away in China and I have a spare room your mum can use if she likes. Next question.’
He stepped up so that their chests were almost touching.
‘My mother is my responsibility. Not yours.’
Lottie narrowed her eyes and stared up at Rob. His face was in shadow from the street lights and security lamps, making the hard planes of his cheekbones appear even more pronounced.
‘Let me make something very clear. I am not doing this for you. I am doing it for Adele. Bully.’
‘Let me make something clear. I am not letting her out of my sight. Kidnapper.’
They stood there, locked in a silent stand-off as the air between them positively crackled with the electricity that sparked in the narrow gap.
And into that gap drifted a completely obvious but daring idea.
She needed a replacement chef for Valencia Cagoni at the charity fundraiser and Rob needed transport in her van. Maybe there was a way they could both get what they wanted?
Lottie inhaled a long slow breath through her nose as the plan took shape.
‘There might be one way you could persuade me to let you travel in the back with my bakery trays. If you can lower your pride, of course. I realise that would mean coming down in the world from the kind of transport that you are accustomed to.’
A thunderous look and a lightning-sharp glare were joined by a hand-on-hip move that would no doubt terrorise any lesser female. But Lottie held her ground as he slowly walked around to the back of her white delivery van and peered inside.
‘The back of the van?’
She nodded slowly up and down. Just once. ‘There is a charity fundraiser on Saturday evening at the catering college we both went to. You were notorious. I was a star. The big-name chef who was lined up to attend can’t make it. So I have to find a second-best alternative. I suppose you would do as a last-minute stand-in. Or do you want to go home in a taxi?’
His nose twitched. Ah. Perhaps there was still a faint sense of humour lurking there behind the scowl.
‘One evening. Charity fundraiser. That’s it.’
‘Absolutely.’ She grinned. ‘Leap in.’
‘Well, the way Sean tells it, Rob was squeezed into the back of your delivery van all the way back to the bakery and you took every corner at speed just to make sure that he would be tossed around in the back as much as possible.’ Dee giggled down the phone. ‘Shame on you, Lottie Rosemount. Although...I would have liked to have been there to see it.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Lottie replied, with the phone jammed tight between her shoulder and her ear. ‘A good dry-cleaner should be able to get the stains out of his trousers. Although chocolate and double cream sticky smears can be tricky, especially on cashmere.’
‘You should try getting soy sauce out of a silk top!’ Dee laughed and Lottie could visualise her friend wiping her eyes before sniffing. ‘Now here is the thing, sweetie. I haven’t told Sean that Rob was the head chef who fired you from your job when you were an apprentice. Secret squirrel, just like you asked. So the boy wonder is still in the dark at why his devilish charm is being wasted on you. At the moment. But you know how much chefs love to gossip and the fundraiser is at a Beresford hotel. Rob is bound to find out one way or another. So-o-o...it might be time to fess up and call it equals before the big night.’
‘Equals? Oh, no. Rob Beresford doesn’t get away that easily. A twenty-minute van ride through central London does not match up to being fired from your dream job for something you did not do. I think I can stretch the retribution out for a little bit longer.’ Then Lottie put down her mixing spoon and took the phone in one hand before asking in a low voice, ‘Does that make me a bad person? Because I don’t want him to turn me into an evil witch.’
‘True. That coven look is so last year. But don’t worry. You just want to make the boy suffer as payment for the horrible mistake he made when he let you go. His loss. I understand that perfectly. You have to get it out of your system and this is your chance to do it. And maybe have a little fun in the process. Am I right? And now I am going to be late. Email. Later. Bye.’
Lottie put down the telephone and thought back to that moment when she had turned around to find Rob Beresford sitting within striking distance of her and fun was not the first thing that came into her mind.
The sound of laughter rang out from inside the tea rooms and Lottie looked up as one of their regular gentlemen customers held open the door for two elderly ladies whose hands were full of shopping bags and the three cake boxes containing all they needed for a spectacular sixth birthday party for a very special grandson.
Her regular crowd of early shoppers were still enjoying the special-offer breakfast special. Cheese and ham panini followed by a freshly baked and still-warm blueberry and cinnamon muffin washed down with as much tea as they could drink. Good tea, of course. Dee Flynn might not be spending much time in the tea rooms these days but she made sure that the tea was as good as ever.
Sunlight flooded into the cake shop from the London street and bounced back from the cream-and-pastel-coloured walls.
This was how she had imagined it. Years ago when she was working the corporate life and popping into coffee shops for a triple espresso and a paper sack full of carbohydrates, fats and sugar just to get through the morning.
Her bakery. Her cake shop and tea rooms.
It was all real. She had done it. No, correction. She had not done this all on her own.
Lottie smiled and reached out for a spatula but then let her hand drop onto the worktop.
She missed Dee more than she would ever admit. Dee had been the one and only person she had asked to join her and it had been such fun planning the cake shop and tea rooms together. A girl who had a passion for baking and an Irish girl whose idea of heaven was the contents of the wonderful mystery packages that used to arrive from tea gardens all over the world.
But then Dee had fallen for Sean Beresford and now her life was one huge adventure. Exciting and thrilling. Her tea import company would go live by the end of the year and she was loved by a man who was almost good enough for her.
One day soon Dee would be off for good, leaving her alone. Again.
A woman’s voice lifted up from the chatter and Lottie looked up in time to see a handsome couple in business suits laughing together as they strolled hand in hand down the pavement, a cake box swinging from the man’s arm like an expensive briefcase.
From the side view the blonde in the designer suit and high heels looked so much like the old version of herself that Lottie clasped hold of the workbench for support.
Not so many years ago she had been that girl. Hardworking and driven, but happy to eat out in fine restaurants several times a week with the man her father thought was suitable boyfriend material.
Strange. She had taken it for granted at the time that one day she would move to the next step and marry the young executive, take the standard maternity leave and create a pristine and perfectly run home
