Battle Royal by Lucy Parker

Chapter Two

Present Day

Sugar Fair, Notting Hill

Proprietor and Head Chef: Sylvie Fairchild

“You’re an entertainer at best. Not a baker.”

—Dominic De Vere, maker of cakes, eater of crow

Royal Wedding Belle?Sylvie’s gaze traveled from the Metropolitan News’s front-page headline to the inset photograph of Princess Rose. Currently fourth in line to the throne, but likely to be bumped down the queue if her bachelor uncle, the Prince of Wales, or her older brother ever reproduced. The princess was smiling up at a tall blond man. With narrowed eyes, Sylvie scanned the text below, but it was the usual recycled speculation, nothing new since the same engagement rumors last month.

And then, driven by some latent masochistic impulse, she couldn’t help flipping through to the arts and lifestyle section to see the article currently being discussed by her staff. Dominic’s name immediately jumped out at her—and how lovely, they’d printed a photo of him as well, as if his face plastered all over the ads for the upcoming season of Operation Cake weren’t enough.

The personality was nothing to brag about, so she supposed they had to milk the bone structure.

It was a lengthy piece about icons of the London food industry. Most of the featured businesses were Michelin-starred restaurants well out of her dinner budget, but they had interviewed a couple of confectioners and pâtissiers, including Dominic—who’d had a number of things to say when the journalist had asked about the balance between modern marketing and maintaining artistic integrity.

Cue a bunch of pithy quotes about the reliance of certain bakers on gimmicks and social media algorithms over skill and substance.

It would be pretty unsanitary if her eyeballs actually rolled right out of her head in a commercial kitchen, so it was fortunate that her newest intern called out for help with decorating a tray of truffles. She had learned from experience that it was best to heed those requests quickly. Penny tended to panic at every mishap and turn tiny mistakes into messes that had to be scrapped entirely.

Sylvie was pressing sugar stars into white chocolate truffles when she caught sight of movement through the window onto the main shop floor. With a tickle of welcome amusement, she watched as a dapper little chap in Thomas the Tank Engine overalls sidled another few steps away from his mother. The young woman was engrossed in a display of wrapped fruitcakes, weighing each one in her hands and trying to sniff them through the packaging. Her daughters were transfixed by the chocolate waterfall, staring with wide eyes as it flowed between twinkling tree branches in the center of the room, but her son had his sights fixed firmly on the enchanted castle. He darted a glance between his mum and his target, visibly weighing up his chances. Give him twenty-odd years, and he was a shoo-in for covert ops at MI5.

The Castle—because anything that had taken that long to make deserved to be capitalized—had begun life as a small sugar tower, part of Sylvie’s ongoing attempts to exactly replicate the appearance of glass art—pâte de verre—in edible form. From the bricks to the turret, the tower appeared to be constructed out of highly textural, glistening ice crystals, as if a fairy-tale witch had cast a spell of perpetual winter. She’d then got a little carried away. For weeks, she’d spent every free evening hunched over in the back room, after full twelve-hour days in the kitchens and storefront. She’d ended up with a record number of blowtorch burns on her hands and wrists, a withered sex life, and a bloody epic five-foot-tall castle. Totally edible from moat to uppermost flying flag.

At least one person appreciated her efforts. The Thomas fan shot a last quick look upward, then set off on his mission, oh-so-casually. Sylvie half expected him to tuck his hands in his little pockets and whistle. With a wiggle of tiny fingers, he took a headlong dive toward her current pride and joy.

“Oy. Kid.”

He froze comically, inches from the Castle, as Mabel Yukawa appeared from behind the waterfall. Sylvie’s senior assistant was holding an amezaiku bird in one hand, the small candy sculpture half-finished, its translucent wings painted in a cascading effect of pink and blue feathers.

Mabel pointed a blue-tipped brush at the guilty-looking child. “Were you going to touch that castle?”

She and the boy gave each other a shrewd once-over, their faces equally skeptical.

“Yes.”

