“I can’t believe you!” she suddenly erupted, to his deep satisfaction. “I can’t believe even you would have the nerve to break into my apartment and then stand there lecturing me! Get out!”
He folded his arms, so tempted to say Make me, he had to bite his tongue hard and think that through. He didn’t really want to come across as a man who would muscle his way without permission into a woman’s apartment and refuse to leave. She truly did manage to bring out the beast in him. And she hadn’t even managed to slip him one of her potions yet.
“I’ve never heard of a prince getting kicked out of a tower this way. Not that I would presume to call myself a prince, but since you insist,” he added in a tone designed to infuriate. “Usually he gets some kind of reward for his invasion.” A kiss, for example. He refused to say the word out loud. Let her blame her own mind for leaping to the idea.
But Magalie gave him a scathing look that made him wonder if she was about to comment on the origins of those tales, when the invading prince was more likely to rape the sleeping princess than kiss her to wake her up. His head almost blew off. True, she called him a beast, and the prince label was an accusation of arrogance, not of gentlemanliness, and true, he had invaded her apartment. But if she even thought—if it even crossed her mind that he might—if even for a second she had the slightest fear that—
“I’m not a princess,” she said dryly, proving her mind was off on a different track altogether.
“Yes, and, speaking of which, if you send another spoiled blonde my way, I’m going to feed her something that makes her fall in love with you, and see how you like it.”
Magalie’s arrogant expression flickered. Abruptly she seemed to notice the winter-evening dimness of the apartment and crossed to turn on the light by her bed. Her heels sounded wrong on the apartment floor, too aggressive for this space. He wondered if she usually took them off by the door. Had his presence required her to keep on her armor?
“I don’t feed them anything to make them fall in love with you.” She frowned deeply, seeming unsure where to put herself. Maybe usually she sat on the edge of her bed now, kicking off her shoes, curling up to examine her purchases . . . His blood surged long and slow and hot through his body at the image. “A poor, innocent princess? Why would I do something like that to her?”
“They don’t look that innocent to me, but thank you for reminding me of moral considerations,” he said politely. Really? She hadn’t been sending those would-be seductresses his way? Something bitter was released in him, dissipating so fast, he had to struggle to keep his fighting form. “It’s true, it would be quite reprehensible to make anyone fall in love with you.”
Her eyes flashed. He almost laughed. This was fun. He felt aroused and infuriated and so alive, he held himself still only by his years of self-discipline. He knew how to pay precise, attentive care to the smallest of movements, how to wait as long as it took for something to be perfect.
She dropped her packages onto the bed, started to take off her jacket, and stopped herself. Oh, so she would usually shrug out of her jacket about now. And drop it carelessly across her bed or hang it up? No, hang it up. The room was so peacefully uncluttered. “If I wish anything on anyone, it’s usually strength and courage and clear-seeing, which they never seem to have enough of. I have no idea why that would lead them to you.” She looked as if she had bitten into something rotten in polite company and didn’t know where to spit it out.
Strength and courage and clear-seeing. He felt himself draw a long, deep breath, like at the gym when he had just finished a punishing set of exercises well. Or at the Meilleur Ouvrier de France trials when the last, extravagant, impossible spin of sugar held. “Thank you,” he said, “for the compliment.” The extraordinary, beautiful compliment.
“It wasn’t intended.” She scowled.
“Yes, I gathered that.” But maybe, when she stirred her chocolate and thought of strength and courage and clear-seeing, maybe some part of her thought of him. He reached out and caught her window frame, to give himself some purchase. His hand curled slowly harder and harder around it.
She had just undone him utterly with a few words and might, or might not, be willing to mold him back together again.
She folded her arms, and her foot made a little aborted gesture, as if she wanted to kick her bed. The lamp gave off a soft, warm light that seemed to embrace her tense body. Normally she would be relaxing in that bed, wouldn’t she, soft and at peace? “How many spoiled blonde princesses are we talking about?”
