Her Client from Hell

But that voice... How could someone so rude sound so hot? It was like chocolate velvet, wrapping her up and making parts of her warm that hadn’t been warm in quite a while.

Which was a stark enough reminder that this was business. Hadn’t she learnt already never to mix that with pleasure?

And she was not that desperate to flirt with a client who was getting married. It was just a voice.

‘So, considering your late call, I presume you are interested in using Sweet Treats for the wedding? Have you had a look at the menu options? I’m happy to juggle things around if you want to mix and match.’

‘I don’t know. It’s complicated. We need to meet and discuss this further. And time’s running out.’ She wondered how easy it was for him to speak without the aid of brackets to explain everything in duplicate. A hum of traffic buzzed in the background. He raised his voice. ‘How about tomorrow? Afternoon? Evening?’

‘I’ll just check.’ Looking at her diary, she worked out she could fit him in between Zorb’s regular Friday Feast lunch order, little Hannah’s third birthday party and the carnival meeting early Saturday morning. Couldn’t she? Sleep was seriously overrated. As was a social life.

As for a sex life? She literally laughed. Out loud. Sex was something she remembered from her dim and distant past. Vaguely. Hell, twenty-six and sex was just a memory? If she planned right, she could fit in a quickie between the hours of three and four in the morning. Next Wednesday week. But, in her experience, most guys weren’t particularly happy with that. Well, not the kind of guys she wanted to spend that special hour with, anyway.

Better make that two people in need of a happy pill. ‘I can fit you in at around six-thirty. Would that work? Where are you based?’ She jotted down the details. ‘Actually, you’re just down the road from me; I’m in Notting Hill too. When the business started to take off we decided to move—’

He sighed. ‘Look, I’m in a cab; it’s hard to hear. I don’t need your life story. I just need food.’

‘Of course. Of course.’ Tetchy. She hadn’t quite mastered the art of managing her thoughts in silence. Or managing anything at all, really, outside the kitchen. But she was trying hard. ‘I usually meet my clients at Bean in Notting Hill Gate, just a few shops down from the cinema. It’s a sort of café-bar, open office space for independent professionals. I’ll hire a meeting room so we can chat in relative privacy. There are also office facilities there in case we need any photocopying et cetera. If that suits your requirements, Mr Brennan?’

‘Perfectly.’ His growl wasn’t nearly as scary as he intended. ‘This is my first time at organising a wedding breakfast and I want to get it right. I’ve absolutely no intention of doing it again.’

‘I’m sure Mrs Brennan-to-be will be very glad to hear that.’

‘What?’ Some tooting and a curse from a voice that wasn’t dark and rich interrupted the conversation. Then he was back. ‘Sorry?’

Cassie spoke slowly. ‘Your intended? Mrs Brennan-to-be. Will she be joining us tomorrow? I find that it cuts down on problems and saves a lot of everyone’s time if the happy couple thrash out ideas and differences way before the event. So I’d prefer to meet you both. Tomorrow. If that’s okay?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘There is no Mrs Brennan-to-be.’

Ah. She knew it—that deep voice was way too good to be heterosexual. ‘Oh. Sorry. Er...well, bring Mr Brennan-to-be along.’

‘No. No. No. Not at all. I’ll explain tomorrow...er...?’ She imagined him sitting in the back of a cab, squinting through a monocle at her business card, trying to make out the name of the woman he was phoning.

‘Cassie,’ she reminded him. No wife? No husband. ‘Erm...you’re not one of those marrying his pet iguana kind of guys, are you? I mean, I’m not one to judge, but I’m not sure what iguanas eat.’

He laughed. Finally. Hesitant—reluctant, even, but there. Free for a moment, unctuous like thick, warm chocolate ganache. Or was it just a gasp? Whichever, it was gone as quickly as it appeared. ‘I have no intention of marrying a man or an iguana. Or anyone, for that matter, Cassie. Yes. Short for Cassandra?’

‘Says the guy who doesn’t want my life story.’ But now she really, really wanted his. Although she wasn’t surprised such a grumpy, tetchy man hadn’t got a wife-to-be or a husband and was only appealing to a reptile.

But she really, really needed his money.

There was another toot of a horn, his voice fading in and out. ‘Tomorrow, then. Oh, and one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Leave the paring knife at home.’

This had to be the weirdest conversation she’d ever had. Organising a wedding breakfast for a man who wasn’t getting married. Maybe he’d had his heart broken and couldn’t move on? Maybe he was channelling Miss Havisham? Tragic.

And that was definitely none of her concern. Because she was not going to allow any man to wheedle his way into her business or her heart—especially her heart—ever again.

