Last-Minute Proposal

CHAPTER FIVE

EXCEPT it didn’t work out like that. The moment Campbell came through the door, Tilly’s heart gave a sickening lurch into her throat, where it lodged, hammering so hard she could hardly speak.

He was exactly as she remembered him, but somehow more so. Everything about him seemed very definite, and she was aware of him in startling detail, down to the buttons on his shirt, the fine hairs on his wrist, the faint line between his brows as he watched the crew bustling around the kitchen, talking about light and angles.

Momentarily sidelined with him, Tilly cleared her throat and forced her heart back into position. ‘How have you been?’

‘Busy,’ said Campbell succinctly. ‘I’m moving to the States in three weeks, and there’s a lot to do before then.’

So he clearly wasn’t going to have time for a little seduction on the side.

Tilly told herself that it was just as well. Her confidence was so low that he would be boarding his plane before she got up the nerve to try a little light flirtation. She had never been any good at that.

Anyway, look at him, so cool, so detached, so self-contained. It was all very well for Cleo to talk about having fun, but how could she have fun with a man like Campbell? It would be like trying to have fun with a granite rock.

No, forget it, she told herself. Just do the programme. Think about Mum and what this could do for the hospice. Teach him how to make a cake and don’t for one second let him think you might even have considered the possibility of fun!

There was a pause. It didn’t seem to bother Campbell but the silence made Tilly uncomfortable. ‘Where are you staying while you’re here?’ she asked, hating how inane she sounded. The two of them had shared a tiny tent. They had laughed on top of a mountain. She had clung to him and begged him not to let her go. And now she was treating him as if he were a stranger she had met at a cocktail party.

If Campbell noticed the incongruity of it, he made no comment. ‘In a hotel,’ he said. ‘The Watley…’ He twiddled his hand to indicate that he had forgotten the rest of the name.

‘The Watley Hall.’

‘You know it?’

‘Everyone here knows the Watley Hall, even if we can’t afford to eat there. It’s the best hotel in Allerby.’

She might have known that was where he would be staying.

‘It’s not very enterprising of you,’ she commented tartly. ‘I thought you would be pitching a tent in the garden!’

Campbell glanced at her. His face was perfectly straight but there was a glimmer of a smile at the back of his eyes, and her heart tipped a little, as if she had missed a step.

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m just a boring businessman nowadays, wanting a place to work.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be learning how to make a wedding cake?’

‘During the day,’ he agreed. ‘I will need to catch up with work in the evenings, so a hotel will suit me rather more than a tent. And you’ll no doubt be glad to know that I’ll be out of your hair once the baking lesson is over for the day.’

The baking lesson. Tilly didn’t miss the dismissive note in Campbell’s voice, and her eyes narrowed. He obviously thought cake-making was a trivial business, easily mastered. A token few minutes in the kitchen every day and then he would be planning to head back to his hotel room to deal with real man’s business!

They would see about that.

Campbell was looking around the kitchen. He had somehow imagined Tilly living in a muddle, but although the room certainly had a relaxed feel to it, with a couple of comfortable old armchairs at the far end, he was relieved to see that it was clean and very well-organised. From what little he had seen of it so far, the whole house had a friendly, welcoming air.

‘This is a nice house,’ he commented. ‘There must be more money in cakes than I thought.’

‘Sadly not,’ said Tilly dryly. ‘This was my stepfather’s house. My mother and I moved in here when I was seven. Mum died when I was twenty, and Jack the following year, so the mortgage was paid off. We spent quite a lot of time at the hospice over those couple of years,’ she explained with a little sigh. ‘I suppose that’s why it means so much to me.’

‘How old were your brothers then?’

‘Only twelve,’ she told him. ‘Jack made me their guardian before he died so I could keep this as a home for them. We’ll have to decide what to do with it when they reach twenty-five. If they ever settle down, Harry and Seb may want to sell so they can buy their own places, but there’s no sign of them doing anything remotely sensible yet, so until then I’m happy to stay here.’

Campbell was watching her with a slight frown in his cool eyes. ‘Don’t you get a say?’

