The Chocolate Kiss

by Laura Florand

  Smug. Unbearably smug.

  Why, had he just staked his ownership of her out loud and clearly for the entire island? Why, yes, I did win this battle, thank you, and she is mine.

  He waved his cup of hot chocolate generously, on cue, inviting his subjects to continue celebrating his victory.

  She turned toward his chest so that no one else could see how tightly her teeth were gritting. “I might seriously kill you one day,” she said between them.

  “Believe me, I’ve realized that a few times in the past twenty-four hours.” He took a sip of the chocolate. “But a man’s got to die sometime, and it’s hard to imagine a better way to go.”

  And while Magalie was sputtering over the meaning he had just put into her threat, flushing and wrestling desperately with the urge to dump the entire cauldron of chocolate over his head, he tweaked her nose where everyone could see and strolled off to make sure all their guests were enjoying the party.

  In the end, when people were giddy from sugar shock, Aunt Aja orchestrated a stone-soup movement, and Philippe’s kitchens filled with great pots of something bubbly and curry-influenced. Philippe and Magalie took bowls of it and tucked themselves up at his most intimate table, against one of the great glass windows, slightly sheltered from the room by a pillar.

  The snow had tapered off, but the street outside was still lovely with it, despite or because of the footprints everywhere that showed the way their island of Parisians had played all day long. The streetlamps glowed beautifully against crystals of ice, rich gold warming the snow.

  “Would you rather we sleep at my place or yours?” Philippe asked, and she curled her hands around the warm bowl with an involuntary burst of happiness at his assumption. Strange, how some of the ways he was arrogant hit her just right.

  And, even more oddly, she wasn’t even sure she cared about the answer. Attached though she was to her sense of place, either seemed just fine to her. “Your bed is bigger.”

  He smiled. “That has its pros and cons.”

  “But mine is closer to work. And less far to go in the snow.”

  “That has its pros and cons, too,” he laughed. “I like walking with you in the snow. But I also like being tucked up warm with you in an apartment, watching it.”

  She smiled, feeling peaceful, as if she was resting on a great downy mattress of happiness and neither of these choices could really go wrong. “Let’s see how late it is when the party breaks up.”

  He took a bite of his curry stone-soup concoction, eyebrows lifting a little in pleasure at the flavor. “Your aunt cooks like this a lot, you said?”

  She smiled a little around an odd vision of him tucking himself up at their dinner table. It would certainly change the dynamic. In fact, she was not entirely sure his legs would fit under the aunts’ table. Her head tilted as she considered the vision. She was deeply uncomfortable with changed dynamics inside her home, and yet it didn’t feel wrong. More like the oddly enticing discomfort of the spice in Aunt Aja’s curry.

  Philippe took another bite, watching her. “Your Aunt Geneviève said you had trouble trusting others.”

  Magalie blinked. “I don’t distrust others.”

  “En fait, she said you had learned what trust you do have from her and Aja, which I found disquieting, to say the least.”

  “It doesn’t really come up,” Magalie said, perplexed. “Trusting others. I mean, trust them with what?”

  Philippe gazed at her with sardonic resignation. “Your feelings, for example.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  He shrugged as if she had made his point, aggravating her, because she hadn’t.

  “My feelings are my own responsibility. I don’t see what trust has to do with it. I can’t go around handing them off to other people.”

  He toyed with his spoon. His mouth had an odd, wry curve. “I would try to take good care of them.”

  She gave a crack of laughter that made anger tighten his mouth. “You would not. You would try to take them over, do anything you wanted with them, if I handed them off to you.”

  Now he was seriously ticked. It ran through every tight line of his body. “What the hell makes you think that?”

  “You just would. It’s who you are. It’s who people are, period, but you’re worse than most.”

  “I am not.”

  Anger crackled so strongly in him, she could tell he could barely sit still. For once, she hadn’t made him angry on purpose, so she tried to explain. “You’re stronger than most.”

  “So are you, Magalie.”

  She sat back, thrown by how true that sounded. Her parents had always said the same thing about her. Her aunts had always shown it without saying it. She herself had always felt so impatiently competent and in control of herself compared to all the heart-torn princesses who wandered into their shop seeking consolation in a cup of chocolate. “But when I go out into the city, when I leave La Maison, I feel like I’m going to war.”

  Surely most people handled that more easily? Even princesses. Particularly princesses. Didn’t her sense that she had to armor herself indicate her own weakness?

  “Vraiment?” His anger faded as he reached across the table and curled just the tips of his fingers into hers. “That explains a lot.” He studied her, as if he was trying to peer through a narrow gap in a fence to figure out what was behind it. “You still go, though,” he said after a moment. “You go confront arrogant princes”—he dipped his haughty head in sublime acceptance of his role as prince—“you brave shops for every delicious item of clothing you wear, you put your hair up in a ponytail and go running. Could I go running with you, Magalie?”

  “No,” she said instinctively, taken aback. His mouth set. The light in his eyes cooled, was shielded. “I like that time by myself.” But even as she said it, a vision snuck in, of them running together quietly in the dawn, not speaking, in perfect peace and harmony. “Maybe sometimes . . .” she said slowly, softly, wonderingly. Was that something she could share?

