The Semi-Sweet Hereafter

by Colette London

  Danny took another drink of lager. Then, “I heard those were Roundhead escape tunnels, used during the Civil War, so the Parliamentarians could get away from Charles I’s Royalists.”

  I stared at him. He gave me one of those looks.

  Just because I have muscles, his expression said, I’m some kind of meathead? I remembered him saying that when we’d run into Amelja at the Wrights’ town house. I should have known by now not to pigeonhole my longtime buddy. Danny was multifaceted.

  “Sure, sure!” the publican hastened to add. “Them, too.”

  Most of my half pint was gone. I could have polished off a full, I realized, but I didn’t want to get pissed. (That’s not what you’re thinking—it’s Brit for “drunk.”) Either way, I was already feeling better about the harrowing events of the day.

  “Why were they called Roundheads?” I asked Danny, peering at his skull. “Everybody’s got a round head, don’t they?”

  “Unlike the froufrou ‘divine right of kings’ crowd, with their long, flowing ringlets, the Roundheads had short hair. Practical hair.” Danny didn’t notice me glancing meaningfully at his own militarily cropped dark haircut. “The Cavaliers had influence, so their slur stuck. That, or the Parliamentarians owned it.” He swigged more beer, then grinned at me. “Probably that.”

  “You’ve got a unique take on history,” I told him. “Leave it to you to side with the underdogs in a three-hundred-year-old war.”

  “Well, they won, now didn’t they?” the publican argued, pulling me another lager. He set it down. “That’s not so bad.”

  I couldn’t argue. My grip on British history was too tenuous for that. I’m a chocolate whisperer, not a professor. I’m a world traveler, not a historian. So I raised my glass. “To The Fat Squirrel’s secret tunnel, for helping the rebels win!”

  We toasted, then happily drank.

  “That’s boring stuff, though,” the barman said affably. “The smuggler story is a bit more popular with most tourists.”

  “We’re not ‘most tourists,’” Danny pointed out.

  “How about showing it to us?” I asked. “Can we see it?”

  “My tunnel?” The publican started. “Oh, erm . . . well, right at the moment, it’s all blocked up with some kegs of Guinness.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I shot him a dubious look. He laughed.

  “Don’t go spoilin’ my fun, now. Or runnin’ off to Twitter to tell the whole world The Fat Squirrel’s a big, fat sham.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” I crossed my heart. His banter was just what I’d needed today. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  The publican shot Danny a wary glance. “What about him?”

  I guessed Danny looked less upright than I did.

  “He can keep a secret, too,” I assured the barman. Reminded of my sometime security expert’s most recent secret, I nudged Danny. “Especially when it’s got to do with the ladies.”

  The barman perked up. “You’re on the pull, are ya?”

  That slang for “picking up interested ladies” was lost on Danny, but not on me. “He doesn’t need to be. Ladies pull him.”

  “Yep. That was me in my younger days.” With a smile, the publican gazed at the busy pub. “Now too, if I get a chance.”

  He spotted a woman nearing the bar and made his excuses.

  Duty called. For the proprietor of The Fat Squirrel and us too. I looked at Danny. “Are you going to tell Travis, or am I?”

  He understood me immediately. He shook his head. “Not me.”

  I didn’t want to do it, either. The news of my train-ward push would only upset my financial adviser. The minute Travis heard I’d run into more trouble, he’d scour his sources for two tickets stateside. He’d already been upset that I’d encountered another murder in London. If I told him I’d been a target?

  I shivered, not wanting to think about it.

  “It has to be you,” Danny advised. “If it’s me, I’ll never hear the end of it. I was supposed to protect you, remember?”

  “You did protect me. If not for you—” I shivered again. Then I gave my friend an earnest look. “You saved my life.”

  He cracked a wry grin. “That’s not the way Harvard will see it. By this time tomorrow, he’ll have spreadsheets and graphs proving what a useless waste of financial resources I am.”

  Danny wasn’t wild about being on my payroll. I’d wanted him on retainer after San Francisco, partly to keep him away from his bad-influence buddies and partly to keep me safe. Travis had disagreed, partly out of contrariness (I was sure) and partly out of frugality. Despite spoiling me sometimes, Travis takes seriously his duty to watch out for my financial well-being.

