Page 27 of The Cake Fairies
Chapter Sixteen
ANNABELLE
Annabelle felt the colour drain from her face as the little brown bottles tumbled from the shelf and bounced across the floor: this was not good. Her legs wobbled. Her heartbeat began to thrum in her ears while simultaneously thrashing against her chest. This was not good at all. The last thing she saw before passing out was a hazy replica of the guy on the train as Polly foolishly toppled backwards, and she followed suit like a well-behaved domino.
Amazingly, it seemed ‘Adonis’ had somehow managed to catch both of them because, minutes later, a kind and caring shop assistant had ushered the trio into the store’s busy café, where she’d arranged for a pot of sweet tea and a tray of iced pastries to be express-delivered.
“We meet again.” Alex grinned mischievously from cousin to cousin before taking a mammoth bite of his Danish pastry and doing something way too sexy for the time of day with his eyebrows. “Good, but not quite baked to my supercilious Danish standards,” he offered his initial assessment.
Annabelle was helpless. The guy was captivating with a capital ‘C’. There wasn’t even an icon to whom he could be likened, and definitely not a local Middle Ham male. They’d broken the mesmeric mould when they’d made this one.
Polly spoke first. “I’m so sorry once again about the… um… what happened yesterday. Well, and… today. I don’t usually climb shelves doing impersonations of Tarzan. Just so we’ve got that bit straight. I needed that peppermint for a recipe.”
Now she fumbled nervously with the handle of her teacup, and Annabelle silently chided her. The only one apologising for yesterday’s outburst should beAnnabelle herself. Why was Polly so damned loyal, when it came to covering for other people’s shit? First her brothers, and now her. Annabelle couldn’t bear to look at her face, illuminated as it was with a lustre to rival Peter and Jane’s glow in the Ladybird pocket books of their childhood.
Alex was a jar of sweets, gleaming Rhubarb and Custard gems, and Polly, a ravenous girl who needed to get out more.
He patted at his utterly-edible-themselves lips, undivided attention resting unfathomably on her cousin. Jealousy stirred in Annabelle’s stomach. She masked it with a grimace and a hasty bite of her pastry. Flakes splintered from her mouth, dotting her rosebud pout. She made a frantic swipe for her napkin, while the green-eyed monster rampaged with her emotions. She supposed it could’ve been the marginally worse spinach-between-the-teeth scenario and let out the faintest of sighs in gratitude.
But neither Polly nor Alex noticed; the chemical trail of their sparks was dissipating every other particle of solid matter in the room. Annabelle had no choice but to continue to work on her cake, nibbling with avian refinement this time; willing herself to keep her cool. Nobody ignored her!Nobody, dammit.Least of all a man!
Polly’s damsel in distress charade was downright cringeworthy, and Annabelle was stumped as to how he could fall for it. Talk about the height of embarrassment, yelling out ‘Adonis’ into the jam-packed aisle like that. Goodness only knew how many people had stopped to gawp.
“Don’t apologise.” Alex propped his arms behind his head, emitting a lazy smile. “I can hardly help it if my very image conjures up such a flattering description, causing grown women to fall into supermarket shelves… and at my feet. This afternoon’s rendezvous was clearly meant to be.”
Oh, how corny. Annabelle flipped her hair in disgust. Twice. Over each shoulder. Lest anybody be in any doubt as to her disdain. Conjured? Did he really say that? Surely the twenty-first century could magic up a slightly more inventive batch of chat-up lines? And what was with the continental lingo?
A background waitress dropped a timely cup and saucer, so that everybody sat bolt upright. It was quite the strangest of interventions, but in that moment, Polly quickly became Polly again; her expression morphing from entranced to indifferent. The very same Polly who’d missed every single romantic encounter that had been meticulously laid out before her – and thus messed everything up for Annabelle, too.
No.Annabelle began to panic. She didn’t want Polly to go quite so far into reverse. Her unfathomable cousin would never find her letter Z at this rate, and that would mean they’d both sail off on the next ferry, headed for certain spinsterhood. Annabelle was reluctant to accept it but accept it she must: Alex was proving himself to be Polly’s catch, not hers, even though his looks met all of her own superior requirements. She had to turn this around.
“Excuse me for interrupting, but did you say you were Danish?” Annabelle asked, keeping half an eye on Polly, who stirred her teacup with a surge of nervous energy. Then her cousin knocked back the rest of her drink and gazed crossly at a group of giggling teens. It seemed they, too, had fallen for Alex’s allure.
“Guilty as charged.” He held up his hands. “I’m a Danish man in Londoooonnnn,” he began to sing. “Bad impersonation ofThe Policesong there. Very bad impersonation.”
“We wouldn’t know it, after our time…” Polly said dismissively.
Annabelle coughed a warning to Polly, exasperated at the way she was chopping and changing without warning. Yet, the trade winds seemed to have touched Annabelle too. Alex was trite, admittedly, but somehow, he felt like an important ally on their ridiculous quest.
And try as she might, she still couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something else about this guy, something that she couldn’t put her finger on. First the look he’d given her – and her exclusively – when they’d collided in his café last night. Then his spitting image on the Bristol-bound train. Something screamed destiny about him, except he’d laid his romantic claim on Polly – so fair had to be fair. And he was more than fair. He was white-blond Viking fair.
The Danish connection figured. His tresses alone could’ve been constructed from snow and ice, and his hypnotising turquoise eyes were a match for the waters of any of the great Norwegian fjords – which weresort ofon the same part of the map, give or take a few hundred miles anyway.
“But what are you doing here?” Annabelle briskly changed the subject, desperate to keep her own version of cool. “London’s such a big place. What are the chances we should bump into you again?”Then she kicked herself. Why did she have to go and remind them all of her embarrassing attempt to run away, WHY?
“I often think the universe has a sense of humour like that.” He stared off into the distance, as if attempting to recall something poetically enlightening that he could impart. “Alas, it’s no more exciting than I’m having a year out in London; all part of my catering course at college in Copenhagen. We spend twelve months learning about something other thankiksekage,kransekageandwienerbrødin a foreign city; take our new-found knowledge back to the homeland and use it in our future eatery enterprises. Today was supposed to be my day off… and yet The Toadstool seems to care more about its mushrooming business opportunities.”
Annabelle stifled a groan. What a terrible play on words, and yet it was impossible not to indulge the guy with a little tea and sympathy.
“So, you work here, too? You must be shattered.”
“Not exactly. But my employers are trialling a new range of high-end café-style cakes for the mass market. They’re using a scattergun approach all over the country. This is one of the lucky stores. I’m basically one of the dudes you see handing out samples in the hope shoppers love them so much that they pick up a box of The Toadstool’s Mulberry and Damson Eclairs, or our Pink Gin and Botanicals Cheesecake, or our Sour Lemon and White Chocolate Brioche… two thirds of which were designed by yours truly and pilfered by the powers that be.” He paused to top up his teacup and swallow a scowl. Polly eye-rolled ayeah right. Thankfully he didn’t see. “Massive store though, you’re right: must be fate we should bump into each other, as I was heading for lunch.”
Annabelle couldn’t help sighing over the enormous shop. “We’ve never seen anything li…” She chastised herself for the umpteenth time since her arrival in this strange and surreal land. She’d always had a useless poker face in a game of Gin Rummy. Keeping their sixties secret to themselves was not going to be easy.
“So, this is your first trip here?” he asked them both, eyeing Polly with an ever-growing fascination.
Annabelle nodded fervently, determined that she wouldn’t expose any further tidbits.
