Page 115 of So Now You're Back

She pressed her lips lightly to his, mindful of his swollen mouth, keeping the kiss tender, and chaste, but filling it with all the affection she felt.

His hands settled on her waist, making her feel ridiculously cherished.

‘Same,’ he murmured as they parted.

Her heart soared.

The shy smile he sent her turned to a wince as he touched his fingers to his split lip. ‘Ouch.’

She laughed and took his hand. ‘Come on, we better go talk to my mum and Aldo, before Aldo explodes.’

After she had led him up the outside stairs to the car and watched Aldo nearly knock him flat, she shared a secret smile with her mum.

She hadn’t messed up. And she would do everything in her power not to mess up in the future. Because she was the Trey Whisperer now.

Chapter 25

‘The most important thing is not to over-whip the cream.’ Halle scooped the fragrant Baileys-scented cream onto the thin base of chocolate sponge, aware of the camera panning in for a close-up. ‘Because as much as we all love butter, cream is always preferable in your chocolate roulade.’

She let the babble effect take over as she scored the sponge at one end and wound the roulade in a perfect pin-wheel twirl of chocolate, cream and Christmas indulgence.

After another close-up, the director yelled ‘Cut’ in her earpiece. The studio silence turned into industrious noise as the crew sprang into action to get ready for the re-set.

Della, the hair and make-up girl, rushed over wielding her powder puff. ‘Just a quick dab to get the shine.’

‘Is it just me or are the lights especially hot today?’ Halle remarked as Della powdered her nose and forehead and then whipped her trusty comb out of the tool belt hung round her waist and began arranging the wayward strands of Halle’s updo.

She smiled at Halle. ‘That’s the problem with doing your Christmas Special at the beginning of August.’ She spread her arm, indicating the array of ornately wrapped presents with nothing inside them dressing the counter of the country kitchen they were using for the shoot. ‘It feels so wrong.’

Halle took a steadying breath, trying to tune out the sound of Bill, the floor manager, directing the two cameramen for their next shot. A runner arrived holding a finished and dressed chocolate roulade aloft, which had been made to Halle’s specific recipe in the prep kitchen next door. He placed it on the antique table the props people had dressed beside the towering beribboned Christmas tree in the farmhouse’s front parlour.

Halle flicked through the script in preparation for her final piece to camera while Della continued fussing with her hair, knowing she’d probably forget the lot as soon as she started speaking and end up winging it as usual.

Christmas in August was a hazard of her job, especially with her new book, The Best Family Christmas, due out in October. They needed to get a jump on her Christmas Special so they could access edited clips and release them on YouTube to publicise the book launch.

‘Perfect,’ Della remarked, assessing her work. ‘You’re good to go.’ The make-up girl clasped Halle’s hand. ‘It’s going to be another hit. You look lush.’

Halle smiled, her nerves a lot steadier than usual despite being in the midst of a take. Because performing for a TV camera had one indisputable advantage. By heaping on pressure in the here and now, the pressure to perform professionally and entertainingly on the director’s cue and not curdle her whipped cream, the one thing she didn’t have time to do was think about Luke.

It had been two weeks now since their return from Tennessee. Two weeks since he’d walked out of her kitchen door, and although they’d had a few stilted email conversations about Lizzie—and their daughter’s momentous decision to apply to art college in Paris—that had been the sum total of their communication.

And it was killing her.

She missed him. She wanted to see him. To chat and tease and, OK, yes, she might as well admit it, to lick along the line of his happy trail until his belly muscles quivered.

She needed his relaxed, much more pragmatic approach to relationships, and parenthood, his ego-boosting advice, not to mention the chance to gaze at that buff body, in various states of dishabille. And know that it was hers, to do with as she wished.

But every time she’d come close to picking up the phone, on those nights at home after Aldo was in bed and she could hear Lizzie saying goodbye to Trey at the door, their conversation muffled and confidential and full of that unstated sexual tension that hummed in the air between them, she’d stopped herself.

He’d given her an ultimatum, a stupid false ultimatum that had been entirely unnecessary. Between him and her kids. She could see now that she’d blown the whole punch-gate incident out of proportion. Trey had come back to work a week later, the day after they’d all attended his mother’s cremation in the imposing surroundings of Kensal Green Cemetery. Despite the hollow exhaustion wrought by grief, Trey appeared unharmed by Luke’s unprovoked attack and eager to return to work. Even his lip had healed.

Luke had also contacted Lizzie and invited her to visit him in Paris in a couple of weeks to check out colleges. Lizzie had accepted the invitation enthusiastically and, from what Halle could gather, not a lot of grovelling had been involved. Even Aldo seemed to have forgiven Luke, peppering her with a load more questions about Lizzie’s dad, all of which had been curious and keen rather than resentful.

But even so, Halle couldn’t bring herself to make the first move. And she knew, deep down, it had nothing to do with punch-gate, or the ultimatum or her children’s reaction to him. Deep down it had to do with trust and accountability and equality in their relationship. And all those boring things she’d ignored the first time she’d fallen so heavily for Luke.

She’d always been the one to make the first move. The one to make the most compromises. Because she’d always loved him more than he had loved her. Or that was how it had felt at the time. She knew now there had been tangible reasons for that. That Luke as he was at seventeen, at twenty even, had been incapable of trusting anyone enough to love them fully and openly with no holding back because of the hideous insecurities of his childhood. But that didn’t alter the fact she couldn’t be the one to do the chasing again.

If she was, she would feel compromised—maybe not now, maybe not even in a month’s time, but the inequality would be a part of their relationship again. She had to be able to trust him fully and completely. She had to know that he cared enough about her to put in the effort to make this work. And she couldn’t have that if she was the one who made the first move.

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