Fortunately, he didn’t need to lift his head to see who was responsible.
“Where’s Aaron?” He completed a wisp-fine curlicue, moved on to the next, and another. “And somebody please take that pan off the heat.”
A quick clash of metal before his sous-chef crossed his line of sight with a steaming pan. More ingredients going straight in the bin. “Aaron’s . . .” Liam looked around the busy kitchen and grimaced. “Well, he was here.”
Dominic completed the tray of truffles and slid them onto the racks for packaging. Pulling off his gloves with a snap, he gestured Liam toward the remaining sweets on the assembly line. “Finish up, would you?”
He found Aaron in the back hallway, just coming in from the alleyway. He was clutching his phone. “My office. Now.”
They were short-staffed in the kitchens today and the busiest they’d been all month out front, thanks to a blasting of promos for Operation Cake. No complaints about the increased foot traffic, but he’d already endured five hours of mostly mediocre bakes in the TV studio this morning, culminating in the elimination of Byron. He of the clown phobia, lethal scones, and today, a shortbread sculpture of the Victoria Memorial that looked like a toddler had got into the biscuit tin and emptied the contents onto the floor.
The kid had cried. Tears dripping down the peach fuzz on his cheeks—before he’d double-checked which camera to sniff into and delivered a speech straight off the cutting-room floor of a third-rate battle flick. The wounded hero, reluctant to abandon his comrades to the encroaching evil.
Insert clip of Dominic.
Unless there was a genuine reason for Aaron’s increasingly poor efforts, he was not in the mood for this.
He perched on the edge of his desk and eyed his employee, who was currently demonstrating both shifty eyes and shuffling feet. “Aaron,” he said, his tone obviously not what the other man was expecting; Aaron stopped fidgeting and looked at him. “I shouldn’t need to point out that your work is not up to standard. You’re struggling. If it’s a health issue, either physical or mental, we can offer multiple avenues of support. Life deals a fucker of a card sometimes, it happens frequently, and with respect to work it’s not a big deal. We’ll help you through it. If it’s the work itself, again there’s assistance available, but if things don’t improve soon—”
“I’m sorry,” Aaron interrupted miserably. “It’s my nan. My grandmother. She’s not well, and I’ve had to move in with her. There’s no one else. And I’ve asked her not to call me at work unless it’s an emergency, but . . . but she forgets . . . And I’m tired. God, I’m so tired.”
“Right.” For a moment, Dominic said nothing. Then he nodded at a chair. “Take a seat.”
When Aaron left the office ten minutes later, some of the strain had left his features.
Dominic wished he could say the same. And when he opened his emails and read the message from his lawyer, any hope of salvaging this day from the scrap heap went out the window like a rocket.
He jerked open his door, ready to stalk out in search of his sister, but at least the universe was prepared to offer the sop of hand-delivering his target. Pet stood with her hand partly raised. He’d give her the benefit of the doubt that he’d interrupted her midknock, but her style was more shove-open-and-sail-merrily-on-in.
“Hello!” Her smile faltered when she saw his expression.
A few seconds ticked by.
“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re pissed about something, or if that’s just your face now.”
“I just received an email from my lawyer. Regarding a substantial financial deposit.”
“Yay?” Pet suggested without much hope.
“Chair. Sit. Now.” Dominic jerked the door wider, and she sighed.
Looking extremely put-upon, she brushed past him, bypassed the chair, and hopped up to sit on his desk. “I know you were already practically collecting a pension when I was born, and I might be currently between fathers,” Pet muttered, “but I’m a good decade past the parental lecture, bro.” She looked at him. “That money is rightfully yours. Mum left it to you. You’re never going to see the half you generously and stupidly gave to Lorraine again, but I’m not keeping your share.”
“I don’t have a clue what latent burst of remorse or guilt prompted Lana to leave me a third of her estate, but we hadn’t spoken for over twenty years. I severed those ties at thirteen years old, and that cut was permanent. On both sides. I have no interest in her money. It belongs to you and Lorraine. And you’ll take it.”
“No. I won’t. You were still her son. And she owed you.” The tiniest quaver rocked Pet’s instant rebuttal, but her gaze was solid. Stubborn. “Stop giving it back. I don’t want it.”
Dominic looked at her. Those big dark eyes, fixed on him. Twenty-five years ago, those same eyes, in a round little baby face. Trusting. Loving.
Abruptly, he turned away. “Then donate it to charity. Feed some cats. Clean some rivers. Set up a scholarship fund for gifted bloody chihuahuas, if you like.”
His office had been cleaned only this morning, but the air felt thick, as if it were layered with dust.
Voice clipped, he spoke solely to break the intense silence. “What do you mean, you’re ‘currently between fathers’?”
Gerald Hunt—Pet’s father, Dominic’s . . . stepfather, for lack of a more specific term for a man raising the living, breathing proof of his wife’s extramarital affair—was dead a good five years now. As their mother had also passed, Pet would find it difficult to acquire a new parent.
The silence took on a new quality. Frowning, he turned.
Pet had pressed her lips together. For an appalling moment, he thought she was going to cry. The last time he’d seen her in tears, she’d been crawling around in footsie pajamas, clutching a piece of bedraggled, drool-encrusted blanket she’d named “Fizzy” for a reason she’d kept to herself. It had been her first word. One of only two words she’d been able to speak when he’d left that house.
Fizzy. And “Mink.”
Dominic.
“So, funny story,” she said in a sudden rush, as if once she’d decided to speak, she had to get the words out as quickly as possible. “Last year, thanks to a medical test . . .” At his jerky movement, she shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m fine. And also, genetically not the daughter of Gerald Hunt.”
“What?”
“Not a single strand of common DNA. Add my bio dad to the mystery list with yours.”
He shook his head, not a negation, just—the fuck? “And was Lorraine . . .” He cut off that pointless question before it could fully form, and Pet’s obvious tension briefly relaxed into a snort.
“Lop off Lorraine’s hair, paste it to her chin, and behold! Gerald walks again. She’s his mirror image.”
In both face and personality.
“I . . .” Her voice wobbled again. Again, in his mind, he saw the baby she’d once been. The ghost of chubby arms around his neck. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin. She was a fighter. Disastrously soft heart. Spine of steel.
“There was no sense of loss in that discovery,” she said quietly. “I was relieved. He was a hypocritical, judgmental bully. As I got older, I saw him for the man he was. I saw the way he treated others. I—I know now how he treated you.” She held out her hand, and Dominic realized she was holding a card. He took it automatically. “The DNA is just a technicality. I haven’t felt like a Hunt in a long time.” She nodded at the card. “It’s finally official, so I’m just . . .” Her chin rose higher. “Informing you.”