* * *

Jack Brennan jogged down the steps of his Notting Hill home and checked his watch—time minus twenty minutes. What the hell he was doing he didn’t know. But if he could organise a film crew to shadow a rock group across twenty European music festival venues at the drop of a hat, he could organise a few flimsy sandwiches.

No.

His heart squeezed a little. Lizzie was not getting sandwiches for her wedding. He’d make damned sure of that. She deserved a whole lot better, whether she liked it or not. He just had to find the time—and courage—to tell her.

A wall of noise greeted him as he opened the door to Bean. The café was filled with the Friday after-work-before-dinner crowd. With standing room only, he was grateful that the scatty-sounding Cassie had shown a little foresight to book a room, because discussing the finer points of canapés across this racket would be impossible. Still, the food smelt of something exotic and spicy—garlic, chilli and coriander—sending his stomach into a growling fit, and he remembered he hadn’t eaten. Editing his current documentary had taken up the majority of his afternoon. Food had, as always, taken a back seat.

Ten minutes later he was still standing there, blood pressure escalating. Unused to being stood up, looked over or generally let down these days, he made for the exit. Cassie Sweet had had her chance. If she couldn’t make it on time for the initial meeting, how could he trust her to be reliable for the event? The event he needed so badly to be a success.

As he reached for the handle the door swung almost off its hinges and a blur of colour rushed in. ‘Hey—Mr Brennan? Jack? Are you Jack? I’m Cassie.’

‘You’re late.’

‘I know—I’m sorry. I tried to call but reception was patchy—’ She dug deep into a large battered brown satchel that looked like a relic from way before his school days and pulled out a phone and showed him it. ‘I got held up with a client at a birthday party. There was an emergency and I just couldn’t leave her with all those children.’

From the phone call last night and what he knew about chefs—which was diddly-squat—he’d conjured up an image of an older, larger, bitter woman, hair piled up on her head exposing two fat ruddy cheeks and small glittering eyes. Okay, so what he knew about chefs amounted to a TV reality show about some Scottish bloke swearing in a sweat-filled steel kitchen and the overly cuddly nineteen-twenties period drama below-stairs cook.

Wrong. So damned wrong on every level.

A twinkle in her eye, yes. A cocky mouth, yes. But he hadn’t imagined such a mouth—teasing and smiling. Lips that were full and covered with a slick of something shimmery and red. Pinned-up hair, yes. But secured with a pair of chopsticks on the top of her head, with wisps of vibrant auburn corkscrewing at angles round her face.

Something glittered on her cheek, a smudge that sparkled—he thought for a moment about pointing it out. But it kind of went with the whole chaotic look.

And curves, yes. Very interesting, framed by a bright loose-fitting top in dazzling browns and blues and oranges, the kind of thing an old-fashioned gypsy might wear, secured by a thick dark brown belt. Below that, a layered frilly white skirt ended just above her knees. On her feet she wore flat leather laced tan sandals. All Greek goddess meets hippy. A crazy artsy type with her head in the stars. So not his type. A pretty head, though, porcelain skin. And that hair...

As wild and crazy as she was.

This whole escapade was already shifting him way too far out of his comfort zone; he didn’t need a too-hot boho airhead added to the mix. Regardless of the curves and the hair...and the curves...

He shook his head. ‘Well, I’m sorry. You’ve had your chance; I’m leaving.’

‘Oh. But we haven’t even—’ Her mouth turned downwards, her hand on his arm. ‘Please don’t. I did try to call...’

‘I don’t have time to be wasted. Nate said you were reliable. And keen.’ Frazzled more like, as if she was juggling a zillion things in the air and they were all dropping around her. But she was still smiling and he was drawn to that, in some kind of weird masochistic way.

So she was pretty. Didn’t mean a thing. Certainly didn’t mean the woman could cook.

Nate had also mentioned she’d been babied during a difficult upbringing, that she’d had little direction in her life apart from partying and that she was trying to prove herself with this catering venture. She’d already dabbled at other things like...nannying, was it? Dog-walking? And lost not only cash but interest far too quickly.

Nate hadn’t mentioned anything about an ex-business partner, though, or the need for a paring knife. So Jack guessed Cassie kept her family in the dark about some things.

Which suddenly made her a whole lot more interesting. In a purely professional way. Teasing dark secrets from people had made him a stack of money and cemented his reputation as the best gritty documentary maker in the UK.

‘So Nate told you about me?’ Two pink patches on her cheeks darkened to red. ‘Nate Munro? I wondered...usually people use a search engine or a business card rather than a world famous rock star to find a caterer.’