When Only Cupcakes Will Do (3 page)

‘But you didn't say yes.'

And in his silence her whole world crumbled. Seeing the embarrassment on Alex's face was almost more than she could bear. An involuntary sob escaped from her throat. She clutched her stomach with her arm and doubled over as a slash of pain hit her squarely in the solar plexus.

‘Lucie, I'm sorry. If I'd known you were planning… well, all this…' He swung his palm around her personal idea of retail paradise, still unable to meet her eyes.

‘Go away. Just leave me alone,' she spluttered more harshly than she'd intended, her eyes narrowed and her teeth clenched.

Alex stepped away from her as though he'd been slapped and Lucie felt even worse. She saw the discomfort written boldly on his handsome features. He was terrified she was about to cause a scene in front of his boss. That was something Alex abhorred – women who showed their emotions in public were to be pitied. She saw him flash a hand gesture to Yolande and after that her senses became muddled. She felt Yolande link arms with her, mutter an incomprehensible but soothing stream of random words into her ear and watched as Alex disappeared from her life without a backward glance. She vaguely heard Yolande politely thank Brett for his assistance before steering her into the darkness of the street outside to allow the manager to lock the door behind them.

The fresh air hit her brain but her body still endured a cauldron of emotions – mortification and embarrassment at her public rejection, shock and confusion at Alex's reaction, and pain, a sharp raw pain coursing through her veins, sparkling out to her fingertips before jettisoning back up to her chest where it gathered in a heavy armour of lead weight.

She was grateful for Yolande's support, physical and emotional, as they waited at the kerb for a taxi. Her mind was so crowded with unanswered questions she was unable to formulate speech, either to ask for her opinion on what had just transpired or to thank her for her kindness. She was vaguely aware of being bundled into the back of a cab, but not before she noticed, incongruously, that it had stopped
raining and the sky had taken on a smooth, infinite mantle of black silk which pressed down onto her shoulders and wrapped its fabric around her body, inducing a feeling of claustrophobic panic.

‘Here.' Yolande handed her a packet of fragrant tissues and enveloped her hands with her own. ‘I'm so sorry, Lucie. So, so sorry that happened to you. I don't know what Alex was thinking. Perhaps it was the surprise; perhaps when he's had chance to think things through...'

Lucie stared at Yolande, at her carefully made-up face creased in genuine concern, and found her voice at last. ‘He doesn't love me. If he did, he would have said yes straightaway, wouldn't he?'

Sadness now took the place of shame and descended like a tepid shower. Yolande didn't reply and they sat in silence until the taxi drew up in front of the building that housed the apartment she shared with Alex. The windows on the third floor were in darkness – just like her world. She glanced at her watch and was astonished to see that less than an hour had passed since she'd left the restaurant, her life on an upward spiral, consumed with happiness and excitement for her future. How was she going to explain what had happened to Gino, Antonio and Sofia? She knew Francesca wouldn't care as long as it didn't affect her ability to create culinary artistry.

Why did life have to toss such random grenades into the path of the unsuspecting? What was she going to do? She couldn't continue to live with Alex after what had happened. But she knew there would be a sofa for her at Steph and Hollie's flat in Wimbledon. And there was always Jess in Richmond if she could endure the commute and being mauled on a daily basis by her two young nephews. She'd better start packing.

‘Want me to come up with you?'

Lucie liked Yolande, but even in her pain-infused state she caught the tremor of dread in the woman's voice. ‘No, but thanks for… well, for bringing me home.'

‘Are you sure there's nothing I can do?'

‘I'm fine…'

‘I'll get Greg to talk to Alex… Perhaps if…'

‘No, please don't do that. Greg is Alex's boss. It's better to keep this between the two of us. I don't want it to affect Alex's chance at partnership.'

‘Well, if you're sure…'

‘Bye, Yolande.'

Lucie slammed the door and the cab sped away, its red tail lights shimmering like cat's eyes growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared round the corner. She had a feeling of absolute certainty that she would never see Yolande, or Greg, again.

Would her premonition extend to Alex, too?

