The Chocolate Kiss

by Laura Florand

  “So . . . only me?” he said, trying and failing to get his grin under control. “I’m the only one you’ve let through? The rest of them just bounced off those walls of yours?”

  “You don’t bounce off much, Philippe.”

  “No, I don’t,” he agreed. The next little grin was impossible. “I like to penetrate.”

  She hit his arm, though not nearly as hard as she would have liked. “Will you shut up?”

  “Did you ever play cowboys and Indians when you were little and always insist on being the Indian chief so you could do the wild, gloating, victory war dance?”

  She had been an only child with no cousins, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “If we weren’t standing right across from Notre-Dame, in the most civilized city in the world, I think I would be doing one right now.”

  “It’s terrible being a sixth-generation Parisian, isn’t it? The constraints of princehood. If you start gloating over me, I’m going to push you right off this bridge.”

  “You?” He gave a pffing, dismissive wave of his hand that nearly brought her head down in a bull charge. He was right by the rail. If she hit him hard with all her weight when he was least expecting it . . . “I’m not gloating over you. How many men do you think bounced off those walls of yours? Hundreds? Probably thousands.”

  “Philippe, you’re flattering, but I really don’t remember ever having thousands of men trying to flirt with me.”

  “You never even noticed.” He threw back his head with such a fierce, triumphant look, she thought he was going to let loose that Indian war whoop right on the spot. “You never even noticed them.”

  She gave a heavy sigh. She should never, ever have allowed him to get started on this subject. “You know, if I had ever imagined you in my future, I would have had a few more flings just to take your arrogance down a couple of notches.”

  He gave her a quick, hard look. “Bitchy, Magalie. But as I think I told you the first time we met, I’m not afraid of competition.”

  Yes, as he had pointed out, he wasn’t the only pastry chef in Paris, but once people tasted him, the others didn’t matter.

  His grin came back. “I would still spoil you for any other man.”

  “Are you going to pretend wounded innocence again when I tell you how arrogant you are?”

  “It’s sad, but Sylvain Marquis is the only person I know who doesn’t confuse honest self-evaluation with arrogance. Go ahead. Make me humble. Tell me why me.” He pressed his lips together. A laugh bubbled through the corners of them. “Is it because of how I . . . penetrate?” He snickered.

  He was really very full of himself right now, wasn’t he? “I’m going to have to kill you.”

  He stopped walking and stopped laughing all at once, standing under a lamppost just at the start of the second bridge, the one between Notre-Dame and their—her—island. Even in the still-chilly weather, people lingered here, gazing at the cathedral. A tourist wrote in her journal with finger-gloves over her hands, and a group of buskers played jazz. She missed the latest young man with a violin. Violinists tended to head south for the winter, and a new one would pop up sometime in the spring. “Sérieusement. Why me?”

  Seriously? Seriously, the honest answer was going to make him impossible to live with.

  Live with. Was that becoming an option?

  “I don’t know if you remember, but when I first saw you, you were laughing.”

  “I remember. You cut across it like a whip.” He touched a hand to his chest, as if he could still feel the sting on his skin. Was that where the sight of her had struck him? Right in the chest?

  “I wanted that laugh.”

  He liked that. She could see the pleasure in the rise of his chest, in the way the corners of his mouth softened, in the way the blue of his eyes warmed. But he didn’t know quite how to interpret her word want, his eyebrows flickering over it.

  She closed one fist low over her abdomen, illustratively. “I lusted after you.”

  He made a sound as if he had just taken a soccer ball right in the midsection. Wrapping her up in his arms, he turned her back against the lamppost and kissed her, long and thoroughly, the flying buttresses soaring behind him, and no one on this bridge of dreams did more than even glance at them. The jazz band started playing a love song.

  He raised his head at last. The wind that had been blowing his hair off his face now blew it toward her, little tendrils not long enough to reach her cheeks. “So if I had picked you up and put you back against my office door and eaten you up, the way I wanted to do, you would have liked it. And probably kneed me, hit me over the head with my laptop, knocked me unconscious, and never let me get anywhere near you again.”