As Sylvie handed a completed tray of truffles to a snickering kitchen hand, Mabel nodded and sat back down at the small table where she was painting an entire jungle of sugar animals. “I respect your honesty. Don’t.”

The little boy drew nearer the table, now fixated on Mabel’s deft fingers as she finished coloring the bird. “Could I do that?”

Mabel picked up a candy leopard and held it up to the light. “Not well.” She reached for a fresh brush and dipped it in a dish of black food dye. “You have extremely small hands,” she added disapprovingly.

They narrowed their eyes at each other again.

“So do you,” he pointed out, accurately and with obvious indignation, and Mabel tilted her head.

“True.” With the tip of her pointed boot, she pushed a second chair in his direction. “Well, what are you waiting for? Sit.”

He almost fell over his short legs hastening to join her, and Sylvie shook her head, grinning, as Mabel put a sugar snake on his outstretched palm and handed him a brush. Her instructions were abrupt and drenched with exasperation, but her hand was gentle as she guided his decorating attempt.

When the family had left, Mabel’s new number-one fan clutching a rainbow-streaked snake, and his mother loaded down with cakes and sweets, Sylvie spoke without looking up from her notebook. “Some of the staff actually smile at customers. I casually mention.”

“Some of the staff are simpering twits.” Mabel fluttered her brush over the side of a large fish, iridescent pearly scales appearing beneath her fingertips. A piece of nougat came flying out of the kitchens and smacked her directly on the forehead. Sylvie heard the slap of a congratulatory high five. Mabel didn’t so much as pause. “Most human beings are insincere cretins who cover egocentric impulses with meaningless social gestures. At least they buy things. Helps pay for my new couch.” She finished the fish, examined the piece of fallen nougat, put it in her mouth. “Kids are usually more tolerable. Stickier fingers, but less bullshit.”

The floor-to-ceiling bookcase behind Mabel was full of chocolate boxes, packaged to look like vintage books. As she spoke, the hidden door in the central panel opened and Jay Fforde, Sylvie’s best friend and business partner, came in from the staff offices. He was holding a thin sheaf of papers. “Would these be the ‘tolerable’ kiddies you threatened to drop-kick into the chocolate waterfall last week?”

Mabel was well over a foot shorter than Jay. At the bakery Christmas party, she’d glanced with loathing at the limbo pole, walked straight underneath it, and headed for the bar. She still managed to look down her nose at him now. “Valuable life lesson. If you feel comfortable shoveling handfuls of stolen sweets into your pockets, I might feel comfortable shoving you headfirst into a pipe.”

Jay raised his brows at Sylvie. “Have we considered moving Mabel’s workstation so she’s slightly farther away from the paying customers? Perhaps about”—he made a pinching motion with his finger and thumb—“two postcodes to the left?”

“Have we considered getting a haircut, so we look slightly less like an aging rocker?” Mabel asked conversationally. “It’s swell of you to take over potions class while Sylvie’s back on telly, Axl Rose, but you don’t have to go full wizard cosplay.”

Jay opted to ignore that, although his fingers went briefly to his shoulder-length hair. It was quite a bit longer than usual, possibly because of his current girlfriend. Lovely woman. Kept telling him things about his artistic soul. He’d started writing poems and reading them aloud to Sylvie in their shared office.

It had been a trying few months all round.

She closed her notebook. “Are you sure about taking over downstairs?”

At the street level, Sugar Fair welcomed customers into a bright, child-friendly fantasy. The architecturally designed enchanted forest was awash in jewel tones, and gorgeous smells, and the waterfall of free-flowing chocolate.

But it was the Dark Forest downstairs that had proved an unexpected money-spinner, an income stream that had helped keep them afloat through the precarious first year.

Four nights a week, through a haze of purple smoke and bubbling cauldrons, Sylvie taught pre-booked groups how to make concoctions that would tease the senses, delight the mind . . . and knock people flat on their arse if they weren’t careful. High percentage of alcohol. It was a mixology class with a lot of tricks and pyrotechnics. It had been Jay’s idea to get a liquor license.