Chapter Three

‘Hey, Lucie, are you planning on serving chargrilled
torta di ricotta
to our customers this evening?' chuckled Antonio, grabbing a cloth to remove her ricotta pie from the oven and setting it down to smoulder on a wire rack.

Because it was Friday, the busiest night of the week, Lucie, like Gino and Antonio, had arrived at the restaurant early to prepare her ingredients and bake her most popular desserts for the evening's service. The torte she'd spent the last hour creating had the additional aura of silver smoke and an intense aroma of burnt caramel.

‘Oh, God! Sorry, sorry!'

Gino paused in his task of separating zucchini flowers from their stems and swept his palm over his dark hair as he turned to look at Lucie, his face wreathed in anxiety. ‘You okay, Lucie?'

Gino and Antonio were treating her like a delicate piece of Venetian glass to be bundled up in cotton wool, dipped in love and affection and dispatched home. While it was a welcome relief to know she was loved, and surrounded by such genuine concern for her well-being, all she really wanted to do was bury herself in a busy shift – the busier, the better – so that her brain had something else to focus on other than the painful memory of her rejection and broken heart.

Once they'd settled into the familiar routine of the daily preparations, Gino strode over to Lucie and enveloped her in an Aramis-infused bear hug. ‘Alex is an
imbecille
. You want that me and Antonio take our meat cleavers over to Pimlico and surprise the hell out of him on his commute to work?'

Tempting though it might have been to authorise such a foray, she knew it wouldn't solve anything. And, more worryingly, she knew both Gino and Antonio had large extended families in Italy with accompanying whispers of connections to the Mafia. She was sure it was a wind-up by Antonio, but who knew?

She scrutinised the handsome head chef's features. Anyone meeting him for the first time couldn't fail to guess at his Italian ancestry – his Mediterranean-hued complexion, those dark curled lashes. He could be described by some as stocky but there wasn't a spare inch on him, and when he cooked he exuded such a force of energy he made the onlooker exhausted just from watching him.

However, Gino's most endearing trait was his infinite capacity to make everyone feel special. He possessed the enviable ability to recall the names of their regular diners like an ageless elephant. He had grown up above his parents' restaurant on the outskirts of Milan, helping out with the service from the time he could toddle around the tables with the bread basket. Lucie loved him – all the staff at Francesca's did – and he was the reason she had forced herself to slap on a mask of make-up and return to work. Friday nights were always manic, but the kitchen staff worked in formation like a professionally choreographed ballet troupe. Well, under usual circumstances they did – that day she had been cast in the role of the clumsy, flat-footed clown.

Next it was Antonio's turn to grab her shoulders and deposit a noisy kiss on each cheek before declaring she was too good for the tight-arsed, stuck-up lawyer and should stick to dating red-blooded, passionate Italian sous chefs instead of dallying with wet, cowardly corporate suits. Lucie smiled her gratitude at the Italian Adonis who had girls reserving the same table every Saturday night to ogle the fruits of his obsession with the gym. Sicily's loss had been their gain throughout the winter season, but the women would be sobbing into their Prosecco rosé when he returned to Palermo in July to help his uncle out at his pizzeria for the summer.

Yet, as Lucie chopped, sliced and grated the stack of ingredients she would be using in her desserts that evening, she had to admit Gino and Antonio did have a point. Alex still hadn't returned any of her calls. Even her friend Steph had tried to corner him one morning at the County Court but he'd scuttled away with his client into a conference room. Steph had declared herself disgusted at his spineless attitude.

‘Damn!'

Lucie took a sharp step backwards as an almost empty bottle of extra virgin olive oil, which Francesca's brother had sent over from his hill farm in Tuscany, slithered from her fingertips. Then she was forced to watch in horror as Francesca herself appeared in the kitchen doorway and bent down to retrieve a piece of the broken glass, her sharp hazel eyes narrowed and her brow creased into parallel lines of concern.

