The last time that had happened, he had ended up married to Lisa, and look what a mistake that had been! No way was he doing that again.
‘If you cried, there really would have been no chance of getting him back,’ he said caustically to make up for the fact that while his mind was firmly back under control, his hands were taking rather longer to catch up and were still tingling at the idea of touching Tilly.
Scowling at the sign of weakness, Campbell gripped them firmly around the mug.
‘I know.’ Tilly sighed. ‘What is it with men? Look at you. You’re happy to jump off a cliff but show you a woman in tears and I bet you’d run a mile!’
This was unfortunately so true that Campbell could only glower. ‘I like dealing with facts,’ he said. ‘Emotions are messy.’
Tilly stared at him and shook her head. ‘How on earth did you ever manage to get married in the first place? You must have had to succumb to a teensy little emotion then, surely!’
‘The attraction between us was a physical thing. It was never about hearts and flowers and all that stuff. Lisa’s not like that. She’s like me in lots of ways. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it, and she gets it. And for a time,’ he said, ‘she wanted me.’
Campbell paused, remembering. ‘It’s hard to resist a woman who looks the way she does. You’d have to see her to understand,’ he said, catching Tilly’s sceptical expression.
‘I can’t see you being pushed into doing anything you didn’t want to do, let alone marriage,’ she said. ‘You’re not the passive type.’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I did want to marry her.’
‘Because you loved her, or because you could show her off, prove that you had a more beautiful wife than anyone else?’
A very faint flush stained Campbell’s cheekbones. ‘I suppose there’s some truth in that,’ he acknowledged. ‘But marriage was Lisa’s idea. I’d never imagined myself as a marrying type, but she wanted a wedding, and I was mad for her. I didn’t care what happened as long as I could have her. I should have known it wouldn’t last.’
What would it be like to be so beautiful you always got your own way? Tilly wondered. What would it be like to be desired so much by Campbell that he would do whatever you wanted?
‘How long were you married?’ she asked instead.
‘Just three years,’ said Campbell. ‘There was great sexual chemistry but not much else going for the marriage. I was away on operations most of the time, and Lisa wasn’t prepared to sit at home waiting for me. She liked to have fun, and she liked money, and it didn’t take her long to get bored and start to want something more glamorous. Arthur offered her the lifestyle she wanted, so she took it.’
He shrugged, but Tilly couldn’t believe that he was as nonchalant about the failure of his marriage as he pretended. It must have been a huge blow to his pride.
‘Are you hoping that if she sees how successful you are now, she might come back to you?’
Campbell stared at her for a moment, then pushed the mug abruptly aside. ‘No,’ he said instinctively, and then, honestly, ‘I don’t know.’
So what were you thinking, Tilly? Tilly asked herself. That he might say, Of course not, how could I possibly want my beautiful ex-wife with whom I shared such incredible sexual chemistry when I could have you for a brief fling?
‘I was angry when she left,’ he said unexpectedly, almost as if the words had been forced out of him. For a long time all I thought about was seeing Lisa again, and making her regret the choice she had made. I probably did hope that she might change her mind then.’
‘And now?’
‘Now…now I think I want her to see what she could have had if she had stuck with me. Beyond that, I really don’t know. I probably won’t know until I do see her again.’
Well, she had asked and he had answered. Tilly couldn’t complain that he hadn’t been honest. She was very glad that she hadn’t done anything silly, like taking Cleo’s advice. Campbell was like a dog with a bone that it had tired of until the moment someone tried to take it away. Losing Lisa to another man would smack too much of failure for a man like him. Consciously or not, Tilly was prepared to bet that his life since then had been focused on getting his wife back.
Perhaps that was how it should be, she thought, but it was hard not to feel a little disconsolate. No one would ever feel that way about her. Olivier certainly hadn’t, she remembered with a trace of bitterness. Even if she had been the one to dump him, he would probably just have been relieved that she had saved him the trouble. He wouldn’t still be hankering after her four years down the line.
She should just face up to the fact that she wasn’t the kind of girl men got possessive or obsessed about, Tilly decided glumly. She had better just stick to baking.
And, talking of which…She sniffed delicately and looked across at Campbell, who was staring into his tea with a brooding expression.
He glanced up as he felt her eyes on him. ‘What?’
‘How long has your cake been in?’
‘The cake!’
Campbell leapt to his feet and yanked open the oven, only to cough and splutter as smoke billowed into his face. Grabbing a tea towel, he pulled the tin out, swearing as he burned his fingers and let the tin fall with a clatter on to the work surface.
When the smoke cleared, he could see that the cake was not the perfect chocolate cake he had intended to make. Instead, it was burnt, hard and flat. It didn’t take a Michelin starred chef to see that it was going to be inedible.
Only the tiniest of smiles dented the corner of Tilly’s mouth as she went into the larder and found a banana cake she had made a couple of days earlier. She put it on the table and sat down again, very carefully saying absolutely nothing.
‘All right!’ snarled Campbell as if she had been shouting accusingly at him. ‘All right! It’s not just a question of reading the instructions, OK? I admit it! Happy now?’
He looked so chagrined at his failure that Tilly had to bite her cheeks to stop herself from laughing out loud.
‘Actually, it is just a question of following a recipe,’ she tried to placate him, ‘but you have to know how to read it first. I can teach you that.’ She cut him a slice of cake. ‘Here, try a bit of this.’
Campbell took a bite. It was a revelation—moist and light and delicious, its flavours and textures perfectly balanced. He felt as if he had never eaten cake before. He finished the slice without speaking and then looked straight at Tilly. ‘That was the best cake I have ever tasted,’ he said simply.
She laughed, pleased. ‘That’s one of the easiest cakes to make. You can try one for yourself tomorrow if you like.’
‘I suppose there’s some secret ingredient you keep to yourself to make sure no one else makes a cake as good as yours.’ Campbell looked at her accusingly, but Tilly held up her hands in a gesture of innocence.
‘I promise you
