Battle Royal by Lucy Parker

Author:Lucy Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Sugar Fair

Currently in Mourning

RIP the victims of the Great Gingerbread Witch Massacre.

Sylvie tried not to flinch as the entire trolley of gingerbread witches crashed to the ground. Broken biscuits skittered across the newly cleaned floors. A decapitated witch head landed on the tip of her shoe. They decorated these as good witches, with correspondingly friendly expressions, but the fall had knocked this one’s face askew and she peered up with gleaming malevolence.

Considering that the rest of her body was six feet away under the truffle fridge, she was entitled to be a little peeved.

Mabel pushed through the kitchen door, took one look at the mess on the floor, shot Sylvie a very pointed stare, and turned straight back the way she’d come.

Sylvie lifted her head to meet the wide-eyed, naïve gaze of Penny.

Even as she opened her mouth, the intern’s gray eyes started to fill.

Oh no.

“It was an accident,” she said hastily, but it was too late. The meltdown commenced.

“I’m hopeless!” Penny wailed, flinging herself down onto a stool and scrubbing her hands over her face. She was still wearing her gloves, so green icing smeared all over her cheeks.

With a massive internal sigh, Sylvie stripped off her own gloves and went to pat her on the back.

“It was like sad Elphaba,” she said a quarter of an hour later, knocking back coffee in the office. “Tears streaking down her green face. Have you seen her when she’s crying? She has Disney eyes at the best of times. The slightest upset and she goes full-on Bambi.”

Jay was leaning against the filing cabinet, arms folded.

Before he could say the words obviously scrambling toward his tongue, she set down her mug. “Don’t say it. I can’t fire her over a dropped tray of biscuits.”

Jay tossed down the papers he was holding. “It was an entire trolley of biscuits, and this is only one more catastrophe in an endless stream of incompetence.”

She was tired and on uncertain ground about a lot of things right now, and she was really not in the mood to argue about this again. And it was admittedly becoming frustrating that however hard she tried with Penny, whatever angle she took, it netted no positive results at all. “I know you think I need to be tougher in this part of the business.”

Jay seemed about to respond, probably in the emphatic affirmative, but when he took a closer look at her face, he sighed and came to sit on the edge of the desk. “Look, when it comes down to it, you can’t be anything other than what you are. And nor should you be. You’re almost entirely the reason this business is successful at all.”

His eyes were very warm and affectionate on her, and she reached up to squeeze his hand. “The business is both of us. We built it together, and I couldn’t do it without you.”

Letting her fingers drop, she sat up straighter with a sigh. “I think—I know—I’ve probably been a bit . . .

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