“Pleasures of the mouth,” he’d said at the time. “The holy trinity—chocolate, coffee, and booze.”

With even her weekends completely blocked out, Sylvie had almost made a crack about forfeiting certain other pleasures of the mouth, but Jay had inherited a puritanical streak from his mother. Both their mouths looked like dried cranberries if someone made a sex joke.

The sensuous, moody haven in the basement was a counterbalance to the carefully manufactured atmosphere upstairs. There were, after all, reasons to shy away from relentless cheer. Perhaps someone had just been through a breakup, or a family reunion. A really distressing haircut. Maybe they’d logged on to Twitter and realized half the population were a bunch of pricks. Or maybe they’d picked up the Metropolitan News and found Dominic De Vere indirectly trashing their entire business aesthetic in a major London daily.

Whatever the reason—feeling a little stressed? A bit peeved? Annoyed as fuck? Welcome to the Dark Forest. Through the bakery, turn left, down the stairs.

“There’s absolutely no way you can keep your current workload and take up this judging gig on Operation Cake,” Jay said emphatically. “You’ll conk out from sheer exhaustion by month’s end. And while I know you’d prefer to blowtorch your own eyeballs than work hand-in-glove with Dominic De Vere—”

“Especially when it was directly his vote that booted you off before the final in your series,” Mabel cut in, avidly eavesdropping. The comment was heavy with ire. Despite describing most reality TV as “like looking up the devil’s colon,” the Queen of Doom and Gloom held a grudging fondness for Operation Cake. Sylvie had once had to drop a package off at her flat on a Sunday night, and had found her watching last year’s series in a onesie.

It’s just so damn cozy.

To watch, undeniably. Behind the cameras, it was a business like any other, with the accompanying pros and cons. Sylvie had some fond memories of her time as a contestant, and she was flattered to be asked back as a judge. She also had reservations.

Including one towering, sarcastic reservation who’d just swiped yet another major cake contract out from under them.

Trying to hide her dismay in front of the watching staff, she looked at the document Jay handed her. “Hallum & Fox went with De Vere’s? That brief was made for us. It’s a fantasy novel, for God’s sake. They’re holding a carnival at the launch and they opted for the Dominic Special? Five tiers, blanket white, maybe some fondant work if he’s made someone cry and is feeling festive?”

To give the master and commander of De Vere’s his due, silently and reluctantly, the cakes inside those tiers would be fantastic. Might-as-well-keel-over-right-now-because-you’ll-never-taste-anything-this-good-again quality. But, Christ, Dominic. Colors. They exist.

“They went for the old-school prestige.”

“Damn,” Sylvie said softly, staring down at the Hallum & Fox logo.

She’d badly wanted that commission, and not just because it came with an expansive fee. The launch was for the new installment in one of her favorite book series. She still backed the design she’d submitted. It would have been a beautiful, exciting cake.

“De Vere’s has the name recognition and the status.” The other bakery had held top-tier status since Sebastian De Vere, Dominic’s grandfather, had opened the original pâtisserie decades ago. “They can get away with making snotty comments about tacky fads,” Jay said darkly. “We need to utilize every marketing plan we’ve got.”

He glanced around the shop floor, currently devoid of people not on their payroll. He’d always had Resting Brooding Face—way back in their teen years, he’d got the part of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the school play just by walking into the casting room—but his expression and clothing really had gone full Victorian undertaker lately.

He started to speak, then inclined his chin meaningfully toward the door to the offices. Sylvie stuck her head into the kitchens to make sure everybody knew what they were doing. Nobody was panicking or on fire, so she followed him back through the bookcase.

“Temporary lull,” she assured him in their messy little office, easily reading his expression. “It’s been busy all morning. We’re still riding the wave of Strawberry Bomb sales.”

