Loving Our Heroes

‘The cake!’

Campbell leapt to his feet and yanked open the oven, only to cough and splutter as smoke billowed into his face. Grabbing a tea towel, he pulled the tin out, swearing as he burned his fingers and let the tin fall with a clatter on to the work surface.

When the smoke cleared, he could see that the cake was not the perfect chocolate cake he had intended to make. Instead, it was burnt, hard and flat. It didn’t take a Michelin starred chef to see that it was going to be inedible.

Only the tiniest of smiles dented the corner of Tilly’s mouth as she went into the larder and found a banana cake she had made a couple of days earlier. She put it on the table and sat down again, very carefully saying absolutely nothing.

‘All right!’ snarled Campbell as if she had been shouting accusingly at him. ‘All right! It’s not just a question of reading the instructions, OK? I admit it! Happy now?’

He looked so chagrined at his failure that Tilly had to bite her cheeks to stop herself from laughing out loud.

‘Actually, it is just a question of following a recipe,’ she tried to placate him, ‘but you have to know how to read it first. I can teach you that.’ She cut him a slice of cake. ‘Here, try a bit of this.’

Campbell took a bite. It was a revelation—moist and light and delicious, its flavours and textures perfectly balanced. He felt as if he had never eaten cake before. He finished the slice without speaking and then looked straight at Tilly. ‘That was the best cake I have ever tasted,’ he said simply.

She laughed, pleased. ‘That’s one of the easiest cakes to make. You can try one for yourself tomorrow if you like.’

‘I suppose there’s some secret ingredient you keep to yourself to make sure no one else makes a cake as good as yours.’ Campbell looked at her accusingly, but Tilly held up her hands in a gesture of innocence.

‘I promise you there isn’t. Pleasure in food is for sharing, not keeping to yourself.’

‘There must be something special you do.’

‘Oh, there is,’ she agreed. ‘I make all my cakes with love. Do you think you’ll be able to do that?’

There was a tiny silence as their eyes met across the table.

Campbell was the first to look away. ‘Will determination do instead?’

‘If that’s the best you can offer, we’ll have to hope it’s good enough for Cleo’s cake.’

Cleo was dark and vivacious and she eyed Campbell with undisguised interest when she arrived to discuss her wedding cake the next day. Right at home in Tilly’s kitchen, she plonked herself down at the table and proceeded to cross-examine him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer while Tilly made coffee.

Campbell wasn’t doing a bad job of deflecting her questions, Tilly thought as she put a plate of biscuits she had made earlier on the table between them, but if he had hoped to deter Cleo he was in for a disappointment.

‘Biscuits … yummy … and Tony’s favourites, too! Can I take some home for him?’

Without waiting for an answer, Cleo turned back to Campbell.

‘Tilly’s a fabulous cook! Well, you probably know that already, Campbell.’ She leant confidingly towards him. ‘Tony was wild with envy when he heard you were going to be spending a couple of weeks here. He’s always angling for an invitation to dinner and then he spends weeks afterwards asking me why I can’t be a domestic goddess like Tilly.’

Ignoring Tilly’s warning kick under the table, she sat back and warmed to her theme.

‘Lucky she’s such a special person or I’d really hate her. As it is, everyone loves Tilly,’ she told Campbell. ‘She’s the best friend anyone could have. She’s the one we all go to when we need looking after. I don’t know what I’d do without her, and I certainly don’t know what Harry and Seb would have done without her. She brought them up, you know. She’s a born mother, I think, and she’s going to make some lucky guy a perfect wife one day.’

Tilly sighed and gave up on trying to be discreet. It was way too late for that now. The only thing she could do now was to brazen it out. ‘Why not come right out and offer Campbell fifty camels if he’ll take me off your hands?’ she asked acidly. ‘You’ll have to forgive Cleo,’ she said to Campbell as she handed out mugs of coffee. ‘Wedding bells have gone to her head. Just because she’s getting married, she thinks everyone else should be, too. She’s desperate to get me attached to some poor unsuspecting man and she doesn’t care who she embarrasses to do it! Just ignore her.

‘And you, Cleo,’ she added, pointing a stern finger at her friend, ‘stop it! Campbell is here to make your wedding cake, and that’s it. He isn’t attracted to me and I’m not attracted to him.’

Cleo was quite unabashed. ‘We wouldn’t have to embarrass you if you ever made the slightest effort to find someone new. You just hide yourself away in this kitchen and nobody ever knows what a lovely person you are. Honestly, it’s a crime! Tell her, Campbell.’

‘I am not hiding away!’ said Tilly, exasperated, before Campbell had a chance to reply. She dropped into the chair next to him. Right then, he seemed to be her only ally. ‘Nobody seems to understand that I’m trying to run a business here! Tell her, Campbell!’

