‘I hear you and Todd broke up.’ Sophie turned to face the voice from the corner of the lift.
‘Paul.’
‘You OK?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘You still mad at me?’
‘Not really. Just fed up with the male race in general.’
‘Ouch. I realise I was a bit insensitive, mentioning Pamela. Just trying to be honest why I couldn’t invite you for the holiday. I should have explained. She dates too. It’s not—’
‘Paul, it’s fine.’
‘You headed out for lunch?’
She nodded. She wasn’t really that hungry but sitting opposite Todd, who was on the phone to his new flavour of the week, Leticia, was more than she could bear. It might have been easier if she thought he was OK. The worst thing was that he didn’t look happy. To anyone else he might, but she knew him. His laugh was a little bit forced, the lines around his mouth were a little more pronounced and the purple shadows under his eyes seemed to darken on a daily basis. Not that she was much better, continuing to channel Pollyanna’s love child for all she was worth.
She gritted her teeth. It would get better. She had no false hope that he would change his mind, but one day they’d get back to that friendship. He needed a good friend. And one day she’d forgive his idiocy to be that friend again. It was going to take her a little time. Of course, he had no idea that she’d decided to stay and he certainly didn’t have the right to know.
‘Gee, there’s a lot going on inside that head of yours,’ commented Paul, making her realise she’d been pulling all sorts of faces.
With a forced laugh, she denied it. ‘Nothing special.’
The words echoed in her head. Since she’d read the groom’s rather heart-warming email last week, she’d been wrestling with ideas, much to Bella’s disgust, who thought the brief was too cheesy and insubstantial to consider taking any further.
‘Can I tempt you with lunch?’ Paul’s words interrupted her train of thought, chasing away the glimmer of an idea that had floated into the periphery of her mind. ‘My treat. An apology for being a dickhead?’
Charmed by his unexpected bluntness, Sophie found herself agreeing.
They piled out onto the sidewalk with a tide of other office workers escaping their desks for a quick burst of sunshine. The weather over the weekend had been miserable, heralding the coming fall, although Sophie still wanted to say autumn all the time. She’d just about managed to come to terms with sidewalk, cilantro and sweater.
‘Where do you fancy?’
‘Would you mind Italian? Mario’s. Do you know it?’
‘Never been there, but didn’t Trudy mention it in an editorial meeting?’
‘Yes, I’ve been writing a feature on him and the history of the family and the restaurant. I wanted to check a couple of facts with him before I put the piece to bed.’
‘Sure. Who doesn’t love Italian food?’
Sophie was dithering over whether to have the lasagne or the chicken parmigiana, her appetite reignited by the usual delicious smells coming from Mario’s kitchen, where she could see his wife of thirty years hard at work.
‘Have the lasagne,’ said Paul, snapping his menu shut. ‘I’m having the pizza.’
‘I don’t know. I quite fancy the chicken.’ Which was silly because she knew everything on the menu would be amazing. She’d spent enough time in here both eating and interviewing the whole family over the last few weeks.
‘Well, have the chicken then.’
‘I can’t decide.’ She wrinkled her nose and sighed, which made Paul look up from his phone with barely concealed exasperation. Clearly, he had no idea what his role here was.
‘You’ve had the parmigiana a ton of times before. Have the lasagne,’ came Todd’s patient voice over her shoulder. She whipped around, startled.
‘The lasagne, Sophie. Last time you ate half of mine,’ he gave her a broad grin before adding, ‘or Paul could have the lasagne, then you could share his and have the chicken.’
‘I’m sure Sophie’s quite capable of making her own choice,’ drawled Paul, a possessive challenge hovering in his voice and body language. ‘And I’m quite happy with mine.’
‘I wouldn’t count on that, English here is absolutely hopeless at deciding,’ countered Todd cheerfully, as if he were completely oblivious to the atmosphere. ‘She’s a greedy wee piglet,’ he said authoritatively, pulling out the chair next to Sophie and sitting down at the table with his usual casual confidence. ‘I tell you what, I’ll have the parmigiana and then you can have some.’ He looked over at Mario and nodded. ‘We’re ready to order. Right, Sophie’s having lasagne, I’m having parmigiana and Paul’s having the pizza. And a jug of tap water.’
Sophie could have cheerfully strangled him, but he seemed completely at ease and she was damned if she was going to let her feelings show. Paul narrowed his eyes and studied Todd, who was now engrossed in a conversation with Mario about Italian football.
