The Secret Ingredient (15 page)

Tears pricked the backs of Lottie’s eyes as she watched in astonishment as Rob Beresford slid off his chair and onto his knees in front of her on the floor of the cake shop.

And her heart felt as though it was going to explode with happiness.

He didn’t care that the girls from the Bake and Bitch club had sneaked out and were peeking at them from behind the counter, or that a lady with a toddler in her arms was staring at them in disbelief from the back of the tea rooms.

‘That’s why I stayed up last night working on this recipe. Just for you, only for you. Always and for ever, my love. I know I don’t deserve you, but if you give me a chance I’ll show you what real love is like. Will you take a chance, Lottie? Will you take a chance on us?’

The whole room went completely silent. No one moved, not even the toddler. Lottie felt that every eye followed the movement of her hand as she slowly picked up a spoon, waved it in the air for a millisecond.

And then plunged it into the lemon drizzle courting cake, picked up a huge piece from the very centre and brought it to her lips.

Rob was smiling at her all the way as she carefully closed her mouth around the spoon and slid the moist, succulent cake onto her tongue.

An explosion of flavour made her groan out loud and her eyelids fluttered closed as she savoured every morsel. It was the most delicous thing that she had ever eaten. No way was Rob going to make this cake for any other girl. A huge round of applause and cheering burst out in the room and when she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was the expression in Rob’s eyes.

And in that instant she knew what it felt like to be the most beautiful woman in the room. She was loved and loved in return.

‘Good cake.’ She grinned. ‘You can get up now. Because my answer is yes, yes, yes.’ And she fell into his arms, laughing and crying and laughing again, and knew that her heart had found the only home she would ever want.

There was a lot to be said for the perfect recipe for seduction.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from HER CLIENT FROM HELL by Louisa George.

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ONE

Sweet Treats Website Contact Form, 10th
August, 9.55p.m.

Hi! How can Sweet Treats help you?

Contact from: [email protected]

I need catering for a wedding party of 50
(fifty) adults (no children) on 6th September. Better include some vegan
options. Nothing too ‘out there’. (Neither too trendy nor
endangered).

Send menu suggestions ASAP.

I hope your food is better than your
website.

JB

* * *

Whoa,
someone was
in serious need of a happy pill.

Cassie Sweet squeezed the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes
and wondered what the hell she’d done that was so bad she had to endure
this.

Impossible clients
. 1: Like
JB@zoom
. At way too late o’clock, making rude comments
about her business. 2: People who said things and then explained them in
brackets.

Impossible choices
. Her regular
no-holds-barred mojito night with the girls struck out for a mind-distorting
evening in front of the laptop trying to magic her business out of financial
chaos.

And
impossible decisions
. Instead
of telling JB where to stick their rude comments, she’d have to smile sweetly
and reply positively. It was a job and, even though her work schedule was
overflowing, one glance at her bank statement told her there were far too many
minus signs. Looked as if she didn’t have a choice.

Email to:
[email protected]

Well, hi, JB. Are you Mr? Miss? Dr? Rev?
Lord?

Cassie resisted the temptation to add
Sith?

Congratulations on your upcoming
wedding!

Sweet Treats would be happy to help. Please
find enclosed a copy of our specials menu and suggested vegan options for
three, four and five courses. Please don’t hesitate to contact me for
further info. I’m more than happy to talk things over.

Cassie

For Sweet Treats

She looked back down at the spreadsheet and willed the red
numbers to be black. Damn her stupid trusting genes. She was way too much like
her father; there was no doubt that William Sweet’s too-trusting blood
definitely ran through her veins.

The figures swam in and out of focus. One day she’d been
financially stable and then...wham! Sucker-punched by betrayal. She would never
trust a man again.

Except, perhaps, for her bank manager, who she would not only
trust but would love for ever if he could help her work a way out of this. Or
maybe the bank manager was a woman? Who knew?

Her ex, actually. He’d set up the accounts with Cassie’s
signature and apparent blessing. She, meanwhile, had focused on the catering
side, giving little attention to running the business.

Well, hell, she was paying attention now. And oh, it would be
so easy to run to her family and ask for help, but this time—
this time
—she was going to prove them all wrong. She
did have stickability. She could cope without them.

Unlike her failed dog-walking business...her brief foray as a
children’s entertainer...or the blip that was her disastrous market stall—why
the hell they had to have them so early in the morning she didn’t know. This
time she was going alone and this time she would succeed.

Her mobile rang.
Blocked
number.

Glancing at the clock, she breathed in, fists curling in
anticipation. What time was it in deepest, conveniently out of killing distance,
South America? By the time she’d finished with him, his number wouldn’t be the
only thing that was blocked.