  We’d disagreed. We’d argued. I’d won. End of story.

  “Travis cares about me, that’s all,” I reminded Danny.

  And that’s why I knew I had to tell him. Now, not later.

  With a resigned sigh, I rummaged for my wallet. I took out twenty quid (twenty pounds, technically) and left it on the bar.

  “Wish me luck.” I wielded my cracked phone. “Time to find out if this thing still works. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Stay within sight of the window.” Danny nodded at it. Then he thought better of his advice. “On second thought, I’m coming with you.” He thumbed through his own wallet and withdrew a few pound notes—enough to cover both our drinks. Then he tucked my money into the side pocket of my bag. “You might need that.”

  He was so predictable. It didn’t matter what I could afford. Danny wanted to treat us both. I tried not to grin.

  “Yeah, to buy you drinks tomorrow.” I nodded good-bye to the friendly publican. “One of these days, you’ll forget to insist on treating me. Then you’ll sleep in that four-poster.”

  “Not alone, I won’t. That’s a girly bed. Times a hundred.”

  “Then you’d sleep in it with company?” I wasn’t sure if I could stomach inviting venal Claire for a sleepover with my bodyguard, even if that’s what he was hinting at. “Is that it?”

  We made it to the door. Danny stopped to let me go first, the way he usually did, but I must have been tipsy. We wound up chest-to-chest in the tight entryway, staring at each other.

  His suggestive look wasn’t lost on me.

  “‘With company’?” he repeated roughly. “Is that an offer?”

  For one recklessly overheated moment, I considered it. I honestly did. My shared past with Danny tugged at me, tossing up memories of wanting, waiting, giving in . . . wising up.

  If there’d ever been a time I might have weakened, that was it. Hard on the heels of almost dying, I felt all too aware of how fragile life could be—how important it was to seize it.

  But I’d made it through other dangerous situations without losing my mind over Danny. I could do the same thing tonight.

  “When it is,” I told him, “I won’t be half that coy.”

  Then I gave him a pat on the chest and headed off to a more private spot next to one of those iconic Royal Mail postboxes to make my call. I pulled out my phone. I took a deep breath.

  I considered the intense “pillar box red” color of that antique mailbox. I thought about the royal insignia stamped on it, dating from the 1870s, according to the inscribed year. I recognized I was stalling about calling Travis with my news.

  I realized, too late, that I’d said when it is to Danny just now. Not if it is an invitation to share my bed or it will never be an invitation to share my bed. But when. When it is.

  Shoving aside that troubling realization, I dialed. My phone did work. Hurray! I listened to its ringing while Danny paced around at exactly the distance not to overhear my conversation.

  It connected. “Hey, Travis,” I said breezily. “Guess what?”

  As breaking-bad-news tactics went, it might work. Maybe if I sounded super-duper alive, Travis wouldn’t react too badly.

  Maybe.

  But I wasn’t counting on it.

  I should have known my
supersmart keeper was already on the job. “Hayden,” he said in that extra-sexy, extra-perceptive voice of his, “next time you feel a need to file a police report, let me know. As a legal expert, I might have pertinent advice.”

  His hard retort didn’t fool me. I considered, You’re a lawyer, too? But I settled for, “I love you, too, Travis.”

  Silence. Then, “You’re all right? You’re not hurt?”

  That was more like it. Inexplicably, at the sound of Travis’s gruff questions, tears sprang to my eyes. Feeling foolish, I swiped them away. I managed a smile. It felt good.

  “Getting better all the time,” I promised.

  I really meant it too. Thanks to him.

  Sixteen

  For the next few days, I was swamped with work. Things were picking up at Primrose—the chocolaterie-pâtisserie was featured in a travel magazine, which gave its business a major boost—and all the bakers and chocolatiers were doing well. The brigade of prams and stockbrokers from The City picked up, as well, which I found encouraging. It wasn’t enough that one-off travelers visited Primrose. For the place to really thrive, Londoners had to embrace it themselves. Quite suddenly, it seemed they were.

