‘In case you were wondering, Freya and her schoolfriend decided to have a dolls’ house tea party yesterday, just before I took off. So I rustled up some super-quick little cakes before her mother caught me messing up her kitchen. The girls enjoyed them.’
He pointed at the remains of her cake, which was halfway between the table and her mouth.
‘They may not be chef quality, but what do you think? I did try to follow the instructions on the packet, but they were rather vague and my lovely daughter was no help at all.’
Think? She was expected to think? And judge fairycakes? That he’d made from a packet mix?
Oh, why did he have to make fairycakes for his daughter? That was a totally unfair advantage.
Of course there was no way that he could know that some of her most precious family memories were of when her dad had made fairycakes and mini-scones for dolls’ tea parties with her mother. Then her mother had died and there had been just the two of them against the world, but standing in that kitchen licking cake batter from a wooden spoon had somehow made it all better.
There was no way for Max to know that. How could he? They had only just met. He did not know a thing about her life and the bumpy road she had travelled to be sitting at this table. Winning this contest could open up all kinds of doors to achieving her dream—and all he could offer her was a packet fairycake.
What was it about him that made it impossible for her to stay grumpy with him? It was so very annoying. Especially when he was giving her his last fairycake.
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