The Chocolate Kiss

by Laura Florand

  She turned their sign to LES SORCIÈRES REVIENNENT DANS CINQ MINUTES, picked up the tea again, and walked not toward Philippe Lyonnais’s gloating success but toward the opposite end of the island, crossing the Boulevard Henri IV, named after the same green king who always saluted her. She passed through the small park, where two brave souls sat on the benches despite the cold, and descended the stairs to the quay and the tip of the island.

  Their local clochard’s German shepherd wandered up, sniffing for food, and Magalie gave it a guilty look as she handed an old, battered pot full of chocolate to the dog’s homeless owner. She always forgot to keep things on hand for non-chocolate-eating creatures. The street-dwelling clochard—who sometimes let Magalie call him Gérard and other times insisted he was one of the Notre-Dame gargoyles in disguise, but who always insisted that he was not homeless, he simply preferred to live life out in the open—took the pot with a noise of appreciation. Magalie wondered what the wish for happiness she’d stirred into it could possibly do to help someone in his situation, but then again, it surely couldn’t hurt.

  No one else was there, which used to make her uneasy, when Gérard, alias Gargoyle, had started hanging out there, but they had gotten used to each other over the years. Gérard frustrated Geneviève no end, however; she couldn’t get his life straight no matter how hard she went after him, and, generally speaking, Geneviève was to other people’s lives what a heavy, old-fashioned iron was to clothes.

  The water flowed winter-brown and high from recent rains, splitting around the point of the island. Bare trees stretched away along the banks, offering little of the soft shelter from the city that they suggested in the summer. The bridges that braceleted the Seine thinned out a little past this point, and the arches of the Pont d’Austerlitz were small in the distance. She could see, farther on, the shining and impractical book-towers of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

  Naked.

  The word flashed back through her like a stab in the back. It had a lion’s arrogant grin on it, and she pictured him surging up in his own nakedness, shoulders broad and powerful, and beyond that . . .

  Beyond that, what? His jaw was lean. Oh, what a lean, powerful jaw that was. But the coats and chef jackets she had always seen him in left a lot to the imagination.

  So why did her imagination provide a lean waist and a flex of abs and, above all, him glorying in it?

  Well, of course, he would glory in his nakedness. That man gloried in everything about himself, didn’t he?

  Footsteps sounded on the quay, and Magalie braced instinctively, because even here, on her island, riffraff could occasionally wander in from the rest of Paris to annoy women standing alone. Then Gérard would urinate in very close proximity to the riffraff ’s feet, which was amazingly effective at driving them off, but awkward all around.

  But her first glance spotted functional tennis shoes and a bulky jacket, and she relaxed. A tourist. She loved tourists. They usually meant no one any harm and were wrapped up in wonder. What was not to love?

  Except . . . this one was carrying a box very clearly stamped Lyonnais. And more specifically, one also marked at each corner with the PL Philippe Lyonnais had added to the logo of his Lyonnais shop.

  Magalie contemplated one trailing lace of those tennis shoes. One sudden fall, and those macarons would be crushed. And the German shepherd would be happy. She sighed and bent her head, slipping her gloved hand under her scarf to rub the back of her neck. She probably really did need to drink Aja’s tea. It would be nice to stay the kind of person she could like. Wanting to trip a tourist, for God’s sake.

  The river curved two great, protecting arms around the island, shielding it from the hustle of the rest of the city. Holding her untouched tea in one hand, Magalie contemplated the banks across the water. From here, the critical, brisk, sharp-dressed people moving along them were just part of the view. The tourist set his box down on a bench and took some pictures.

  Her feet aching in her boots, Magalie eyed again the white pillows that passed for shoes on the tourist’s feet and, just for an errant second, imagined wearing them.

  She caught the image back. She wasn’t in Ithaca. People who belonged to this island in the heart of this city never wore running shoes.

  But her gaze flicked up to the comfort of the tourist’s outfit, not too unlike the comfort of the clothes she used to steal from her boyfriend back in high school, because she liked to bury herself in them and pretend she could never be dragged out. What would it feel like to put on those baggy sweatpants and the giant sweatshirt?

