Battle Royal Read online

  It was Aaron’s saving grace that he did have natural talent when he chose to apply it, because that last-chance string seriously frayed after Dominic also tasted the pink champagne cake. Fun new game for the whole staff, working out exactly what bottle of liquid Aaron had mistakenly used for the flavor profile, because it definitely wasn’t champagne.

  With ten minutes until the network car was due and an aftertaste in his mouth that was going nowhere fast, Dominic was updating spreadsheets in his office when the door came flying open. His sister sailed in, then screeched to a halt on her extremely high heels. He wasn’t sure why she bothered wearing them. The stilettos were long and lethal enough to kill a rhino, and Pet would still have trouble getting on half the rides at Disneyland Paris.

  Her expression instantly morphed on seeing him. She usually wore a look of perpetual joy in the world around her and sincere interest in the people inhabiting it. Dominic might not be a fully grown adult working in a pseudo-magical tree house like others on this street, but if anything would make him believe in the existence of fairies and changelings, it was Pet’s presence in his family.

  She hesitated, a frown flickering between her brows. A buzz of tension roped the air between them. “Hello, big brother.” Her soft voice was usually cheerful, but artificially so at the moment. She held up a sheaf of papers. “I’ve sorted the Hallum & Fox correspondence. I was just going to leave it on your desk. I thought you were at the TV studio today.”

  Dominic finished inputting a column of sums and shot another glance upward. Her gaze was restless and jumpy, darting around like a dazed firefly, briefly fixing on minutiae and finally colliding with his. Big brown eyes that should be liberally laced with laughter and mischief, currently veiled and cautious. His fingers closed hard around a pen. “Hello, extremely small sister.” He jotted down a note. “Thanks for dealing with the letters. And I’m leaving soon. If the appropriately hearse-like network car is on time for once.”

  The wry greeting dispelled some of the strain. Pet noticeably perked up and came to perch on the edge of his desk. “God, I love your show.”

  “It’s not ‘my’ show. It’s a painful source of extra income.”

  Increasingly necessary income, in the current market. He wouldn’t be taking time away from the business for any other reason. De Vere’s straddled the boundary between retail and hospitality, and neither industry was exactly a flourishing money tree right now. Event contracts were down on the same quarter last year, and they were seeing fewer sales on the shop floor. The livelihood of every person in this building depended on the decisions he made on a daily basis. As much as he despised almost every element of his unsought side gig, it was paying some of those salaries.

  “But it’s so warm and cuddly. Like a televised hug.” Pet ripped off a piece of notepaper, picked up a pair of scissors, and started making tiny snips. Most chronic fidgeters doodled with a pen. His sister cut intricate silhouette portraits. In less than three minutes, she could reproduce someone’s profile with meticulous accuracy. “Not the bits where you make someone cry, obviously.” Snip. Snip. “I’m still waiting to be invited for a studio visit.”

  Tucking her tongue between her teeth as she deftly maneuvered the scissors, she sent him a teasing but hesitant look.

  That cloak of reserve was seeping in again.

  He didn’t know how to broach it.

  And if he were ruthlessly honest, these interactions with Pet were so far out of his experience that a small part of him would find it easier if she was like his other sister, Lorraine.

  A clinical narcissist and living on a different continent.

  “Come on,” she said lightly, “you’re ancient and I’m short. If you can’t get a studio pass for a sibling, we could totally pull off a ruse for take-your-daughter-to-work day.”

  “If you’d like to retain the illusion of the show being ‘warm and cuddly,’ I’d stick to couch-viewing like the rest of the country.” Shaking his head, he took the silhouette Pet handed him, an outline of Mariana Ortiz’s head. The food writer had a distinctive nose: narrow, turned up at the tip, and now perfectly captured on the crisp paper.

  He turned it over on his palm.

  “Should I give this to her?” he asked abruptly. He was not on gift-giving terms with Mariana. Even after six seasons of the show, they hardly knew each other outside of work. But Pet’s self-described silly whittling was art. It should be seen.

