Maid of Dishonor (18 page)

ONE

‘Ellie,
your phone
is ringing! Ellie, answer it
now!'

Ellie Evans grinned at her best friend Merri's voice emanating
from her mobile in her personalised ring tone, then eagerly scooped up the phone
and slapped it against her ear.

‘El?'

‘Hey, you—how's the Princess?' Ellie asked, sorting through the
invoices on her desk, which essentially meant that she just moved them from one
pile to another.

‘The Princess' was her goddaughter, Molly Blue, a six-month-old
diva who had them all wrapped around her chubby pinkie finger. Merri launched
into a far too descriptive monologue about teething and nappies, interrupted
sleep and baby food. Ellie—who was still having a hard time reconciling her
party-lovin', heel-kickin', free-spirited friend with motherhood—
mmm
-ed in all the right places and tuned out.

‘Okay, I get the hint. I'm boring,' Merri stated, yanking
Ellie's attention back. ‘But you normally make an effort to at least pretend to
listen. So what's up?'

Her friend since they were teenagers, Merri knew her inside
out. And as she was her employee as well as her best friend she had to tell her
the earth-shattering news. Sitting in her tiny office on the second floor of her
bakery and delicatessen, Ellie bit her lip and stared at her messy desk. Panic,
bitter and insistent, crept up her throat.

She pulled in a deep breath. ‘The Khans have sold the
building.'

‘Which building?'

‘This building, Merri. We have six months before we have to
move out.'

Ellie heard Merri's swift intake of breath.

‘But why would they sell?' she wailed.

‘They are in their seventies, and I would guess they're tired
of the hassle. They probably got a fortune for the property. We all know that
it's the best retail space for miles.'

‘Just because it sits on the corner of the two main roads into
town and is directly opposite the most famous beach in False Bay it doesn't mean
it's the best...'

‘That's exactly what it means.'

Ellie looked out of the sash window to the beach and the lazy
ocean beyond it. It had been a day since she'd been slapped with the news and
she no longer had butterflies about Pari's, the bakery that had been in her
family for over forty years. They had all been eaten by the bats on some
psycho-drug currently swarming in her stomach.

‘Why can't we just rent from the new owners?'

‘I asked. They are going to do major renovations to attract
corporate shops and intend on hiking the rents accordingly. We couldn't afford
it. And, more scarily, Lucy—'

‘The estate agent?'

‘Mmm. Well, she told me that retail space is at a premium in St
James, and there are “few, if any” properties suitable for a
bakery-slash-coffee-shop-slash-delicatessen for sale or to rent.'

After four decades of being a St James and False Bay
institution Pari's future was uncertain, and as the partner-in-residence Ellie
had to deal with this life-changing situation.

She had no idea what they—she—was going to do.

‘Have you told your mum?' Merri asked quietly.

‘I can't get hold of her. She hasn't made contact for ten days.
I think she's booked into an ashram...or sunning herself in Goa,' Ellie replied,
her voice weary. Where she
wasn't
was in the bakery,
with her partner/daughter, helping her sort out the mess they were in.

Your idea
, Ellie reminded herself.
You said she could go
.
You
suggested that she take the year off, have some fun, follow her
dream...
What
had
she been thinking? In
all honesty it had been a mostly symbolic offer; nobody had been more
shocked—horrified!—than her when Ashnee had immediately run off to pack her bags
and book her air ticket. She'd never thought Ashnee would leave the bakery,
leave
her
...

‘El, I know that this isn't a good time, especially in light of
what you've just told me, but I can't put it off any longer. I need to ask you a
huge favour.'

Ellie frowned when she picked up the serious note in Merri's
voice.

‘Anything, provided that you are still coming back to work on
Monday,' Ellie quipped. Merri was a phenomenal baker and Ellie had desperately
missed her talent in the bakery while she took her maternity leave.

The silence following her statement slapped her around the
head. Oh, no...no, no,
no
! ‘Merri, I need you,' she
pleaded.

