Last-Minute Proposal

Tilly had told him that she was afraid, and he didn’t have time to win her confidence. Even if he did, what then?

He was moving to the States, Campbell reminded himself. Taking over a company with a global reputation like Mentior’s would be the culmination of his business career. There would be no stopping him now. He was going to take that firm and turn it round and make it the best in the world again, and he was going to do it where Lisa couldn’t fail to note his success.

Ever since Lisa had left him, he had been focused on proving to her just how big a mistake she had made. He would never have a better chance than this. There was no question of not going.

And that meant there was no question of convincing Tilly that she was a desirable woman. She was absolutely right. It was best for both of them if they kept their relationship firmly on a friendly basis. Tilly had made it very clear that was all she wanted.

He needed to be realistic, after all, Campbell told himself. They were only together because of the television programme. As soon as Cleo’s wedding was over, and he had made that cake, they would go their separate ways. They would meet up at the awards ceremony for one last filming and, if they had won, as Campbell fully intended they would, they would hand over their cheques to the hospice that meant so much to her, and that would be that.

It was impractical to even think about anything else.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Campbell thinking about it anyway. It was hard not to when he and Tilly were spending so much time together.

Campbell hadn’t expected to enjoy his time learning to make cakes. He had expected to be bored and impatient to get back to the office. He checked his email regularly, and his PA had strict instructions to ring him if there were any problems, but they all seemed to be managing perfectly well without him, and Campbell found himself thinking about work less and less and about Tilly more and more.

Never having given it any thought, he had been surprised at quite how much was involved in making cakes for a living. As Tilly explained, it wasn’t just a question of baking. She had long interviews with each client to find out exactly what they wanted, then the cake had to be designed and decorated and delivered on time. She sourced recipes, shopped for ingredients and priced each cake, but what she was best at was talking to people.

Inclined to be dismissive at first, Campbell came to recognise her ability to make connections for the skill it was. He watched clients relax as they sat at Tilly’s table and told her about who or what they wanted to celebrate with a special cake, and he watched their faces when they saw what Tilly had made for them.

There were almost always gasps of pleasure and admiration when the cake was unveiled, and he could understand why. Campbell was amazed at what she could do. The day after Cleo’s visit, she had made a football pitch complete with players in the correct strips for a nine year-old boy who was a Manchester United fan. Campbell had helped her deliver it to the birthday party and would have enjoyed the whole experience if he hadn’t had to drive a van with ‘Sweet Nothings’ painted on the side.

A pink van.

Campbell had told Tilly she needed to work on her corporate image, but she’d just laughed at him. ‘Everyone loves the pink van,’ she said. ‘It’s fun.’

‘I just hope to God nobody I know sees me in it,’ he grumbled and Tilly slid him a mischievous glance.

‘Perhaps you’re the one who needs rebranding,’ she suggested. ‘You could tone down all that macho man and get in touch with your feminine side!’

The look Campbell sent her in reply made Tilly laugh out loud.

‘OK, there is no feminine side. That would explain why you’re finding it so hard to make a cake!’

And Campbell had to admit that he was struggling on that front. Tilly made it look so easy, but when he’d tried to make even a basic sponge it was a disaster.

‘Look, it’s not a competition,’ Tilly said to him, watching him square up to his ingredients for yet another practice cake. ‘It’s not about winning, or beating the ingredients into shape. It’s magic.’

She let some caster sugar run through her fingers, caressed a speckled brown egg. ‘It’s about taking all these different ingredients and turning them into something that looks wonderful and smells wonderful and tastes wonderful. You’re too aggressive,’ she scolded him. ‘You’re treating cooking as a battle, with you as Julius Caesar and the ingredients as the poor old Britons! Don’t think of the recipe as a series of manoeuvres. Think of it as helpful advice to create something beautiful.’

But, frustrated by his inability to master baking the way he had mastered every other obstacle in his way, Campbell was too brisk, too impatient for results, to do anything of the kind. He didn’t know what Tilly meant when she said it wasn’t about winning. Why else would he be making a fool of himself like this?

He was much happier sorting out her office for her and criticising her accounting system. He fixed wobbly shelves and changed the light bulbs she couldn’t reach. He checked the oil in the van and filled up the windscreen wash. He set up a special business email account for Sweet Nothings.

‘If you carry on like this, I’m not going to want you to leave,’ Tilly said.

Leave. Campbell was jolted by the reminder. Of course he would be leaving. He would be getting on a plane and flying off to the States, where there would be no Tilly humming tunelessly as she moved around the kitchen. No Tilly endlessly teasing him about his military approach or his interest in Roman history. No Tilly there rolling her eyes, wearing her bold bright lipstick, leaning forward with an animated face, encompassing everyone she talked to in her warmth and her light.

But he would be in New York. He would be successful. He would look Lisa in the face and show her everything that she had lost.

‘Careful!’ Tilly cautioned him as he lifted the cake out of the back of the van. ‘This one’s very fragile.’

Campbell looked down at the cake, decorated to look like a bed complete with pink frills, scatter cushions and a teddy bear. It was covered with cosmetics, a chick flick DVD and a sparkly top.

‘Is this a birthday cake?’

‘It’s for a sleepover party.’

To Campbell the house seemed full of shrieking, giggling girls who flocked around them, exclaiming at the cake and tossing back their hair as they cast sidelong glances at him under their impossibly long lashes while Tilly carried on an in-depth conversation with the birthday girl’s mother.

‘Phew!’ He let out a long breath when he finally managed to extricate her and made an escape. ‘I’d rather parachute into enemy territory than do that again.’

Tilly rolled her eyes in a characteristic gesture. ‘Honestly, they were just a few little girls!’

‘They weren’t little, and they were terrifying. You could have warned me!’

‘I didn’t realise that it would be quite such a traumatic experience for you,’ she said, grinning as she unlocked the van. ‘You certainly weren’t much back-up support!’

‘Hey, I got you out of there, didn’t I?’

‘I’m not sure grabbing me by the wrist, telling Jane that we had to go and dragging me to the door really counts. You might try a more diplomatic approach next time.’

‘There’s going to be a next time?’ said Campbell, his horror only half feigned.

‘Perhaps I’d better make it solo missions if there’s any girly stuff involved,’ said Tilly, laughing at him over the roof of the van. ‘I hope this never gets back to the mess. The day Campbell Sanderson panicked when confronted with six twelve-year-old girls!’

‘I did not panic,’ he said, trying to suppress an answering grin. ‘I merely made a strategic retreat. I was thinking of you, in any case,’ he added virtuously as they got into the van. ‘It’s been a long day.’

Tilly stretched and sighed. ‘It has. At least that’s it for today.’ She reached for her seatbelt. ‘Do you want me to drop you back at the hotel?’

‘If you’ll let me buy you dinner,’ said Campbell on an impulse and when she froze with her seat belt halfway across her, he held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘Don’t panic, I’m not planning to make a move on you! You made your feelings clear enough about that,’ he told her. ‘I was just thinking that you’d done enough cooking today, and I’m sick of eating in a restaurant on my own.’

Tilly hesitated. Far from panicking, she was perversely miffed that Campbell had made his lack of intentions so obvious. It didn’t help that she was perfectly aware that it was her own fault. She had told him that she didn’t want to get involved, so she shouldn’t complain that he had taken her at her word.