Chapter 24 #2
Occasionally, my mind wanders to the book and the letter, but it’s like trying to find my way through a labyrinth in the dark. At least, now I know why Nell chose that book. The king in the story is called Sweeney too. She was leaving the letter there for Sweeney to find.
Only he didn’t find it.
Because I did.
A helicopter chops through the silence.
The shadows have shifted across the floor when I look outside. How long have I been baking? The sound grows louder, directly overhead now. Through the back windows beyond the garden, a man jumps from the helicopter on the landing pad and strides toward the house.
Troy Severin.
I’m still watching when he looks up...
I duck out of view and go back to what I was doing, but then catch my reflection in one of the oven doors. Without thinking, I reach up and fix my hair and check that my earrings aren’t twisted.
Then I stop.
I’m making pastry. Why do I need to check my earrings? Why am I even wearing earrings?
The guilt of what I let that man do to me is written all over my face in the glass, but I still look back at the helicopter pad. Troy is no longer walking across it. He’s probably gone to his office.
When the door opens a few minutes later and Ben runs in, tail on the go, I’m expecting it to be Kathy. But when I wipe my brow with the back of my hand, and look up…
It’s not.
Troy is staring at me.
I can’t help but stare back.
Then he glowers. “What are you doing in here? Where’s Kathy?” He absently strokes Ben’s head as the dog fawns all over him.
“She went to the village. I’m helping her make some…er pies and things.” His eyes narrow as he takes me in, and then glances down at my handiwork, several pies, a selection of quiches, and a whole tray of jam tarts. His jaw clenches, but he says nothing. “For the wedding breakfast,” I add.
“Who are you feeding? The whole village?”
“I really like baking.” Okay, that wasn’t even remotely mean. But it’s hard when my emotions are all mixed up.
It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since the engagement party, since he kissed me like I mattered. Now, his expression is the same icy mask from my first day here, and I don’t know which Troy is real, or how I’m supposed to act around either of them.
Unnerving panic and something else I can’t quite place, snakes through my gut. I should be…what should I be? I don’t know.
Cold? Distant? Angry?
He blinks at me in disbelief, turns, and goes to leave, but then stops and looks at me again. “Nice dress. It goes well with the earrings.”
Mean. Be mean. “T-thanks.”
He frowns as his phone buzzes, and then answers it partway through the door.
“What?”
The door swings as he walks out, taking his traitorous dog with him. I hurry after him to hold the door open a crack to stop it from closing. When I look through the gap, Troy is standing in the hallway, staring at a portrait on the wall as he listens to someone on the other end of the line.
“Are you certain? She didn’t go to France? Well, where the bloody hell is she then?”
He exhales and shifts his stance, turning toward me.
“I don’t give a fuck, Elias. Find her. I don’t care what it takes.”
Suddenly, his eyes connect with mine. With a squeak, I run back into the kitchen, letting the door go behind me.
Find her.
Find who? Troy was telling Mundel to find someone, a female someone, and seemed very angry about it.
I don’t know what to think about that. Could it be something to do with this business deal he seems worried about?
I want to collapse in a mess on the floor. Instead, I’m standing bowed over, with my head resting on the table, enjoying how the stainless steel feels against my cheek, when Kathy comes back from the shops.
I straighten up immediately, the blood rushing to my head. “You’re back.”
“What are you doing? Are you feeling sick?” She bustles in, carrying so many bags, and starts emptying them, putting the produce away.
“I was just, er, resting.”
“Alright, well, don’t do it on the kitchen table. It’s not hygienic.”
“Of course, sorry.”
“Did you finish the pies?”
“In the oven.” I nod, dusting my clothes as I walk over to her, picking up a cucumber to help, and then not knowing where to put it, so I stand there with it.
She looks at me, the cucumber, and then sighs, taking the vegetable from me before I do any damage. It’s incredible how quickly she’s figured me out.
“Go and put these in the pantry.” She shoves a load of bags at me.
“Where’s the—”
“Through the back.”
I head through, where Kathy said to go.
Now I remember this room. This is where I saw the keyhole with an eye blinking through it. I never did find out how to open it.
Putting down the bags, I glance over my shoulder to make sure Kathy isn’t coming in and walk around the shelving unit to where the keyhole was. It’s still there with the swan etched into the design around it; I didn’t imagine it.
I trace my finger over it, feeling the cold air seeping through. Mentally, I add find the pantry door key to my list of investigative tasks, as well as check for prison scars, and locate Sweeney.”
Then I remember the key I saw in the barn, hanging around Troy’s neck. I didn’t think anything of it then because I was too busy staring at his…
“Sage, do you need help in there?”
Blinking, I look around. Right, I’m supposed to be putting groceries away. “No, all good.”
I have to stop zoning out. But I can’t see anywhere to put the frozen food until I open a fridge standing upright next to the shelves and see the drawers of frozen food at the bottom.
Quickly, I start shoving the items where they belong. I’m not really thinking. I don’t even care where things go; I just throw them in. And then I hurry back into the kitchen.