  She gave herself a shake, like a dog flicking off water. No sense going that far.

  But the idea teased at her. Tennis shoes. Running shoes. What would it feel like to go running through the city? She had gotten interested in track when she was fourteen. She’d done well that first year at her American high school but then missed all the spring meets when her mother just couldn’t resist another spring in Provence, and the coach hadn’t let her back on the team. She was too small, anyway, to have ever been a star athlete. But she had liked it, there for a while.

  Occasionally she saw women running in Paris. Mostly very slowly, very fashionably, chatting with a competitively fashionable friend the whole way. But what would it feel like to really run?

  Floating through the city like some seagull, detached from it yet part of it. With no armor, no clicking of boots, no competition. Not giving a damn what others saw when they looked at her.

  It was a very odd idea, and maybe it was because of that oddness that it kept hold of her as she headed back to the shop. It curled around the nape of her neck, as if with just a nod of permission it would massage all the tension away.

  When she got back to the shop, a couple was standing in front of the display window, the man tall and lean, with overlong black hair and an intense, sensual, poetic face; the vaguely familiar-looking woman slim and considerably shorter, with light brown hair just past her shoulders, in that absolutely straight, silky look that was still fashionable. She was dressed in a way that proved sometimes money was just wasted on people. The woman’s clothes spoke of the highest-end stores on Faubourg Saint-Honoré, but she wore them with a streamlined elegance that just barely escaped being bon chic bon genre. Magalie, with the same money, would have come out of those Faubourg Saint-Honoré shops with flair.

  “You’re right,” the man was saying. “This is fantastic.”

  Magalie smiled.

  “Tu vois.” The woman nudged her elbow gently into his side. “I told you you had to see this.” Her accent was clearly American, but her French was accurate.

  A quirk of a sensual mouth as the man glanced down at her, but all he said was, “I don’t see why you made me go to Philippe’s opening on the way. As if he wasn’t full enough of himself without me stopping by.”

  “And here I thought it was my presence that would flatter him,” the woman said dryly.

  Magalie could see the man’s eyebrows flick up incredulously at this idea—maybe that the woman’s presence could be flattering at all to Philippe, or maybe that anyone’s presence could be more flattering than his own—but he politely smoothed the expression away before the woman glanced up at him. She gave him an ironic look, nevertheless. He smiled at her. She immediately melted, smiling back.

  Handsome, arrogant men who manipulated women with a sexy smile were so . . . annoying. Right.That was the word Magalie was looking for. Annoying. Nobody ever managed to do that to her. And there was no reason at all that that thought should make her regretful.

  “Besides, he agreed to do our wedding. You know you can’t do it. The least we could do was come to his opening, Sylvain.”

  “I might make one little thing for our wedding,” Sylvain said discreetly.

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “Sylvain, if you spend the forty-eight hours before our wedding trying to make sure your ‘one little thing’ outshines whatever Philippe brings—”

  Magalie drew in a startled b
reath, her heart speeding up like that of a sixteen-year-old about to throw her panties to a rock star onstage. This was—could this be Sylvain Marquis? The best chocolatier in the world? Oh, God, and he was standing there looking at their display.

  Three dangerous-looking witches flew over a forest, on a long journey, each with a gift behind her on her broomstick. The small chocolate chests were slightly open, revealing frankincense of gold-colored candied lemon peel in one, myrrh made from bits of golden and brown raisins chopped fine in another, and real gold leaf in the last. High up was a great chocolate star with eight points, flecked with gold leaf.

  They would have to take it down soon. The Fête des Rois had been last week. But the season stretched through January. Magalie and her aunts, for example, were going to another Feast of Kings that weekend, hosted by the friend who had gotten the fève in the galette des rois, or King Cake, at La Maison des Sorcières’s Feast of Kings the week before. Some of the people in the line before Lyonnais were probably buying his galettes, paying a fortune to have a little bite of fame at their own Fête des Rois.