“Since I’ve opened here?” Overprivileged young women who had walked into his shop and started throwing themselves at him as if he was going to catch them? “A few.” And he hoped she could recall exactly how beautiful the women had been.
Her arms tightened under her breasts. He wondered if she could catch his gaze flickering over her body at movements like that, the same way he sometimes caught hers. Of course she did. And no doubt gloated. “So you’ve been having fun,” she said dryly.
“En fait, Magalie, interestingly enough, I’ve been working nearly nonstop. Things will settle into a good routine eventually, and the new people I’ve brought in will learn their jobs enough for me to leave them to it, but for the moment, that’s how this goes. And on the few occasions when I’ve stopped working, it hasn’t been to provide an overindulged socialite with courage and strength she should be trying to find in herself.”
It was to spend time with his family, because a man had to have priorities. To go to the gym, because it helped him keep his sanity. And . . . well, she was just going to have to figure out the third and dominating focus of his time and attention herself. He wasn’t exactly being subtle.
“I don’t have time to go shopping,” he said, gesturing at her bags from the Marais. He regretted the words immediately. Was he playing for pity? That was not the reaction he wanted.
She gave his body an incredulous look, shoulders to feet and back again. And of course his body hummed deliciously in response. Pretty clearly, he didn’t inspire her pity. So she liked the way he dressed, did she? “The jacket and shoes are from two years ago, Magalie. A fashionista like you can’t tell? Plus, my sister likes to shop. And when it comes to clothes, I make quick decisions. I pass a window that has something I like, I buy it, and I keep going to my next appointment. It takes five minutes.”
For some reason, that last seemed to annoy her. God knew why. Too arrogant? Too princely? Was she thinking he thought she was a sweater?
He sighed.
The silence stretched, and he wondered why she didn’t tell him to get out again. Then a slow smile grew as he realized why. She couldn’t, because if he just shrugged his shoulders in response, she couldn’t take the embarrassment of not being able to enforce her own orders on her own ground. She couldn’t throw him out, and she would probably die before calling the police or in any other way admitting she needed someone to help her against him. Her pride didn’t allow her any way of getting rid of him unless he went of his own accord. She certainly wasn’t going to ask him. And he didn’t feel like volunteering to go. This pale room so high above the world, with the soft, luminous light falling all around her, filled him with a strange mix of peace and rightness and that vivid, hungry aliveness.
His own accord liked it right where he was. He grinned at her. That would teach her not to lock her door.
She tilted her head up at that grin and gave him a long, searching look. Bon sang, but she was going to kill him with that stretch of bare throat here in the vulnerable intimacy of her private tower. He wished . . . he wished she had invited him in.
She put her hands on her hips. “You know, this is exactly like you. To barge in where you aren’t wanted and where you have no right to be, without even the courtesy of asking. Do you want me to show you my underwear drawer, too, or have you got a pair in your pocket already to take home with you?”
He laughed in pure respect for her technique. Drive him into a rage so that he stomped off. Good luck.
It was nice up here. “Not yet, but I wouldn’t turn down the offer.”
She snapped her mouth shut, and her eyes fulminated.
He tilted his head. “According to Maman, the first time she read ‘Rapunzel’ to us, I was three, and when she told us about the prince coming back every day with another rag that Rapunzel could stitch together for her eventual escape, I said, ‘Why didn’t he just bring a rope the first trip?’ ”
She looked completely lost at this change of subject. What, was the reference not obvious to her?
“When I was about twelve years older, it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t want to bring a rope. Maybe he was making Rapunzel earn her way to freedom one rag at a time with all kinds of sexual services. That one provided some great fantasies.”
Her eyes widened a tad. He loved the brown of them. It made him want to get very close so he could see if her pupils had dilated. Her winter-pale skin flushed.
