Guilty Pleasures (36 page)

The bottle of Douro red still stood on the counter, and Lance served himself a glass as a little gesture of thankfulness, a libation to the goddess Fortuna, who in fact turned out to be an absolute bitch.
 

Millie, laughing and chattering merrily, was leading Francine right into the kitchen. “Serge, come and meet Francine. She is to be our
Great Expectations
bride, isn’t that a wonderful coincidence?”

Lance’s heart hammered into a savage rhythm. A wave of blood rose to his head, and a dizzying heat suffused him. He felt sure he would die.

“Francine, this is our Master Chef, Serge Moreno. He will be preparing the menu—for your approval, of course—for your wedding reception. This is Will, his assistant.”

Lance, scarlet faced and pop-eyed, mumbled a greeting, under Millie’s surprised stare. Francine nodded politely and smiled at Serge.

“What a beauty,” Serge cried, ecstatic. “For you, my dear, I will outdo myself.” He capered up and gallantly kissed Francine’s hand.

“Mr. Moreno, if you do half of what you did tonight, I will be in heaven. Tell me, do I detect a hint of influence from the great Carême?”

“Indeed, Mademoiselle, you have a cultured palate. I learned everything I know from my father, Anatoly Servinski, chef
to the household of the great Prince Orlov—a devotee of the old,
old
French school.”

“You are supreme, Mr. Moreno. You should be cooking for the world.”

“I enjoy this so much more, my dear. I do everything myself—every sauce, every garnish, every detail. I pour myself into each dish I create. It is art, mademoiselle, not industry.”

“Thank you for a most wonderful experience. I’m so glad you will be making your art part of my wedding celebration.”

Millie tucked a friendly hand through Francine’s arm. “Come along, my dear. Let’s see if I can fit you in a little earlier. I had one cancellation, but if your guests are coming in from overseas, you’d have to consult them. Also the cake and the flowers, I’ll see if we can get
those
sorted out for the new date.” She led Francine away, casting suspicious glances over her shoulder at a gasping, puce Lance.

“What a lovely girl. Delicate, aristocratic, beautiful . . . she’d have been worth a fortune in the bagnio.” Serge gazed up at Lance. “Willie, are you all right? You look like you’re having a stroke.”

Lance struggled to get his breath back, to slow his thundering heart. “I choked . . . the wine . . . can’t breathe . . .”

Serge reached up to pound him vigorously on the back. “There now, Willie.” He rustled up a brown paper bag and handed it to Lance. “Breathe into that.”

Thankfully, Lance buried his face in the bag. He was immediately assailed by the unmistakable stale-sweat odour of Spanish onions. He gasped and tears streamed down his face.

“So I’ll call around; see what I can do. You do the same, and we’ll decide tomorrow, okay?” Millie sauntered back into the kitchen with Francine.

“Perfect, Millie, I can’t thank you enough.” Francine kissed Millie on both cheeks and bent down to do the same to Serge. “It was an honour meeting you, Mr. Moreno. Thank you once again.”

“It was a pleasure, a true pleasure.” Serge was grinning happily. “Come back anytime! I have a wonderful collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century cookbooks that might interest you.”

“Oh, I will. Thank you.” Francine turned to Will, who hastily lowered his paper bag. “And thank you, Will, isn’t it? You helped serve, didn’t you? You look familiar, have we met before?”

“No, I don’t dink so.” Scarlet-faced with nose and eyes streaming, Lance was far from being at his best, and shaking a puzzled head, Francine said her farewells and left.

“Goodness, Will, what’s the matter?” Millie asked.

“Poor bugger choked on some wine. He was hyperventilating.” Serge reached into the discarded paper bag and removed the still-succulent tail end of an onion. “Sorry, Willie, doesn’t look like I was very helpful after all.”

Oh, but you were, Serge. You were my saviour.
Lance sighed in relief.

“That went very well,” Millie commented. “Francine is coming in tomorrow to choose the linens, cutlery, and the dinner service. We might be moving the wedding reception up to the second, rather than the seventeenth. That won’t be a problem, will it Serge?”

“No, Millie dear. I’ll do anything for that lovely girl.”

“Soddy, Millie,” Lance cried, mopping at his runny nose. “Da second is ma grandmadder’s bidday. I was going to dake da evening off.”
 

“Well, let’s see what happens. You can come in for the afternoon, and I can get one of Hendricks’s boys to fill in later.”

“Dank you.”

“Well, boys, let’s call it a night. You go straight home and rest, Will. You look awful.”

Serge waved. “See you tomorrow morning, Willie, four-ish. Ta-ta!”

Lance mumbled his good-byes, sopped up his streaming nose and eyes, and headed for home to the comforts of a hot shower and a cold bed.
 

