Turning Up the Heat

‘No.’ Trudy shook her head. ‘I’ll deal with Donny. He sent the text message to me so I should be the one who deals with him.’ She paused to grin at her friend and added, ‘Besides, you’ve got enough going on in your life with this new and secret love.’

‘He’s hardly new. And it’s not a secret.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I’m not telling you. Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s none of your damned business.’

Her cheeks had been flushed with the efforts of exercise before. Now they were crimson with embarrassment. She was looking in every direction except at Trudy, as though on the verge of being shamed by the revelation.

Trudy remembered seeing her friend suffer the same embarrassment when she had been found to be involved in an ill-advised threesome with Donny and one of Donny’s regular fuck buddies, Gemma Hadfield. Not wanting to make her friend endure the humiliation of an unnecessary revelation, Trudy shook her head and placed a reassuring hand on Charlotte’s arm.

‘You’re right. It’s none of my damned business.’

Charlotte seemed to shrink with relief.

‘I’ll tell you about him soon,’ she promised.

Trudy shook her head. ‘If you want to keep your new love a secret I won’t press again. I promise.’

Charlotte sniffed. ‘He’s not exactly a new love,’ she muttered. Then she shook her head and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thanks for being understanding about this. And, if you want me to contact Donny and tell him to stop the stupid threats …’

A worrying thought crossed Trudy’s mind.

Had Charlotte said that her current lover was ‘not exactly a new love’? She was clearly embarrassed to admit who he was and Trudy wondered if her friend had restarted her relationship with Donny. The idea left her cold and worried. The prospect of Charlotte and Donny getting back together again was unsettling. Donny had hurt Charlotte badly once before. Trudy didn’t want to see her friend suffer that misery a second time.

‘Will I see you at HQ this morning?’ Charlotte asked. It was the name they had decided on for their shared offices at the Sweet Temptation bakery. Daryl always called it ‘the fun factory’ but, for Charlotte and Trudy, it was invariably HQ.

‘I might be a little late,’ Trudy replied. ‘I’ve got to go to the market to track down a couple of spices and take care of some other business. I might also need to do a little research and development.’

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. ‘Some other business? Are you keeping secrets now?’

Trudy blushed and nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted.

‘Does the research and development involve this damn flavour you’re trying to identify?’

‘You can read me like a book, can’t you?’

They hugged with a promise to catch lunch together. Then Charlotte was heading back to her home at Eldorado and Trudy jogged back towards Bill’s house, through the city centre, and taking a detour via the old market.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_bacac432-8eb6-56a3-b8a5-9dc923161ddb)

She made her way to Finlay West’s premises at the rear of the old market. It was an ancient spice shop. The sign above the door said the company had been in business since 1870. Bill often joked that Finlay had been there on the day the shop first opened. Whenever he made the joke in Finlay’s earshot, Finlay said that Bill had been his first customer.

Inside the air was perfumed with the memory of a thousand exotic spices. The wall behind the counter was a collection of drawers and jars, each labelled in West’s fussily neat handwriting. Trudy knew that the stockroom was even more copiously stocked and she doubted there were many spices in existence that Finlay West couldn’t locate in seconds. She was certain that, when it came to identifying and understanding spices, there was nothing that Finlay West didn’t know.

‘Trudy McLaughlin,’ West sighed cheerfully. ‘You’re here early, aren’t you? Would you care for a drink?’

He was elderly and grey. His smile shone through the silver wisps of his beard as he beamed at her and called her by her name. His eyes, hidden behind wire-framed spectacles, sparkled with bright enthusiasm.

‘Are you making the drink?’ she asked. ‘Or will you be bullying Imogen into making this one?’

It wasn’t really bullying, she conceded. When Imogen was working with him West had an abrupt way of shouting, ‘Shop girl – make yourself useful for once and put the kettle on.’ Trudy supposed it was part of the banter the pair shared throughout the working day. But she still didn’t like the idea that Imogen might resent being treated as some sort of lackey, expected to provide beverages for the benefit of West’s customers. She supposed, if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t like the idea of Imogen having any further reason to resent her.

‘Imogen doesn’t start for another hour,’ West said, checking his watch. He shrugged and added, ‘If you’d said yes to the offer of a coffee, I was going to send you over the road to buy two cappuccinos from that new shop.’

Trudy shook her head and laughed softly. ‘I’ll buy the coffee,’ she said, ‘if you’ll do me a favour with this.’

She took the muffin from the pink bag on her hip and placed it on the counter in front of him.

West regarded it with suspicion. He made no move to approach the muffin. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets and frowned down at the counter. It was like watching a police detective studying the scene of a crime.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s a muffin.’

He glanced up from the muffin and considered her with a disapproving frown. ‘You’ve been hanging around with Hart too long. Sarcasm is never a becoming feature on a young lady. Please tell me what I’m looking at here.’

‘It’s a coffee and pumpkin-pie-spice muffin,’ she explained. ‘I think it’s lacking something. I want you to tell me what you think it needs.’

‘Pumpkin-pie spice and coffee?’

He lifted the muffin gingerly and sniffed the risen crust. In the morning light of the spice shop the sponge looked like dark gold. She could see the sprinkling of golden sugar crystals on the top and watched them sparkle brightly.

‘Pumpkin-pie spice and coffee is an adventurous combination, isn’t it?’

Trudy said nothing. She didn’t want to influence his opinion. She simply arched an eyebrow, turned and went over to the coffee shop.

She returned ten minutes later with two cappuccinos.

It pleased her to see that West had consumed half the muffin but she couldn’t bring herself to smile. He was shaking his head and she understood that something was wrong with the flavour. Something was clearly troubling him.

‘Where did you get the pumpkin-pie spice?’

‘Get it? I made it.’

‘That’s good. We can probably correct the error from there.’

If anyone else had told her she’d made an error in the kitchen, Trudy would have indignantly bristled and asked what qualified them to make such a bold statement. But no one knew spices better than Finlay West. If he said she’d made a mistake, Trudy was prepared to consider what he had to say and likely bow to his experience.

‘Are you telling me the error’s in the pumpkin-pie spice?’

She tore a piece of the muffin away and sniffed doubtfully. It had all the component parts she expected to encounter. It was fiery and sweet from half of the ingredients with a suggestion of something medicinal and bitter from the cloves.

‘What do you think is missing?’