  He tilted her hand up so that her palm pressed against his and interlaced their fingers. His mouth softened. She liked the way his bigger hand spread hers just a little too much, a not entirely comfortable fit. She liked the way she was getting used to it, after a day of snow and lovemaking and that glowing warmth that had spilled everywhere from their neighborhood party.

  It terrified her to realize suddenly that she was getting used to it. That was the one thing she most preferred not to do, with people. Get used to them.

  It had taken her years to get used to her aunts, and despite Aja’s claims of making room, she thought mostly she and her aunts did so well with each other because none of them did the jigsaw-puzzle thing. They just stayed the shape they were, and tough luck for other people running into their pointy, hard edges.

  Nobody gave herself away.

  Not even to a prince who smiled at her across a table and lifted her hand to kiss the inside of her wrist, just there.

  It was astonishingly warm and comfortable to spend the night in his apartment, which was where they ended up, out of curiosity to see the rest of Paris in the snow one more time before they went to bed. Astonishing, because to hold onto one place had been so important to her for so long now.

  But Philippe seemed delighted to have her, happiness expanding out from him until it filled the whole place like light, and he had to draw the curtains for once in case there was so much light and happiness inside, people could start seeing in. In the private cave of his room, he at first slept curled toward her, then eventually sprawled away from her on his stomach like a man not used to sharing his bed. She slept little, woken constantly by his movements in his sleep, but it wasn’t until around three in the morning that she felt that little knot of cold and anguish in her again. That What am I doing? feeling.

  She swallowed it as best she could. She had no patience with people who wallowed forever in their childhoods and sold short the rest of their lives. And it had never occurred to
her before the past few days that she might be doing that.

  She finally fell solidly asleep when he rolled back over and tucked himself into her breasts as a pillow, and then she slept late, but he didn’t have the luxury. She felt him kiss her and woke to see his back as he left the bedroom and heard the outside door close behind him. She dragged herself home and went out for a slow and careful run through the icy patches of snow, which entirely failed to clear her head.

  Magalie was working in the display window later that day, just before opening, when the timbre of a voice that came through the glass made her head lift and her heart perk up. In front of the shop windows, on a sidewalk salted for Madame Fernand’s sake, Philippe was talking to Geneviève, who seemed to be acting quite pleasant. Magalie pricked her ears, but Geneviève wasn’t trying to lower her voice, so no secrets carried through the glass. She leaned deep into the display window, ostensibly to scoop up a spoonful of crystallized roses. “. . . not enough self-confidence . . .” she thought she heard Geneviève say. “C’est un vrai problème.”

  Magalie drew back, frowning. Who was Geneviève talking about?

  Philippe glanced at her through the glass and held her gaze for a moment without smiling. Her heart started to beat too fast, as his looks always made it do.

  His eyes crinkled up just a little at the corners, a hint of a smile despite his serious expression, and he blew her a kiss.

  She blinked and spilled rose petals everywhere, and he broke into a grin. He looked for a moment as if he was going to walk into the shop and kiss her for real, but instead he clasped Geneviève’s hand, handing her a package, and Geneviève shook her head and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Philippe rubbed one knuckle against one of those cheeks as he turned back toward his shop, looking rather pleased.

  Geneviève handed the package to Magalie when she came into the shop, a soft, floppy package, the sticker on its wrapping paper belonging to a clever Marais designer. Geneviève stood over her, studying her and shaking her head. “It’s like seeing your own child grow up to be a unicorn or something,” she said. “It’s hard to understand. But he’s growing on me. I don’t think I’ll mind so much.”

  Flushing, Magalie concentrated on her package.

  It was a scarf. Rich blue that matched his eyes, cashmere.

  The card tucked inside had more than just his name on it, this time. It said, If I have to work you out of this tower one rag at a time, we’re definitely doing the sexual-fantasies version. Philippe.

  Magalie folded it quickly against her belly and looked up. Geneviève glanced away guiltily, trying so hard to look uninterested that for a second Magalie thought her aunt was going to start whistling. From the card against her belly, heat grew and stretched through her, pooling and concentrating in all kinds of areas she didn’t want her aunt to know about.

  “Don’t you worry about Philippe Lyonnais at all?” Magalie asked and wished desperately that her tongue didn’t curl around his name as if she were saying the king’s.

  “I tried to give him some tea,” Aunt Aja said from behind them. She was sweeping the floor. That had once been assigned as Magalie’s job, but Aunt Aja kept doing it no matter how many times Magalie went back over it. She said it was a very satisfying feeling, to sweep the floor clean of old messes. “If he refused to drink it, on his own head be it.” Her black eyes held Magalie’s.

  Magalie tried to look as full of tea as possible. Aunt Aja had not offered her a cup of tea since that day a month ago when Magalie had secretly tossed her cup into the Seine. That could be because Aja thought that one cup was enough, but it could also be because Magalie was now labeled as an ingrate. But what if she had drunk it and it had made her too clearheaded to allow Philippe in, for example? That didn’t bear thinking about.

