The Little Paris Patisserie. Julie Caplin

shook her head very slowly as if they might lessen the offence. ‘Sorry. No. But thanks for your help. You’ve no idea what a disaster that could have been. I’ve got three dozen eggs in there.’

      Together, they pulled matching horrified eek faces. ‘Can you imagine?’

      ‘Uh! Scrambled eggs.’ The other girl shook her head with the dark curls bouncing up and down like enthusiastic puppies, as they grinned at each other.

      ‘Which along with the flour, sugar and icing sugar would have been a recipe for disaster.’

      ‘Instant cake,’ she teased, amusement dancing in her eyes. ‘Who doesn’t love cake though?’

      ‘Mm, and instant unemployment for me. Thank you, you’ve saved my bacon.’

      ‘No problem, I’m Maddie by the way.’

      ‘Nina.’

      ‘Have you got far to go?’

      Nina shook her head. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the patisserie on the other side of the street.

      ‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to go in there. Is it any good?’

      ‘To be honest, I’m not sure it is, but don’t tell anyone I said that.’

      ‘Let me give you a hand. I’ll carry the flowers and leave the eggs to you. So you work there?’

      ‘Sort of.’ Nina explained the whole story and told Maddie all about the patisserie course as they walked along in tandem.

      ‘How exciting. I’m a terrible cook. I’m more of a hearty stews and nursery puddings sort of girl.’

      ‘You should do the course,’ said Nina, hauling the trolley along, thinking about how long it was going to take her to unload this lot.

      ‘What a brilliant idea.’

      ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean it.’ She must stop saying that. It had been an off the cuff remark. She was recruiting new candidates quicker than people ate hot dinners. Sebastian was not going to be happy. ‘It starts tomorrow, so probably a bit—’

      ‘Perfect, I don’t have lectures tomorrow. And do you know what? It will impress the hell out of Mum. I could make her half-yearly birthday cake.’

      Nina raised both eyebrows at the interesting statement.

      Maddie laughed. ‘We celebrate half-yearly birthdays. We like cake in our house. Although they normally come from Tesco. I once attempted apple pie. Let’s say all of the words burnt, irrevocably moulded and knackered applied to the saucepan at the end. It had to go in the bin.’

      By the time Nina was lifting the trolley up the step into the patisserie with Maddie’s assistance, the other girl was already musing out loud what sort of cake she’d make when she went home.

      ‘It might be a bit late to book for the course,’ said Nina.

      ‘Oh, no worries,’ said Maddie.

      Nina heaved a tiny sigh of relief. God knows what Sebastian would have said about an extra student, especially if he heard she’d suggested it.

      ‘I’ll just turn up tomorrow morning, if there’s no space, no probs.’

       Chapter 9

      ‘We’ll leave in five minutes, are you all done?’ asked Sebastian barely looking up from his hunched position over his laptop as she walked back in still trying to manage the wayward trolley, which definitely had ideas of its own. With one leg hooked over a chair and working sideways onto the bench, he looked extremely uncomfortable.

      ‘Actually,’ said Nina, busying herself unloading the eggs, grateful that he seemed absorbed in his work, ‘I need to … erm, perhaps set up another work station, you know … in case anyone else turns up.’ There was a loaded silence and she thought for a moment that she might have got away with it. No chance. He looked up from his laptop with a suspicious frown. ‘Run that by me again.’

      ‘Well, you know…’

      ‘No.’

      Nina risked peeking up to find his eyes boring into her. Feeling self-conscious, she rubbed the back of her calf with her foot, doing her best not to look shifty.

      ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Nina!’

      Nina winced. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, I … well, I mentioned it to an English girl I met and she was really keen and…’

      ‘And you didn’t think to tell her the course was full or anything,’ he snarled with such feeling, Nina couldn’t think what to say. Surely it wasn’t that big a deal.

      ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he snapped and snatched up his crutches. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Call a cab. I’ll be outside.’

      As soon as he’d gone, she blinked hard. No, not going to cry. He was not worth it, he was a pig but he was not going to make her cry. She hated him. How had she ever imagined herself in love with such an arrogant, rude, bad-tempered, surly, rude, opinionated, rude, pig?

      The taxi journey back to the hotel was completed in absolute silence, with Sebastian in the back seat again. Nina spent the forty-five-minute ride with a fixed gaze out of the window, mentally packing her bags. She didn’t need this. As soon as she’d helped Sebastian up to his room, she’d be hightailing it to his apartment and getting the hell out of Dodge. He could find someone else to help him.

      Her shoulder ached where the stop start of the hideous traffic threw her against the seatbelt. It was official, Parisian traffic was horrendous. The time in the car, which seemed to be going more slowly than regular time, seemed to have propagated the tense silence between her and Sebastian still further and was worsened by the driver’s kamikaze tendencies as he lurched forward to take advantage of every space that opened up before ramming on his brakes inches from the bumper in front. It was a relief when he slammed to a halt outside the hotel, having crossed three lanes of traffic in one quick, last-minute swerve.

      Sebastian handed over a fifty-euro note and manoeuvred himself painfully slowly out of the back as Nina waited with his crutches. The driver let out a torrent of French as Sebastian began hopping into the hotel.

      ‘Don’t you want the change?’ asked Nina, realising that the taxi driver was claiming he didn’t have enough change.

      ‘No,’ growled Sebastian not even turning around.

      She shrugged at the driver, picked up Sebastian’s laptop bag and followed him, glaring at his back and muttering under her breath. She was so out of here. Rude bastard, not even waiting for her. He was already halfway to the lift.

      He dropped a crutch as he fumbled for the lift button and cursed vehemently. Nina sighed under her breath, amazed that it was possible for him to be even more bad-tempered.

      When she picked it up and handed it to him, he almost snatched it from her hand. Biting her tongue, she kept her face impassive. Only ten more minutes. Ten more minutes before she walked out of here and never had to see him again. All she had to do was accompany him in the lift, open the door for him, give him his laptop – and the jury was out as to whether she might wrap the bloody thing round his head – say goodbye and leave. She’d had it with him. He was on his own from now on.

      As soon as the lift doors opened, he was off, his crutches rattling as he ploughed his way straight to the room with his head ducked down as he waited for her to catch up and put the key card in the slot.

      ‘Thanks,’ he growled. ‘See you tomorrow.’ And he was off without a backward look.

      For a moment Nina stood, clenching her hands into fists. How dare he treat her like this? Ungrateful git. Yes, she’d made a couple of mistakes today, but no one had died and everything