The Billionaire's Favourite Indulgence.

"He has a boat, Wren."

"Everyone in Scotland has a boat."

"Not a 'rowing' boat. A boat with a name. He named it after his mother, which means he's either sweet or deeply disturbed, and I'm willing to gamble on sweet."

Wren Tavish pressed her forehead against the cold glass of a shop window on Victoria Street and closed her eyes. Rain ticked off the awning above her. Behind her, across the cobbles, the gold lettering of The Gilded Thistle glowed like a dare.

"Tam. I have flour in my hair."

"You have flour in your hair 'every' day. It's your brand."

"I smell like a caramel factory. I've been up since four. I have a letter from Glaswell Developments on my counter that I've read nine times and understood zero times, and you want me to sit across from an accountant's cousin and discuss his 'boat'."

"Callum is a dentist."

"That's worse. He'll look at my teeth."

"He'll look at your 'face', which is the whole point of a face." A pause, and the rustle of Tamsin rearranging herself on whatever sofa she was sprawled across, being magnificent. "When did you last talk to a man who wasn't a delivery driver or a sourdough starter?"

"The starter's very responsive."

"Wren."

"Mr. Pettigrew from number six says good morning."

"Mr. Pettigrew is eighty-one and tells you about his hip."

"He's 'engaged' with me."

Tamsin laughed, the big shameless laugh that had got them both thrown out of a school assembly in 2010. Then her voice dropped into something gentler, and that was worse.

"Ten years, Wren. You do everything for that bakery. Your mum would've said the same thing."

Wren opened her eyes. The reflection in the glass looked back at her: apron still tied under her raincoat, hair escaping in every direction, a face that hadn't quite decided whether to cry or cheer.

"That's a low blow."

"It's a 'loving' blow. One dinner. If he's dull, you fake a phone call and I'll ring you. If he's lovely, you owe me a lifetime supply of shortbread."

"You already have a lifetime supply of shortbread."

"Then I'll require a second lifetime."

Wren breathed out. Somewhere behind the restaurant's frosted windows a violin was being played by someone who took it seriously.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"One dinner. I'm going in. I'm hanging up. Don't call me."

"I'm calling you in forty minutes."

"'Tamsin.'"

"Love you, bye!"

The line went dead. Wren stared at the screen, then at the restaurant door, then at the screen again. She had, in the last quarter of an hour, walked around this block twice. A third lap would be undignified.

She shoved the phone into her apron pocket, squared her shoulders, and rounded the corner at a speed that could only be described as brave, only to bump into a wall.

But the wall was not a wall.

It was warmer than a wall, for one thing, and it smelled of cedar and rain and something expensive. It also said "'Christ'" in a low, flat voice, and then there was a wet, splattering sound, and Wren looked down to find that the front of a very beautiful charcoal coat was now the colour of a latte.

"Oh, no. Oh, 'no.' I'm so sorry."

The man stepped back. He was tall, and she had to tilt her chin to find his face, and when she did she wished she'd stayed looking at the coat. Dark hair, rain-damp. A jaw that looked like it had been signed off by a committee. Grey eyes with the warmth of a January loch.

He held the empty paper cup between two fingers as though it had personally betrayed him.

"That," he said, "was a flat white."

"It was. It's 'definitely' a flat white. It smells like a very good one." She was already digging in her raincoat for anything absorbent. "I've got a napkin. Somewhere. Here, no, that's a receipt. It's a receipt for icing sugar, sorry, that's not very absorbent-"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters. It's a lovely coat. It's wool, isn't it? Wool's a nightmare, you can't just-" She stopped rummaging. Her hand had brushed something in her apron pocket. She pulled it out, a little square of gold cellophane twisted at both ends, and pressed it into his palm before he could think to refuse.

"What is this?"

"Emergency compensation."

"I don't want-"

"Honey toffee. Made this morning. My mum's recipe, it's basically a hug you can chew, and I know you're annoyed, you have every right, but you'll feel better in about four minutes. Please. I'm so sorry about the coat. I'll pay for the cleaning. Hearth & Honey, Cobbler's Lane, just ask for Wren!"

"Miss-"

"Have a 'lovely' evening!"

The restaurant door was already swinging shut behind her.

Struan Calder stood in the rain with a ruined coat and an empty cup and a small gold parcel resting in his palm.

He looked at it the way he looked at a contract with a clause he hadn't drafted.

'What a disaster.' he thought.

-------

"Good evening, madam. Do you have a reservation?"

The maître d' of The Gilded Thistle had the smooth, faintly startled look of a man who'd recently been reminded who his most important customer was. Wren unwound her scarf and tried, discreetly, to pat down her hair.

"Hi. Yes. It's under Cal. Or Callum, maybe. I'm meeting him, it's a..." She waved a hand. "It's a friend-of-a-friend situation."

"Cal." He consulted the screen. His eyebrows made a small, respectful movement. "Of course. Mr. Calder is already at his table. Right this way."

"Mr. 'Calder'?" Wren frowned. "Sorry, I thought it was Dunmore-"

But he was already gliding away between the tables, and she followed, because that seemed to be what one did in a room this lit and this hushed.

He was seated at the far end, in the corner table with the view of the whole restaurant and the wall at his back. The man stood as she approached. It was the 'manners' of standing, not the pleasure.

Wren stopped so abruptly that the maître d' nearly walked on without her.

