The Secret Ingredient. Nina Harrington

if the fundraiser was a flop? There were so many creative people bursting with talent who needed a helping hand to get started living their dream. Scholarships to help gifted chefs find training was only the start. But a big start in more ways than one.

      Pity that Dee had to be in China this week. She could have used some moral support.

      Especially when the celebrity chef she had booked as the main attraction for the fundraiser had just cancelled that morning. It had taken months of pleading and cajoling before multi-award-winning chef Valencia Cagoni had finally agreed to turn up for the night.

      Yes, of course Lottie understood that Valencia was still with her family in Turin because both of the four-year-old twins had chickenpox and were grounded as infectious tyrants. And no, Valencia was way too busy with the calamine lotion to think of another chef who could step in at such short notice and take her place.

      Thank you, Valencia, my old boss and mentor. Thanks a lot.

      Panic gripped her for a few seconds but Lottie willed it back down to a place where she kept all of the suppressed fear and suffocating anxiety that came with taking on such a huge responsibility.

      This fundraiser had been her idea from the start, but if there was one good thing that her father had taught her it was that she always had options. All she had to do was think of one. Fast.

      Lottie shuffled from side to side on the hard seat and tried to get a comfier position. She was going to have to give the gallery owner some feedback before his paying customers started complaining about having frozen bottoms.

      On the other hand, this was not a museum and she had been sitting in one place a lot longer than she had planned. Wealthy clients looking for artwork to adorn their walls would not be perched on the end of a leather bench for more than a few minutes while she had been sitting there for—Lottie checked her watch and snorted deep in the back of her throat in disbelief—twenty minutes.

      Amazing.

      This was the first time in weeks that she had been able to steal a few minutes to enjoy herself in between running her bakery and organising the fundraiser and she was quite determined to enjoy every second of it. Because she probably would not find another slot before the event.

      But she had always been the same. Every time her mother bought a new piece of art for one of her interior design clients, it was Lottie who had the first look before the piece was shipped off to some luxury second or third or, in one case, eighth home around the world. That was all part of her mum’s high-end design business.

      If Lottie saw something she liked she took the opportunity to appreciate it while she could. It was as simple as that.

      Having the time to enjoy works of art was probably the only thing she really missed in her new life.

      Of course she had known that running a cake shop and tea rooms would not be a nine-to-five job, but, sheesh, the hours she was working now were even longer than when she worked in banking.

      She loved most of it. The bakery was her dream come true. But when her photographer friend Ian had casually mentioned that he was looking for a caterer to serve canapés and mini desserts for the opening of a new gallery specialising in contemporary art she had jumped at the chance.

      Lottie’s Cake Shop and Tea Rooms needed a photographer to take images for the bakery website and Ian needed food for the gallery tonight. Now that was the kind of trade she liked and it had nothing to do with her old job working the stock market.

      Lottie glanced back at the main reception area.

      She could hear the visitors start to arrive and gather in the bar area that had been opened up onto the stunning patio overlooking the south bank of the Thames on this cloudy June evening. The weather was warm with only a slight breeze. Perfect. Just the way she liked it.

      Her skin did not do well in hot sunshine. Too fair. Too freckly.

      Much better to stay here for a few minutes and enjoy this painting all to herself while she had the chance before the evening really got started.

      The food was all ready to be served in the small kitchen behind the bar, the waiting staff would not be here for another ten minutes, and even the artist had not made an appearance yet.

      So she could steal another few minutes of glorious self-indulgence before she had to go back to work.

      This was her special time. To be alone with the art.

      Lottie waggled some of the tension out of her shoulders and rolled her neck from side to side before lifting her chin and sighing in pleasure.

      Most of the exhibition was high-art portraits and landscapes in oils and multimedia in a startling bright and vibrant colour palette, but for some reason she had been drawn to this far corner of the room. It was away from the entrance and the drinks table but was bright with natural light flooding in from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

      And the one picture in the whole collection that was muted and subtle.

      It was a small canvas in a wide red glass frame just like all of the others.

      But this one was special. Different. She had seen it in the catalogue for the exhibition that her friend Ian had created and had been immediately drawn to it.

      It was hard to explain but there was just something about the image that had taken hold of her and refused to let her go.

      Lottie’s gaze scanned the picture.

      A middle-aged woman in a knee-length sleeveless red dress was standing on a sandy shore edged with pine trees and luxuriant Mediterranean plants. She was slender and holding out her arms towards the sea.

      Lottie could almost feel the breeze in the chiffon layers that made up the skirt as they lifted out behind her.

      The woman’s head was held high and tall and there was a faint smile on her lips as she stared out to sea, reaching for it with both hands while her pale feet seemed totally encased in the sand.

      It was dusk and on the horizon there were the characteristic red and gold and apricot streaks in the misty shadows that stretched out to the horizon. Soon darkness would fall but Lottie knew that this woman would stay there, entranced, until the last possible moment, yearning for the sea, until the very last of the day was gone.

      While she still had a chance for happiness.

      A single tear ran down Lottie’s cheek and she sniffed several times before diving into her bag for a tissue, but then remembered that she had left them back at the cake shop, so made do with a spare paper napkin she had popped into her bag for spillages.

      Last chances. Oh, yes. She knew all about those.

      Until three years ago she had been a business clone in a suit, trapped in cubicle nation in the investment bank where her father had worked for thirty-five years. All she’d had to do was keep her head down, say the right things and do what she was told and she’d had a clear career path that would take her to the top. She’d even had the ideal boyfriend with the right credentials on paper just one step higher than her on the ladder.

      How could her life have been more perfect?

      The fact that she hated her job so much that she threw up most mornings was one of the reasons she was earning the big bucks. Wasn’t it?

      Until that one fateful day when all of the pretence and lies had been whipped away, leaving her bereft and alone. Standing on a beach like the one in the painting. Holding out her arms towards the sea, looking for a new direction and a new identity.

      She wasn’t balls-of-steel Charlie any longer, the girl who had walked away from her six-figure salary and the career track to the top of her father’s investment bank to train as a pastry chef. Oh, no.

      That girl was gone.

      The girl sitting with tears in her eyes was Lottie the baker. The real girl with the real pain that she had thought she had worked through over these past three years but was still there. Catching her unawares at moments like this when the overwhelming