‘My baby needs me too, El.' Merri sounded miserable. ‘And I'm
not ready to come back to work just yet. I will be, but not just yet. Maybe in
another month. She's so little and I need to be with her...please? Tell me you
understand, Ellie.'

I understand that I haven't filled your
position because I was holding it open for you—because you asked me to. I
understand that I'm running myself ragged, that the clients miss
you...

‘Another month?' Merri coaxed. ‘Pretty please?'

Ellie rubbed her forehead. What could she say? Merri didn't
need to work, thanks to her very generous father, so if she forced her to choose
between the bakery and Molly Blue the bakery would lose.
She
would lose...

Ellie swallowed, told herself that if she pushed Merri to come
back and she didn't then it was her decision...but she felt the flames of panic
lick her throat. They were big girls, and their friendship was more than the job
they shared—it would survive her leaving the bakery—but she didn't want to take
the chance. Her head knew that she was overreacting but her heart didn't
care.

She had too much at stake as it was. She couldn't risk losing
her in any way. She'd coped for over six months; she'd manage another month.
Somehow.

Ellie bit her top lip. ‘Sure, Merri.'

‘You're the best—but I've got to dash. The Princess is
bellowing.' Now Ellie could hear Molly's insistent wail. ‘I'll try to get to the
bakery later this week and we can talk about what we're going to do. Byeee! Love
you.'

‘Love you...' Ellie heard the beep-beep that told her the call
had been dropped and tossed her mobile on the desk in front of her.

‘El, there's someone to see you out front.'

Ellie glanced from the merry face of Samantha, one of her
servers, peeking around her door to the old-fashioned clock above her head, and
frowned. The bakery and coffee shop had closed ten minutes ago, so who could it
be?

‘Who is it?'

Samantha shrugged. ‘Dunno. He just said to tell you that your
father sent him. He's alone out front...we're all heading home.'

‘Thanks, Sammy.' Ellie frowned and swivelled around to look at
the screens on the desk behind her. There were cameras in the front of the shop,
in the bakery and in the storeroom, and they fed live footage into the
monitors.

Ellie's brows rose as she spotted him, standing off to the side
of a long display of glass-fronted fridges, a rucksack hanging off his very
broad shoulders. Week-long stubble covered his jaw and his auburn hair was
tousled from finger raking.

Jack Chapman. Okay, she was officially surprised. Any woman who
watched any one of the premier news channels would recognise that strong face
under the shaggy hair. Ellie wasn't sure whether he was more famous for his
superlative and insightful war reporting or for being the definition of eye
candy.

Grubby low-slung jeans and even grubbier boots. A dark untucked
T-shirt. He ran a hand through his hair and, seeing a clasp undone on the side
pocket of his rucksack, bent down to fix it. Ellie watched the long muscles
bunching under his thin shirt, the curve of a very nice butt, the strength of
his brown neck.

Oh,
yum—
oh, stop it now! Get a
grip! The important questions were: why was he here, what did he want and what
on earth was her father thinking?

Ellie lifted her head as Samantha tapped on the doorframe again
and stood there, shuffling on her feet and biting her lip. She recognised that
look. ‘What's up, Sammy?'

Samantha looked at her with big brown eyes. ‘I know that I
promised to work for you tomorrow night to help with the
petits fours
for that fashion show—'

‘But?'

‘But I've been offered a ticket to see Linkin Park and they are
my favourite band...it's a free ticket and you know how much I love them.'

Ellie considered giving her a lecture on responsibility and
keeping your word, on how promises shouldn't be broken, but the kid was nineteen
and it
was
Linkin Park. She remembered being that
age and the thrill of a kick-ass concert.

And Samantha, battling to put herself through university,
couldn't afford to pay for a ticket herself. She'd remember it for for ever...so
what if it meant that Ellie had to work a couple of hours longer? It wasn't as
if she had a life or anything.

‘Okay, I'll let you off the hook.' Ellie winced at Samantha's
high-pitched squeal. ‘This time. Now, get out of here.'