‘It’s not my house. Seb and Harry aren’t going to throw me out in the street, so it’s not as if I’m going to be destitute or anything.’

‘Still, it seems strange not to have made any allowance for you,’ said Campbell, surprised at how concerned he felt on her behalf. ‘I know you were just a stepdaughter, but presumably Harry and Seb are your half-brothers. You’re family.’

‘Don’t blame Jack,’ said Tilly loyally. ‘At the time it was the reasonable thing to do. My real father is still alive and has much more money than Jack ever had. Of course Jack assumed that I would be well provided for.’

‘And you’re not?’

Tilly looked away. ‘I asked my father for help after Jack died. We had the house, but most of Jack’s money was tied up in trust for the boys’ education, and I didn’t know how I was going to manage with day-to-day expenses.’

‘Surely your father didn’t refuse to help you?’

‘No, not exactly,’ she said. ‘He offered me a home, college fees if I wanted them and even an allowance, but he wasn’t prepared to take on the twins. I don’t think he ever forgave my mother for being happy with Jack,’ Tilly went on thoughtfully. ‘Even though he was the one who left us, for a new wife more in keeping with his oh-so-successful image,’ she added with a touch of bitterness. ‘Mum wasn’t supposed to be happier than he was after that.’

Campbell’s brows contracted. ‘So he made you choose?’

‘That’s right. I could be his daughter or I could be the twins’ sister, but I couldn’t be both.’ She smiled wryly. ‘At least it wasn’t a difficult decision to make!’

‘Wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Not many twenty-one-year-olds would turn their back on financial support in favour of looking after two boys.’

‘What was I supposed to do? Walk away and leave them to bring themselves up?’

‘They must have had other family who could have looked after them.’

‘There was Jack’s sister, Shirley, but she was much older than Jack, and she’d never had any children. I’m not sure if she would have been able to cope with the twins, and it would have been awful for them, too. She was very strict and used to get terribly anxious about noise and mess, two things you can guarantee a lot of with twelve-year-old boys around!

‘They’d lost so much,’ Tilly remembered sadly. ‘First Mum, and then Jack. I was all they had. I wasn’t going to abandon them.’

She was watching the television crew moving around the kitchen, but the deep blue eyes were sombre and it was clear that she was lost in memories. Campbell found his gaze resting on her face, on the dark sweep of her lashes and the curve of her cheek. She had beautiful creamy skin, the kind you wanted to touch, to see if it was as warm and soft and lush as it looked.

He had thought about her much more than he had expected over the last three weeks. The oddest things would trigger a memory and he would be back on that hillside with Tilly. Campbell had been surprised at how vividly he could picture her, how precisely he remembered the scent of her hair, the feel of her squashed against him, the curve of that generous mouth and the sound of her laughter.

Most of all, he remembered how he had felt when he was with her. Her sparkiness had made him uneasy, and he had been torn between exasperation and feeling reluctantly intrigued by the contrast between her warm, sensuous body and her tart humour.

Looking at Tilly now, Campbell realised that there was a stubbornness and a strength to her, too. He could imagine her squaring her shoulders and bearing the burden of her young brothers’ grief as well as her own. It couldn’t have been easy looking after the two of them.

‘You were very young for that kind of responsibility,’ he commented.

Tilly shrugged, her eyes still on the cameraman. ‘Lots of girls are mothers before they’re twenty-one,’ she reminded him.

‘Not of twelve-year-old boys.’

‘Maybe not, but I just had to get on with it. People deal with a lot harder things every day.’

Yes, stronger than he had thought.

‘Still, it must have been hard. At twenty-one you should be off exploring the world, enjoying yourself, finding out what you really want to do with your life.’

She smiled slightly at his determination to feel sorry for her. ‘I know what I really want to do,’ she said. ‘I’m doing it now.’ She gestured around the kitchen. ‘I worked in an office for a few years. It was a dull job, but it paid the bills and meant I could make a home for Harry and Seb while they were at school, but when they went to university I could suit myself, and that’s when I decided to set up Sweet Nothings.’

