‘They both have like, a major sweet tooth. I reckon she’s got a stash of chocolate or in there or something.’
Shit. If Lambeth is going to her office that could mean...
I push back my chair as I stand, yanking open the meeting room door.
‘Where are you off to?’ Jay yells after me.
‘I’m off to make someone diabetically comatose to save my own fucking skin.’
5
Heather
I manageto get to work on time, thanks to Dad dropping me to the tube station, but my mood is less than stellar, despite picking up a cronut to go with my coffee from the American-style bakery a few streets away from the office. To add to my ill humour, Haydn has already reached his Friday quota of annoyance, and it’s not even half past ten. Apparently, my input to our last team meeting was “conceptually criminal” and that “my word smithery requires deep work”, whatever that means.
He also had the cheek to suggest I make some of the staff feel uncomfortable because I don’t enter into the spirit of dress down Friday, despite my currently wearing a Breton sweater and a cute skirt.
‘Fatty tit head is right,’ I grumble, scrolling through the webpage I’m studying. I’m standing at my desk—that is, I’m standing at my high standing desk—when I become aware of a change in the light in the room. As I begin to look up, expecting Haydn to have returned with an addendum to hiswhat-the-fuckerywhen my attention is tweaked when the prettiest cupcake appears next to my mouse. Lilac and creamy, buttercream icing swirls to a peak where a tiny pearl lies.
A flight of butterflies disconcertingly takes flight in my stomach, but whether from the arrival of the artisan cupcake or the scent of Archer Powell’s aftershave or the fact that I woke this morning to a porn-y dream of him, I can’t be sure. But if I was a betting woman, I’d stick a twenty on that last one. Whatever the reason, I keep my gaze on the webpage, almost afraid to look up.
‘Is this a bribe?’ It takes every ounce of concentration to keep my voice even and not to look up into those startling blue eyes.
‘Heather,’ Archer admonishes playfully. ‘Clearly, this is a birthday cupcake.’ He leans his forearm across the high back of my desk, and I can’t help but glance up at him . . . and be irrationally annoyed by his smile and his demeanour and his taunting, relaxed brand of confidence. He doesn’t look like he woke up in the wrong bed this morning. But I’m not going to think about what bed he woke up in because it wasn’t mine.
Wait—what I mean to say is so long as it wasn’t mine.
Then, because I’ve clearly been dazzled—I mean annoyed—by his presence, I realise the webpage I have open is one I could do without him seeing because, holy mother of pearl, talk about disastrous. You see, I decided this morning on the way into work, a decision about how I was going to sort out this wedding problem without crashing the car I don’t own and faking my death. I close my laptop lid with asnap. If Archer notices my haste, he doesn’t remark on it.
‘Look, it even has hundreds and thousands.’ He points to the light scattering of iridescent sprinkles, the very posh sort of hundreds and thousands. ‘Definitely a birthday cake, a birthday cake that’s lilac and lemon flavour. The woman in the shop said it’s her bestseller.’
‘You went to a shop to buy me a cupcake?’ I aim for suspicion because it’s preferable to sounding confused.
‘What I know about baking would leave space on a postage stamp. I tried to get something heather-coloured, but lilac was the nearest she had.’
I roll my bottom lip inwards, fighting a smile. Though I wish I could appear less affected, I’m oddly touched that he’d go to the trouble of buying me a cupcake for any reason, without considering a theme.
But the question remains, exactly why has he?
Because of my spoiled orgasm?Lol, jokes.
‘And I just wanted to say that I’m sure your cupcakes were delicious.’
An apology, then?Though that hardly seems likely.
‘You mean, even though they looked worse than a dog’s dinner?’
‘I said they looked worse thanmydog’s dinner, but to be fair, my dog will only eat gourmet.’
‘Gourmet that comes out of a tin?’ The second time I glance at him, something flickers deep inside me like an echo of my dream. My God, those eyes. They’re the kind of blue that’s as tempting as the Mediterranean Sea on a hot summer day.
‘Seriously, you should smell the stuff. It’s like something you’d spread on posh crackers.’ He shrugs affably, and I wish I could say it doesn’t work for him, especially as he tries another of those charming half-smiles. Sadly, I’d be lying, but at least that realisation also irks me. ‘Anyway, yours must’ve been good because all that was left this morning was crumbs.’
He’d have been hard pushed to find one because I dumped the few that were left as soon as I got in this morning. Not that there were many because it seems not everyone judges a cupcake by its icing.
‘This still looks like bribery.’ Despite wanting to inhale it, even after my cronut, I glance contemptuously at the cupcake because I’m waiting for the punchline, the bit where he reminds that he’s not the pleasant easy-going soul he’s pretending to be but a man slut who’s using his pretty face and his silky charm to get what he wants.
Namely my silence.