Sophie winced and mouthed ‘Sorry’ at Paul who lifted his shoulders in a terse shrug.
‘You heard that the editor on Supercars has left,’ said Todd as Mario left, having taken their order. He leaned back, stretching his arms, resting one on the back of Sophie’s chair, his thumb grazing her back. Shooting him a sharp glare, she leant forward, putting her elbows on the table, although she might not have bothered, for all the notice the two of them were paying her, as Paul launched into an enthusiastic response about staff vacancies and moves in the building. Her mouth twitched in reluctant amusement, Todd had done it deliberately. What was he playing at?
Whatever it was, she refused to rise, instead she smiled serenely through every mouthful of her lasagne. Although she refused a single bite of his chicken, he still helped himself to the odd forkful of her dish as if nothing had changed.
Who was she kidding that they’d be friends? She might just kill him before they got to that stage.
She stomped into the kitchen and threw her bag onto the coffee table.
‘Bad day?’ asked Bella, looking up from the cake she was carefully icing.
Sophie was determined not to bad-mouth her cousin. Since lunch today, Todd had been under her nose at her every turn. Appearing in the test kitchen, raiding her desk drawer in search of cookies and barging in on a meeting with Trudy.
‘Just ignore me for a while. I’ll crack on and make a batch of muffins. What flavour are you doing this week?’
‘Cinnamon and Orange,’ mumbled Bella, tilting her head to one side, examining her work.
As Sophie whizzed about the kitchen collecting and lining up the ingredients, weighing everything out in her usual methodical fashion, she felt the irritation of the day start to fade. Cooking always had the power to soothe. Bella left her to it, completely absorbed in her task, the fiddly icing demanding almost mathematical precision.
Once the cakes were in the oven, she turned to watch Bella, humming along to the radio.
Sophie began to smile.
‘What?’ asked Bella, looking puzzled.
‘That song.’ Sophie began to sing along, ‘I want to see the sunshine after the rain …’
Bella joined in, ‘I want to see bluebirds flying …’
When it finished, Bella gave her a hug. ‘You OK?’
‘I will be. I’ve had the sunshine. I’ve seen the bluebirds. It might be raining right now, but I’ll be OK.’
Bella rubbed her back and put down the icing bag. ‘What do you think?’
‘Oh my goodness, that is so pretty.’ The cake was covered in the palest blue icing and Bella was halfway through overlaying it with a delicate lattice of white piped icing.
‘It’s also painstaking. I’ve reached a point where I can take a break. Fancy a glass of something?’
Curled up in her usual spot on one of the pink armchairs, Sophie lifted her glass and toasted Bella. ‘To your beautiful cake. It’s going to look amazing when you’ve finished.’
‘I’m quite pleased with it, the bride wanted simple and elegant, incorporating her bridesmaid’s colours.’
‘I think you nailed it.’
‘It was an easy one.’
Sophie took a sip of her cool white wine and tapped her fingernail on the glass, watching the condensation run down the side. ‘I’ve been thinking about that brief. The really romantic one.’
‘What, Mr Special? Why did I know that?’
‘Because it came from the heart.’
‘No, because I know you. You’re a big softie. Go on, tell me you’ve come up with another one of your brilliant ideas.’
‘I’ve got the germ of one.’ Sophie faltered, looking across at the beautiful half-finished cake, uncertainly. ‘It’s kind of my dream cake but … I’m prepared to sacrifice it for someone who sounds as if he and his bride deserve it.’
‘Are you sure? And what is your dream cake? Mine changes on a weekly basis, when I see all the amazing designs around.’
‘Remember I told you I love the silver balls? I’d have a cake covered in those. Just that. I think it would look amazing.’
Bella wrinkled her nose. ‘Cute.’
‘It would,’ insisted Sophie, conscious of the other girl’s scepticism. ‘Now you’ve got me worried. Look, I started to make some initial sketches.’ Delving into her bag, she pulled out her notebook and gave her earlier sketches a cursory glance before she handed it over to Bella.
‘Hmm,’ said Bella, tilting the book this way and that.
‘It’s hard to make it come alive on paper.’
‘Mmm,’ agreed Bella.
‘It will work.’
‘Yes, but how are you going to convince the happy couple?’
‘How would you feel if I mocked one up? A smaller version.’
