Page 47 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘I hate this atmosphere,’ he’d say. ‘There must be a way that we can make things better.’ Then he’d put his finger to his chin in the same way that he was doing now. ‘I know, you could apologise to me.’
But in the two years since Steven had broken her, Mattie hadn’t just put herself back together, she’d made herself stronger, tougher. She was never going to let another person make her feel less when she was so much more.
‘I don’t want to work on your show,’ she said slowly.
‘I knew you’d be jealous about it,’ Steven said with a knowing little grin – if only her rolling pin was still in close proximity. ‘But I’m offering you a great opportunity here. You could be my research assistant. It would be your job to come up with new recipes! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
She actually gasped. ‘Are you for real?!’
‘I know it’s a lot to take in. Don’t say yes straight away just because you’re excited, sleep on it,’ Steven advised her kindly. Then he sighed. The sigh was never a good sign. ‘Although … how do I put this, without upsetting you?’
How did I ever fall in love with you?Because I was twenty-four and had never been in love before. Mattie had mistaken her attraction to Steven’s beauty and the glory of him noticing her as love, when it hadn’t even come close. She’d been so sure that Steven wouldn’t deliberately set out to hurt her and manipulate her, because they were in love and you didn’t do things like that to the person you loved. But Steven’s final act of treachery and the two years that had passed since then had made the scales fall from Mattie’s eyes. God, he wasn’t even trying to make it convincing!
Mattie rolled her shoulders, ready for the fight. ‘Oh, I’m pretty sure that you couldn’t upset me any more,’ she said, and now that she knew that Steven no longer had any power over her, she felt free. Liberated. At last! She wanted to laugh, but she settled for a calm smile.
‘Well, I wanted to say: this isn’t about you and me getting back together. I’m sorry to disappoint you, you’re a cracking girl, but I’m with someone else now. She’s a model,’ he added with a faux-embarrassed chuckle. ‘Not sure what she sees in my ugly mug.’
‘Mmm. Me neither,’ Mattie said.
‘But I wouldn’t want things to be awkward if we’re going to work together,’ Steven said. He made another grab for Mattie’s hand, but she was ready for him and with the same serene smile, she held her hands up so it was very clear that she wasn’t there to be touched. Steven’s own smile dimmed. ‘Anyway, I can’t wait to hear some new recipe ideas from you. That girl who was mopping the floor – and by the way, I would have someone much more attractive front of house – said that you make these mini red velvet cakes that look like little Christmas puddings. Sounds interesting!’
‘Yes, it is,’ Mattie agreed.
‘So how exactly do they work …?’
She knew then that Steven was never going to go. He was going to stay on her doorstep with his tired old tricks and his mean little jibes, unless Mattie made him go. ‘It’s probably better if I show rather than tell. Stay there!’
‘I can’t come in?’ Steven asked.
‘You’ve seen what my flatmate’s like.’ Mattie grimaced and nodded down the hall to the kitchen where Tom was stiff-backed and doing something that no doubt involved one of Mattie’s non-stick pans and metal cutlery. ‘He has a temper on him and a black belt in karate. You’d better stay there.’
She backed away, down the hall, smile fixed on her face. It was eight paces at most and Steven, peering round the door, could see what Mattie was doing.
‘Now I’ll need flour and sugar,’ she said loudly, reaching for them as Tom turned to stare at Mattie as if her head was spinning around in a full 360-degreeExorcisttwist. Actually, she did feel like she’d been demonically possessed as she tipped flour and sugar into the bowl. ‘Of course you’ll probably need to measure them out,’ she called to Steven who was still peering around the door and – the rat – making notes on his phone. ‘I don’t need to, because I’m a seasoned professional. Let’s say two hundred grams of flour, two hundred of sugar.’
‘Are you sure you don’t need a lie-down?’ Tom murmured, but Mattie was too busy rooting around in the fridge to pay him any attention. ‘You seem a bit … manic.’
‘Butter. Milk,’ she said, pulling out the items in question. ‘Eggs. Where are the eggs?’
‘They’re on the counter because I’m about to fry two of them,’ Tom said. ‘Really, do I need to stage some kind of intervention?’
‘I’m so sorry for what about I’m about to do,’ Mattie said, snatching up the last two eggs that were left, and cracking them one-handed into the bowl. ‘But my need is far greater,’ she added as she sloshed in some milk, then grabbed a lump of butter with her bare hands. ‘Then you take a wooden spoon and you mix all the ingredients together.’
‘You don’t cream the butter and sugar together first?’ Steven asked as Tom handed Mattie a wooden spoon with a resigned sigh.
‘No, it’s a one-bowl, chuck-it-all-in method,’ she said. ‘It’s so easy, even you could do it.’
‘I didn’t quite catch that,’ Steven called out as Tom murmured, ‘Why are you givinghimone of your recipes?’
Mattie smiled another teeth-baring smile. ‘Because he really, really deserves it,’ she said, and even to her own ears she was sounding pretty manic. ‘Are you watching this, Steven?’ Still mixing, she walked down the hall towards him.
‘Did you just add cinnamon?’
‘No, I added a generous pinch of go fuck yourself,’ Mattie said, as she tipped the bowl, or rather its gloopy contents (she really had put in too much milk), over Steven’s head. ‘Now get out and don’t ever,evercome back.’
Cake batter dripped from Steven’s formerly glossy brown hair onto his expensive leather coat. Lumps of flour and sugar sat on his shoulders; strands of egg white hung from his nose.
‘How – howdareyou? You mad bitch! You always did have a screw loose. You need therapy!’