Campbell was looking dubious. A cake-making business was all very well, but she was clearly an intelligent woman.

‘You didn’t want to do something more…?’

‘More what?’

‘More…’ He searched for the right word, and failed to find it. ‘…challenging?’ he suggested at last.

As soon as the word was out of his mouth, he knew he had blundered. Tilly was smiling, but there was a flinty look in her eyes.

‘No,’ she said levelly. ‘I love what I’m doing. How can one ask for more than that?’

Fortunately Suzy came over just then. ‘I think we’re ready,’ she said. ‘Tilly, can you show Campbell the kitchen and explain what he’s going to have to do for the camera, then we’ll leave you to get on with it. Have you arranged about the wedding cake, by the way?’

‘Yes, a friend of mine called Cleo has agreed to let Campbell make hers. She’s got a good sense of fun and she won’t be traumatised if it’s all a disaster.’

‘When’s the wedding?’

‘A week on Saturday.’

‘Perfect. We’ll come and film you both with the cake then. It should make a great scene!’

Campbell was expressionless as Tilly showed him round the kitchen and then opened her portfolio of designs. She had made cakes in an extraordinary range of designs, from Manolo Blahnik shoes to giraffes to a golfer driving off a tee.

‘As you can see,’ she said for the benefit of the camera, ‘here at Sweet Nothings we make whatever the customer wants. It’s important that they feel that their cake is unique, so I spend quite a lot of time talking to them first, about who the cake is for, and what exactly they want to celebrate.’

She turned a page and the camera zoomed in over her shoulder, missing the real story, which was the tightening of Campbell’s jaw as he realised just what he was getting into.

‘Some people want a fun cake, perhaps to fit in with the theme of a party, or with a particular interest. You’d be amazed what some people are interested in, so you need to be adaptable. So if you had to make a cake for someone with a really strange hobby-an interest in Roman military history, say-’ she said, unable to resist the dig at Campbell, ‘you’d have to do some research to see what a soldier in the legions might have worn, for instance.’

Campbell was looking wooden, and Tilly suppressed a smile. ‘Fortunately, there aren’t too many odd-bods like that around,’ she went on innocently. ‘Most people are normal.’

That would teach him to sneer at baking.

For the benefit of the camera, she turned a few more pages. ‘Some customers prefer a more traditional cake, but they still want the personal touch. The main thing to remember is that I’m making the cake they want, not the cake I think they should have. You’ll have to bear that in mind when you make Cleo’s wedding cake.’

Campbell managed to unclamp his jaw. ‘Has she decided what design she wants yet?’

‘No, she’s coming in tomorrow to talk to you about that. You can discuss it together.’

Campbell couldn’t see that conversation lasting long. He didn’t have the slightest interest in wedding cakes, as Tilly clearly knew only too well. How the hell was he supposed to come up with a design for a wedding cake? There hadn’t even been a cake at his own ill-fated wedding to Lisa.

He eyed Tilly suspiciously, wondering if she was deliberately setting him up, and when she pulled a pink apron emblazoned with ‘Sweet Nothings’ from a drawer, he was sure of it.

‘You’ll need to wear this when you’re baking and decorating,’ she told him, and he recoiled, his expression everything Tilly had hoped for.

‘I’m not wearing that!’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ she said sweetly. ‘Health and safety regulations.’

‘Do put it on,’ Suzy urged from behind the camera. ‘The viewers will love it!’

Campbell opened his mouth to tell her in no uncertain terms what she could do with her viewers when he caught sight of Tilly’s face. Her eyes were alight with laughter.

‘You planned this!’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Only in the way you planned that river crossing,’ she whispered back.

‘It’ll win you so many votes,’ Suzy promised. ‘Roger was none too happy about putting on a special uniform to do the pedicure either, but the viewers do love a good sport.’

‘Does Roger have to wear pink?’ Campbell asked sourly, but he tied the apron round him. This whole experience was going to be humiliating enough without letting Roger outdo him. It would take more than an apron to beat him.