  Phoebe was pleased with the shop’s progress. So was I, as a matter of fact. In only a few weeks, I’d taken a crew of novices from East London and turned them into a competent, close-knit workforce. It wasn’t what I usually do when taking on a chocolate-whispering consultation—ordinarily, I’m more about refining existing techniques and adding creativity, not training beginning workers from scratch—but it felt like a major accomplishment, all the same. Whatever got the job done, right?

  Unfortunately, Hugh never returned. I tried to salvage his job by taking up his case with Phoebe, but she wasn’t having it.

  “We can’t afford any disruptions among our staff, now can we, Hayden?” she’d said finitely. “Especially not with my television appearance coming up in a matter of days. Focus!”

  Her rallying cry of “Focus!”—delivered with a goofily inelegant arm thrust—had been strangely reminiscent of Andrew Davies, I’d thought. But maybe that wasn’t too surprising. As the head of Hambleton & Hart had told me himself, he and Phoebe did “run in the same circles.” Maybe, in their posh, public-school crowd, that gesture was super cool. Who knew?

  For the rest of our phone call, Travis had reacted reasonably well to the news of what had happened to me on the Tube platform. First he got mad. Then he lectured me. Then he told me how much he worried about me (aww). Then he described the odds of such an event being genuinely accidental (pretty good, actually) versus the probability of it happening to me again, depending on how often I used the London Underground.

  He’d said some truly unprintable things about Danny, for having allowed me to slip away from him in the first place.

  Then he’d said some incredibly nice things about Danny, for saving my life in the end. Then Travis had hung up. Abruptly.

  I would never understand the relationship (if you could call it that) between the two men in my life. It was . . . inexplicable.

  So was the express-delivered package I received the next day—until I opened it to find a pristine version of my old phone. Unpacking it like a kid at Christmas, I’d discovered . . .

  “It already has all my stuff on it!” I’d shown the screen to Danny. “See? Isn’t that thoughtful? Travis is a genius.”

  My security expert had been about to leave for another mysterious appointment. “Harvard knows how to spend money and use a cell phone OS. So what?” he’d grumbled before leaving.

  I’d been reminded that I still didn’t know exactly how Danny was “keeping an eye on things,” as he’d promised. I’d also remembered—via that technical sounding “OS” comeback he’d tossed out—that there was more to my longtime friend than meets the eye. Danny might look like a thug, but he isn’t. Not really.

  My first call on that shiny new phone had been from Nicola.

  “Hayden, how are you?” Jeremy’s former assistant had oozed disingenuousness, just as she’d done at her staged “press conference” at the police station. “Are you well? Is everything going simply marvelously? Claire told me you’re writing a book!”

  Unhappily, I tried to change the subject.

  But Nicola persisted. “You’ve got to be careful,” she warned. “Claire is quite busy with me at the mo, and there are only so many hours in the day, aren’t there?” A tinkling laugh.

  I’d gripped the phone, frowning. Was that a threat? Was Nicola suggesting that she’d kill me to keep Claire for herself?

  I might be jumping at shadows, but I still wasn’t sure of Nicola’s capacity for wrongdoing. She didn’t seem physically capable of pushing me off a train platform. On the other hand, all she’d have needed was a momentary imbalance, and I wasn’t exactly the Incredible Hulk myself. I would have been easy to push. I was just lucky that whoever had pushed me had delivered a glancing, destabilizing bump, rather than a direct hard shove.

  “Anyway,” she chattered, “the reason I’m phoning is that I wanted to discuss my book launch party. You are willing to cater it with some delicious Primrose goodies, aren’t you?”

  “We’ll see. Gotta run!” I blurted out. “Sorry! Bye!”

  I hung up. And that—for the moment—was that.

  Claire also phoned me. Multiple times. I ditched every last call. I didn’t want to lie to Jeremy’s former agent about my nonexistent chocolate industry tell-all book. But until I could connect Claire to Jeremy’s murder (or not), I wasn’t keen to come face-to-face with her mercenary nature, either.