‘That would work. Could you do it this weekend? I’ll email the guy and see if he can come here to see it. And I can take photos for my gallery. You’re going to need a hell of a lot of those silver balls. I’d better get onto the wholesaler. This job will certainly keep you quiet over the weekend!’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Sophie grimly. ‘You don’t mind if I work in the kitchen?’
By three o’clock on Sunday, Sophie’s hands had almost cramped into a permanent lobster claw.
‘I wish I’d never started this,’ she moaned, her hands gripping a pair of tweezers, when Bella popped in with Wes.
‘Jeez Louise, it’s like a fairy hailstorm visited,’ said Wes, surveying the floor.
‘They’re slippery little devils,’ said Sophie with feeling.
‘You should have just chucked the balls over the cake,’ observed Bella.
‘Then it wouldn’t look right, or special,’ snapped Sophie, immediately feeling guilty – but seriously, this was so romantic, it had to be perfect. ‘Some would overlap, some wouldn’t stick, it would have bald patches.’
‘Sorry,’ said Bella. ‘Why don’t you take a break? Have you eaten?’
Sophie shook her head, looking a little frantically at the clock. ‘You did say six, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but I can always ring and put them back.’ The groom was due to bring his bride to see the cake today.
‘No, I thought you said it was the only night both of them could do.’
‘Yes, but you’ve got another three hours. You’ve been at this since nine. You need a break.’
‘I daren’t, the icing is starting to harden off. And I’ve only got the last third of the top tier to do.’
Making the cake had been the easy part. She’d made three mini-sized ones, each an inch bigger in radius than the next, yesterday morning. It still stood thirty centimetres tall. Yesterday afternoon Bella had helped her to assemble them one on top of the other, strengthening each cake with dowelling and a hidden platform, so that the weight of the top two cakes wouldn’t sink into the base. The icing had been more problematic as it had to be exactly the right consistency, firm enough to ensure that the silver dragee balls stayed put and didn’t slide down or sink, and soft enough that it didn’t harden off while she was still working on the decorations.
Each silver ball had to be applied with a pair of tweezers, as the silver dust came off the balls if they were touched. Sophie suspected she looked as if she might be related to the fairy godmother, she was so covered in silver dust.
‘At least have a coffee and a muffin,’ said Bella firmly. ‘And let me carry on.’
Sophie hesitated. Was she being too possessive? With each silver ball, she’d thought of a special memory. The early cakes she’d made with her mum. The day her dad took the stabilisers off her bike. Her first published article. Her first kiss. Her first kiss with Todd. The first time they’d gone to bed. The day on the beach at Coney Island. The day on Jones Beach. So many reasons to be happy. So many treasured memories that she’d always hold dear. Todd might be out of reach but he’d shown her how to live. He’d given her a new way of looking at life. He’d given her Brooklyn.
‘Hello … Sophie, come back to me.’ Bella snatched the tweezers out of her hand. ‘You can trust me! For goodness’ sake, girl, take a seat and a caffeine hit. Wes, make her.’
‘Don’t involve me,’ he rumbled, holding up his hands in mock surrender.
‘I promise I won’t mess it up. You need a break.’
Sophie took a seat and watched like an over-protective mother as Bella took over.
‘Darn it! These things are like … oh darn it, I’ve dropped another one. Whose bright idea was this?’
Sophie flexed her cramped hand and laughed at Bella’s comical dismay. ‘Wait until you’ve been at it for a few hours.’
‘I’d have run out of patience about thirty seconds in.’
In fact Bella’s patience ran out after about ten minutes, which being perfectly honest, Sophie was rather pleased about.
Sophie placed the final few balls into place and stepped back. It looked stunning. Simple but so effective.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Bella, ‘I take it all back, I’d never have believed how beautiful it is. This is definitely special.’
‘I think so. I hope she likes it. You’d better keep any sharp implements out of reach, just in case.’
‘How could she not love it?’
‘She’d better, I’ve put my heart and soul into this one. It really is my cake.’ Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of each of the thousands of silver balls that she’d evenly placed exactly a fraction of a space from each other.
‘Right. We have one last job to do,’ announced Bella.
Sophie looked confused.
‘This is a work of art, you can’t leave it in here. We’ll take it through to the bakery. I’ve had Wes do some work.’
‘We need to move it,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope we don’t drop it.’
‘Don’t even say that,’ Sophie shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about.
They carefully lifted the cake onto the trolley that Bella kept for this very purpose and pushed it through into the other room.