Folding his arms, he glared at the camera. There was a long moment of utter silence while Tilly, Suzy and the cameraman all looked at him, and then there was a muffled snort as Tilly broke first.

She couldn’t help it. Campbell looked so ridiculous, glowering over the pink pinny. On a man who would be utterly at home in camouflage and a black balaclava, the apron looked positively bizarre and his expression was so forbidding that she started to laugh.

A moment later Suzy joined in, too, and then the camera was shaking as Jim, the cameraman, succumbed as well. They laughed and laughed while Campbell regarded them with a jaundiced expression, not at all amused.

‘I didn’t realise you were making a comedy,’ he said caustically.

‘Oh, dear.’ Suzy wiped her eyes and made an effort to control her giggles. ‘I’m sorry, but this is just perfect! The contrast between you two couldn’t be better!’ She sighed happily. ‘This is going to be such a great programme. All you’ve got to do is make that cake now, Campbell-oh, and don’t forget your video diaries again!’

‘Boy, that Suzy knows how to manage you,’ said Tilly as they waved the producer and cameraman off at last.

Campbell scowled as he snatched off the apron. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She knows she just has to dangle the prospect of Roger winning in front of your nose and you’ll do anything to beat him, even if it means wearing a pink apron!’

‘I’m certainly not going to make myself look ridiculous unless I do win,’ said Campbell trenchantly.

‘Campbell, has it ever occurred to you that you might lose?’ Tilly asked, folding her arms and studying him curiously. ‘Someone has to.’

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I never lose.’

‘Your ex-wife might not agree about that,’ Tilly couldn’t help retorting. ‘You don’t have a very good success rate when it comes to relationships.’

He shrugged that aside. ‘Relationships are different.’

And clearly a lot less important than winning as far as Campbell was concerned.

Tilly remembered Cleo’s advice to have a little fling and sighed. Campbell was far too focused on winning this competition to waste any time on her. She could stand on the table and do the dance of the seven veils until she was stark naked, and Campbell would be telling her to stop wasting time, they needed to get on. He was only here now because he couldn’t win without her.

‘Come on,’ she said, resigned. ‘If you’re going to win, we’d better get on with teaching you how to make a cake. Have you ever done any baking before?’

Campbell was still fuming about the apron episode as he followed her back to the kitchen. ‘No, but surely it’s just a question of reading some instructions?’ he said irritably.

‘Oh, good point.’ Tilly paused and put her head on one side as if struck by his good sense. ‘I never thought of that. Well, that’ll save us some time. Why don’t you go ahead and make one, then, and I’ll put the kettle on? We probably won’t need to bother with the rest of the week. We’ll just have half an hour on icing tips before the wedding, and you can spend the rest of the time working.’

He eyed her for a moment, certain that she was testing him somehow, but then again, how difficult could it be? It was only a cake, for God’s sake!

‘All right,’ he said, accepting her unspoken challenge. Unconsciously, he squared his shoulders. Not only would he make a cake, he would make the best cake she had ever tasted. If she thought mocking his interest in the Romans and dressing him in pink would put him off his stroke, she would soon discover that she was mistaken!

‘Don’t forget your apron,’ she reminded him.

Setting his jaw, Campbell retrieved the apron and looked around for a recipe. The dresser held a whole range of cook books and he had no idea where to start. Only the knowledge that Tilly was just waiting for him to admit that he could do with some advice made him pull out a book at random.

Favourite Cake Recipes…Just what he needed. Campbell turned the pages determinedly, although his heart sank as he was presented with yet more choices. Who would have thought that there were that many different kinds of cake?

Eventually he settled on a chocolate sponge cake with butter icing. It looked like the ones his mother had used to make when he was a boy and she had knocked them out in no time.

‘I’ll do this one,’ he said, showing Tilly the picture.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘I love chocolate cake. You’ll find cake tins in that drawer there, dry ingredients in the larder-over there-and everything else in the fridge. Off you go, Sanderson!’

He looked at her, suspicious of her enthusiasm. ‘What are you going to be doing?’