  Eventually, things came down to the wire. With my consultation at Primrose essentially completed—except for the obligatory report—and only one day remaining until Phoebe’s TV appearance, I felt no closer to finding out who had bludgeoned Jeremy to death than I had before. My suspects were all arrayed. The trouble was, I still couldn’t connect all the dots between any particular one of them and Jeremy. I had my theories, but—

  “Hayden!” Commandingly, Phoebe snapped her fingers beneath my nose. “You’re woolgathering again, aren’t you? That simply won’t do. If I’m to perform this recipe flawlessly on telly tomorrow, I’ll need you to pay attention and do your job.”

  I shook myself into alertness. “I’m sorry, Phoebe.” I scanned the fancy quartz countertops of her expansive kitchen, trying not to lock eyes with Amelja, who was dusting in the adjoining dining room, obviously eavesdropping. “Where were we?”

  “I was making this Victoria sponge.” Phoebe’s voice was tart as she gestured to her cooling vanilla cake layers. Later, we would fill them with raspberry jam and—in place of the usual whipped double cream—white chocolate buttercream. “You were staring into space, just as you’ve done most of the morning.”

  Aha. She wasn’t finished berating me, then. Okay.

  “Again, I’m very sorry, Phoebe.” I knew she was anxious about her upcoming TV appearance. Her curtness had only grown as each day had brought it closer. “You’ll be fine on TV. Don’t worry about a thing. Your buttercream looks wonderful!”

  My consultee frowned into the stainless-steel bowl of her professional-caliber standing mixer. “White chocolate is awfully plebeian, isn’t it? I’m not sure this is sophisticated enough. Perhaps I should go with the chocolate sticky-toffee pudding.”

  “That was tasty,” I agreed. If you’re not familiar, it’s essentially what Americans would call a “pudding cake,” served with toffee (caramel) sauce. It was an especially beloved, homey British dessert. For our version, we’d added melted chocolate to the cake batter, then added a garnish of chocolate curls. “You were very good at making the chocolate curls, too.”

  “Don’t condescend to me,” Phoebe snapped. “A child could make chocolate curls! I must be impressive tomorrow. I’m not sure you comprehend what’s at stake. Primrose is my life!”

  I nodded, calling on the reserves of patience I’ve built over my years of chocolate whispering. Aside from
expertise with all varieties of chocolates, my job also demands that I possess scrupulous attention to detail, a thick skin for criticism, and an excellent memory. Right now, my memory was reminding me that in just a few days, I’d be leaving London (and Phoebe) behind.

  Until then, I’d simply have to make the best of things.

  “Primrose is doing much better now,” I reminded Phoebe.

  She looked unsure. “That could go away at any moment. My shop did well straight out of the gate, with extensive press coverage and heaps of people queuing, and then everyone got bored. They moved on to the next thing, didn’t they?” Phoebe’s voice rose as she grew increasingly red in the face. “Well, this time, I’ll be the next thing! I will not have it any other way!”

  Buffeted by her shrieking, I stepped back. Amelja stared.

  “You can’t simply will yourself into success,” I reminded Phoebe in a consoling tone, knowing that her heartbreak over Jeremy must be affecting her composure. “The vagaries of the business being what they are, none of us can do that. Being a restaurateur is challenging. But with a little extra practice—”

  Phoebe scoffed. “Perhaps if you had done your job properly, things would not feel quite so dire just now, would they?”

  That stung. Probably because I had neglected my work, just a skosh, while looking into Jeremy’s death. I wasn’t proud of that fact, but I’d thought I’d compensated for it pretty well.

  Judging by Phoebe’s reaction? Maybe not.

  “It was so much effort for me to get here. What if I can’t succeed? The only thing that saved me before was Jeremy!” Phoebe informed me in a shattered voice. “The love everyone felt for him transferred to me, too. It grounded me, and Primrose. All of us basked in his glow, didn’t we? But now that he’s gone—”

  She broke off and started to weep. I felt sorry for her—and struck by the poetry of the way she’d described her husband.

  Maybe I was being too hard on Phoebe. Maybe I was a snob . . . about snobs. I didn’t like her much, and she probably knew it. Just when she was having the worst time of her life, too.