  A faint flush crept into Pet’s pointed face. “If you like.” She was quiet for a moment before she seemed to shake herself. Tearing off another sheet of paper, she started snipping again. “I see the competition over yonder is doing a steady stream of business despite the foul weather. Please note my staunch loyalty in never having stepped through that adorable door, despite the fact that it looks like my natural habitat and I would really enjoy a cocktail served in a gold cauldron.”

  Dominic closed the spreadsheet. “If you want to blow out your liver and brain cells at Sugar Fair, have at it.” Now that she mentioned it, Pet probably would love the place. If she’d been the one to take over De Vere’s, it would be twinning Sylvie’s dubious brainchild by now. He rested one hand on the desk, a silent assurance it wouldn’t be carved back into a tree trunk and smothered in fake leaves and spangles any time soon. “But I’d make a booking ASAP. It’s a miracle it’s stayed in business this long.”

  Pet rotated her paper and made a careful cut. “Is your brother really such a surly bastard, they ask. Of course not; inside, he’s a teddy bear, say I.” Snip. “And then he opens his mouth.”

  At his raised eyebrow, the left corner of her mouth indented slightly. A ghost of amusement was in her voice as she murmured, “You know, you can stream reruns of Sylvie Fairchild’s season. I binged seven episodes last night. Excellent executive decision to bring her onto the judging panel. The woman is a bloomin’ treasure.”

  The woman was a bloody menace.

  “Occasional spurts of technical genius wasted on garish, childish, obnoxious concoctions that ought to come with a health and safety warning.” A dull stiffness had invaded several muscles around his spine. Cupping a hand around his shoulder, Dominic rolled his neck. “As if it hasn’t devolved into enough of a farce. Every half-baked drama-monger in the competition will be rolling out the glitter cannons to win her vote.”

  He felt more than usually irritated just contemplating it.

  The deepening laughter in Pet’s eyes momentarily banished more of that god-awful tension in the room. “Think you sank your own ship there, Captain.” She grinned as his brooding preoccupation sharpened to acute attention, his gaze narrowing. “You should have kept to the usual Popsicle stare and impersonal critique four years ago. Sylvie was clearly the public darling back then, and Sugar Fair is a production draw now, but if you hadn’t needled back and forth like that, I highly doubt they’d have offered her the contract. Sugar-laced strychnine on one side, icy darts on the other. Jab, jab. And she was totally unfazed.”

  There was a speck of awe in that last remark, and just a hint of bite underscored his response. “She was hardly the only contestant with enough brain cells to differentiate between honest feedback and a personal insult. I don’t dick around the truth with pointless bullshit, but if they’re giving it their all, there’s nothing to be fazed about.”

  It was a small percentage that actually listened and took the advice on board, instead of staring like a headlight-struck rabbit and playing up to the cameras as if they’d just survived an encounter with the Sith, but the number wasn’t limited to one.

  “No,” Pet agreed matter-of-factly, “but she also brings some serious cute factor to the table. She’s nice to look at, and the entertainment industry is a shallow beast. And she KO’d you with a sponge cake.” Her mouth twitched again. “Mortal Kombat with the Sugar Plum Fairy.” In a pitch-perfect imitation of Jim Durham’s West Country brogue, she drawled, “It’s all about those ratings.”

  He always enjoyed rounding out
a grim morning with a few unpalatable truths.

  After a moment, he grimaced.

  The show was a victim of its own financial success; from a modicum of legitimacy and a few scraps of genuine heart in the first few seasons, it was rapidly unraveling into sensationalized rubbish. Jim’s unexpected departure was a boon to a production team that delighted in constantly switching things up.

  With a short sound in the back of his throat, he rose and took the files back to the locked cabinet. “If you’re not planning to do any more actual work today,” he said, “may I offer a suggestion?”

  “For the afternoon?”

  “For the future in general.”

  The metaphorical drop in temperature was swift.

  “For the last time”—Pet’s voice lost all traces of humor—“I am not changing career paths. I’m twenty-six years old, I’m good at my job, and most importantly, I enjoy being a personal assistant. We all have a calling, and this is mine.” She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the paper a few times. “Why else would I want to help out here so you can fulfill your contractual obligation to scare the living shit out of the nation?”