Picking up, she kept her voice steady. ‘Patrick, if that’s you
I swear I’m going to take out my paring knife and chop your—’

‘Hey, hey. Steady, lady. Put. The. Knife. Down.’ The voice, so
not her ex’s, was deep and dusky, a little tired at the edges. Like her. It
wasn’t a posh accent per se—definitely London. Did she mention dusky?

‘I’m not Patrick. And even if I were I wouldn’t admit to it
now.’

‘Believe me, if you were Patrick you wouldn’t have a breath
left in your body.’ Although, three months down the line, she’d given up hope of
seeing him or her money again. Case closed, they’d said.

‘Oh? A woman scorned?’

She supposed she was. Her ex hadn’t so much broken her heart as
completely stamped on every trusting fibre in her body. ‘Who is this?’

‘Jack Brennan. I just got your email with suggestions.’

Not the ones she was really thinking. Such an unexpectedly warm
voice for one so rude.

‘Oh, hello. Yes. My food is great; I come highly recommended.
You saw the testimonial page?’

‘Eventually. Does it need to be so busy? I couldn’t find
anything; it’s definitely not user-friendly. There are too many tabs. Too many
options.’

Well, really? Mr Sexy Voice had become Mr Cocky and Irritating
in the blink of an eye. Maybe she wasn’t so desperate that she needed to add his
job to her already overflowing schedule.

Yes, she was. ‘Thanks for the feedback. I’ll make a note and
consider a re-jig of my website next time I have an advertising budget.’ Like
never. Raising her head above the cyberworld parapet and reminding the webmaster
of her existence, and therefore her unpaid overdue bill, would only cause more
trouble. ‘I guess it could do with a spruce.’

‘It needs a deforestation.’

Like your manners
. ‘As it happens,
the website detail belonged to my...er...ex-business partner. I’m making
changes. It takes time.’

‘Your ex-partner and Patrick—I presume they’re the same
person?’

‘Yes, he was the brains behind the business, allegedly. I’m the
chef.’

‘
Private party? Personal chef
.
Yes—’

‘Please don’t make any comments about that byline. I came up
with it, and I like it.’ It was about the only thing she had left.
Apart from my dignity
, and that was starting to sag a
little round the edges too.

But that voice... How could someone so rude sound so hot? It
was like chocolate velvet, wrapping her up and making parts of her warm that
hadn’t been warm in quite a while.

Which was a stark enough reminder that this was business.
Hadn’t she learnt already never to mix that with pleasure?

And she was not that desperate to flirt with a client
who was getting married
. It was just a voice.

‘So, considering your late call, I presume you are interested
in using Sweet Treats for the wedding? Have you had a look at the menu options?
I’m happy to juggle things around if you want to mix and match.’

‘I don’t know. It’s complicated. We need to meet and discuss
this further. And time’s running out.’ She wondered how easy it was for him to
speak without the aid of brackets to explain everything in duplicate. A hum of
traffic buzzed in the background. He raised his voice. ‘How about tomorrow?
Afternoon? Evening?’

‘I’ll just check.’ Looking at her diary, she worked out she
could fit him in between Zorb’s regular Friday Feast lunch order, little
Hannah’s third birthday party and the carnival meeting early Saturday morning.
Couldn’t she? Sleep was seriously overrated. As was a social life.

As for a sex life? She literally laughed. Out loud. Sex was
something she remembered from her dim and distant past. Vaguely.
Hell
, twenty-six and sex was just a memory? If she
planned right, she could fit in a quickie between the hours of three and four in
the morning. Next Wednesday week. But, in her experience, most guys weren’t
particularly happy with that. Well, not the kind of guys she wanted to spend
that special hour with, anyway.

Better make that two people in need of a happy pill. ‘I can fit
you in at around six-thirty. Would that work? Where are you based?’ She jotted
down the details. ‘Actually, you’re just down the road from me; I’m in Notting
Hill too. When the business started to take off we decided to move—’

He sighed. ‘Look, I’m in a cab; it’s hard to hear. I don’t need
your life story. I just need food.’

‘Of course. Of course.’
Tetchy.
She
hadn’t quite mastered the art of managing her thoughts in silence. Or managing
anything at all, really, outside the kitchen. But she was trying hard. ‘I
usually meet my clients at Bean in Notting Hill Gate, just a few shops down from
the cinema. It’s a sort of café-bar, open office space for independent
professionals. I’ll hire a meeting room so we can chat in relative privacy.
There are also office facilities there in case we need any photocopying et
cetera. If that suits your requirements, Mr Brennan?’

‘Perfectly.’ His growl wasn’t nearly as scary as he intended.
‘This is my first time at organising a wedding breakfast and I want to get it
right. I’ve absolutely no intention of doing it again.’

‘I’m sure Mrs Brennan-to-be will be very glad to hear
that.’