"You," she said.

"You?" said the man, raising an eyebrow in confusion and displeasure.

"The wall!"

"Seems I got a new name."

"Wow.'" Her whole face lit up, as if somebody had opened a window in it. "What are the chances. I ruined your shirt, and now we're here again. Tamsin is so going to lose her 'mind.' Do you know how rare this is? Do you know what the odds are?"

"Roughly one in the number of tables in this restaurant."

"It's 'fate.'"

The man's forehead wrinkled at that word. "I'd rather believe It's a seating error."

"That," said Wren, sliding into the chair before he'd finished the sentence, "is what fate wants you to think."

The maître d' murmured something about menus and evaporated. Struan Calder sat back down with the wariness of a man who has just noticed that the floor plan has changed.

He had taken off the coat. Underneath, the suit was black and immaculate. On the tablecloth beside his water glass lay a small gold square of cellophane, unopened.

Wren noticed it at once and beamed at it. "You kept it."

"Would you prefer I throw it away?"

"You could 'eat' it."

"I don't eat sweets."

"You don't-" She stared at him. "At all?"

"No."

"What about at Christmas?"

"No."

"Birthdays?"

"No."

"Do you have a 'soul'?"

The faintest movement occurred at the corner of his mouth. It vanished so quickly that she might have imagined it. "That is beyond the scope of the evening."

She laughed. It was too big for the room, and two women at the next table glanced over, and Struan's eyes flicked to them with the mild threat of a man who had never once been laughed at in public and wasn't sure what to do about it.

"Right," she said, still grinning. "Introductions. I'm Wren. Wren Tavish. Hearth & Honey, the bakery on Cobbler's Lane, the one with the blue door, you must've walked past it, everyone walks past it, it's a very 'walk-past' kind of lane."

Something crossed his face, then. It was small, and it was gone.

"Tavish," he repeated.

"Do you know it?"

"No."

The word arrived a fraction too quickly. Wren, who had spent ten years reading customers across a counter, tilted her head. But then he added, "Struan Calder," and offered nothing more, and her curiosity slid off him like rain off a slate roof.

"Struan," she said, trying it out. "That's a good name. It sounds like something you'd find at the bottom of a whisky barrel."

"That's not entirely inaccurate."

"So what do you do, Struan Calder? Tamsin said dentist, but you don't have the hands for it. Too steady. Dentists have jumpy hands, it's all the caffeine."

"I don't have a-" He paused. Something in his expression recalculated. "Your friend told you what I do?"

"She told me you have a boat."

"I don't have a boat."

"You don't?" Wren's face fell, comically. "She said it was named after your mother."

"My mother is alive and lives in Perth. She'd be appalled."

"Then who-" She stopped. Her eyes widened. "Oh, no."

"Yes?"

"Oh, I think we have a problem."

"I suspect we have several."

"You're 'not' Callum."

"I am not."

"You're not a dentist."

"I run a distillery group."

"And this isn't a blind date."

A beat.

"Miss Tavish," said Struan Calder, with the grave patience of a man addressing a child who had just set fire to something, "I was expecting my lawyer."

"Your lawyer." Wren pressed her hands over her mouth. Her shoulders started to shake. "I sat down at a stranger's table and told him about the bakery 'and' his soul."

"Briefly."

"I'm so sorry. I'll go. I'll just, I'll find Callum, he's probably at the bar looking for a woman with flour in her hair-"

"Sit down."

It wasn't a request. It wasn't quite an order either. It was the voice of a man who had never had to decide the difference.

Wren, to her own surprise, sat.

"The maître d' will straighten it out," Struan said. "He's already seen the error. It would be more efficient if you waited than if the two of us walked through a full dining room announcing it."

"That's a very sensible way to be embarrassed."

"I've had practice."

"At being embarrassed?"

"At being efficient."

She was laughing again, quietly this time, when his phone buzzed against the table.

He glanced at it, and she watched a very odd thing happen. It began the way anyone's face begins when they check a message: a small dip of the eyes, a slight frown. But the frown did not settle. It froze. The colour went out of his knuckles, though he hadn't moved his hand.

"Is everything all right?"

"Fine."

"You look like somebody's died."

"Nobody has died," said Struan Calder, and read the message a second time.

It was from Crispin Voss. Crispin, who had booked this table, who was already forty minutes late, who had not, apparently, been coming at all.

'Sorry, can't make dinner. Your grandfather has amended the succession agreement. The clause has been triggered. You have three months. Find a wife.'

A pause.

Then, beneath it, as if the previous three sentences had not been sufficient cruelty:

'He says he'll know if it's fake.'

Struan set the phone face down on the tablecloth, very gently, as one lays down a weapon.

Across from him, Wren Tavish had picked up the menu and was reading it upside down, giving a small delighted gasp at the description of the venison. There was a smear of flour along her cheekbone. A curl had escaped whatever she'd used to tie her hair, and she blew it out of her eyes without embarrassment. She looked up, caught him looking, and smiled at him with the unguarded, entirely unearned warmth of a woman who believed the universe was, on balance, kind.

'This can't be happening,' Struan thought. 'Chatter. Flour. A bakery with a blue door.'

'A woman who apologises with sweets.'

But as he looked at the little gold square beside his water glass, then at her again, he sighed, with genuine horror:

'This is going to be a nightmare.'​