  “And I’m not that altruistic,” Geneviève said. “If he had stopped, knocked politely, asked our leave, maybe. But he can’t come in as if he owns this island and expect me to worry about him.”

  Magalie stared at both her aunts, for a moment completely confused. Finally, it clicked that they had misunderstood her. “I don’t mean worry about him as if he were your child heading off down the wrong road! I mean, worry about what having him here is doing to La Maison des Sorcières.”

  The aunts gazed at her for a moment in deep concern. Clearly, though, for her. Then they exchanged a glance that made Magalie want to show them her report card from school and swear she was doing all right.

  “Our customers!” she cried.

  “Oh, those.” Aja shrugged. “They’ll go away eventually. Besides, I really think the influx is more your fault than Philippe’s. I told you you didn’t have to make your chocolate call people all the way from Timbuktu.”

  “I meant not having enough customers!” Magalie fairly shouted in frustration.

  “What, just because there weren’t so many of them the first few weeks he was open?” Aja waved a hand. “We don’t have to compete with fads.”

  A fad. Magalie grinned at a vision of Philippe setting his back teeth.

  “Besides, we don’t want too many people to know about us. The fun is being a secret.”

  “And you weren’t here yesterday morning,” Geneviève said severely. “People trying to rattle our doorknob off to get in on a snow day, because of that Christophe’s blog about our chocolate. Rattling our doorknob. Is that polite?”

  “The snow made them worse, I think. Something about hot chocolate and snow. It was very thoughtful of Philippe to host a party at his place to draw them off,” Aunt Aja reminded her spouse. “At Magalie’s suggestion, too. You see, they can both be taught.”

  Magalie had brightened. “That blog worked? You mean, we won’t go out of business?”

  Both the aunts stared at her for a long moment. They exchanged one of those glances that made her feel thirteen. “Maybe we should tell her,” Aunt Aja suggested.

  “I was hoping she would learn her own power,” Geneviève protested.

  “She’s very young. You’re rushing her. If she’s still acting like this when she’s in her forties, then we’ll know there’s a problem.”

  “By then it would be too late!” Geneviève sounded like a witch who had read one too many parenting books. “You can’t change a person in her forties!”

  Aunt Aja shook her head, dismissing parenting books as a waste of paper. “Do you know how much we rent those other apartments for?” she asked her niece.

  Magalie shook her head. “Several thousand?”

  Geneviève gave Aja a disgruntled look and told her.

  Magalie opened her mouth and closed it a few times like a gasping fish out of water. “That’s twice as much a month as my annual salary.” For one apartment. That explained a lot about why Aunt Aja and Aunt Geneviève only opened the shop from two to eight, five days a week, and closed for two months in the summer.

  Geneviève gave her shoulder an affectionate pat. “Yes, you do help keep our overhead down.”

  “Can I have a raise?” Although, continuing the rental math, her own free studio apartment must be worth . . . also more than her annual salary. That was some gift Geneviève’s’s old lover had given her, back when she was Magalie’s age.

  Geneviève gave her a severe look. “You would just spend it all on clothes.”

  Yes, well . . . “So?”

  “You can’t buy confidence in a clothing store, Magalie.”

  Magalie stared at her aunt blankly. “Are you kidding? This is Paris.”

  Geneviève gestured to her cotton caftan superbly. It might be a generational gap, but Magalie couldn’t think of a polite way to express her reaction to the idea of wearing a cotton caftan.

  “And what’s this about confidence? I have plenty of confidence. People have been commenting on it all my life.” In two languages. Such a self-confident little girl, her teachers used to write in their comments. So centered. Si sûre d’elle. To her teachers’ credit, they had usually managed to make her sureness of herself
sound like a compliment and not a danger to anyone else’s authority.

  Geneviève snorted. “As if they know anything about self-confidence.”

  Probably in comparison with Aunt Geneviève’s, most people’s knowledge of confidence could fit on the head of a pin.

  “I know something about self-confidence,” Magalie said, affronted.

  This time it was Aunt Aja who patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. You’re still an apprentice. You’ve got plenty of time to learn.”

  “Go practice on that boy of yours,” Geneviève added. “You don’t meet many people who let you practice your self-confidence on them that way. The ones who do are either very weak or very strong.” Her brown eyes glinted. “Which do you think he is?”

  Chapter 31

  At a wild guess, not weak.

  Philippe created an immediate rhythm. Strong, confident, not asking for permission. Sometime in the early afternoon, usually within an hour of the tea shop’s opening, he would stop by for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, later, when she and he both quit for the day, he would come back to take her out to a restaurant and take her home again, his or hers.

  Geneviève was always glad to see him, as it gave her a chance to blame him for the flood of customers who were making her crabby. “First you move in here and attract everyone’s attention this way, then your friend Sylvain begs me to help him with one of his windows and goes around letting people pick up our business cards, and then that Christophe has to blog about your crush on Magalie’s chocolate. You’re nothing but trouble.”

  “It will die down,” Aunt Aja soothed. “Eventually. You know it will.”

  “I wish I could take all the blame,” Philippe said, “but really I feel that most of your ability to attract customers is due to you three.”