‘Oh wow.’ Wes had done an amazing job, stringing several lots of fairy lights around the walls of the far corner. All the furniture had been moved away with the exception of one circular table which Bella had covered with a pure-white damask tablecloth. ‘It looks fab in here. It’s going to set the cake off beautifully.’
Sophie let Bella lift it onto the little table and Wes switched out the main lights.
Like a gorgeous silver star, the cake twinkled in the fairy lights. Sophie clasped her hands together and let out a tiny gasp. ‘It’s perfect.’ Her heart flipped over at the beautiful sight and she blinked back tears.
‘Well, whoever the couple are, I bloody hope they love each other to bits,’ she said fiercely.
Wes and Bella came and flanked her.
Bella squeezed her arm. ‘It is beautiful and so romantic. And listen to that, bang on time. I’ll get the door.’
They’d agreed that Sophie would present the cake and Bella would talk money and dates. Even if the couple didn’t like it, Bella had arranged for some professional shots to be taken on Monday that she’d use on her website.
Wes melted away into the kitchen as Sophie lingered, giving the cake one last look. She could hear Bella unlocking the café door and talking in a low voice.
Then a shadow moved through the café towards her.
She waited, twisting her hands, suddenly anxious. What if they didn’t like the cake? The shadow came closer and stepped into the circle of light, the tiny bulbs suddenly illuminating his face.
‘Todd!’
‘Sophie,’ he said quietly.
Where was Bella? She looked at her watch.
‘We’re about to have a meeting with …’ her voice trailed away. With a slow smile, his eyes never leaving hers, he stepped forward and took her hand.
‘That is one hell of a cake.’
‘It is,’ said Sophie, proud of every last inch of it.
‘And exactly what I asked for.’
‘Oh,’ her mouth dropped open, she scarcely dared breathe as she looked at the cake and then back at him. Hope bubbled, singing in her veins. Her eyes widened, as she stared at him.
He lifted her hand to his mouth. ‘I want to give you,’ he gently kissed each knuckle with each word, ‘the sun, the moon and the stars,’ he said, holding her hand, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘You make my world a brighter place and my life is infinitely better when you’re at my side.’
His softly spoken words warmed her from the inside out and she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, in case her brain had short-circuited and she wasn’t understanding properly.
She frowned, scared she might have it wrong.
With gentle fingers he soothed the line away.
‘English, I love you. I don’t deserve you but I know you love me,’ he gave her a lopsided smile, ‘and I’m taking it.’
It was such a magical moment, she didn’t want to spoil it. Instead she squeezed his fingers, her eyes locked on his, letting all the love in her heart pour out.
‘And our spectacular wedding cake is absolutely perfect.’ His voice was so soft, her heart stalled and she stared up at him, wide eyed, scarcely daring to believe in case she’d misheard.
‘Ours?’ she asked in a breathless whisper.
He nodded. ‘It’s beautiful. Starlight and love. A million stars to wish upon.’
Her lips curved. ‘Romantic.’
‘I can do more.’
‘For how long?’ she asked softly, clutching his hand, praying she hadn’t got this wrong.
‘How about forever?’
‘Forever’s a long time.’
‘All or nothing. I want it all.’
‘You want to get married?’ Sophie’s whisper was incredulous.
He nodded and then a playful twinkle danced in his eyes. ‘There is a proviso … it has to be to you.’
‘Why?’ asked Sophie, still not quite able to believe that this gorgeous man wanted her.
He looked startled and then he looked at the cake. ‘Because you’re the moon and the stars in my life and I can’t live without you any longer.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Never been surer of anything in my life.’
‘But …’ she frowned.
‘I love you.’ He gave her a giddy smile. ‘Proper love.’ He touched her arm as if to reassure himself that she hadn’t run away. ‘The sort of love that you read about in books, hear about in songs. The sort of love that’s selfless. The sort of love that you’ve given me. That you offered me unconditionally even when I didn’t think I could give it back. You took a risk saying it. You were right, I was a coward. I spent all weekend thinking about what you’d said. Even discussed it with Marty. He thinks you’re cool, by the way.’
‘Pleased to hear it.’ She smiled up at him.
‘All week I kept trying to think of reasons why I didn’t want to be with you. And I could only think of reasons why I wanted to be with you. The harder I tried to think of reasons, the more I wanted to see you.’
‘And what about your harem?’
‘Given them up.’
‘What about …?’
‘What about kissing me, Sophie, and agreeing to spend the rest of your life with me?’
With a teary smile, she gazed up at him. ‘Sounds like a plan.’