He was horrified to find himself pulled in deeper and deeper into this deception. Every step he took he was more bound up in his web of lies. The only way he could untangle this was by telling the truth. But how could he? How could he possibly find a way to tell the truth, keep Millie from getting hurt, and keep himself in her life? He’d try. He’d tell her, tell her who he was. But when? Timing was of the essence. A revelation at the wrong time would be disastrous, and Lance had always prided himself on being a master of timing.

Millie staggered home after what must surely have been one of the longest days in her life: the long night of the Irish wake, followed by the dawn shopping expedition on her own for the Dorrit dinner, a short morning nap before lunch, then back to Guilty Pleasures. Plus she also had to deal with the fallout from the drunken revel in the shape of Will and Hendricks, and the demanding Little Dorrit dinner that evening. She badly needed a good night’s sleep.

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

The Little Dorrit do was surprisingly agreeable though tiresome. I met my
Great Expectations
bride. She’s a delightful girl. I might fit her in two weeks earlier than foreseen, if we can coordinate everything.
 

Will was most peculiar, the poor man looked about to die of apoplexy. It was quite funny. Serge, trying to help, had him puff away into a bag with onion scraps.

Poor Will. He was purple and crying like a baby, snot nosed, too. So, I sent him home. His aroma was far from erotic . . .
 

Don’t worry, tomorrow Mr. Wilfred Lancelot Pecklise will get his comeuppance, in a manner of speaking.

I’m taking Horse for his walk and then I’m going to sleep—alone.

Blessed sleep.

Chapter 28

Lighting is very important in a romantic setting.

Yes,
we
like it bright—the brighter the better—while women don’t.

They feel that halogen spotlights kill the mood and tend to bounce off every little dimple of cellulite on their thighs, highlight every little roll of flab, every delicate little tracery of a varicose vein, and every tiny sag and droop.

Opt for soft candlelight. It’s romantic, sexy and flattering; firelight is also good.

But
do not set fire to the house
.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance fell into a heavy, thankfully dreamless sleep, and woke unrefreshed to the alarm’s strident clamour. He stumbled out of bed and into his shower. The hissing water and the heat nearly lulled him back into sleep. He stared into his mirror and surveyed the damage. A lamentable softness was blurring his lovely abs, and his chest was distinctly stubbly. He turned away from his renegade body and pulled on his clothes.
 

Bleary eyed, he headed for Guilty Pleasures and his encounter with Serge. Thankfully, the man was in a distinctly morose mood, uncommunicative and sullen. Lance drove in silence through the nearly empty predawn streets. He watched Serge argue heatedly with Jerry the Fishmonger over sturgeon, lobsters, and oysters.

Serge picked out a saddle of lamb and squabs. He bought cabbages, beets, beetroots, aubergines, and bunches of white roses and violets. At the deli, he spent an astonishing amount of money on a small jar of Russian caviar, even though he personally preferred Iranian. “Come on, Willie. We both need coffee like a fish needs water.”

At the café, the smiling hostess brought over their usual, and retreated before Serge’s vicious snarl.
 

His humour partly restored by an infusion of bile-bitter coffee, Serge set to the pastries with a will. Sighing, he pushed back his chair. “Better. Now, tonight we will be cooking for a fucking Bolshevik, a bloody red-turned carpetbagger. His daughters, now,
they’re
lovely. Take after their mothers, I’m sure. My father’s beloved homeland is being portioned off to a thousand petty czars.”

“Have you ever been there, Serge?”

“To Russia? No. I’ve been meaning to go, but my nerve always fails me at the last minute . . . I’d rather imagine it as my father described it, the St. Petersburg palaces lit up for the balls in the wintertime, the country in summer, boating on the Neva . . .”

“But Serge, your father left Russia in the early nineteen twenties. That was practically ninety years ago.”

“Well, for me the Romanovs still rule. My father was seventy-six when he died, Willie, but he still wept over the charm, the refinement, the beauty that was lost.”

“I hate to tell you, Serge, but there was a damned good reason for the revolution, you know.”

“Bolshevik propaganda. So they enslaved a few million starving serfs, so what? What’s so different
today?
Ah, but they had style, Willie; you can forgive someone almost anything when they have style.”

“You think? Style . . . I’ve never thought of that.”

At home, Lance accessed his long neglected e-mail: Mother, Mother, Mother, George, clients, Jane, editor, spam, George
today
. Lance double clicked on George’s message and saw the wedding reception date had been changed. George also asked him what he had been up to and why they hadn’t seen each other.
 

It was something Lance felt ill equipped to handle at the moment. He sent off a curt reply saying he was okay on the new date. His mother’s messages he erased unread. Jane had sent the contact for the makeup artist. He thanked her and sent the man a message briefly explaining what he wanted, booking him for the second of the month at five o’clock in the afternoon.