  She remembered the heat in that room. “It’s really very hard to say.”

  “Now you’re just being mean, Magalie. I have fantasies about that meeting all the time.”

  “It’s hard to imagine me using something as impersonal as a laptop on you. Most of what I wanted to do required my bare hands.”

  He rested his forehead on hers. “Some of the fantasies I’ve had about that meeting are so bad. I think if I ever admitted them aloud, every female I know would disown me.”

  “Well.” Magalie slipped her hands under his coat around his waist. “Nobody ever said Givenchy boots came cheap.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her in hard, hard, so that she was enfolded in him and the panels of his coat, shutting out the cool March wind entirely.

  When he finally pulled back, he was studying her, his eyes narrowed. “But you still don’t want to admit you love me?”

  She stiffened, a shocked recoil back behind her shield, her pupils contracting. His mouth went grim, and he straightened away from her. They walked on without speaking, the détente of a moment before broken.

  Chapter 34

  “I love you, minette,” Stéphanie Chaudron said, and Magalie huddled into herself in the vast, noisy hall. She had forgotten how cold the Gare de Lyon could be. Cold enough to render the optimistic palm tree over there in front of the nearest TGV kiosk ludicrous. Full of people leaving, so briskly and firmly, as if that was just the way life was supposed to be. Masses of people who brushed past Magalie without a second thought, scuffing the toes of her boots with their suitcases.

  She hated train stations.

  “Me, too, Maman. You didn’t stay long in Ithaca this time.” Her mother was on her way back to Provence after a brief visit with her father in the U.S. Barely over two months.

  “Oh, ma puce, the winter there. And I didn’t even have you to snuggle up with.” Her dark-haired, brown-eyed mother smiled down at her, a sweet smile reminiscent of those clinging cuddles between mother and daughter when all the rest of the world was well lost.

  Magalie nodded. She kept trying to straighten her shoulders and open her arms to hug her mother good-bye, but the next thing she knew, she would be rubbing her hands up and down over her tight leather sleeves again, trying to warm herself. “How did Dad feel?”

  “Oh, pucette, you know how hard it is on him. At least I always had you.” Her mother touched her cheek and gave her a soft smile. “You always made everything all right. You could handle anything.”

  Magalie couldn’t understand why her heart kept trying to choke her, why her eyes kept wanting to sting. She could handle anything, certainly this, her parents’ eternal Hades-Persephone relationship. She didn’t know why she kept seeing her father’s face, his hand lifted in a wave to her until she couldn’t see it anymore.

  Unless it was because someone had been forcing her heart open. Sudden terror seized her at how vulnerable it now felt.

  “Don’t you want to stay in Paris for a few days? You don’t have to get straight on a train from the airport.”

  Her mother laughed. “You’re my little Parisienne. I never could handle this city. But come down south with me. I’m sure the aunts could spare you.”

  “No, they couldn’t,” Magalie said quickly, so
hard her mother’s eyes widened in surprise. “They couldn’t,” she insisted.

  Her mother laughed again, affectionately. “Pucette, I’m quite sure they could find some young woman to serve customers for a few weeks. I’ll talk to Geneviève myself, if you want. She doesn’t need you nearly as much as she pretends to.”

  Magalie stared at her mother. “Yes, she does.” Her voice almost squeaked.

  Her mother patted her cheek again. “I know sometimes people make a big deal out of good-byes and try to stop you from leaving, but you know they always get over it once you’re gone. That’s what it means to have a full life. You keep living it.”

  Magalie’s breathing was so short, it was infuriating her. This couldn’t be happening, this raw openness to things her mother had always said. This was not something she let get to her anymore. She did have a place now. She had made it, and she had never left it, so she got to keep it. No musical-chairs games for her. She knew how those worked. “They do, too, need me.”

