There was every reason for Rosie’s wedding cake to keep her up at night.
It would be a far more comfortable explanation for her exhausted jumpiness now.
She forced herself still. He had a job to do, and she was being a pest. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”
For the first time in a very long time, she’d lain in bed last night and experienced the physical ache of missing a particular person’s body, their touch, their scent. More personal than simply thwarted arousal, it was a feeling she’d never had for somebody she barely knew in a physical sense. It was something she associated more with a separation in a long-term relationship, when her body was used to sleeping entwined with another.
Not with a man she’d previously have fancied chucking under a nonmetaphorical bus.
And that light, whispering kiss was the least of the intimacy that had started to weave between them.
Yesterday at the party, when she’d been unusually tired and frustrated, there’d come one moment when her patience had been stretched to the finest of threads—and her sudden instinct had been to call Dominic.
As if in response to that thought, her phone buzzed on her lap, and she glanced down at the screen. Her heart jumped at his name on the display. He’d hit the traffic jams as well, but his car was well and truly stuck, and he was running late. She sent a quick reply, confirming she’d arrived safely.
They were just simple, no-frills messages—thankfully he hadn’t broken out the emojis. If he ever smiley-faced her, she’d have to assume it was some sort of SOS and report his kidnapping.
But still . . . He’d texted to let her know.
If she were not a grown woman with increasingly crackly joints and white hairs in her eyebrows, these rapid developments might have distracted her from the job she was being paid to do today.
Fortunately, she’d racked up a lot of life experience that included multiple short-lived infatuations, two serious relationships, and a failed one-night stand with a man who’d recognized her from TV and thought she’d find it hilarious if he smeared himself with icing and dipped his dick in sprinkles.
She’d survived an encounter with Cupcake Cock. She was not going to be earth-shatteringly flustered by one tiny kiss.
One tiny, really great kiss.
Oh, look. Residual sex tingles. From a memory.
This wasn’t potentially life-upturning at all.
Zack was looking for somewhere to put his muslin cloth. He hung it from the clawed hand of the nearest gargoyle, like a Gothic towel rail. Addams Family chic. “This is all so weird,” he pronounced with great satisfaction.
Yes. Yes, it was.
With her eyebags sufficiently camouflaged, she followed a grip to the ballroom where the team was prepping for the day’s competition. Leaning against a pillar out of everyone’s way, she watched the contestants setting up their stations. The usual format was temporarily dropped for the location shoot. Instead of multiple rounds, the contestants would have five hours to produce four types of sweets—petit fours, sugar cookies, tartlets, whatever they chose. The selection had to include an occasion cake; it must adhere to the chosen theme, which this year was current West End musicals, and it must involve elements of sugar craft. Four years ago, this was the episode in which she’d topped the leaderboard, and she was hoping she’d see some spectacular art today.
Emma was helping Adam unpack a variety of molds and stencils at his station. Their heads were close together and they were laughing. Transparently, endearingly smitten. Smiling, Sylvie’s gaze passed on, coming to a stop on Libby.
At her counter, the redhead was efficiently sorting her ingredients for each component of her menu, checking them off against a handwritten list. She frowned suddenly, her finger pausing on the page. After a moment, she walked over to a neighboring station and spoke briefly to its habitant, Sid Khan, the jovial alien abductee. Libby beamed at the elderly man when he obligingly handed her a small box. Returning to her station with it, she caught wind of Sylvie’s scrutiny, and her eyes widened.
Innocence personified.
Aadhya came striding over, Mariana trailing languidly behind with a coffee cup perched on one elegant palm. The producer opened her mouth to speak, then followed the direction of Sylvie’s pensive stare. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a down on the poor girl, too.”
Sylvie chose to focus on the last part of the accusation. “Too?”
Aadhya’s eye roll was masterfully expressive. “Dominic. At our last meeting, he was typically obstructive. Just lounged there like a bloody Roman emperor, ready to turn his thumb down and condemn every idea I put forward,” she said with obvious lingering irritation.
Sylvie had to suppress faint amusement. She wasn’t surprised Dominic hadn’t jumped for joy at whatever brain wave Aadhya had sprung on him. Just last Friday, she’d tried to push through the idea of thematic costumes for today’s shoot. Emma had been assigned Grease as her musical, so wardrobe could supply her with a Pink Ladies bomber jacket. And Adam Foley had Beauty and the Beast; wouldn’t he be a scream as Cogsworth? The health and safety officer had put her foot down then, painting a dire picture of what was likely to occur if Adam was forced to maneuver pots of boiling sugar around a minuscule work space while kitted out as an anthropomorphic clock.
As much as Sylvie liked and respected Aadhya, it was an illuminating experience being on this side of the kitchen counter.
“Having contributed absolutely nothing of use,” Aadhya went on, “he mildly suggested that I ought to keep an eye on Libby, because there ought to be a line between ‘manufactured soap opera bullshit’ and cheating.” She fixed Sylvie with a piercing look. “Do you suspect nefarious activity as well?” Her tone was not encouraging.
“I suspect she’s a bully at best,” Sylvie returned matter-of-factly. “Nobody’s reacted quite as”—epically—“forcefully as Nadine, but I’ve seen some of the contestants giving her a wide berth.” Her gaze traveled back toward the contestant pool, but the lighting team had clustered in front of Libby’s station, unrolling a long spool of cable and blocking her view. “And admittedly, some people in this room are quite capable of setting their own ovens too high or leaving the freezer door ajar, but there do seem to have been an unusual number of incidents. She clearly misled Byron during the ingenuity challenge, even if he shouldn’t have been asking for help.” She drew her lower lip between her teeth in a brief tug. “It was the look in her eyes when that button wound up in his scone.”
“It’s a competition,” Aadhya pointed out. “It’s natural to be privately relieved if a competitor does poorly.”
“It wasn’t relief in her face,” Mariana said unexpectedly, watching her tea swirl as she moved the cup. “It was satisfaction. Of the clever wee me variety.”
“I haven’t received a single complaint from any contestant about Libby.” Aadhya looked faintly harassed. Sylvie wasn’t surprised about the radio silence behind the scenes. She recalled very well that with the grand final prize money at stake, nobody had wanted to rock any boats and prejudice their chances of winning. “Do you have any evidence the girl is waging some invisible scheme of sabotage and harassment?”
“Not a scrap,” Sylvie said, and the producer’s response was crisp.