“But now I’ve had another idea. Maybe one rag at a time was all he could talk her into. Maybe she didn’t want to escape. Maybe she liked it just fine in that tower with her witch guardian until some prince waltzed in and tried to drag her out of it.”
Her brow knit. She was getting it at last. “I am not,” Magalie said tightly, “a princess in a tower.”
He only smiled a little and shrugged. “And you don’t have to come out of it either, if you don’t want to. I like it up here.”
“Back to the sexual-fantasies theory?” she said sardonically, and then her foot twitched, as if she wanted to kick something else, possibly herself, for having brought the topic back up.
He grinned very slowly. He couldn’t help the thorough look up and down her body as his insanely greedy brain tried to process fifty sexual fantasies at once. “I wouldn’t object.”
“You know what I remember thinking about that story?” Magalie said. The deepening of her flush made his body frantic with heat. “Just another over-entitled man forcing his way in where he wasn’t wanted. And that the princess seemed oddly helpless for someone raised by a witch. I always felt like there must be parts to that story missing.”
“Forcing his way in,” Philippe repeated carefully. He looked once around the soft white of her apartment and down at himself.
“Yes. Someone exactly like you, for example.”
“Over-entitled?” As if someone else had given his success to him? There was a reason he wasn’t just another Lyonnais; he was Philippe Lyonnais. It had all come from his hands, his work, his sense of taste, his inspiration.
“Yes. You know, another selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant bastard.”
His mouth set against the hurt of that. “Such flattery.” Why did she so determinedly think the worst of him? He got on well with his family and showed respect, albeit sometimes mixed with exasperation, for his parents. He looked after his sister and babysat his niece one or two busy Wednesday afternoons a month, both to help Noémie and because he liked to. His circle of friends was small but very strong, and they could count on him when they needed him. He never beat out his rivals with underhanded tricks but with pure, superior quality. He took on interns to help them forge careers. Why did she always think so badly of him? How much damage had he done to her aunts’ business, for God’s sake? His staff was spending half their salary at La Maison des Sorcières.
“Christophe came to blog about us. He probably would have done two or three entries over time. A couple of recipes, a little piece on the shop. The most-read food blogger in Paris. And you couldn’t stand it, could you? You had to figure out a way to lure him off and get even more attention for yourself, even if it meant giving up one of your prized secret recipes to do it.”
He stood very still. He could feel it rise in him slowly, like the tide, the rage, coming in wave after wave—hitting his groin, reaching his heart, now his head. “You think I spent the afternoon showing that damn, encroaching blogger how to make my Désir—my Désir—because I wanted to steal attention from you?”
She folded her arms. It pushed her breasts up, as it always did. It sent him a little mad, as it always did. “Clearly.”
He turned his head sharply, staring out the window, because wrath was beating so hard in his head, he didn’t dare do anything else. Down below, two familiar forms exited the shop, wrapped for once in capes against a night too cold even for them. La Maison des Sorcières was closed for the night. Dark, empty, full of pointed hats and chocolate lures and danger.
“Where are your aunts going this evening?”
“A . . . friend’s poetry reading,” Magalie said jerkily, clearly thrown by the question.
He turned his head back, still sharp. “What recipe were you going to show Christophe? Your chocolat chaud?”
She hesitated, shrugged, and nodded.
“Your tarte aux pistaches et aux abricots? The one you invented because you were dying for my Désir macaron?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I was not dying for it.”
He held out an imperious hand. “Come show me.”
Her jaw set. “Will you stop ordering me around in my own apartment?”
“Magalie, if you will so very kindly come show me . . .” The beast she woke in him uncoiled in starved delight and roared. “. . . I will show you why I kept Christophe out of your kitchen.”
Chapter 18
Magalie didn’t know exactly what Philippe was up to, but it didn’t feel safe, which was probably why she was doing it.
Philippe Lyonnais, asking her to teach him her recipes? That was a triumph, wasn’t it? He had finally cracked, and she had yet to taste one single thing he had tempted her with. So why did it feel as if she was placing herself in his power?
