The Chocolate Touch

by Laura Florand

  He did let a smile soften his mouth, hold her eyes for just an extra second, let her see the warmth in his. “Tell me . . . what flavors do you like?”

  He could barely recognize himself. Him, with his all-out, aggressive, take-it-or-leave-it approach to women, he was so reined in, so subtle, so gentle. Slow, slow, slow, he told himself. Slow. She’s a cream or a pastry or a chocolate to be tempered just right. Think about her that way. Sloooow.

  Let her absorb you. Just the way she sat in the salle day after day and absorbed everything you made, as if it was the only thing in life she wanted to do.

  He was losing his mind. He didn’t even know who he was, to be feeling like this, to be acting like this. With a woman he didn’t even know, just because she had come into his salon and sat so still in it, consuming him, two times a day for seven days.

  “Probably anything of yours,” she said frankly, ruefully, and another wave of arousal swept through him. Putain, he thought, like a man just catching a hint of a tsunami on the horizon with no time to get away. This is going to be bad.

  “Just . . . whatever you think,” she said quietly. “You pick for me. I would like that. I would be honored.”

  Honored? He couldn’t breathe properly. He felt like a schoolboy when the sexy math teacher bent over his homework. Or the way he imagined that would have felt, based on books; he had left school before puberty. He was suddenly so nervous he was grateful for the white glove to hide his damp palm. All of his flavors were wild, all his chocolate was dark, challenging. That was what he was known for. That smoky chocolate, there, for example—that might be too much. But then again, she might love it. Maybe he should stick with his least wild flavors, like this straightforward dark single origin chocolate—but it was so very dark, so bitter at first bite, with its long, lingering, slowly gentling aftertaste. What if it was too bitter for her, what if she couldn’t wait for that gentling?

  For the first time in his life, he wished he had just one chocolate that was a neutral, trustworthy 50 percent cacao with a touch of Tahitian vanilla.

  “Which ones did you like best from the other box?” he asked hopefully.

  A smile flashed over her face, rueful and happy. “All of them.”

  Another warning wave crashed through him. Yes, he thought, as that tsunami got closer. This was going to be bad.

  He looked down helplessly, starting to get frustrated with himself. These were his chocolates. How could he be nervous about them? How could he not dare offer them to her? They were the best thing in his life he had to offer.

  If he couldn’t offer this, then he might as well forget it. He had nothing else worth anything.

  “What is that one?” She pointed to a square printed with an elusive pattern in an even deeper garnet than her sweater.

  She couldn’t point at one of his least challenging ones, could she? “It’s a balsamic vinegar caramel center with a blend of Caribbean dark chocolate.”

  Her gaze flashed up to his, round and fascinated. “Balsamic vinegar?”

  If he blushed, he was going to have to go hang himself. What was the matter with him? This was his chocolate. “If you would like something a little more traditional . . .” He didn’t really have anything traditional, but maybe the lemon-thyme was comparatively subtle? She had liked that éclair the other day. Besides, she might be used to some of these flavor combinations if she knew chocolate; other chocolatiers copied him all over the world these days, and even if they didn’t do it as well as he did, some of the flavor combinations that had been outrageous when he first came up with them were growing widespread. Imitation might be the best form of flattery, but it sure as hell was an annoying one. At this rate, he might have to start working with milk chocolate and vanilla just to continue to be the rebel. He just so did not see himself as a milk chocolate and vanilla kind of guy.

  “No, I want to try it,” she said definitely. “If you came up with it, it has to be good.”

  Warmth infused him, scarier and more powerful even than the arousal. Still, his fingers hesitated before he closed them around the garnet-marked square. What if he disappointed that conviction of hers? That was the problem when you took such risks with your flavors; some of the risks were bound to offend someone. Of course, he liked offending people. Why was he suddenly wishing he made things that were safe?