‘Oh, I’ll be here working on a few designs,’ she said, plonking herself down at the table. ‘Feel free to ask if you can’t find anything.’

Campbell set about his task with grim determination. Working his way down the list, he managed to assemble all the ingredients, but the eggs were cold, the butter hard and he had obviously dismissed the difference between caster and granulated sugar as irrelevant. Tilly could practically see him thinking flour is flour is flour before deciding that plain flour would do just as well as self-raising, and he picked out a cake tin at random without any thought for its size or whether or not it needed to be lined.

It was odd that a man so focused, so competent, so coolly logical, should have such a cavalier approach to baking, she thought. But then, Campbell wouldn’t see cooking as important, would he?

Still, she had to give him marks for perseverance. He got points for tidying up, too, after he had put the cake in the oven. ‘There,’ he said at last, laying the cloth out to dry on the edge of the sink at a precise right angle. ‘That’s done.’

Realising that he was still wearing the stupid apron, he wrenched it off and tossed it aside.

Tilly was sitting at the end of the table, idly turning the pages of a magazine, and he eyed her sardonically.

‘Working hard?’

‘I am, as a matter of fact,’ she said equably. ‘I’m researching. I’ve got clients coming in to choose a twenty-first birthday cake for their daughter, so I want to be able to give them some fun ideas. I do a lot of bags and shoes, but I’m wondering if I might do a complete outfit like this one.’ She turned the magazine so Campbell could see the photograph she was considering.

He looked at it uncomprehendingly. ‘Why don’t you just make her a nice chocolate cake?’

‘Because anyone can do that-even you, apparently! I’m offering something different, and I can’t do that unless I’ve got a real sense of the person the cake is for. Actually, making the cake is the easy part. You need to be able to talk to people, and listen to what they tell you.’

She fixed him with a stern gaze. ‘That means when Cleo comes in tomorrow you can’t just fob her off with a traditional three tier cake. You need to find out what kind of wedding she’s planning, what sort of cake she really wants, and come up with some ideas for her. Cleo’s my friend, and she’s agreed to let you do her cake as a favour to me, so you’ve got to make it really special for her.’

‘You’ll be there, too, won’t you?’ Campbell asked with a touch of unease. He couldn’t imagine having much to say to an excited bride full of wedding plans. ‘I’m not very good at talking at all, let alone about that kind of stuff.’

‘I wasn’t any good at abseiling, but I still had to do it,’ Tilly pointed out tartly. ‘Yes, I’ll be there, just as you were at the top of the cliff, but I can’t do it for you. This time it’s your challenge.’

Campbell sighed. ‘Why does it have to be so complicated? A cake is a cake!’

‘When you were in the army, were all operations the same?’

‘I was in the Marines, but no, they weren’t.’

‘And now you’re in business, is every deal exactly the same?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s the same with cakes.’

Tilly could see that he wasn’t convinced. ‘Every time I make a cake, I’m making it for different people, and a different situation. Even if they choose exactly the same cake, the way I mix it and bake it and decorate it is all different. If it wasn’t, my customers might as well go to a supermarket and buy one made in a factory.’

‘The next time I’m negotiating an important deal I’ll think of you and remind myself that it’s just like a cake,’ said Campbell dryly.

Tilly couldn’t help warming to the idea that he might be thinking about her in the future. ‘Will you have to do much of that in your new job?’

‘Negotiating? I imagine so. This will be my most challenging job yet. I’m going to a global corporation that’s been on a downward slide for some time. I’ve been appointed to turn it round, but it won’t be easy.’

‘Oh, but surely it’s just a question of reading some instructions?’ Tilly murmured provocatively.

Campbell looked at her sharply. She met his gaze blandly, but the dark blue eyes gleamed and, in spite of himself, he laughed.

‘It would be nice to think that there would be some instructions to read!’

Tilly found herself smiling back at him, even while wishing that she hadn’t made him laugh. It was so obvious that Campbell thought that making cakes was beneath him that she had been doing a good job of disliking him again, and now he had gone and spoilt that by smiling.