‘I should deduct this breakage from your salary, but I'm prepared to make an exception on this occasion.' Francesca leaned in a little closer to scrutinise Lucie, running her eyes from her tangle of bird's-nest-inspired hair to the scuffed toes of her ankle boots. A blast of her heavy perfume lingered in the air between them. ‘If you don't mind my saying so, Lucie, you look like you've been flattened by a runaway steamroller and waited while it reversed to make sure the job was done properly.

‘Of course, I understand that you've just endured the most tremendous shock but you must resist bringing your personal difficulties into the kitchen. If you are unable to do so, you should take the rest of the day and this evening off when you've completed your desserts. However, I should remind you that indulgence in your relationship problems will most certainly have to be accounted for. I don't want you to make a habit of it. And if Antonio's tip-off is correct, and we are to be visited by the celebrity blogger from
Anon. Appetit
, then tonight of all nights I will need my staff to be at the top of their game.'

‘Really, Fran, I'm fine. I'm sorry, I know how important tonight is and…'

‘Well, if you insist on staying, I want the same attention to detail I demand from all my staff every night of the week no matter what personal triumph or disaster has befallen them that day.'

Francesca paused in the habitual tailspin of energy she used to control every aspect of her trattoria, then walked over to the preparation bench where Lucie had started to murder a mango she was supposed to be slicing. Strangely enough, an imprint of Alex's features had appeared in the speckles on its skin. She stopped her attack as Francesca rested her palm on her forearm, forcing her to let go of the knife.

‘We can't allow our standards to slip. Do you understand?' Francesca allowed her eyes to linger on Lucie's to ensure her message hit home before flouncing out of the kitchen to check on the alignment of the cutlery.

‘Honestly, I'm fine,' Lucie repeated to no one in particular.

When she saw how Gino was looking at her, she decided to steer the conversation away from the elephant in the room she had brought to work with her that afternoon.

‘Anyway, does anyone know who the
Anon. Appetit
food critic – who may or may not be gracing us with his royal presence tonight – actually is? How can one person have so much influence over London's ravenous diners that one word from him brings them flocking to the tables or sends them fleeing from the trattorias?'

‘There's no photograph of the guy – understandable, I suppose; he needs to remain anonymous in his pursuit of gastronomic excellence – but his blog apparently became an internet sensation after he recorded and uploaded his forcible eviction from a French restaurant over in Soho at Christmas when he dared to question the provenance of their black truffles,' explained Antonio as he chopped up a forest of fresh basil for his pesto sauce.

‘One thing there
was
a photograph of was the bruise the irate chef gave him after he pursued him into the street armed with a wooden rolling pin and a frying pan of fury. Ever since that crazy incident, every chef the length and breadth of London craves and fears an
Anon. Appetit
review in equal measure. A five-star review is like sprinkling fairy dust on their cuisine and is enough to jettison the restaurant and the chef's reputation into the upper echelons of gastronomic preference. André Michelin – take a back seat! Of course, the reverse is also true.'

‘Exactly!' declared Francesca who had reappeared unnoticed as they listened to Antonio's story. ‘This is why I insist that we must continue to strive for the pinnacle of our talents every single night of the week! For we will never know whether this food critic is eating at one of our tables. If it's not tonight, it could be tomorrow or next week, or the week after that, and we must be ready. A favourable review could be the catalyst not only to an upswing in bookings but the fulfilment of my dream to expand this little slice of Italian paradise and the security of your employment.'

Everyone was aware of Francesca's dream to take over the lease of the vacant shop next door. She intended to open an authentic Italian deli that would serve espressos and fresh Parma ham snacks for those patrons too squeezed of the luxury of time to indulge in the full sit-down experience.

‘Whoever this food critic is, he knows his stuff – that much is clear. As it says on his website banner – the pen is mightier than the spatula. But we have nothing to fear if you all concentrate on what you are employed to do and produce your best dishes consistently. But if it
is
tonight, I do hope you're up to it.'

Francesca's eyes lingered for a second longer than necessary on Lucie, who she clearly saw as the weakest link in her culinary empire, before spinning round on her four-inch stilettos and returning to prowl around the dining room before the evening's diners descended.