The stairs were dim as they descended, lit gently by low lights designed to give just enough illumination to see but not intrude under doorways and wake others. Philippe preceded her, his broad back very correctly between her and any fall down the stairs. But it meant she could not see his face. Just a glimpse of his profile when he turned at the landings, looking very primitive in the dimness.
The trip through the dark courtyard blasted her with coldness again. Nights like this were when she most wanted to be curled up in her bed in her apartment. Without invaders. But maybe with a warm, hard, welcome body curling around hers under the covers . . .
Philippe opened the door for her, and when she passed under his arm and looming body, all dark in the darkness, a thrill of something atavistic ran through her.
It was almost a relief when she turned on the kitchen light, a warm golden color that embraced them. But somehow her heartbeat only seemed to speed up, and she struggled to swallow. She could feel every movement he made through every inch of her skin.
Past the archway of the door into the rest of the shop, everything was dark. It seemed to make their space even smaller, a little intimate hollow of light into which darkness walled them. She could just make out the shapes of chocolate trees through the second archway, silhouetted large and black against the lights in the street.
Philippe very courteously moved behind her to help her off her coat.
It was, of course, what any prince with the barest modicum of self-respect would do. But why did it make her feel all silky and vulnerable, as if his hands had slid over her shoulders, when they hadn’t, as if his breath had teased the nape of her neck, when it hadn’t? It brought him close enough that she could smell him. He had been making caramel.
He hung her coat on the empty hook on the courtyard door and slipped off his own. The pressure in the little kitchen seemed to rise too high, as if too much air had been forced into a closed space. It didn’t take much to fill this space. Magalie, small as she was, could command it all by herself. She and her aunts almost never shared the space, taking turns at making recipes rather than driving one another crazy.
To have Philippe in it, at the same time as she, over-filled it. And she was not even trying to battle him out of it but allowing him in. She would have to turn away from him, bend dow
n, stretch up. To allow him to be that close to her without resistance.
“So,” Philippe said, still in that courteous tone. “Which would you rather show me? Your famous chocolat chaud that drives men mad? Or the tarte I”—his voice silked out over the I—“inspired in you?”
“There’s really not much to the hot chocolate,” she said uneasily. Drove men mad? Really? How mad did he feel? “It’s a very simple recipe.”
“Then why not show me both?” He opened a palm in the most chivalrous way imaginable. “I’m in no hurry.”
She tried to work up anger at the fact that he assumed her time was equally at his disposal. But the attempt flitted away like an inconsequential distraction.
No hurry.
And when she turned to pull her pot out from the cabinet under the counter, her bottom brushed his thigh.
That thigh didn’t move away to give her more room.
Her bottom and the back of her thighs seemed to flame, heat spreading from the point of contact and flushing through her sex.
Her hands faltered as she set the pot down, and it bounced and rang against the burner. There was a whirring sound from the clock in the next room, and a witch laughed evilly in the dark.
Philippe shifted, as if to get out of her way, but it put him just in the spot where her butt went the next time she bent down, to get the milk and cream from the under-counter refrigerator. A refrigerator that a kitchen expert like himself surely recognized behind its cabinet front.
She straightened too fast.
“Allow me,” he said, as if the milk might be too heavy for her, and closed his hand around hers on the bottle. The calluses on his palms slid against her knuckles, warmth on one side of her hand, the chill of the bottle on the other, and then the warmth was gone, as he took the bottle and set it down.
“They’re the best dairy,” he confirmed, seeing the name on the bottle. “I use them, too.”
This suggestion of complicity left her feeling oddly warm. Then wary, as if she had caught him sneaking up on her left flank. Since when did His Highness allow anything of hers to be equal to his? She started the burner and poured the milk and cream in, crazily self-conscious, so that she almost couldn’t breathe.
The Chocolate Kiss Page 15