  Magalie took a couple of careful breaths and tried to make herself sound adult and confident and not in the least starstruck. “Pardon.” She nodded to Sylvain Marquis and his companion in a friendly, firm fashion as she moved past them to unlock the door.

  “Bonjour,” the woman said with a bright smile, and she held out her hand. Confused, Magalie put hers into it and found it shaken confidently. Not just another American, but an American businesswoman, Magalie decided instantly. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was in here once before, when I was in Paris for some business meetings a few months ago. I’m Cade Corey.”

  Magalie searched her face. They had quite a few princesses come by, and she clearly was one, but now that Magalie thought about it . . . way back in the fall . . . a wish for someone to understand her own freedom . . . “Ah!” She smiled. “Did it work?”

  Cade Corey tilted her head inquiringly. “Did what work?”

  “Ah . . . nothing. Were you wanting some—some chocolate?” She was offering chocolate to Sylvain Marquis? “Or tea, perhaps?” Her tea was a lot safer to drink than Aja’s. Happy people generally did prefer to limit their risks of being shaken up. “Please come in.”

  Cade Corey’s gaze flicked around the shop as she preceded Magalie inside, her face lighting with pleasure. Sylvain insisted on holding the door for both of them. Magalie turned at once to see his face as he came in after her, and she blushed a little when she saw his slow smile of enchantment. “This is wonderful.”

  She could feel herself turning bright red. Sylvain Marquis. “I’ll just—please sit where you like. I’ll just get out of my coat. May I take yours?”

  When she came back from layering the coats on the hook on the courtyard door, Cade was examining the child’s drawings on her menu with great delight, and Sylvain Marquis was standing as close to the display case as he could without pressing into it, studying the shelves full of antique silver molds climbing the wall behind it. He had an avaricious gleam in his eyes.

  Cade Corey looked up from her menu. “I don’t remember it being this quiet,” she said frankly. “Is it the Lyonnais opening?” she asked, just as intrusively as if they were good friends and she had the right to know.

  Magalie knit her brow, not quite sure what to do with the other woman. Overall, she liked her; she liked that clear, open confidence she gave off. But how were these things Cade Corey’s business?

  That Corey name was vaguely familiar, calling to mind awful chocolate bars to which she had occasionally been exposed during the parts of her childhood that were spent in America. What an ironic coincidence that someone with that name should apparently be engaged to marry Sylvain Marquis.

  Cade frowned. “I like Philippe, but if he puts this place out of business, I will kill him.”

  Magalie clenched her stomach muscles, a second too late to protect herself from the blow. That was bluntness with a vengeance.

  Sylvain turned his head from the chocolate molds, his eyebrows going ever so subtly up. “You like Philippe?”

  Cade grinned. “Not as much as I like Dominique Richard,” she told him.

  Dominique Richard was the name of another top chocolatier in Paris. Sylvain Marquis turned completely away from the molds and narrowed his eyes at his fiancée. She looked rather smug about how annoying she was being.

  Before she could tease Sylvain more or, worse, twist more knives in La Maison des Sorcières’ wounds, the door opened and Geneviève blazed in, followed by a very quiet Aja. The cold air swirled around them and disappeared, eaten in one bite by the warmth in the shop.

  “Bonjour,” Geneviève told their two clients with warm approval, while Aja smiled at them. “I’m so glad to see someone with taste.”

  “It went that well, did it?” Magalie said dryly, rather relieved. If Geneviève and Aja had ended up on best-buddy terms with Philippe Lyonnais, it would have been desperately annoying.

  “First of all, we had to force our way in.” Geneviève looked about as dangerous as a woman who was six feet tall and wielding chocolate could. “There were lines, and he seemed to think we should wait in them.”

  Sylvain Marquis grinned. “How impolitic of him.”

  Geneviève waved a dramatic hand. “I don’t say it was him personally, but it’s certainly his responsibility to better educate his lackeys.”

  Aja smoothed her tunic back into clean lines as if it had gotten ruffled. “Everyone on the island was there.”