  A question he’d also posed after a motorcycle crash had put his usual executive assistant on leave for weeks and his sister had jumped in to fill the vacancy. Prior to this month, he could count on one hand the number of times they’d been in the same room since she was a baby. So, a bit of a surprise when Pet had promptly showed up in his office with a temp contract she’d drafted, typed, and already signed.

  He still wasn’t sure how he’d also ended up signing it, and he’d had to controvert her attempt to give herself a pathetically low salary. He wouldn’t let anyone work for that, and they sure as hell weren’t in such a precarious financial position that he was going to rip off his own sister, whether she needed the money or not.

  He leaned back against the filing cabinet and surveyed her stubborn expression. “I know how well you did in school. You were nudging the genius scale in almost every subject, and for a while you wanted to be an astrophysicist.”

  Once more, Pet’s fingers stilled on the scissors. “How do you know that?”

  “Sebastian managed to get the occasional update,” he said after an infinitesimal pause. After he’d gone to live with their grandfather as a child, his own access to family news had been limited. “We . . . always tried to keep tabs on how you were doing.”

  Even when she hadn’t wanted him to.

  He saw Pet swallow.

  A bit roughly, he continued, “You could have breezed into Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, you’ve devoted yourself to pacifying the spoiled whims of people who probably treat you like shit.”

  “Oh, you’re not that bad. At least you come with free chocolate.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t work for people who treat me like shit, as it happens. I bring a lot to the table, and I expect a lot in return. And if I had the least desire to go back to uni, I’d already have applied. I certainly have the money to pay for it. Shame a whole chunk of it doesn’t really belong to me.”

  He straightened. “We’re not going into that again.”

  “Annoying when people refuse to hear a word you’re saying, isn’t it?” Pet asked sweetly. Before he could respond, she went on, “Look, I’m happy, and you’re . . . well, at least you have your health.” She stood up and put back the scissors. “And if the papers are right and there’s a royal wedding on the horizon, there’s going to be a De Vere’s cake on that reception table, photographed for millions of people to see and bringing in a huge paycheck, and I am pumped and here to help.”

  “Enthusiasm on the unconfirmed opportunity noted, Pet, but there’s a pink champagne cake out there that tastes like something recently extracted from a drain, and your baking ability makes the man responsible look like Alain Ducasse. I’m not sure this is your forte.”

  “And is your forte romance, happy-ever-afters, and royal trivia? Doubtful.” She handed him the finished silhouette. “See you later. Enjoy intimidating a bunch of nice people who just want to bake cake and massively improve my Sunday nights.”

  She exited with a lot less noise than her entrance. His mouth taut, Dominic looked at the closed door, and then down at the artwork he held in his hand.

  It was a silhouette portrait of Sylvie Fairchild.

  For the first time, not a totally accurate portrait. Sylvie’s lips had a much more pronounced curve.

  The nose and brow bone were dead-on, though.

  And in the tilt of Paper Sylvie’s chin seemed to lie an implicit challenge.

  Chapter Three

  Hartwell Studios

  Time-honored, beloved home of Operation Cake.

  Where somebody has made the executive decision to hold a meeting about baked goods and not serve snacks.

  As the assistant producer of Operation Cake tapped her iPad, Sylvie tried to find a more comfortable spot on the conference room chair, and wished she’d eaten a chocolate bar in the car. Although even if she’d had one, Dominic’s silent, brooding presence beside her would likely have put her off. Nothing like commuting with Heathcliff to suppress the appetite.

  “Libby Hannigan.” Sharon floated another headshot into the cluster on the PowerPoint. The redhead in the photo had a face full of adorable freckles and a sweet smile—and a surprisingly hard expression in her eyes.

  “And what deeply traumatic event led to Ms. Hannigan taking solace in the kitchen?” Dominic turned his ballpoint pen over in his fingers, regularly tapping out a beat on the tabletop. It had taken five of these character summaries before Sylvie had identified the tune. Bonnie Tyler. Unexpected on multiple levels.