They had pulled a queue right down the street for the Bombs, truffles with a hidden center that burst spectacularly in the mouth, thanks to a visit from a tousled-headed pop star and his model girlfriend, and the accompanying Instagram selfie.

He didn’t so much as blink. “But?”

She started plaiting her long ponytail. She was a stress plaiter. There were some very intricate bread loaves and rocking hairstyles in this place. “But you’re right. Overall momentum is slowing. I’d be more comfortable if we can knock things up to a higher level.”

He tucked his hands in his pockets and perched on the edge of the desk. “It is a good thing you’re doing Operation Cake. I’m sorry, I know you’ve never exactly been jumping to get on TV.”

Understatement of the century. She’d had to be talked into going on the show the first time round, on the grounds it could kick-start their business dreams.

“Ten minutes after I signed the contract, I found a snow-white hair in my eyebrow.” She ran a finger over the offending brow. “I expect the rest to shortly follow suit.”

Oh, well. Another step toward unlocking her coveted life goal of Cranky Crone.

“It’ll be a serious boost for us. People still remember you.” A whisper of a grin. “Hard to forget. The slow-motion clip of the hoof whacking De Vere in the face has racked up half a million views on YouTube. I bookmarked it for whenever I need a laugh.” Behind the amusement, however, Jay seemed genuinely concerned about any suffering Sylvie was about to endure on their behalf. What a darling. “On the bright side, the studio doesn’t waste money. That filming schedule is fast. We’ll only have to juggle your commitments for a few weeks. And the name recognition for the judges is huge.”

Sylvie nodded. They’d already seen a bump in mentions online and in the press. One media outlet, speculating on the show’s new judging lineup, had run a puff piece about the perceived competition between Sugar Fair and De Vere’s, which she highly doubted Dominic had even seen, let alone read, and would pay no credence if he had.

He viewed her as a temporary, upstart blip on his radar.

So sad for him that she intended to be a permanent, well-established nuisance.

“We need to pull bigger event contracts,” she said without preamble, and something flickered in Jay’s expression.

She knew that look. Even as kids, it had heralded useful information. He preferred the term “social research” over “gossip.”

“You know something.”

“Shall we say whisperings have become a loud hum?”

Anticipation sat heavy in her chest. This could be the one they’d been waiting for, for months. The literal contract of the decade. If it was true. “The press has nothing new. Same litany of guesses in the papers today. Princess Rose engaged in heated snog. The princess’s new diamond ring. Wrong hand, but still! Ring! Diamond! Et cetera.”

He rolled his eyes, all nonverbal scathing of the press, and a smile grew from the hopeful flutters in Sylvie’s stomach. “Engagement imminent, or has he really popped the question?”

“My royal source”—and only Jay could say that without sounding like a total git—“says it’s a done deal. Official announcement from St. Giles Palace any time now. Wedding expected to be in the spring.”

“We’re ready to go as soon as it drops.” She put one hand down on the desk, resting her fingers on the file that sat on top in priority position.

“And you’re quite sure about this video game thing?” Jay looked and sounded skeptical. “She is a princess.”

Sylvie snorted. “So her personal hobbies ought to be—what? Practicing ribbon-cutting? Swanning around St. Giles unveiling makeshift plaques? The girl walks her pit bull in a Metallica T-shirt, and showed up to the Easter service at the Abbey wearing a skull necklace. Gamer princess seems entirely on brand. We could do whatever the hell they like for the actual wedding cake, but we need a foot in the door first. The pitch cake has to be memorable and personal.” She grinned at him suddenly and buffed her nails against her collar. “You’re just pissed because Watson got the jump on Holmes this time. Need to up your game, Sherlock.”

Jay’s lips were tugging irrepressibly upward. With a surge of affection, she flung her arm around his neck, and he dropped his head to rest against hers.

“If Sugar Fair ever closes,” she said, with a note of fierceness, “it’ll be at our instigation. We will not go under. It works, and it’s going to keep working. And if that means going back on TV, fine.” She straightened. “If it meant job security for every person under this roof, I’d sign on to a bloody burlesque act with Dominic.”