  Magalie’s stomach tightened. “Even Claire-Lucy? Thierry?” Who had saluted her with a rose bouquet when she went off to battle? All those people who had sat at their tables for months, swearing their support?

  Aja inclined her head without saying anything.

  “However, we did make our way back into his kitchens,” Geneviève continued grandly, “without—need I clarify?—waiting in lines. There, I must say, he seemed rather intrigued to see us. However . . .” She fell silent. Her mouth got as tight as a mountainside just before lava blew its face off.

  “He declined our gifts,” Aja said, as evenly as if this was entirely his right and choice and no matter to her. She ran one finger over the length of her black braid, smoothing everything within reach.

  Magalie’s right fist clenched. “Your tea?” she forced herself to ask first, courteously, as if that was the most important thing to her.

  “He set it aside on the back of the counter, thanked us kindly for thinking of him, and promised to bring the pot back another day.” Aja made a little gesture of her hands: On his head be it. She fixed Magalie with steady black eyes. “If you’re offered a gift, and you refuse it, then you’ve made your choice.”

  Magalie tried to look bright-eyed, as if she had drunk her own cup of Aja’s tea instead of throwing it into the Seine. With her luck, the tea had been meant to make her dreamy.

  “And my chocolate?” she got out. That she had made with her own hands and all her heart, pouring out her desire to see him begging on his knees.

  “Refused outright,” Geneviève said crisply. She held up the carnival pot. “He asked us to take it back to you.”

  Magalie gasped as if the chocolate pot contained icy water that Geneviève had just dashed into her face. Such an open rejection. And in front of Sylvain Marquis, too.

  “It smells delicious,” the most famous chocolatier in Paris said instantly, although the aroma leaking from the pot was now thin and cold, a ghost of its former self. “I would love to try some.”

  Magalie was going to wish every wonderful thing in the world for him and his fiancée, she decided firmly. What a beautiful man. “Not that one,” she said hurriedly, grasping the cold pot from Aunt Geneviève. The idea of Sylvain Marquis begging on his knees in front of her was just . . . wrong. Not at all what she wanted. “I’ll make some fresh. Aunt Geneviève, Aunt Aja, this is Sylvain Marquis.” She tried to sneak the subtlest emphasis in there, because Aunt Geneviève w
ould fail to respect the President. Which was one thing, but failing to respect Sylvain Marquis . . . well, there were limits. “And Cade Corey,” she added, trying her best not to make that name sound like an afterthought.

  Cade looked wryly amused.

  “I remember you,” Aunt Aja told her. “It seems to have worked.”

  Cade squinted just a little. “What worked?” she asked again, a shade more warily.

  “Sylvain Marquis,” Magalie heard Geneviève say musingly as she went back into the kitchen to empty the carnival pot of chocolate and start a fresh batch. “I think I’ve seen you on TV. You’re quite handy with chocolate, aren’t you? Did you come to ask for my secrets?”

  Pouring milk and a little cream into a pot, Magalie groaned silently and raised her eyes to heaven.

  “As a matter of fact . . .” Sylvain said, and Magalie dropped her spoon. Chairs scraped. “I want to talk to you about your window displays.”

  By the time Magalie finished the chocolate and came back out, Sylvain and Geneviève were at a small table together, deep into negotiations for Geneviève to help him design a particularly magical window theme, and Cade Corey was looking like someone swelling with smug satisfaction and trying hard not to let it show through her professional demeanor. Completely unoffended by Geneviève’s attitude that he was a young arriviste, Sylvain was wheedling the older woman respectfully, acting for all the world as if she would be doing him an enormous favor.

  Cade Corey watched him do this, the love and affection in her face so discreet yet intense that Magalie stood there with the tray of chocolate in her hand, its warmth and wishes for their wonderful life twining all around her, and felt desperately lonely.

  The door opened with a forlorn little chime, and she looked up, smiling with delight to see one of their old faithful returning. Madame Fernand came in with a sigh. “Magalie, ma petite chérie, I don’t suppose you would mind keeping track of Sissi long enough for me to try one little bite at that Philippe’s? They won’t let me in with a dog.”