Although admittedly slightly galling when she’d subsequently smooched the cat.
This was different. The violent swiftness of that withdrawal twanged straight at the chord of his worst memories, the deep-buried hurt he’d always despised himself for retaining.
Reflexively, he took a step back.
The remaining color leached from Sylvie’s cheeks. Her eyes were shadowed and deeply unhappy; briefly, she squeezed them shut as she released a shaky breath.
He could see the apology in their darkened depths when she looked at him again. She reached out and touched his arm, stroking the pad of her thumb over his wrist.
It was a featherlight touch, heedless of any watching eyes and cameras. Intimate.
And trepidation had a sudden creeping, cold grip on his gut.
Things continued to spiral downward during the final judging. Libby embedded one last tiny crystal on the top tier of her cake and set down her tweezers, while Adam and Emma stumbled over the finishing line in a Monty Python–level comedy of errors. If the production team managed to edit this footage to create any sense of uncertainty about the outcome, they ought to be in line for a BAFTA.
The series villain was going home with the prize money.
It was a teeth-gritting ending to a tumultuous series, and the most flagrant rewarding of self-serving behavior since the appointment of their current prime minister. But every episode was theoretically a blank slate, and they could only judge what was put on the table today. Libby’s cake was infinitely superior to the others.
A shrewd-eyed Aadhya had Sylvie hold up her baton second, after Mariana had unenthusiastically cast her vote in Libby’s direction, extracting any tiny thread of drama that they could.
Sylvie was a fundamentally good person with strong sense of ethics, who looked at the world and genuinely saw magic. She’d suffered deep losses in her life, but she still believed in happy endings. He didn’t want Libby to win, either, but it would be even more intolerable to Sylvie that someone could cheat and still prevail.
However, Libby had prevailed today. The judging playbook was clear. So Dominic was genuinely surprised—and concerned—when Sylvie lifted her chin and voted for Emma.
Dominic was left to break the tie and award the title to Libby, who fucking winked at him as if there had never been the slightest doubt from day one.
If Adam hadn’t tripped over his own bootlaces and knocked Libby headfirst into the sink, the entire experience would have been irredeemable.
They left the set in an atmosphere both tense and anticlimactic.
As Zack handed Dominic a wipe to remove the light coating of powder on his forehead and nose, the makeup artist grimaced. “Another series when the biggest bitch on set takes home the prize. Even more unsatisfactory than the second season, when that pompous prick of a banker won.” He reached out and flicked an eyelash from Dominic’s cheek. “Fortunately, he was swallowed by a hippo at the safari park in Derbyshire last year. The universe always rights a wrong.”
Dominic’s eyes were on Sylvie, who was listening silently to Mariana’s chatter, her body tauter than a quivering wire. At that casual revelation, however, he lowered the wipe. “He was swallowed by a hippo?”
“I mean, he didn’t die,” Zack said carelessly. “He only went in from the waist up, and it spat him out again. Probably tasted rotten. I saw him on the news covered in tusk punctures. I expect it’s too much to hope that Libby wanders into a wildlife pen, but at least she’s unlikely to score the big endorsement deals. I’ve been keeping an eye on social media since the show started streaming, and she’s not popular with viewers. Everyone loves Emma and Adam. The shipping game is strong. Shame that didn’t work out.”
Sylvie had broken away from Mariana and was coming toward them, not quite meeting Dominic’s gaze. She arrived in time to hear the conclusion of Zack’s gossip.
“Did you notice them avoiding each other today? They hooked up the other night. And according to Suzie in catering—worst sex ever. Mutual agreement that the only pleasurable part was the postcoital shower. Apparently, the contestants’ hotel has massage jets. Their scalps got a pounding. The mattress did not.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “They were so cute together, too. Sometimes you don’t know the chemistry’s a fizz until you put it to the test.”
Sylvie had been cheerfully invested in that budding love story for weeks. She frequently texted Pet with updates. And after all the hope and speculation and tongue-in-cheek bets with his sister, she heard out the demise of the great Operation Cake romance with not even a flicker of reaction.
She was completely silent as they walked down to their dressing rooms. By the time they reached the locked doors, he was so bloody worried about her that he resorted to the meaningless small talk that usually tested his patience.
“Not an ideal outcome for the series,” he said, pulling out his key. “Every superhero narrative would lead you to believe that fortune eventually turns its back on evil. A theory supported by the time Humphrey climbed the curtain rail and it collapsed before he could execute a carefully planned decapitation. However, apparently there’s an outside chance she’ll be inhaled by a large semiaquatic mammal, so there’s still hope.”
Sylvie’s head was down as she unlocked her own door. “I can’t believe you voted for her.” Her voice was low. “She didn’t deserve to win.”
He leaned his shoulder against his door and studied her profile. He said nothing for a moment. “Morally, no. She deserved to be catapulted headfirst into a sink full of red food coloring, and I’m not sure that was an entirely accidental stumble from our mild-mannered professor. She’s an insincere opportunist and probably a cheat, but there was never solid proof, and we had to judge what was on the table today. Her work was far and away the best. You know that. Did Aadhya tell you to vote for Emma?”
There wasn’t a trace of judgment in his tone, but Sylvie’s jaw tightened. She was worrying at the doorknob with her thumb. “No. Her wishing well was an ingenious idea. Right up my street. Just like Libby’s design was tailor-made to appeal to you. And you danced to her tune just as she intended.”
That last accusation twisted in midair even as the words left her mouth, starting off knife-sharp and layered with acres of something that had nothing to do with Libby and Emma and this never-ending headache of a show. Ending in a hitch of breath.
Everything about this was so unlike her. He was completely bewildered, and when he was unsure of himself, sparks of temper tended to stir. He had to bite back a taut response, but that defensive reflex vanished when her hands came up to cover her face.
“Oh God.” She was trembling now. “I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t take it anymore. Opening her door, he nudged them both inside, closed it behind them.
With his hands over hers, cupping her face, he pressed his lips to her forehead. They stood there like that, completely still, until those gut-wrenching catches in her breathing stopped.
“For the record,” he said then, with a lightness he didn’t remotely feel, “I don’t dance to anyone’s tune. I can do a lot of things with my hands. I make no similar claim about my feet.”
Sylvie’s hands slipped down to his waist. Under any other circumstances, she’d have jumped to the obvious double entendre, but any teasing in her eyes was merely a sad flicker.