It was still featherlight and almost dreamy, as if she’d sent her mind floating in a flagon of Midnight Elixir again. His skin was silky, his lips parting a little, just starting to coax hers open. Shivers slipped down her spine, and she moved a little restlessly on the stool, pushing the pads of her fingers against the wooden tabletop, pressing her thighs together.
A tiny sound rose from her throat as the kiss very briefly deepened, and she lifted her hand. Hesitated.
Dominic raised his head, his breathing as unsteady as hers. They stared at each other. Before Sylvie could pull back, his warm hand closed around hers and he drew her palm to his cheek. Swallowing, she cupped the strong bone there, feeling the rough abrasion of his stubble beneath her skin.
Her gaze dropped to his lips. They were still slightly parted. She ran her thumb across the full lower curve and felt his quick inhalation.
Even when his phone rang, vibrating on the countertop, it barely intruded into her warm haze.
Dominic had gone very still. For just a second, his forehead leaned against hers and their noses nudged, the tiniest nuzzle.
Then he was reaching for his phone and a tinny voice on the other end wound out to her ears. One of his suppliers had canceled a weekend shipment at the last minute.
He hesitated, looking at her. His expression was guarded, but there was still a trace of heat there.
Also, a fair whack of how the hell did this happen, which—ditto.
Her fingers were still trembling.
That first soft touch of Dominic’s mouth—why did it feel like turning the corner in the labyrinth and finally, finally seeing a glimmer of the right path?
She managed a half smile. “Business happens. Go deal.” They couldn’t seem to tear their eyes from each other. Quietly, not quite certainly, and not even sure which of them she was talking to, she said, “This is okay.”
Another flicker in his expression.
Something twinkled in her peripheral vision, and she realized with some surprise that the bubble was still drifting in the lights.
It felt as if an hour had passed since she’d sent it toward him, not merely minutes.
Dominic’s mouth was set tautly.
Small pockets of beauty.
Without a sound, in a tiny sparkle of glitter, the bubble burst.
Sylvie hoped that wasn’t an omen.
Chapter Ten
Middlethorpe Grange, Surrey
Haunted by rumors of discontented spirits for over seven hundred years. Throughout the centuries, locals spoke of lights in the wood, voices in the dark, words on the walls. Legend foretold of a dark, chilling force that would someday strike wide the door as the people cowered in fear—
“I mean, to be fair, Dominic did knock first.”
—Sylvie Fairchild
“Not amused.”
—Dominic De Vere
During Sylvie’s first stint on Operation Cake, the stately home episode had been shot at the property that was also used as a stand-in for Rosings Park in the latest adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Extremely grand, well heated, and the dining room had a chocolate buffet. She’d been so busy she hadn’t even searched Middlethorpe Grange online, but her expectation had been something similarly Austenian.
In reality, the Grange was a Gothic monstrosity more suited to Bram Stoker. And under a glum gray sky, the surrounding fields scattered with a light dusting of early snow, it was an inconveniently long commute to work on a Monday and a reminder that her own poky little flat was at least warm.
She had a private driver, but the car ran into three backups in traffic, and it was already midmorning by the time she sat down in a makeup chair. The hair and makeup team had set up in a hideous stone-walled parlor, in which some Middlethorpe of old had indulged his melancholic streak by hanging massive, scowling gargoyles from the ceiling. She assumed there was a suitably bloodthirsty curse attached to their removal or disturbance; otherwise, there was no excuse for not ripping them down and trying a nice plant.
Zack picked up a concealer bottle and looked between her sleep-deprived face and the leering monstrosity beside her. His fingers fluttered in feigned confusion. “I’m sorry, which is the patient?”
“Ha-ha,” Sylvie said, but a small grin broke through. He wasn’t wrong—at this rate, the bags under her eyes would be drooping to her clavicle by the final.
She’d spent much of the weekend with Sugar Fair’s most difficult customer, a wealthy Mayfair businesswoman with five daughters. Each daughter celebrated her birthday with a party so extravagant that there had actually been cause, at the fourteen-year-old’s gala festivities on Sunday, for somebody to whisper, “What carat do you think those diamonds are?”
In reference to the birthday girl’s straw. Her diamond-encrusted straw, which probably cost more than Sylvie’s annual rent.
The mother was an absolute nightmare, and every time Sylvie had to deal with her, she seriously debated the benefits of a reclusive lifestyle in which human contact was limited to pizza delivery and fictional characters.
And when she hadn’t been changing a million details at the last minute, and usually changing them all back again when Madame reverted her whims, she’d been thinking about Friday night in the Dark Forest.
She could still feel the pressure of Dominic’s lips, the strength of his fingers, the hard warmth of his chest beneath her palm.
“The smudge-proof claims of that lipstick have been highly exaggerated. If you don’t stop touching your mouth,” Zack said, swatting her hand away before he continued circling a blush brush over her cheekbones, “I’m feeding you to Quasimodo’s chums here. What’s with you today? Visions of wedding cakes dancing in your head?”
His wiggling eyebrows invited expansion on that topic. Sugar Fair had been officially mentioned as a possible contender for the Albany contract in yesterday’s tabloids. De Vere’s was still leading the odds at the bookies’ by a massive margin, but nobody could say the gutter press wasn’t thorough when it came to wild speculation. Several reporters had come sniffing around the shop floor over the weekend. They’d all zeroed in on Mabel, sitting quietly at her table carving sweet little candy kittens. Young, female, probably naïve and easily flattered—a prime target to bully into a stammering disclosure.
Sylvie had almost felt sorry for them.
Silencing the first queries with a delicately raised finger, Mabel had paused for three majestic seconds before slamming the blade of her sharpest knife into the cutting board and resting her chin on the handle. Her gentle smile had lowered the temperature of the room about thirty degrees.
She’d torn them to shreds and strewn the remnants of their egos like confetti.
“We spent a fucking fortune decorating this place,” Jay had commented with reluctant admiration. “Ruins the vibe when you have grown men almost pissing on the floor.”
Restlessly playing with the tube of lipstick on the table, Sylvie glanced up at Zack. For all his garrulous delight in gossip, she would actually trust him to be circumspect. After that burst of glee when they’d first discussed the possibility, he hadn’t breathed a word of her intentions on set. However, her lips were now contractually zipped.
The pressure was starting to mount on the contract. The clock was ticking on their deadline. For all intents and purposes, she’d invented Midnight Elixir, and she still couldn’t produce an edible facsimile in cake form. And despite returning again and again to the photograph of Patrick and Jessica, with an odd, tugging fascination, she was no further forward on the design elements.