Ellie grinned as she heard her whooping down the stairs, but
the grin faded when she glanced at the monitor again. Scowling, she reached for
her mobile, hastily scrolling through her address book before pushing the green
button.

‘Ellie—hello.' Her father's deep voice crooned across the
miles.

‘Dad, why is Jack Chapman in my bakery?'

Ellie heard her father's sharp intake of breath. ‘He's there
already? Good. I was worried.'

Of course you were
, Ellie silently
agreed. For the past ten years, since her eighteenth birthday, she'd listened to
her father rumble on and on about Jack Chapman—the son he'd always wanted and
never got. ‘He's the poster-boy for a new generation of war correspondents,'
he'd said. ‘Unbiased, tough. Willing to dive into a story without thinking about
his safety, looking for the story behind the story, yet able to push aside
emotion to look for the truth...' Yada, yada, yada...

‘So, again, why is he here?' Ellie asked.

And, by the way, why do you only call when
you want something from me? Oh, wait, you didn't call. I did! You just sent
your boy along, expecting me to accommodate your every whim.

Some things never changed
.

‘He was doing an interview with a Somalian warlord who flipped.
He was stripped of his cash and credit cards, delivered at gunpoint to a United
Nations aid plane leaving for Cape Town and bundled onto it,' Mitchell Evans
said in a clipped voice. ‘I need you to give him a bed.'

Jeez, Dad, do I have a B&B sign
tattooed on my forehead?

Ellie, desperate to move beyond her default habit of trying to
please her father, tried to say no, but a totally different set of words came
out of her mouth. ‘For how long?'

God, she was such a wimp.

‘Well, here's the thing, sugar-pie...'

Oh, good grief. Her father had a
thing
. A lifetime with her father had taught her that a thing
never
worked out in her favour.
‘Jack is helping me write a book on the intimate lives of war
reporters—mine included.'

Interesting—but she had no idea what any of this had to do with
her
. But Mitchell didn't like being interrupted,
so Ellie waited for him to finish.

‘He needs to talk to my family members. I thought he could stay
a little while, talk to you about life with me...'

Sorry...life with him? What life with
him?
During her parents' on-off marriage their home had been a place
for her mum to do his laundry rather than to live. He'd lived his life in all
the countries people were trying to get out of: Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia. Home was a
place he'd dropped in and out of. Work had always been his passion, his muse,
his lifelong love affair.

Resentment nibbled at the wall of her stomach. Depending on
what story had been consuming him at the time, Mitchell had missed every single
important event of her childhood. Christmas concerts and ballet recitals,
swimming galas and father-daughter days. How could he be expected to be involved
in his daughter's life when there were bigger issues in the world to write
about, analyse, study?

What he'd never realised was that he was her biggest
issue...the creator of her angst, the source of her abandonment issues, the
spring that fed the fountain of her self-doubt.

Ellie winced at her melodramatic thoughts. Her childhood with
Mitchell had been fraught with drama but it was over. However, in situations
like these, old resentments bubbled up and over.

Her father had been yakking on for a while and Ellie refocused
on what he was saying.

‘The editors and I want Jack to include his story—he
is
the brightest of today's bunch—but getting Jack to
talk about himself is like trying to find water in the Gobi Desert. He's not
interested. He's as much an enigma to me as he was when we first met. So will
you talk to him?' Mitchell asked. ‘About me?'

Oh, good grief. Did she have to? Really?

‘Maybe.' Which they both knew meant that she would. ‘But, Dad,
seriously? You can't just dump your waifs and strays on me.' He could—of course
he could. He was Mitchell Evans and she was a push-over.

‘Waif and stray? Jack is anything but!'

Ellie rubbed her temple. Could this day throw anything else at
her head? The bottom line was that another of Mitchell's colleagues was on her
doorstep and she could either take him in or turn him away. Which she wouldn't
do...because then her father wouldn't be pleased and he'd sulk, and in twenty
years' time he'd remind her that she'd let him down. Really, it was just easier
to give the guy a bed for the night and bask in Mitchell's approval for twenty
seconds. If that.