“Wow,” Jay said after an extended pause. “That image is going to be the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it?”

The Operation Caketeam was sending a car at one o’clock. At five to one, Sylvie stood outside under the shelter of the eaves, checking her watch and pulling her coat tighter across her chest. Her breath misted in the sharp bite of the air, frosty and ephemeral. Like the steam that flowed silently from Dominic’s ears when a schedule ran more than fifteen seconds late.

Shivering as a raindrop hit her eyelashes, she studied the Tudor architecture of the storefront across the street. It was one of her favorite buildings in Notting Hill. Like a teeny version of Liberty. It ought to be flanked by horse-drawn carriages and men in doublets and pantyhose, instead of rain-spattered tourists clutching crisp white bags and boxes.

Her gaze lingered on the discreet, elegant signage above the door. The door she couldn’t help noticing was admitting a lot more foot traffic than the one behind her. It swung open again, and a man strode out, with all the appropriate bearing and command of a Tudor king. And increasingly similar amounts of facial hair.

Fortunately, much less formfitting trousers.

The maestro himself.

A ripple of awareness went through the cluster of customers outside De Vere’s, and Sylvie started to grin.

Phones appeared, brandished for selfies, and with absolutely no survival instincts, the crowd pounced on Dominic like a swarm of rabid bees.

Even across the street and traffic, with her vision impaired by the rain, she could see the internal battle in his expression. A polite request to piss off and leave him alone wouldn’t bode well for repeat customers. He shook a few hands, and she started counting down in her head. When she hit “three,” his taut lips moved and the man chattering eagerly at his rigid face took a step back, looking affronted.

Seven seconds from excited greeting to mortal offense. Nowhere near his record. Jay wasn’t the only one off his game.

A young woman sidled in close to Dominic and tried to take a photo, and Sylvie could pinpoint the exact moment he lost all will to live.

As a sleek black car with the network logo slid to a stop, easing smoothly into De Vere’s private parking spot, he looked up and their eyes met.

His expression changed.

She’d been mistaken.

Therewas the moment.

Thirty Minutes Earlier, Across the Road in That Gorgeous Tudor Building

Where, unfortunately, running a successful bakery requires occasional interaction with other human beings.

Three layers. Chocolate. Lemon. Pink champagne. The bride wanted lemons grown only in Sorrento. The groom claimed that chocolate made anywhere but Bruges was a waste of cacao. They both refused to consider any champagne but that of a bespoke label that produced only two hundred bottles of that variety a year, most of which were presold to a man in Chicago who, like most multimillionaires, didn’t share his toys.

What a boon for the rest of the dating market that two such fucking pains in the arse had found each other.

Dominic’s team had the ingredients, budget, and time for one test run. The sample cakes now cooling on the racks were shaped correctly, a good color, barely a crumb out of place. When he took a fork and tasted the spare cuts of the chocolate mud cake, he realized why several members of his staff were staring fixedly at various locations on the floor, ceiling, and nearest exit.

They were already behind schedule this week, and he was out for the afternoon shooting ridiculous promos for Operation Cake. Every person in this room was paid a top-tier salary and in almost all cases did correspondingly excellent work. They did not usually stand around darting wary looks like he was the bloody Grinch about to invade Whoville, or turn overpriced ingredients into a cake with the textural consistency of cheddar cheese.

He set down the fork. “Who mixed this?”

Glances were exchanged.

Lizzie, one of his chocolatiers, cleared her throat. “Aaron.”

He should have known. Aaron’s continued employment was starting to hang by a string. There had been multiple incidents when he’d been late and careless. He’d broken so many plates, Lizzie was using the shards to make photo frames for her craft group.

As a side note, he also kept buying hot chocolate from Sylvie Fairchild’s bakery across the street. Bakery. Funfair. It seemed to be a matter of semantics. Apparently, Aaron liked the marshmallow unicorns that floated in the drinks like small bloated corpses, and thought Sylvie was “a darling.” So not only unreliable and wasting his potential, but questionable sanity.