  He forced his gloved fingers to close around the chocolate, slipping it into the corner of the box. The whole vast expanse of the flat square of metal gleamed back at him, still to fill. It was insane how terrifying that expanse looked.

  Dominique, ça suffit, he told himself sharply. Act like who you are: someone who believes in himself when no one else does. “Perhaps this one?” He closed his fingers around a chocolate square printed with a fragile petal-shape of white. “Jasmin.” He felt awkward, offering her the Jasmin, a lumberjack presenting a princess with a fistful of flowers.

  But she would like that one, he thought. It would bloom on her mouth, like a hint of some magical night in Provence.

  Unless she thought it was too perfumey . . .

  “Jasmine,” she said wonderingly. “Oh, yes.”

  He looked up at her, his mouth softening helplessly. “And this one.” Confidence started to unfurl feathers in the ashes like a phoenix. Why she had burned his up in the first place, that was still the question. Her presence had been so very quiet, from the first. Not at all likely to leave a strong man in ashes, surely? “It has this tiny, secret semi-liquid tangy lime-caramel center that melts over your tongue just after you bite through the bitter dark chocolate.”

  Her eyes kept brightening, flicking from his face to his hands and back. “That sounds so fascinating.” She said it as if her tongue curled around the idea, hungry for fascinating things.

  Warmth and arousal battled in him, blended in what was for him a heretofore unheard of fusion. Probably a normal person’s fusion, like chocolate and vanilla, but he didn’t know it.

  “You should at least try this one.” He picked up a square with a golden pattern that evoked just a hint of a sea of waving grain. “Ganache à l’avoine.”

  Her eyes flickered, and he realized she didn’t know the word. But while his English was minimal, given his lack of schooling, he certainly knew how to describe his chocolate in it; his tourist market was enormous. “Oats.”

  She laughed out loud with delight. “A ganache with oats? Yes, I want to try it.”

  He had to form himself back up out of a puddle behind the counter after that laugh. He hoped he was subtle about it, and she didn’t realize he had melted to the floor.

  He grinned at her. She could have been his mirror, the way she sparkled back at that grin, lighting up. All those days, she’d sat so deeply quiet and still in his salon, and now he was waking her up.

  Triumph surged in him. “This one.” He pointed. “It’s so dark. You can’t rush it. You can’t bite into it expecting something sweet. You have to let it melt on your tongue, wait for the aftertaste, the way it just soothes and soothes and soothes.”

  Her lips softened apart. Her gaze trailed slowly up his body, searched his face, snagged on his lips. Came back to his eyes, as if she wanted to search out the meaning of him. That would be hard. His eyes were close to black, not at all like her clear twilight blue, which made it very easy to see her pupils dilating.

  Yes. He wanted to pump his fist in victory.

  Slow, Dom. Slow, slow, slow. But he felt himself sparkling, as he went through his chocolates, as she lit brighter at every single one, was eager for every single one. He offered her one of his more controversial ones to try on the spot. She blushed and tried to demur, and he overrode her, happily, growing cocky. She took it from his fingers, and he couldn’t decide whether to be grateful for the glove, which helped veil his giant butcher’s hands, or regret it, for it meant he couldn’t feel that fleeting brush of her skin.

  Her eyes widened at the flavors in her mouth and then closed with an intense concentration of pleasure. “I
t’s like an adventure in your mouth. The whole world here in your body while outside, you’re safe and warm.” Her hand, indicating the salle at the words “safe and warm,” seemed to linger a moment in his direction, but that had to be an accident. His salon was an elegant haven, but no one had ever associated safe and warm with his own physical self.

  An adventure in her mouth, though—now that he could provide. “Here, have another.” He pushed the square into her hand. “No, try this one.”

  Her flush blurred her pale freckles, but she smiled and took it. Her enthusiasm, or maybe even more the blush, tempted him to abandon this medium-size box and pull out his largest, fill it with everything of his and three times over. But he caught himself. He wanted her to run out. He wanted her to have to come back here to get her next fix.