Campbell looked from Tilly’s heated face to Cleo’s amused one, and his lips twitched. He had, it was true, been a little taken aback by Cleo’s blatant matchmaking, and wasn’t at all sure how he should react, but Tilly’s intervention had dispelled any awkwardness.

She was right, of course. He wasn’t attracted to her. Interested, perhaps. Amused, even intrigued, but not attracted.

Not really. Not the way he had been attracted to Lisa, anyway, and the two women were such polar opposites that it would be bizarre to find them both attractive. Still, Tilly’s bluntness had stung a little. She had made him feel a fool for being so aware of her the day before.

When he had taken himself back to his hotel at the end of the day, Campbell had told himself that he was relieved, but the truth was that his room had seemed cold and empty and sterile somehow after Tilly’s house. He had opened his laptop determinedly and tried to concentrate on work but his famous ability to focus had completely deserted him. He’d found himself reading emails without taking in a word, while his mind had drifted back to Tilly moving around the bright kitchen.

In her own context, her movements were graceful, her hands quick and competent. Campbell had found it strangely restful to watch her. Alone in his hotel room, he had pictured her in disconcerting detail, pushing her hair back from her face, rolling her eyes, smiling her crooked smile. She had a way of running her tongue over her lips when she was thinking. It was quite unselfconscious, and Campbell wondered if she had any idea how sexy she was, or how it made him think about what it would be like to lose himself in her warmth and her softness and her light.

‘Campbell?’ Tilly waved a hand in front of his face. ‘This is Earth calling! Do you receive?’

Campbell snapped to, aghast to discover that he had been lost in his thoughts and that Cleo and Tilly were staring at him. He was supposed to be trained to be alert at all times. He could just imagine his Commanding Officer’s scathing comments if he had caught him sitting there daydreaming about a woman! A faint flush of embarrassment crept up his cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly, remembering what he was supposed to be doing. ‘I think it’s probably better if I don’t get involved. That way you can both carry on believing you’re right.’

‘A little weasely, but tactful, I suppose,’ said Tilly in a dry voice. She pushed the biscuits towards her friend. ‘Have one of those and give up on the matchmaking! And now that’s sorted, let’s get down to business.’

‘I thought we were doing just that,’ said Cleo, who had been watching Campbell’s face with amusement.

‘Your cake,’ Tilly reminded her, exasperated. ‘That’s why you’re here, in case you’ve forgotten! This is supposed to be a business meeting. Have you had any thoughts about it? Or have you been too busy meddling in the lives of all your single friends?’

‘No, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve even consulted Tony,’ said Cleo with a grin. ‘The wedding service and the reception immediately afterwards are going to be traditional—it wasn’t worth fighting Mum on that one—but we want the party in the evening to be fun. What do you think about an Antony and Cleopatra theme?’ She looked hopefully at Campbell. ‘Could you make a cake like that?

Campbell glanced at Tilly for help, but she just looked blandly back at him. ‘Antony and Cleopatra?’ he repeated carefully.

‘Yes, you know, like the Shakespeare play. I mean, how can we resist? My name really is Cleopatra, can you believe it? I don’t know what my parents were thinking of!’ Cleo shook her dark head, but her eyes twinkled. ‘It’s just chance that I fell in love with an Anthony, but it’s a cool coincidence, don’t you think?’ She struck a melodramatic pose. ‘Another pair of legendary lovers!’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t Antony and Cleopatra die at the end of the play?’ said Campbell dryly. ‘It doesn’t seem much of a precedent for a wedding cake.’

‘Details, details.’ Cleo waved that aside. ‘We just want all the fun bits. Egypt, eyeliner, bathing in milk, you know the kind of thing.’

Eyeliner? Ye gods. Campbell had to resist the urge to bang his head on the table.

‘None of that sounds very suitable for a cake,’ he told her austerely, and Tilly dug a finger into his ribs.

‘What did I tell you about listening to the client?’ Her voice was bubbling with suppressed laughter. ‘If Cleo wants an Antony and Cleopatra cake, that’s what she can have.’

She turned to Cleo. ‘I can’t believe I’ve never made the connection between Tony and Anthony before! I think it’s a brilliant idea, Cleo. I did the play for A level and loved it. There’s no reason why we—Campbell, I mean—can’t make a cake for you. It could be the alternative version: Antony and Cleopatra, happy ever after.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Cleo nodded eagerly. ‘Antony and Cleopatra going off on their honeymoon, perhaps?’

‘On their barge … wasn’t there a barge in the play?’

Cleo clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, yes, of course. The barge!’