Dominic counted back from five in his head. “And where is Aaron?” he asked, with whipcord-taut patience.

“Not sure.” Lizzie turned to continue placing small pieces of gold leaf on dark chocolate truffles. “But he’s definitely not hiding in the bathroom.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

His own workplace was meant to be exempt from the endless stream of sobbing and theatrics that encompassed the short painful weeks on the Operation Cake set. It was a grim countdown to that fiasco every year; he didn’t need a copycat version in De Vere’s.

Aaron finally emerged, full of apologies, and with time Dominic didn’t have, he started walking the other man back through the steps he should have taken. And tried to work out what the hell he had done, because even the worst cakes produced in the TV studio didn’t usually have a mouthfeel more suited to grating on a pizza.

It was Aaron’s saving grace that he did have natural talent when he chose to apply it, because that last-chance string seriously frayed after Dominic also tasted the pink champagne cake. Fun new game for the whole staff, working out exactly what bottle of liquid Aaron had mistakenly used for the flavor profile, because it definitely wasn’t champagne.

With ten minutes until the network car was due and an aftertaste in his mouth that was going nowhere fast, Dominic was updating spreadsheets in his office when the door came flying open. His sister sailed in, then screeched to a halt on her extremely high heels. He wasn’t sure why she bothered wearing them. The stilettos were long and lethal enough to kill a rhino, and Pet would still have trouble getting on half the rides at Disneyland Paris.

Her expression instantly morphed on seeing him. She usually wore a look of perpetual joy in the world around her and sincere interest in the people inhabiting it. Dominic might not be a fully grown adult working in a pseudo-magical tree house like others on this street, but if anything would make him believe in the existence of fairies and changelings, it was Pet’s presence in his family.

She hesitated, a frown flickering between her brows. A buzz of tension roped the air between them. “Hello, big brother.” Her soft voice was usually cheerful, but artificially so at the moment. She held up a sheaf of papers. “I’ve sorted the Hallum & Fox correspondence. I was just going to leave it on your desk. I thought you were at the TV studio today.”

Dominic finished inputting a column of sums and shot another glance upward. Her gaze was restless and jumpy, darting around like a dazed firefly, briefly fixing on minutiae and finally colliding with his. Big brown eyes that should be liberally laced with laughter and mischief, currently veiled and cautious. His fingers closed hard around a pen. “Hello, extremely small sister.” He jotted down a note. “Thanks for dealing with the letters. And I’m leaving soon. If the appropriately hearse-like network car is on time for once.”

The wry greeting dispelled some of the strain. Pet noticeably perked up and came to perch on the edge of his desk. “God, I love your show.”

“It’s not ‘my’ show. It’s a painful source of extra income.”

Increasingly necessary income, in the current market. He wouldn’t be taking time away from the business for any other reason. De Vere’s straddled the boundary between retail and hospitality, and neither industry was exactly a flourishing money tree right now. Event contracts were down on the same quarter last year, and they were seeing fewer sales on the shop floor. The livelihood of every person in this building depended on the decisions he made on a daily basis. As much as he despised almost every element of his unsought side gig, it was paying some of those salaries.

“But it’s so warm and cuddly. Like a televised hug.” Pet ripped off a piece of notepaper, picked up a pair of scissors, and started making tiny snips. Most chronic fidgeters doodled with a pen. His sister cut intricate silhouette portraits. In less than three minutes, she could reproduce someone’s profile with meticulous accuracy. “Not the bits where you make someone cry, obviously.” Snip. Snip. “I’m still waiting to be invited for a studio visit.”

Tucking her tongue between her teeth as she deftly maneuvered the scissors, she sent him a teasing but hesitant look.

That cloak of reserve was seeping in again.

He didn’t know how to broach it.

And if he were ruthlessly honest, these interactions with Pet were so far out of his experience that a small part of him would find it easier if she was like his other sister, Lorraine.

