So Now You're Back. Heidi Rice
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had many dates with her vibrator lately. In fact, when was the last time she’d gotten Bugs, her Rampant Rabbit, out of the bedside drawer? She did a quick calculation.
Good Lord, had it actually been Christmas Eve? Six whole months?
No wonder Luke’s tactile thumb had given her a hot flush. Well, at least it was good to know the anxiety of seeing him again hadn’t induced a stress menopause.
She slotted ‘get Bugs out of mothballs’ onto her to-do list.
‘Vibrators can’t hug you like a man can,’ Carrie stated with a sanguine look. ‘Unless your vibrator’s a new model I haven’t heard of.’
‘Hugs are overrated, as is all the bullshit that goes with them when men supply them.’
‘Halle!’ Carrie looked scandalised. ‘Don’t be so cynical. Not all men are bastards.’
‘And not all men are like Mr Right On,’ Halle countered, cutting the edge out of her voice. Just because she’d learned there was no such thing as a free hug, Carrie didn’t need to know that. Yet. ‘Now, could we please stop talking about my love life?’
‘Dating a vibrator does not count as a love life,’ Carrie said emphatically, but she stepped into the cubicle and sat in the spare chair.
Halle shot her a severe look.
Carrie threw back her you’re-still-on-my-dating-hit-list look, before saying, ‘So where do you want to start? With the client consultation schedule or the fact that the Kane Corporation CEO has come up with yet another brilliant suggestion for the decoration on their sixtieth-anniversary cake?’
‘You’re joking? But we signed off on that design weeks ago. And isn’t the event this Saturday evening?’ In two days’ time.
The studio took on only about eight hundred cakes a year now. All bespoke designs mostly for celebrity parties or huge corporate events and all handmade by the fabulous team she’d assembled. But even so, each cake had to have the unique Halle Best stamp on it. That’s what her clients were paying thousands of pounds per cake for. With her TV and publishing commitments, she no longer had the time to spend hours painstakingly moulding Mexican modelling paste or baking sponges or mixing crumb coating, so her job mostly involved fronting the studio’s PR initiatives, creating the basic designs, instructing the team and schmoozing the clients.
Right from the start, the Kane Corporation’s cake had been a hard sell, and an even harder schmooze. Carlton Foster, the CEO, who had insisted on consulting with Halle personally, had been adamant about showcasing the company’s product range on the cake because the party would be getting lots of exposure on their social media platforms. Unfortunately, it was next to impossible to make a cake topped with syringes, surgical gloves, catheters and bedpans look edible, let alone appetising. After much negotiation, and some extracurricular schmoozing, Halle had managed to satisfy Foster’s marketing zeal while also hopefully preventing his guests’ gag reflexes from engaging by suggesting a five-tiered dark chocolate sponge iced with a raspberry and tangerine white chocolate ganache—black, red and orange being the colours of the Kane Corporation logo—decorated with a tasteful montage of 3D illustrations from the company’s iconic advertising campaigns of the past sixty years. Foster had signed off on the design two weeks ago. And the party was happening on Saturday at the Kensington Roof Gardens. The sponges would have been baked. The decorations would already be in production. They simply didn’t have time for any major rethinks. Or redesigns. But even so …
‘What’s the suggestion?’ Please don’t let it involve the return of the bedpans.
Halle wanted to be as flexible as possible. When it came to big-occasion cakes, last-minute suggestions or panic attacks were the customers’ prerogative. Especially if they were paying ten thousand pounds for the privilege.
‘Foster is really keen for us to incorporate something to illustrate Kane’s latest charitable initiative in the Third World.’
‘OK.’ That didn’t sound too disastrous. One new tableau should be doable. If they could persuade one of the stylists to work overtime to get a head start on the new decoration and she could work out a design for it before she left tomorrow morning. ‘What’s the initiative?’
Carrie smiled, sheepishly. ‘A programme to distribute free condoms in sub-Saharan Africa.’
Halle’s smile faded as she slapped ‘kill Carlton Foster’ onto the top of her to-do list.
What exactly is the point of online check-in?
Luke stood in the queue for the bag-drop desk in Heathrow’s Terminal Two, which snaked halfway to Manchester, his boot tapping against the industrial flooring. As a person who’d been born with a serious case of wanderlust, he knew pointless queues were a necessary evil of air travel. But he’d had a six a.m. wake-up call, despite being up till two at his hotel to meet a deadline on a piece for Time magazine, to allow for the queue at security—which still loomed large, and no doubt even longer, in his future. So this sodding queue was above and beyond the call of duty.
Halle strode through one of the terminal’s revolving doors, followed by a mini entourage that consisted of a woman talking on her smartphone and an older man pushing a trolley with far too many suitcases on it. Luke’s boot stopped in mid-tap, as did the dictation in his head of his letter of complaint to the moron who thought two measly bag-drop staff was enough.
From the parade of double takes that followed Halle and her mini entourage through the terminal, it was clear several people recognised her. No one approached her, though. Not surprising, given those bugger-off vibes she was radiating with every crisp, purposeful stride.
She looked immaculate, and invincible, her hair swept up in a style that left her face bare, but for the few teasing tendrils dangling down her neck. The intimidating light blue power suit and heels were probably some pricey designer brand, a matching set to the outfit she’d worn in Paris. The hum of attraction kicked off in his crotch, annoying him the same way it had when he’d swung round at her gasp in Café Hugo.
Ruthlessly coiffured and expertly styled dominatrix types were not his thing. He preferred a woman who didn’t look as if she were about to conquer Poland. But that hadn’t stopped him having to stifle all sorts of inappropriate urges while sitting opposite her in Hugo’s, mostly involving plucking the pins out of her hairdo and watching the honey-blonde curls bounce off her shoulders.
Funny to think how sunny and unassuming she’d been when they were kids. Young and open and ridiculously naive. Of course, she’d been sixteen going on twenty then, and an exceptionally bad judge of character. Or she wouldn’t have attempted to hand him her heart on a platter.
Halle’s brows rose as she spotted him, but her gaze remained cool and impersonal.
The composed assessment should have been a welcome relief from the radioactive glare she’d lasered at him three weeks ago over croissants and millefeuille. But it felt more like an anticlimax.
He’d been expecting fireworks. Had prepared for them, ready to offer her a quick apology for what had happened sixteen years ago, thus knocking the hefty chip she still appeared to be carrying around off her shoulder.
The blank look wrong-footed him.
‘Hi, Hal.’ The tension in his shoulders relaxed despite his disappointment. At least she’d shown up. ‘You made it.’
‘I made you a promise. And I keep my promises.’
Right. ‘Good thing I saved you a place in the queue, then,’ he said, deflecting the deliberate dig with a certain amount of gratification.
Maybe not fireworks, then, but definitely a sparkler or two. Sparklers he could work with.
‘Aren’t