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‘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 (#ulink_bd2459fb-a409-55b1-bc5e-375fe384ae6c)
‘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 was ready for tomorrow. She might not be perfect but she deserved better and she shouldn’t let him get away with this. Simmering fury began to bubble up. It took a lot to make her mad. She didn’t like confrontation but … this time she had nothing to lose. Sod it.
She marched three full strides down the hallway of the suite into the lounge. There was no sign of Sebastian but anger propelled her towards his bedroom where she heard one of the crutches clatter to the ground.
Pushing open the door with an angry shove, she was about to call his name when the sight of him stopped her dead in the doorway.
He’d collapsed onto the bed, laying diagonally across it, one arm flung over his face. She paused as he let out a low moan. All the bubbling anger, threatening to explode, leeched away in an instant. Stupid, stupid, stupid man. Now she could see the pallor of his face, the tight jaw where his teeth were gritted, the reluctant movement of his lower half.
‘Sebastian?’
He stilled.
‘Are you…?’
‘Go away.’ His voice was gruff and he kept his face hidden behind his arm.
Yeah right, as if she was going to leave him in this state. She crossed to the bedside table where she could see a couple of boxes of tablets.
Nina narrowed her eyes and took a more careful study of him. He was holding himself very still and he’d definitely turned even greyer. The stupid sod was trying to be brave. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d still be in pain but then she’d never broken anything.
‘How much pain are you in?’
The answering silence told her enough.
‘Sebastian?’ her voice was gentle.
‘Yes?’ He lifted his arm and looked up at her, as wary as a small boy caught out in a lie. There was a suspicious watery glint in his eyes.
For a moment, she felt racked with guilt, he looked so beaten and vulnerable. It was horribly disquieting when he’d never seemed anything but invincible.
‘When was the last time you had any painkillers?’ Occasionally having brothers paid off. All four of them had played rugby and shunned painkillers. It was a man thing. Jonathon had broken his leg once and had moaned continuously about how itchy the cast was until her mum gave him a knitting needle.
Sebastian lifted his chin looking mutinous. ‘A while ago.’ Now she could see the chalky whiteness around his mouth and the tension in his body.
‘Are these them?’
He nodded, wincing as he did so.
‘When was the last time you took one?’ she asked again.
‘Breakfast.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She hid her worry in the chiding tone as she snatched up the pack of tablets. ‘How many are you allowed to have?’
‘Two every four to six hours but they’re very strong. They make me feel like hell.’
‘And being in pain is preferable?’ snapped Nina, cross with him now. No wonder he’d been so bad-tempered all day.
Sebastian didn’t say anything but shook his head weakly, his eyes closed, and suddenly she realised how completely helpless he was and how much pain he must be in. Popping a couple of pills from the blister pack, she bustled into the bathroom to get him some water, giving herself a wry look in the mirror. Subdued Sebastian was a lot easier to deal with, but it wasn’t nice seeing him like this and she knew he wouldn’t want her pity either.
‘What did the hospital say about after care?’ she asked, as she put the glass of water and tablets down. She needed to get him sitting upright to give him the pills.
‘Rest. Keep it elevated.’ His flat tone suggested that he knew he’d been an idiot and he didn’t need her to reinforce it.
‘Right. Can I help you to get more comfortable? If you sit up, I can arrange the pillows and then put some under your leg to raise it a bit. Then painkillers.’
Sebastian gave her a bleak look and the grim line of his mouth wavered. When he blinked with a weak nod as if he was too exhausted to speak, she moved forward and started shifting pillows.
‘Do you think you can lift yourself up?’ she asked.
‘Give me a minute. Sorry, that car journey…’
She didn’t say the obvious – and being on your feet all afternoon and not taking any medication.
Once he was nestled into the pillows and had taken the painkillers, she spoke again. She’d been trying to keep things strictly impersonal but she wanted to make him comfortable.
‘Do you want me to take your shoe off?’
He gave her a baleful glare.
Now she rolled her eyes. ‘Look Sebastian, accept that you need help.’ Moving to the other side of the bed, she unlaced his black brogue and eased it off. ‘See, that wasn’t so hard was it? I’m here. Able and willing. I haven’t got any other plans for the rest of the evening. Why don’t you have a sleep? And then I can order room service later.’
He nodded and closed his eyes, which she took as a small triumph. At least he was listening to sense, although she suspected that was more because he’d given up trying to fight the pain. For a moment, she stood over him fighting the urge to smooth his hair from his forehead and a strangely insistent impulse to press a quick kiss there.
With a start, she felt his hand slip into hers but he didn’t open his eyes. With a gentle squeeze of her fingers, he whispered, ‘Thanks Nina.’
Pulling the door to, she went into the suite. There was no way she could leave him in the lurch now. She could have kicked herself for not realising how much discomfort he was in. No wonder he was so damned irritable. Despite saying he didn’t need a carer, he clearly did need someone around to look after him.
Pursing her lips, she pulled out the notes he’d prepared in readiness for the next day. According to the recipes they were going to be making choux pastry, crème pâtissière, chocolate profiteroles and coffee éclairs. Her mouth watered, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten for quite a while, but she decided to wait another hour before ordering anything, then when it arrived she’d wake him up.
The discreet knock at the door signalled the arrival of room service. Nina had played it safe for Sebastian and herself and ordered both of them burgers and chips. Peeping in on Sebastian as she went to open the door, she found him still sound asleep. For a moment she studied him. In sleep his face had softened, the dark hair flopped down over his forehead and his mouth relaxed. He looked much younger, more like the Sebastian she remembered and she was horrified at the unexpected ping of her heart. Quickly she turned and headed towards the door, almost wrenching it open.
‘Someone’s hungry,’ teased a laughing Scot’s brogue.
‘Alex, hi. You do room service?’
He grinned at her. ‘Normally no, but the staff are primed to let me know if Sebastian needs anything and if I’m around, I pop up. How is he?’
Nina grimaced as she backed up to let him in with the tray. ‘Not great, to be honest. Silly idiot has overdone it today.
‘Sounds like Bas. Complete workaholic.’
Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘And you’re a slacker?’
‘I’m not like him. He’s driven.’ Alex shrugged. ‘I work hard—’ his cheeks dimpled ‘—and play hard, but man, he’s super motivated. Determined to prove his dad wrong.’
Nina frowned as she followed Alex into the suite where he deposited the tray on the dining table overlooking the window and pulled back the curtain to peer out at the lights of Paris shining in the dark.
‘I don’t remember his dad, I’m not sure I ever saw him but then that’s not surprising. Sebastian seemed to spend all his time at our house. Mum gave him free reign in the kitchen when she realised he could cook better than she could. It was always a bit of trial for her, she found cooking for four palate-indifferent, human dustbins a bit monotonous. At that age my brothers weren’t terribly fussy and quantity over quality counted every time.’
‘Sebastian’s dad is…’ Alex trailed to a halt. ‘Bas! Brought your supper up for you, you lazy sod. Sleeping on the job, I hear.’
‘You try getting around on crutches. Bloody knackering.’ Nina turned. Sebastian stood in the doorway looking marginally better – but they were talking the slenderest of margins. ‘What’s on the menu?’
‘Burger and chips.’ Nina gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d want.’
‘Perfect. Thanks.’
She noticed he moved very slowly as he moved across the room as if he’d used up all his energy earlier in the day and still wasn’t fully recharged. How would he feel if she suggested he ate and went back to bed? She caught Alex’s eye who frowned as he watched Sebastian’s laboured progress.
‘Dear God, it’s like watching the walking dead. Good job I upped your chip ration.’