A clinical narcissist and living on a different continent.

“Come on,” she said lightly, “you’re ancient and I’m short. If you can’t get a studio pass for a sibling, we could totally pull off a ruse for take-your-daughter-to-work day.”

“If you’d like to retain the illusion of the show being ‘warm and cuddly,’ I’d stick to couch-viewing like the rest of the country.” Shaking his head, he took the silhouette Pet handed him, an outline of Mariana Ortiz’s head. The food writer had a distinctive nose: narrow, turned up at the tip, and now perfectly captured on the crisp paper.

He turned it over on his palm.

“Should I give this to her?” he asked abruptly. He was not on gift-giving terms with Mariana. Even after six seasons of the show, they hardly knew each other outside of work. But Pet’s self-described silly whittling was art. It should be seen.

A faint flush crept into Pet’s pointed face. “If you like.” She was quiet for a moment before she seemed to shake herself. Tearing off another sheet of paper, she started snipping again. “I see the competition over yonder is doing a steady stream of business despite the foul weather. Please note my staunch loyalty in never having stepped through that adorable door, despite the fact that it looks like my natural habitat and I would really enjoy a cocktail served in a gold cauldron.”

Dominic closed the spreadsheet. “If you want to blow out your liver and brain cells at Sugar Fair, have at it.” Now that she mentioned it, Pet probably would love the place. If she’d been the one to take over De Vere’s, it would be twinning Sylvie’s dubious brainchild by now. He rested one hand on the desk, a silent assurance it wouldn’t be carved back into a tree trunk and smothered in fake leaves and spangles any time soon. “But I’d make a booking ASAP. It’s a miracle it’s stayed in business this long.”

Pet rotated her paper and made a careful cut. “Is your brother really such a surly bastard, they ask. Of course not; inside, he’s a teddy bear, say I.” Snip. “And then he opens his mouth.”

At his raised eyebrow, the left corner of her mouth indented slightly. A ghost of amusement was in her voice as she murmured, “You know, you can stream reruns of Sylvie Fairchild’s season. I binged seven episodes last night. Excellent executive decision to bring her onto the judging panel. The woman is a bloomin’ treasure.”

The woman was a bloody menace.

“Occasional spurts of technical genius wasted on garish, childish, obnoxious concoctions that ought to come with a health and safety warning.” A dull stiffness had invaded several muscles around his spine. Cupping a hand around his shoulder, Dominic rolled his neck. “As if it hasn’t devolved into enough of a farce. Every half-baked drama-monger in the competition will be rolling out the glitter cannons to win her vote.”

He felt more than usually irritated just contemplating it.

The deepening laughter in Pet’s eyes momentarily banished more of that god-awful tension in the room. “Think you sank your own ship there, Captain.” She grinned as his brooding preoccupation sharpened to acute attention, his gaze narrowing. “You should have kept to the usual Popsicle stare and impersonal critique four years ago. Sylvie was clearly the public darling back then, and Sugar Fair is a production draw now, but if you hadn’t needled back and forth like that, I highly doubt they’d have offered her the contract. Sugar-laced strychnine on one side, icy darts on the other. Jab, jab. And she was totally unfazed.”

There was a speck of awe in that last remark, and just a hint of bite underscored his response. “She was hardly the only contestant with enough brain cells to differentiate between honest feedback and a personal insult. I don’t dick around the truth with pointless bullshit, but if they’re giving it their all, there’s nothing to be fazed about.”

It was a small percentage that actually listened and took the advice on board, instead of staring like a headlight-struck rabbit and playing up to the cameras as if they’d just survived an encounter with the Sith, but the number wasn’t limited to one.

“No,” Pet agreed matter-of-factly, “but she also brings some serious cute factor to the table. She’s nice to look at, and the entertainment industry is a shallow beast. And she KO’d you with a sponge cake.” Her mouth twitched again. “Mortal Kombat with the Sugar Plum Fairy.” In a pitch-perfect imitation of Jim Durham’s West Country brogue, she drawled, “It’s all about those ratings.”