  The expanse that had seemed so vast at first grew too small. He played as long as he could with that last empty square of metal, teasing her to choose which of the remaining flavors would fill it. But he did eventually have to put something in there.

  He slipped it precisely in and looked up into her face, trying to gauge the moment. Could he push it? Could he ask her out? But if she balked, if that made her uncomfortable, he wouldn’t see her again.

  It was a lot easier to ask a woman out if you didn’t care whether you saw her again, he realized. All his strong come-ons, his hard confidence with women, had it all this time just been pure cowardice? When he had something to lose, he didn’t know what to do?

  Why did he think he had something to lose? He didn’t even know her name.

  She looked entirely intrigued, engaged, eyes bright, a blush on her cheeks as his eyes held hers a little too long. But he hadn’t really flirted with her yet, not in a way that could be positively identified as flirting. She could, all this time, have pretended to herself they were only chocolatier and client, talking about his profession . . . in a passionate way, because it inspired passion.

  “You must come back tomorrow,” he finally said, testing, “to tell me if you liked them.”

  She smiled as if he had made her very happy. So maybe that was exactly the right thing to say. Or maybe he could have pushed it, maybe she would have said yes. Damn it, how had this grown so hard? “I will,” she promised.

  He grinned, entirely satisfied. One sure step forward was better than a long lunge that might end in a void.

  Which was the first time since he was eighteen years old that he had ever thought such a thing. He was all about the lunge.

  Guillemette slipped the box into one of his specially designed sacks with the adamant DR on its side and stepped behind the cash register. He frowned as l’inconnue reached for her wallet. He didn’t want her to pay for his chocolates. He wanted them to be his gift to her. But if he offered them to her, would that be too much? Would she feel uncomfortable coming back the next day?

  Putain. This was going to drive him insane.

  He turned brusquely away from the sight of her paying, deeply uneasy with it, as if his whole joy in that past half hour of chocolate selection had just been messily squashed.

  She glanced up with a smile as she took the sack and hesitated at his frown. A little of that strong coolness of hers came back, that look from the very beginning, as if she would be happy to hang on his smiles but wasn’t going to allow his anger anywhere near her. “Thank you very much, Monsieur,” she said.

  And he was still feeling the monsieur like a wound in his soul when she walked out.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jaime walked down the Boulevard du Temple, away from the roiling life around République, back into the more sophisticated Marais, the sack from Dominique Richard hanging from her fingers. She felt happier than she had in three months, and the happiness seemed to fill her like helium did a balloon, opening up the cramped limp person she had become until she could finally dance in the wind again.

  As a test, she tried to think about older moments of pure happiness, times when she had seen how her work with cacao farms had changed people’s lives so completely. And she hit a huge ugly wall, just as she always did these days. Hit it and flinched back, unable to reach those memories.

  So. Dominique Richard. Her body tickled all over at the memory of him looking at her, feeding her chocolates.

  How different her impression had been the first time she saw him, standing in Philippe Lyonnais’s salon de thé, aggressive, hard, arrogant, dangerous. Maybe he had been angry about something. He probably hadn’t realized he was giving her that hard stare. Maybe the strong lines of his face, the black shaggy hair, the glittering, somehow rough eyes, gave him a false air of aggression. Once he started talking about his chocolates, he turned into a passionate boy. No, that wasn’t quite it, not a boy. Watching him choose his chocolates for her was like being stroked all over, gently, by those big, hard hands of his.

  God, she could stand to be stroked. Even if it was just for a short fling, to soak up that warmth and pleasure as long as she could.

  She flushed all over, wistfully. A fling how, exactly? She could hardly buy him, not Dominique Richard of all people, and she didn’t really know what besides money she had to offer him right now. She felt emptied out. And she hated the way her bones were sticking out and making her look so fragile. She wanted to look invincible.