  But for what? To serve customers in a shop they didn’t even need to keep open, except for their own amusement?

  “Pucette.” Her mother tugged at a lock of her hair, looking wistful. “You could at least ask her and see what she says. I bet she would tell you to go without a second’s thought.”

  The breath after that one physically hurt. Magalie bit on her lower lip until it made sense that her nose should sting. “I think that’s your train, Maman. I’m glad I could catch you on your way through.”

  “Oh, ma petite chérie.” Her mother flung her arms around her and hugged her tightly. “If only you would come with me so we could see each other more. I’m sure everyone here could do much better without you than I can. I love you, you know. My little lavender girl, who would always make me smile, when I was missing your papa.” She started to grab her suitcase handle, then flung her arms back around Magalie one last time. “Don’t mind those two; they have each other, and they’ll get over it if you decide to move back south with me,” she whispered into her ear. “Don’t let them trick you into thinking they need you.”

  And with a last quick kiss, she hopped up onto the train. And waved at Magalie out the window as the train slid away from the platform.

  Magalie almost ran back to her apartment, the four-inch heels of her boots clashing with her need, forcing her to a brisk walk, to keep her chin up against all the opposing pedestrians who bumped past her as if she was nothing.

  Philippe never had to dodge anyone on any sidewalk. People parted around his size and sureness. Slowly, she began to realize that the only reason the masses of Paris had seemed to respect her a bit more, recently, was that she was usually attached to him. It wasn’t that she was growing bigger or more deserving of a place at all.

  Reaching her building was such a relief. She ran up the stairs to change her suitcase-scuffed shoes, running a little late to open the shop, but that kind of thing had never mattered because they didn’t really need the shop and they didn’t need her help, a little voice whispered to her.

  She shut it up with a firm shove of her key in the lock. It jammed halfway. She frowned, wriggled it out, and tried again.

  It wouldn’t fit.

  The first shock, washing through her like a wave of sickness, made her reach out and grasp onto the doorknob.

  She looked down at it. The doorknob was new, and there was clearly a deadbolt above it that had never been there before.

  Her heart raced as if in a nightmare. Had something happened? Had the aunts decided to kick her out?

  No. Get a grip, she told herself. A firm grip. Don’t be stupid. Her aunts wouldn’t do that. Maybe Geneviève and Aja had decided to update all the locks in the building and had not thought to mention it to her.

  Frustrated, feeling hunted, wanting to at least peek into her room and make sure it was still there, she ran down the stairs to her aunts’ apartment. They didn’t answer her buzzing.

  She ran all the way to the bottom and across the courtyard into the shop, gasping with relief when the door opened under her hand and she could get in.

  “Bonjour, Magalie.” Her Aunt Aja smiled at her.

  “Did you—” Magalie took a hard breath, forcing it to even out. “I didn’t realize you were changing the locks.”

  Aja’s eyebrows lifted. “What locks?”

  The wave of panic crashed back. “The lock on my door has been changed.”

  Aja’s eyebrows flexed together. “Are you sure? Geneviève didn’t order anything like that.”

  “Where is Tata?”

  “She didn’t say, but you know how she is. I’m sure she’ll be back soon enough.”

  Magalie took rough breaths, feeling as she did at the end of a too-long sprint, as if she was trying to get her lungs to cool down. Insight and rage filled her in the exact same instant. She turned and headed down the street.

  In his laboratoire, Philippe was bent over something on one of his counters, his fingers hovering just above it. He glanced up when she came in, and his whole face lit. “Magalie! Just one second. Here.” He rubbed his hand over a blank space of marble near him, without really looking at it. “Sit by me.”

  Magalie stopped across the counter from him. Anger was beating in her like a drum. He didn’t even seem to feel it, focused again on what he was doing.

  “Philippe. I can’t get in my door.”

  He looked up from the infinitely precise placement of a crystal of fleur de sel. “Enfin! I thought I was going to have to find someone else. Every time one of my contractors falls in love, they fall to pieces. It’s ridiculous. I’m still getting my work done.”