All at once she was tingling with awareness again and, instead of thinking about how arrogant and disagreeable he could be, she was thinking about the fact that the two of them were alone in the house, and trying not to notice how tall and lean and tautly muscled he was, how out of place he seemed in the cosy kitchen with that air of tightly leashed power.

Looking at him in that pink apron, Tilly had the unnerving sensation that she had tied a bow around a kitten only to realise that it had turned into a fully grown tiger, complete with swishing tail, and she only just stopped herself from gulping.

She pushed back her chair so that it scraped on the tiles. ‘Tea?’ she asked brightly.

‘Thanks.’

Campbell sat down at the table and pulled her sketchbook towards him. As he flicked idly through it, his brows rose. Her designs were quick and clear, and she had somehow captured each idea in a few clever lines.

‘These are good,’ he said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

Tilly switched on the kettle and turned to lean back against the sink, determinedly keeping her distance.

‘It’s not exactly turning round a global corporation, is it?’

Campbell turned another few pages. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that might not be easier than coming up with ideas like these.’

‘Well, that’s why you’re a hotshot international executive and I’m the provincial cake-maker,’ said Tilly. ‘If you think about it, we don’t have a single thing in common, do we?’

Campbell looked at her standing by the kettle. Her nut-brown curls gleamed with gold under the spotlights, and he remembered how soft her hair had felt under his cheek as they had lain together in the tent up on the Scottish hillside. Funny to think they had only spent a matter of hours together. She seemed uncannily familiar already. Campbell wasn’t a fanciful man, but it felt as if he had known the glint of fun in her eyes, the tartness of her voice, the gurgle of laughter, for ever.

‘No, I don’t suppose we do,’ he agreed, his voice rather more curt than he had intended.

And they didn’t. Tilly was right. They had absolutely nothing in common.

It hadn’t taken Campbell nearly as long as he had expected to adjust to civilian life. He had always been too much of a maverick to fit that comfortably into naval life, even within an elite unit. An unorthodox approach and a relentless drive to succeed at whatever cost came into their own on special operations, but were less of an advantage in the day-to-day routine.

He hadn’t regretted leaving all that behind. Lisa hadn’t intended to change his life for the better when she’d walked out, but he was grateful to her in an odd way for making him so determined to prove that he could make twice as much money as her new husband that he had gone into business. It had turned out that he was made for the ruthless cut and thrust of corporate life. Campbell didn’t do emotions, or talking or any of the things women thought were so important, but he knew how to make money, and that was what counted.

When it came down to it, Campbell believed that everybody was motivated by money at some level. Tilly wouldn’t agree, he was sure. That was another thing they didn’t have in common.

‘We just have to get along for a fortnight with nothing in common,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be gone.’

Thanks for the reminder, Tilly thought, piqued in spite of herself. It was all very well deciding not to get involved with him, but quite another thing to be hit over the head with the fact that he was planning to leave the country soon. She had a nasty feeling he had done it to make sure that she got the message that he wasn’t available. Why didn’t he just hang up a sign saying ‘don’t bother’?

Not that she had any intention of letting him know that she had even considered the possibility of getting involved. That really would make him laugh.

‘Of course, you’re moving to the States, aren’t you?’ Tilly was Ms Cucumber Cool as she carried the teapot over and found two mugs. She could do couldn’t-care-less as well as anyone, even Campbell Sanderson. ‘Where exactly are you going?’

‘New York.’

‘Is that where your ex-wife lives now?’

Campbell looked at her, startled. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, you said she lived in the States, and you don’t seem the kind of man who lets go easily. I wondered if you were going there because you wanted to see her.’

‘Not at all,’ he said sharply. ‘It just happens that’s where the head office is.’

Infuriatingly, though, Tilly’s words had made him pause and examine his own motives for the first time. ‘Of course I’ve considered the chance that I might bump into her,’ he went on after a while. ‘New York is a big city, but Lisa’s new husband is in a similar line of business, so it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that we’ll meet.’

‘Gosh, I hope he’s not more successful than you,’ said Tilly, only half joking, and Campbell smiled grimly.

‘Not any more,’ he said.