  At the best of times, she was small and kind of silly looking, with all her freckles. Not someone men with no financial interest swooned over. Most men she met knew she had money, but her few experiments hanging out with her friends anonymously in bars had made it clear that the men who didn’t know who she was were going to pick out her friends and ignore her. Once in a while the shy, awkward men settled on her while their cockier friends went for her girlfriends, because the ones who lacked self-confidence and didn’t know who she was thought she seemed a surer bet. More likely to take what she could get, maybe.

  It had taken the boyfriend disaster and those bar experiments to make her fully grasp how much her ready supply of dates was predicated on her last name. Before that, she had thought at least some of them must . . . just like her. Not for any particular reason. Just because she was her.

  That naïveté had faded. Still, she had believed in herself, in the value of her passionate ability to change the lives of the downtrodden. And now she had lost that, too. The only non-monetary value she knew she had.

  So how could she possibly draw a big, sexy, intense man who could produce chocolates like miracles out of his own hands?

  But there was nothing wrong, of course, with indulging a crush by sitting in his chocolaterie, thinking about him and letting him sell her chocolates.

  It was not as if she had one single other thing in life right now that she would rather do.

  “You should be running Corey Chocolate, that’s what you should be doing,” her grandfather told her roughly. James Corey, or Grandpa Jack to Jaime, still officially lived in the town named after his family, in the U.S. But no one would know it, judging from how much time he was spending in Paris, now that both his granddaughters were there. “Your father is such a pain to work with. Always trying to be in charge.”

  Jaime raised an eyebrow. “You want me to take over Corey Chocolate so you can take me over?”

  “Just to show you the ropes!” The old man’s blue eyes glinted. They were sitting on the terrace of the apartment he and her father had recently bought. It offered a magnificent view of the green sweep of the Jardin du Luxembourg in one direction, where the Palais du Luxembourg rose proudly from the gardens and tiny little specks of color floated on the great bassin, sailboats being chased by children. In the other direction, the Eiffel Tower rose past a stretch of Paris rooftops. “Since you’ve spent your entire life refusing to learn them.”

  “Pardon me for wasting my life doing something unimportant,” Jaime said, dangerously mild.

  “Oh, your work had its uses.” The old man waved his hand, completely oblivious to the danger. “Good publicity, for one. Made it easy to lead the pack for that fair trad
e chocolate craze. I’ve got to hand it to Cade, I thought she was just on another one of her gourmet snob kicks when she backed you on the fair trade thing, but she was right about that one. You helped us corner the market.”

  A muscle in Jaime’s jaw tightened. In her mind, a twelve-year-old boy carried loads she couldn’t even lift. She had tried to heft it. The photo of her failing, falling to her knees under the effort, had created an international furor. It had almost gotten the photographer a Pulitzer prize. “Publicity and market share weren’t why I did it.”

  Grandpa Jack winced. “I know, Jamie, but you don’t have to keep reminding me. I’m trying to imagine you as future CEO material of a major multinational corporation.”

  “Don’t hurt your brain. I’ll never be CEO material. Talk to Cade.” First-born Cade had been the heir assumptive, and Jaime had taken pains to make her own refusal of the role clear. Her participation in anti-capitalist protests and wild parties in college had made her stance a public scandal years ago.

  Her grandfather grunted. “Have you tried talking to Cade lately? She’s gotten almost as impossible as you’ve always been. It’s getting lonely over there in the States. You can’t leave me and your dad together by ourselves, I might have to start spanking him again.”

  Jaime grinned involuntarily. “Did you ever really spank him?” It was hard to imagine her father as a little boy, in someone else’s control. He controlled half the world.

  “No.” Grandpa Jack looked disgruntled. “I told your grandma we were wasting a golden opportunity, but she always insisted on giving him extra chores instead. And look where that got us.”

  “He works all the time?”

  “And he’s bossy to his own father.”

  “I don’t think I can stop Dad from being bossy, Grandpa.” She grinned at the older Corey.