  She mentally caught herself again. Contestant summaries, not characters. Contrary to all appearances—and particularly the appearance of Charlene, the sugar-cookie specialist from North London with four ex-husbands and extremely vague answers as to their current whereabouts—they weren’t vetting suspects in a murder mystery game. These were real people. Sylvie had once been one of these people.

  She’d just had a considerably less dramatic backstory.

  At this point, she was amazed she’d ever made it onto the show in the first place. Unlike Sid Khan, the delightfully eccentric bread enthusiast from Middlesex, it hadn’t even occurred to her to hint at past alien abduction in her audition tape. She certainly hadn’t hand-knit a human-sized cupcake costume, using wool spun by a nun she’d saved from drowning in the Baltic Sea, like retired naval sublieutenant Terence Blaine. If she recalled correctly, she’d introduced herself, Jay had filmed her piping cream into doughnuts, and she’d made a joke about jam that had seemed hilarious until about two seconds after she pressed submit on the application.

  “Hard to beat a natural flair for biscuit-decorating and the high probability you’ve buried four unfaithful men in your basement.” Dominic’s voice was ominously calm, but his stubbled jaw was set in a long, tense line. One tiny flick of Sylvie’s fingernail and his whole head would probably crack like an egg.

  So tempting.

  “Or maybe she’s another Nadine from Bucks,” he went on. “Baking through a bereavement and quite sure her late parrot was the reincarnated spirit of Julius Caesar.”

  Aadhya, the nicest of the producers, opened her mouth, but Dominic reached the end of his limited tolerance before she could speak.

  “I realize that casting decisions are not my area of expertise.” Every syllable in that sentence had a cutting edge, as if he were snapping off the words one by one, like squares on the chocolate bar she still didn’t have. “And that I just need to ‘show up, taste the fucking cake, crush a few dreams, and cash my check.’” Drenched in cynicism, and clearly a direct quote. Apparently, they’d trod this path before; however, Aadhya’s expression barely changed.

  Inspiring level of I do not give one flying shit from the producer on the left.

  “But judging by the relentlessly healthy ratings, your past model worked, and with at least an entry level of sanity.” D
ominic shot another exasperated glance at the montage of smiling faces. “Did supply just run out on the usual lineup? Pseudo-bakers with too much imagination, sporadic technical skill . . .” For the first time since he’d ignored her for the entire drive here, his eyes flicked squarely in Sylvie’s direction. He’d probably intended to look away just as quickly, but their gazes caught and held. “And the general creative aesthetic of My Little Pony.”

  Languidly, Sylvie ran her fingers through her ponytail, fluffing out her latest pink and lavender highlights. She smothered the most delicate of yawns.

  Aadhya studied them both, and then reached for her coffee mug and took a deliberately long, unnecessarily loud sip. “Every contestant has been thoroughly vetted by a counselor. They’re interesting people with unique personal experiences, and fully equipped for the pressures of filming, public scrutiny, and minor celebrity.” Her fingertips played against the ceramic in a jaunty little tune. “And the potential trauma of a one-on-one conversation with you. It’s a new screening process. Sit ’em down and play an hourlong loop of your tactful critiques. Anyone who makes it through with dry eyes and dry pants can grab an apron. You wouldn’t believe how quickly it weeds down the applicant numbers.”

  Hastily, Sylvie lifted her own cup, and once more Dominic’s gaze narrowed on her. His eyes reminded her of his least popular chocolates, the ninety-percent-cacao truffles. Deep, dark, and velvety, with an incredibly sour aftertaste.

  “If you’ve all read your briefings, you’ll know we’ve made format changes this series,” Aadhya continued. “A shorter filming schedule to get things moving.” And significantly cut their costs on everything from staff catering to contestant hotel rooms. “Stepped-up contestant support services. I’m sure Sylvie can attest that it’s disconcerting to go from normal anonymity to suddenly being accosted by strangers at the supermarket.” She shot Sylvie a smile.

  For all the things Sylvie hadn’t enjoyed about her first stint on the Operation Cake set, most of the crew had been genuinely kind. There had always been a tacit understanding that shedding a few stress tears or having a spat with another contestant would be well received, but behind the stirred-up drama, there were warm and helpful personalities.