I try to carry on baking, but I can’t even focus. I’m too distracted. Flour goes everywhere, and I keep dropping things on the floor. After a couple of minutes, Kathy exhales loudly. “You need to take a break, Sage.”
“I think you’re right.” I give her an easy smile and then hurry back to my room, because I need to write this all down before I forget.
After I’ve scribbled it in my notes and shoved the book under my mattress, and after I’ve splashed cold water on my face, I feel so much better.
I calmly take out a blister pack of my migraine pills and shove them in my cardigan, then I put on more lip gloss, don’t ask me why.
Maybe I need a sugar hit, or perhaps the thick, glossy coating on my lips feels like a barrier between me and a certain someone else.
When I get back to the kitchen, it’s dark, and Kathy is nowhere to be seen. But I still haven’t finished, so I continue with the cakes and tarts.
I didn’t lie before when I said that baking calmed me.
I don’t know why, it just does. There’s something therapeutic about making buttercream, whipping it in a bowl so hard my arms ache.
Although I much prefer making pastry. I love the firmness of dough under my hands, and then the outlet of slamming it onto the table, smashing it with the rolling pin, and then—
“What the hell are you doing?” comes a stern voice, smooth as whiskey, melting my insides within a moment’s notice.
I drop the rolling pin, and it clatters to the floor.
In the doorway, the bane of my existence, the one person I can’t stop thinking about, who is probably the Demon of Port Penn and who surely killed Nell.
Troy.
He’s changed. He’s no longer in the clothes he arrived in. He’s wearing something a bit more casual, like dark jeans and a cashmere sweater. His hair is a little damp from a shower, and his eyes are piercing.
Oh, those eyes.
I note he’s carrying a glass when he walks in. Then my eyes slip to his neck. The key. He must be wearing it.
“Just making…um…pastry,” I say. “For the tarts.”
“You mean torturing it to death.” He stalks in and looks around. “Who let you loose in the kitchen?”
Indeed, the kitchen looks like a tornado hit it. Flour everywhere. Buttercream icing stuck to my face, sticky between my fingers.
I don’t really know what to say to him. I’m very mixed up when it comes to my feelings. I hate him, and yet…
In my bra is a foil of powdered pills. I crushed them earlier, and now all I need to do is sprinkle some in his wine.
I stare at his glass again.
Troy frowns and comes over to where I’m working, placing his wine right on the counter next to me. “Are you all right?”
“What?”
“You seem a little... distracted. Are you okay?”
“Why do you care?”
His frown deepens. “I was just…” He shakes his head, running a hand through his wet hair, darker now that it’s damp. Then he sighs. “I’m worried this is all too much.”
Worried? Troy Severin is worried? Now I know I’m dreaming. This is not what I anticipated ever happening.
Suddenly, I’m flustered, and I bumble my words. “I’m completely fine. I-I think with the wedding and everything happening, there’s so much to plan, and all the dresses arriving, and I don’t know what to wear…”
Now I’m just making stuff up, and it’s coming out like verbal diarrhoea. And Troy’s staring at me, taking in what I’m saying, nodding, listening to everything. And as I hear myself, I know I sound completely insane.
But he doesn’t say that.
There’s a twitch at the corner of his lips, though, like he’s trying to hold down a smile.
And that makes me angry. He does not get to laugh at me. Not when he’s leaving without a word for two days just before a wedding is about to kick off.
Our wedding, to be exact.
Because I have to kill him before everyone gets here.
“Come here.”
Just like that, my body obeys. I don’t even get to have a choice in the matter because I shuffle towards him, willingly. He seizes me and pulls me to him.
And then I forget to be mad.
“You have flour on your cheek.” He dusts away something I can’t see on my face. His fingers are rough against my skin. I can smell his cologne, all fresh and woodsy, making my stomach tighten and my toes curl despite my better judgment. All I want to do is throw myself into his arms, but I can’t.
I cannot do that.
We’re not supposed to be touching.
But you need to get the key and check for scars, little Sis.
“I was baking,” I say, sounding a little breathless and hating myself for it.
“Yes, I can see that.”
He lifts my chin and then kisses me. It’s soft and slow, delving deep into my mouth, his tongue tasting every part of me. And I kind of completely dissolve in his arms, more so when he lifts me onto the counter.
In the back of my mind, I can hear Kathy saying, That’s not hygienic, but I don’t care. Not anymore, not when he pushes me onto the floury surface and carries on kissing my neck, making my heart flutter and tiny little moans come out of my mouth.
I have no words when he takes my hand and sucks one of my fingers, eating the icing there.
“Sweet,” he says, licking his lips. “You taste sweet. Are you baking my favorite?”
“You don’t bake pancakes.”
He chuckles, and it’s a low rumble in my ear. “Sticky tarts are also my favorite.”
I give a quick nod. Because what else is a girl to do when she’s lying spread-eagled on a kitchen counter, with the man of her dreams and nightmares standing between her legs…
Devouring icing off her skin?