Saving the Cake(3)

“It’s…” Don glanced back and forth between the kitchen and the cottage above. “I mean, it’s….”

“The cottage is listed,” I told him. “I’m not allowed to change anything. So I had the cellar dug out and this put in.” I looked around at the stainless steel hoods over the double sets of burners, the marble countertops and the small forest of saucepans hanging overhead. Even after years of seeing it, it still made me smile.

“What’s through here?” Don asked, opening a door.

“The pantry.”

“The pantry? People here have pantries? I thought they just invented them for Downton Abbey, as a place to ravish the maid.”

I flushed. Very little ravishing went on in my pantry.

“So, is it just you?” He glanced at the cottage above.

I nodded. “There was…someone. It didn’t work out.” Translated: the marriage didn’t work out for me. For him and Yvonne, his secretary, it worked out quite nicely for a year or so, until I found her knickers in his briefcase. It had been two years since the divorce. I gave Don an I don’t want to talk about it look and he wisely changed the subject.

“Let’s get you unstuck,” Don said. “Where would you normally start?”

I led him across the room. “This is my mood wall,” I started. Then, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“I have a mood wall. All designers have mood walls. I’m a designer of cakes.”

“I didn’t say a thing.” But he was grinning again.

I took a deep breath. “These photos are all the royal wedding cakes from the last fifty years, right up to the last one.”

“I can’t believe another royal’s getting married, so soon after the last one.”

“I can’t believe he’s marrying a hairdresser,” I said. “The queen must have had a heart attack. I’m amazed she allowed it. Unless….”

“What?”

“You know. Unless the bride’s got a bun in the oven. Anyway….” I sighed. “This was meant to be inspiration. But it just scares the hell out of me. Whatever I make is going to be picked over by the press and analyzed to death. You know how they are with a royal wedding. They go crazy.”

He folded his arms and just stood there watching me. It was a weird feeling. After weeks of talking to myself and saying very little, suddenly all the stuff that had been bottled up inside me was coming out. And the way he looked at me, his eyes flicking downward every so often…. What was so interesting about the top of my apron, anyway?

Do you think,” he said carefully, “that there’s any possibility that maybe you’re taking this just…”—he held up his fingers, a gnat’s wing apart—“that much too seriously?”

“It’s cake!” I said, aghast. “It doesn’t get any more serious than this!”

He leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen. “I need a drink,” he said.

“It’s ten O’ clock in the morning.”

“For you. I’m still on LA time. It’s 2am for me.”

“And you’re usually drinking at 2am?”

He nodded. “That’s kind of how I wound up here.” He set off across the kitchen like a bear sniffing out a picnic hamper. “I’ll make you a drink,” he told me, homing in on the corner where I keep the spirits. “A gin and tonic. That’s British, right?”

“But I don’t—“ Ice went into glasses. “I’m not sure—“ He poured gin. “It’s really not—“ Tonic water bubbled and foamed and then he was chopping a lime and it was too late—the glass was in my hand. I looked at it uneasily. It was only ten in the morning. But maybe I did need to calm down.

“Cheers,” he said, his glass clinking mine, and then he watched me as I drank. Drinking gave me time to take a good look at him over the rim. Along with the grin thing, his other incredibly annoying quality was that he was so relaxed. He might not have fitted in the cottage upstairs, or even in the kitchen down here, but it didn’t seem to bother him one little bit. On the rare occasion I ventured out of the village –to some book signing in London or lunch with my agent—I got paranoid that my shoes were too dressy, or weren’t dressy enough. He looked as if he could wear a chicken costume to an ambassador’s reception and carry it off.


And those looks…he looked very much the American newsreader. Or…what did they call them? Anchorman. He was one of those men who you could tell would only get better looking as he went gray—he’d turn into a full-on silver fox. For the moment, he was just a plain, gorgeous fox. His tailored jacket hung just-so over his pecs, showing off their broad sweep—the sort you want to run your palms over. And his hands, as he rested them on the countertop, were reassuringly strong. Neat, but not delicate. I liked that.

As I got towards the bottom of the glass, I felt myself calming down a little. Maybe it was the gin or maybe it was his presence, but the whole thing did seem a bit silly, now that I looked at it. I took a deep breath and let it out. Maybe, with hindsight, shutting myself away in the kitchen hadn’t been the best way of stopping myself from stressing. Maybe I should have called a friend and vented, but they were all on holiday with their husbands, some of them with kids. When the divorce happened, they’d all been sympathetic and tried to set me up with single male friends. But I was so nervous about leaping for the wrong man a second time that I’d only let them persuade me into a few token blind dates. Two years on, the offers had pretty much dried up.