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As if he somehow knew that her life, aside from Nell, was her career. Nothing more existed. It hadn’t for over a decade.
‘Sorry.’ She forced herself to sound jovial. ‘I have things to do. With Nell.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
Effie balked. Think fast. Faster.
She glanced up at the TV by the nearest bed. Some baking show. Perfect.
‘We’re making a cake,’ she announced, before her brain had even had chance to get into gear.
‘A cake?’
‘Sure.’ Hell, why not? ‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘Only that in all the time you’ve been staying at my home I haven’t seen you cook once. I thought you didn’t know how.’
‘There’s a huge difference between cooking and baking, you know,’ Effie managed loftily.
‘Indeed?’
Why did she get the impression that he was deliberately setting her up.
‘What’s that then?’
‘Well...’ She floundered. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Anyway, I have to go. Things to buy and all that.’
Before the shops closed and preferably before Nell decided to go out for the evening with a couple of friends. And if she could grab someone who actually knew the first thing about baking, then she would do that, too.
* * *
‘Mum, you can’t be serious! We’re not spending a Saturday night baking fairy cakes together. I’m thirteen, not seven!’
Effie took it as a win that for all Nell’s exclamations her daughter was still hovering at the door to the vast high-tech kitchen, as though a part of her wanted to come in.
‘The flat will be ready soon, and then we’ll be back home. I just wanted to do a personal thank-you to Hetti and Tak.’
‘But a cake, Mum? You’re not exactly the world’s best baker.’
Which they both knew was an understatement. It was something Eleanor had promised to teach her. Before she’d died.
‘What else are you going to do, Nell?’
It wasn’t easy to make herself sound blasé. Not when a part of her was so desperate to find things to do—any time she found herself at a loose end—which were so family-orientated it would ensure she wasn’t alone with Tak for the rest of their stay here.
Because he was right that what had happened between them the other night should never have transpired. Worse, since it had happened she hadn’t been able to stop replaying it in her head. And even worse again was the fact that in her re-runs the fantasy went far beyond what had happened in reality.
She was wrecked. Bedevilled by a man who wanted nothing more to do with her. And the pain which scraped inside her was inexpressible.
She could pretend it was because of the echoes it had of the one other man with whom she had been intimate—the boy who had fathered Nell. But she knew it was more than that. Tak was more than that. In her whole life she had never imagined meeting anyone who made her body dance and resonate and exalt the way he had succeeded in doing.
So if she could just get through the next few days without having to see him, or at least without having to be alone with him... It was the only antidote she could think of.
‘I thought maybe you might like to have a girls’ weekend with me,’ Effie said, and laughed brightly.
‘Why?’ Her daughter frowned, unconvinced.
‘Why not?’
