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‘Shall we get back to the kitchen?’ asked Ella, replenishing everyone’s glasses with home-made iced lemonade for them to take back to their benches.
‘What’s on the itinerary for this afternoon?’ asked Harriet, dabbing her lips with a napkin after her second helping of chocolate trifle and snatching up a white chocolate chip cookie to take back to her workstation with her.
‘Millie’s going to showcase her fabulous chocolate and orange lava fondants and then I’ll guide you through the most delectable chocolate tiramisu bombe – and you’ve guessed it – it’ll be soaked in Caribbean rum.’
The women set to work. The all-encompassing fragrance of warm cocoa and melted orange caramel was so intoxicating Millie wished someone would bottle it so she could feast her senses on it whenever she wanted. It would be instant happiness in a jar!
‘What did you say the guys were up to today?’ asked Karen.
‘I think Alex said it was scuba diving this morning and then a quad bike safari this afternoon.’
‘No offence, Millie, because I’ve had an absolute ball learning about all these chocolate-based goodies, not to mention the tasting sessions,’ said Carla, tucking the sides of her short bob behind her ears before reaching for her beloved camera to take a few snaps of her creations to post on Instagram. ‘But I would have loved to join in with the guys this afternoon for a race around the plantation on quad bikes.’
‘What? Even in the rain?’ laughed Millie, glancing through the window as the heavens opened to deliver the daily deluge of liquid sunshine. She didn’t think it was wise to go on to say that she couldn’t think of anything she would rather not do than spent the afternoon on one of the over-grown mechanical bluebottles Zach loved.
‘When do you think the boys will get here?’ asked Imogen, clearly keen to be reunited with Alex as soon as possible.
Millie checked the little silver watch that had belonged to her French grandmother. ‘It’s three thirty, so probably in about half an hour or so. Zach said to expect them around four o’clock.’
‘Well, if my super-organised boyfriend has anything to do with it, they’ll be here on the dot – and with him in the lead of course!’ muttered Carla, taking her camera over to the patio doors and pointing the lens at the palm trees surrounding the swimming pool, their trunks leaning almost horizontally to the weather’s torment. ‘It was Greg’s idea to put up the ribbon across the courtyard as a finishing line, and he’s even asked me to take a picture of everyone as they arrive just in case there’s a photo-finish.’
‘Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll give that delightful experience a miss. I’d like to get Gracie back to the hotel for a nap before we go out for dinner tonight,’ said Karen. ‘I’ve never been a fan of watching grown men compete for the Testosterone Trophy.’
‘You really just want to subject Mum to an intensive interrogation about the suitability of Brad as an escort, don’t you?’ Imogen laughed, coiling her arm around her sister’s waist and ruffling her niece’s blonde ringlets that had morphed into a halo of candyfloss with the sudden rise in humidity.
‘Too right! One of us has to look out for her. We don’t want strange men taking advantage of her good nature, do we?’
‘She’s a grown woman, Karen, and she deserves a bit of fun. Leave her be and let her enjoy her sojourn in the sun.’
Karen leaned in to kiss her sister on the cheek before dashing with Gracie to their hire car and disappearing through the curtain of rain down the steep incline towards the town at the bottom of the hill.
Imogen and her two bridesmaids took their time preparing extra-strength cocktails from the recipe cards designed by Lottie and when the rain stopped, they took them out to the veranda so that Millie and Ella could make a start on the tidying up. Millie had to confess that Tuesday’s culinary clutter was even worse than the day before. Every countertop and cupboard door had a generous splodge of melted chocolate smeared across its surface and the whole kitchen looked like a chocolate firework had exploded.
‘Hey! Is that them?’ cried Imogen, unfolding her long legs and leading the race to the courtyard at the front of the villa.
It was exactly the excuse Millie needed to ditch the cleaning and welcome the men back from their afternoon’s exploits. As they waited on the steps, the unmistakable buzz of a quad bike’s engine pierced through the air from deep within the thick, jungle-like vegetation on the eastern border of the Croft cocoa plantation. Millie shielded her eyes with her hand and concentrated on the spot at the far end of the driveway where a row of palm trees stood to attention like a battalion of sentries.
‘I reckon it’ll be Alex out in front!’
‘Not if Greg has anything to do with it,’ said Carla, coiling the strap of her Pentax around her index finger. ‘You know how competitive he is. He’d even try to out-race Lewis Hamilton!’
‘Well, it definitely won’t be Owen,’ murmured Harriet, her face flooded with concern for her husband. ‘He was horrified when Alex suggested this trek as part of his stag week itinerary – I don’t know how Greg managed to talk him into it. He had fun on the rainforest treasure hunt yesterday, though, and he’s excited about the fishing trip that Dylan from the Dive Shack has organised for tomorrow, but anything to do with four wheels makes him really apprehensive, especially on these roads. Have you seen the potholes! I’ve seen smaller swimming pools!’
Millie cast a covert glance in Imogen’s direction. Earlier on that afternoon the bride-to-be had confided the reason Harriet was constantly glancing at her mobile phone, her expression wreathed in anxiety, and why Owen shied away from getting behind a wheel more than was absolutely necessary. If she were in Harriet’s position, she would be exactly the same and her heart gave a nip of sympathy.
‘Yay! It’s Alex!’ squealed Imogen, bouncing up and down on the spot, clapping her hands in jubilation as the frontrunner emerged from the arboreal sanctuary and shot up the driveway towards the official finishing line.
Imogen was right, her fiancéwasin the lead, but only by a few seconds as Greg appeared from a different gap in the trees fifty metres to their left, his head bent low over the handlebars, revving the engine and expelling a cloud of exhaust fumes as he tried to coax the last ounce of speed from the rusty mechanical beast.
A blast of excitement erupted in Millie’s chest when she saw that Zach was in third place. It was all she could do to prevent herself from coming over all Eliza Doolittle-esque as she joined the chorus to encourage her preferred winner.
‘Alex!’ yelled Imogen, cupping her hands around her lips and screamingGo Alex!in a very unladylike fashion before linking her arms through Millie’s and Harriet’s. ‘Come on, ladies. Let’s get over to the finishing line. Come on, Carla. It looks like we might need that photo-finish after all!’
The high-pitched squeal of the engines was getting louder, and the waft of diesel fumes invaded Millie’s nostrils as she watched the string of quad bikes buck and bounce along the road like a procession of kangaroos on steroids. She wasn’t a fan of the quad bikes Zach loved so much. She glanced around the gathering in the courtyard then longingly towards the kitchen where she knew Ella was busy tidying up from theirChocolate & Confettisession.
She knew where she would rather be, even if it meant doing the washing up.
She intended to offer the guys a cool beer before they were whisked off by Greg for the next part of their itinerary – an evening of bar-based activities in Soufrière. However, she knew that no delay in his meticulous scheduling would be tolerated for the whimsy of food preparation and consumption. Someone perhaps needed to remind Greg, a former sergeant in the Royal Marines, that the pre-wedding celebrations were not one of his military field manoeuvres. And she’d thought Zach was obsessive!