‘What?’ Some tooting and a curse from a voice that wasn’t dark
and rich interrupted the conversation. Then he was back. ‘Sorry?’

Cassie spoke slowly. ‘Your intended? Mrs Brennan-to-be. Will
she be joining us tomorrow? I find that it cuts down on problems and saves a lot
of everyone’s time if the happy couple thrash out ideas and differences way
before the event. So I’d prefer to meet you both. Tomorrow. If that’s okay?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘There is no Mrs Brennan-to-be.’

Ah. She knew it—that deep voice was way too good to be
heterosexual. ‘Oh. Sorry. Er...well, bring
Mr
Brennan-to-be along.’

‘No. No. No. Not at all. I’ll explain tomorrow...er...?’ She
imagined him sitting in the back of a cab, squinting through a monocle at her
business card, trying to make out the name of the woman he was phoning.

‘Cassie,’ she reminded him. No wife? No husband. ‘Erm...you’re
not one of those marrying his pet iguana kind of guys, are you? I mean, I’m not
one to judge, but I’m not sure what iguanas eat.’

He laughed. Finally. Hesitant—reluctant, even, but there. Free
for a moment, unctuous like thick, warm chocolate ganache. Or was it just a
gasp? Whichever, it was gone as quickly as it appeared. ‘I have no intention of
marrying a man or an iguana. Or anyone, for that matter, Cassie. Yes. Short for
Cassandra?’

‘Says the guy who doesn’t want my life story.’ But now she
really, really wanted his. Although she wasn’t surprised such a grumpy, tetchy
man hadn’t got a wife-to-be or a husband and was only appealing to a
reptile.

But she really, really needed his money.

There was another toot of a horn, his voice fading in and out.
‘Tomorrow, then. Oh, and one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Leave the paring knife at home.’

This had to be the weirdest conversation she’d ever had.
Organising a wedding breakfast for a man who wasn’t getting married. Maybe he’d
had his heart broken and couldn’t move on? Maybe he was channelling Miss
Havisham? Tragic.

And that was definitely none of her concern. Because she was
not going to allow any man to wheedle his way into her business or her
heart—
especially
her heart—ever again.

* * *

Jack Brennan jogged down the steps of his Notting Hill
home and checked his watch—time minus twenty minutes. What the hell he was doing
he didn’t know. But if he could organise a film crew to shadow a rock group
across twenty European music festival venues at the drop of a hat, he could
organise a few flimsy sandwiches.

No.

His heart squeezed a little. Lizzie was not getting sandwiches
for her wedding. He’d make damned sure of that. She deserved a whole lot better,
whether she liked it or not. He just had to find the time—and courage—to tell
her.

A wall of noise greeted him as he opened the door to Bean. The
café was filled with the Friday after-work-before-dinner crowd. With standing
room only, he was grateful that the scatty-sounding Cassie had shown a little
foresight to book a room, because discussing the finer points of canapés across
this racket would be impossible. Still, the food smelt of something exotic and
spicy—garlic, chilli and coriander—sending his stomach into a growling fit, and
he remembered he hadn’t eaten. Editing his current documentary had taken up the
majority of his afternoon. Food had, as always, taken a back seat.

Ten minutes later he was still standing there, blood pressure
escalating. Unused to being stood up, looked over or generally let down these
days, he made for the exit. Cassie Sweet had had her chance. If she couldn’t
make it on time for the initial meeting, how could he trust her to be reliable
for the event? The event he needed so badly to be a success.

As he reached for the handle the door swung almost off its
hinges and a blur of colour rushed in. ‘Hey—Mr Brennan? Jack? Are you Jack? I’m
Cassie.’

‘You’re late.’

‘I know—I’m sorry. I tried to call but reception was patchy—’
She dug deep into a large battered brown satchel that looked like a relic from
way before his school days and pulled out a phone and showed him it. ‘I got held
up with a client at a birthday party. There was an emergency and I just couldn’t
leave her with all those children.’

From the phone call last night and what he knew about
chefs—which was diddly-squat—he’d conjured up an image of an older, larger,
bitter woman, hair piled up on her head exposing two fat ruddy cheeks and small
glittering eyes. Okay, so what he knew about chefs amounted to a TV reality show
about some Scottish bloke swearing in a sweat-filled steel kitchen and the
overly cuddly nineteen-twenties period drama below-stairs cook.

Wrong. So damned wrong on every level.

A twinkle in her eye, yes. A cocky mouth, yes. But he hadn’t
imagined such a mouth—teasing and smiling. Lips that were full and covered with
a slick of something shimmery and red. Pinned-up hair, yes. But secured with a
pair of chopsticks on the top of her head, with wisps of vibrant auburn
corkscrewing at angles round her face.