  Her heart gave a little hiccup at that, but she repressed it firmly with anger.

  “You hired someone to change the locks on my door?” Not only did he expect everyone’s doors to open for him, he thought he had the right to take those doors over and lock them against the original owners.

  “Just put in a deadbolt and a peephole. Didn’t he do that?”

  She put her fists on her hips. She might have to murder him. “My door. You hired someone to change the locks on my door.”

  He shrugged and went back to the fleur de sel. “You’re welcome.”

  Magalie dipped her hands into a nearby box of rates, the macaron shells that had been discarded for imperfections during the course of the day, and came up with a few weapons. “Did he give you a copy of the key?” she demanded between her teeth.

  “Of course not!” Philippe said, so offended, it was clear he was priding himself on his virtue in not asking for a copy. “Although, if you wanted to offer it to me . . .” He let his voice trail off, invitingly.

  Unfortunately for him, right now all she wanted to do was hit him over the head with the macaron shells. “He didn’t give me the key, either.”

  For a second, she didn’t think this was going to penetrate his obsession with a couple of grains of salt. He trailed crystals one way, made a moue of dissatisfaction, brushed them off, then trailed them in the opposite direction, in a single spiraling line. “Wait,” he said, in delayed reaction. “Then who does have the key?”

  She hit him precisely in the forehead with a macaron shell. It bounced off, and with lightning-fast reflexes, his arm shot up and blocked it from his current creation, protecting the sea salt.

  Everyone else in the kitchen stopped moving.

  The intern looked horrified. The more experienced chefs, like Olivier and Grégory, looked at the nearest boxes of discards wistfully.

  Philippe picked up the macaron shell that had bombarded him and weighed it in his hand reflectively. “Magalie, this is a professional kitchen.”

  Magalie threw the next one. She couldn’t help it. It was his continued conviction that he needed to tell her what a professional kitchen was. He ducked to avoid being hit in the nose, and the shell sailed past the next counter and bopped Grégory in the chest.

  Philippe’s return fire hit her right in the chin. If it had been a snowball, it might have
hurt, but given that it was one of Philippe’s macarons and therefore lighter than air, it just bounced off her, leaving a few sticky crumbs.

  Olivier cracked, scooped up a macaron discard, and hit Grégory in the side of the face. Grégory whipped his head around. Laughing his head off, Olivier tried to pretend it had come from Magalie.

  “This is a terrible example,” Philippe informed Magalie, forming a protective shield with his body over his current creation while she launched a volley at his back and tucked-in head.

  The intern and lower-ranking or newer employees looked too terrified to participate, but Olivier was getting into position right by the ammunition, rapid-firing at Grégory, who was heading toward Olivier and the box of discard-weapons with a clear sense of purpose.

  “Bon, bon, bon, ça suffit!” Philippe roared, and Magalie made a moue at that last word, impressed despite herself. He really could fill a kitchen with that roar when he wanted to, and stamp his great paw down on a mass of rebels carrying knives and hot caramel and precious creations. Everyone stilled. Olivier, ducking to avoid Grégory’s return volley, looked regretful. Grégory threw one last one, hard enough to hit Olivier right in the cheek, and then pressed his hands down by his sides to make them behave, trying to look innocent. “If one single pâtisserie gets messed up, I am not going to be happy,” Philippe warned the whole kitchen in a perfectly normal tone. He didn’t need to raise his voice again, because, post-roar, the loudest sound was a bubble coming from a pot of caramel.

  “Magalie.” He turned back to her and lowered his voice for her ears alone. Or he tried to. Since everyone in the entire kitchen was dead silent and eavesdropping, the attempt at discretion may or may not have been successful. “Come physically attack me in private, why don’t you?”

  He pretty much had to drag her into his office. Her heels were dug in that hard. “I want you to quit forcing your way into my life, and I want you to leave my door alone. It’s my place. It’s mine.”