He always enjoyed rounding out a grim morning with a few unpalatable truths.

After a moment, he grimaced.

The show was a victim of its own financial success; from a modicum of legitimacy and a few scraps of genuine heart in the first few seasons, it was rapidly unraveling into sensationalized rubbish. Jim’s unexpected departure was a boon to a production team that delighted in constantly switching things up.

With a short sound in the back of his throat, he rose and took the files back to the locked cabinet. “If you’re not planning to do any more actual work today,” he said, “may I offer a suggestion?”

“For the afternoon?”

“For the future in general.”

The metaphorical drop in temperature was swift.

“For the last time”—Pet’s voice lost all traces of humor—“I am not changing career paths. I’m twenty-six years old, I’m good at my job, and most importantly, I enjoy being a personal assistant. We all have a calling, and this is mine.” She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the paper a few times. “Why else would I want to help out here so you can fulfill your contractual obligation to scare the living shit out of the nation?”

A question he’d also posed after a motorcycle crash had put his usual executive assistant on leave for weeks and his sister had jumped in to fill the vacancy. Prior to this month, he could count on one hand the number of times they’d been in the same room since she was a baby. So, a bit of a surprise when Pet had promptly showed up in his office with a temp contract she’d drafted, typed, and already signed.

He still wasn’t sure how he’d also ended up signing it, and he’d had to controvert her attempt to give herself a pathetically low salary. He wouldn’t let anyone work for that, and they sure as hell weren’t in such a precarious financial position that he was going to rip off his own sister, whether she needed the money or not.

He leaned back against the filing cabinet and surveyed her stubborn expression. “I know how well you did in school. You were nudging the genius scale in almost every subject, and for a while you wanted to be an astrophysicist.”

Once more, Pet’s fingers stilled on the scissors. “How do you know that?”

“Sebastian managed to get the occasional update,” he said after an infinitesimal pause. After he’d gone to live with their grandfather as a child, his own access to family news had been limited. “We . . . always tried to keep tabs on how you were doing.”

Even when she hadn’t wanted him to.

He saw Pet swallow.

A bit roughly, he continued, “You could have breezed into Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, you’ve devoted yourself to pacifying the spoiled whims of people who probably treat you like shit.”

“Oh, you’re not that bad. At least you come with free chocolate.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t work for people who treat me like shit, as it happens. I bring a lot to the table, and I expect a lot in return. And if I had the least desire to go back to uni, I’d already have applied. I certainly have the money to pay for it. Shame a whole chunk of it doesn’t really belong to me.”

He straightened. “We’re not going into that again.”

“Annoying when people refuse to hear a word you’re saying, isn’t it?” Pet asked sweetly. Before he could respond, she went on, “Look, I’m happy, and you’re . . . well, at least you have your health.” She stood up and put back the scissors. “And if the papers are right and there’s a royal wedding on the horizon, there’s going to be a De Vere’s cake on that reception table, photographed for millions of people to see and bringing in a huge paycheck, and I am pumped and here to help.”

“Enthusiasm on the unconfirmed opportunity noted, Pet, but there’s a pink champagne cake out there that tastes like something recently extracted from a drain, and your baking ability makes the man responsible look like Alain Ducasse. I’m not sure this is your forte.”

“And is your forte romance, happy-ever-afters, and royal trivia? Doubtful.” She handed him the finished silhouette. “See you later. Enjoy intimidating a bunch of nice people who just want to bake cake and massively improve my Sunday nights.”

She exited with a lot less noise than her entrance. His mouth taut, Dominic looked at the closed door, and then down at the artwork he held in his hand.

It was a silhouette portrait of Sylvie Fairchild.

For the first time, not a totally accurate portrait. Sylvie’s lips had a much more pronounced curve.

The nose and brow bone were dead-on, though.

And in the tilt of Paper Sylvie’s chin seemed to lie an implicit challenge.