So Now You're Back by Heidi Rice

tinted glass double doors, waved to Jonno, their receptionist, then strolled past the luxury meeting rooms used for client consultations and tastings and into the cavernous open-plan kitchen at the back. Glass panelling had been used to replace the old warehouse’s loading doors during the refurbishment, flooding the space with natural light and gifting her dedicated kitchen staff of two food stylists, one master baker and a couple of assistants with a spectacular view of the Thames and the grandiose Harrods Depository on the opposite bank.
    Halle loved the way the space made a statement. Of modernity and ambition.
    She breathed in the scent of freshly baked sponge and rose water. This was where her career had finally taken flight. Where all those nights spent baking, icing and moulding decorations in the tiny kitchen of her council flat in Hackney while the kids were asleep had been validated. But today,the clean, striking lines of the stainless steel catering ovens and the industrious chatter of her workforce weren’t giving her any more of a lift than the sign outside.
    Yet more proof—not that she needed it—that she was not looking forward to tomorrow’s trip.
    The two assistants sent her awed looks from their workbenches. She waved back, in too much of a rush today to stop and have a team-building pep talk about the commission they were working on. From the delicate white and pink sugar flowers they were both moulding out of flower paste, she guessed they were busy on the wedding cake she’d designed for a D-list celebrity a couple of weeks ago.
    She raced up the steps to the mezzanine level, which looked down over the baking hub, her sensible heels clicking on the steel risers. Arriving at the glass cubicle she used a couple of days a week as her office, she booted up her computer and collapsed into her chair.
    She would also need to fit in a quick, confidential chat with Trey Carson at some point. She added the new item to the to-do list from hell as she opened the document marked ‘Consultation Schedule’ on her desktop.
    Given her daughter’s not exactly ecstatic reaction to the news that Trey was going to be sleeping over for the next fourteen days, she ought to give the guy a heads-up on some of her daughter’s issues. Figuring out how to do that subtly enough so as not to tread on Lizzie’s already fragile ego, or have it lead to World War Three if she found out Halle had spoken to Trey, would have to be another problem for Future Halle, though.
    Because Present Halle was too busy mentally kicking Past Halle’s arse for agreeing to Luke’s stupid stunt in the first place.
    Why hadn’t she walked away in the Café Hugo threeweeks ago, when Luke had begun talking in tongues about love doctors and
Vanity Fair
articles? Would stopping Luke’s memoirs—correction, phantom memoirs—be worth getting stranded for two weeks with him in the Tennessee wilderness however luxurious the resort?
    As soon as she’d been back on the Eurostar, in the soulless comfort of first class, without Luke’s don’t-be-a-chicken smile daring her to lose her grip on reality, the rational, sensible answer to that question had seemed fairly obvious.
    Two weeks against phantom-memoir stoppage? Good deal? Um, no.
    What she should have done in Paris was tell Luke to take his love-surgeon-article bollocks and shove it right up his superbly toned backside.
    But in Café Hugo, the reckless, impulsive, insane streak, which Luke had mined so easily when she was sixteen, had come out of hiding for one last hurrah. And she’d taken him up on the dare.
    Once she was back in the UK, and Jamie had fired her an email with the subject line ‘Is Your Ex Delusional?’ she still could have denied all knowledge of the devil’s bargain she’d made with Luke and got Jamie to handle the fallout. But she hadn’t. She’d had him draw up a contract for Luke to