She shook her head. And walked up to him. Walked right up to him. He didn’t think she would ever understand what it did to him when she leaned against him like that, as if she was his. As if she could trust him. As if she needed him.
“I guess you’ll just have to try, Dominique,” she said softly. “I’ve seen everything else you’ve tried at, so if you promise me you’ll try, that’s good enough for me.”
CHAPTER 31
She awoke with a crick in her neck, completely disoriented. Tables. Stone. Red velvet. Leather. Chocolate. The scent of chocolate. What the heck? She was sleeping on the little red Second Empire–style canapé that formed one of the voluptuous little seating areas in Dominique’s salon. A pastry chef jacket had been rolled up and tucked under her head, for a pillow. Because they weren’t known for luxury cushioning, in the Second Empire. Two leather jackets formed her blanket, the one she had given Dominique over her torso, his old one he had given her over her legs.
It was early morning, and light was just starting to spill through the great walls of windows, leaving the patterns of his chocolate sculptures and displays in shadows on the floor.
This was a really weird place for Dominique to leave her asleep. She blinked around, finding him nowhere on the ground floor, and finally took the spiral staircase.
The light seemed to grow richer as she climbed it, the sun rising higher somewhere beyond the city horizons, warming, turning the world golden. She stopped dead just inside the laboratoire.
Dominique, almost completely covered in chocolate, stood on the counter by what had been the block for his sculpture. He was drawing a small carving tool very delicately over the edge of the careful feathers in a chocolate wing.
Tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t help it.
It was La Victoire de Samothrace. All in chocolate. Her wings spread behind her. Her body in motion, that one graceful leg leaving the ground behind her, the cloth of her robe fluttering with that caught-in-time instant of her launch into the air.
Jaime brought her hands up to cover her mouth, unable to breathe for the beauty of it. The joy of it.
Dominique’s head came up, as if her presence penetrated his concentration. He must be refining the finishing touches, because to her the statue looked complete. Glorious, courageous, ready to soar.
He straightened away from the wing and let his carving tool fall to his side, staring down at her mutely while she took the sculpture in.
But when one of her tears spilled over her lashes and tracked down her cheek, he leaped down and came up to her. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to ask her if she liked it. He just stroked the tear off her cheek.
And then gave a startled look at his fingers. He lifted his other hand toward her cheek and stopped midway, gazing at it ruefully. “Pardon. I just got chocolate all down your cheek. And I don’t think I’ll be able to wipe it off.”
“No.” She shook her head, a smile starting to sparkle through her tears until she felt like a rainbow. “No, you’re completely covered.” Shavings of chocolate must have fallen over him as he worked and had melted onto his body as he kept working. All night. To get from the half-formed sculpture it had been to this, he must have worked all night. Chocolate completely coated his hair, his face, his forearms, his hands, his chef’s jacket. “Oh, God. Don’t take a shower. Don’t even wash your hands.”
A slow grin grew on his face. “My team’s going to be here soon.”
“I’ll drive the motorcycle. It’s not that much harder than a moped, is it?”
“Umm. Maybe a littl—”
“Hush. You just sit behind me and try to stay intact. Or we can walk. My apartment is really close. You’re going to look a little silly on the street, but Dominique, you can do this for me. You’re like a woman’s wildest dream right now.”
His grin grew. “If you like me covered in chocolate, you should stick around a long time. It comes with the profession.”
“I’m trying to stick around. My marriage proposal still making you feel sick?”
He rubbed his belly, leaving still more chocolate on the front of his jacket. “I think it was the sugar shock. In my career, I’m not used to digesting something so sweet so suddenly.” He leaned in and kissed her, touching her with nothing but his mouth. She still tasted chocolate from a shaving that must have melted against his lips. “Jaime.” His mouth was so tender, those dark-water eyes of his so bright. “Do you still really mean that? That you want to marry me?”
“Surprisingly, one of the things my sister and I learned early in our lives as billionaire heiresses was not to go proposing marriage to anyone unless we meant it. And meant it for the long term.”
“Well.” He took her hands, forgetting again that his were coated in chocolate. “I have what might be a better proposition.”
There he went again. He had a woman ready to marry him, and what did he manage to do with that? Piss her off. Jaime stiffened and pulled at her hands. They slid a little in the chocolaty-ness of his grasp, and he tightened it. “Better than marriage?”
“Just hear me out.”
She set her jaw and waited. La Victoire de Samothrace soared beside them.
“Would you live with me?” he asked, low. “As much as you can. If you have to travel, I’ll come with you as much as I can. I really want to come with you. And you unpack your suitcase, and you live here. With me. For a long time. Three years. A long, long time, until we can see if I can . . . keep this going. If I can be trusted with you. Or four years, maybe four years would be better. Could you do that? If, after four years, I’m still . . . I haven’t . . . you think I’m worth marrying, could we do that?”
She stared at him. Her eyes glimmered with tears. Merde, he had said the wrong thing. “You want to spend four years proving to me every day you’re worth marrying?”
Four would be enough, wouldn’t it? If he could manage for four years to be a decent boyfriend, he wouldn’t suddenly become his father as soon as they got married, would he? He nodded, hesitantly. For someone who had just proposed marriage to a man she had been dating less than a month, she seemed to find this a weird idea.
She blinked, and one of the tears spilled onto her cheek, trailing down over the chocolate smear from his finger. “Did I ever tell you that being with you—it’s like someone just laid me down in the softest, thickest, silkiest comforter?”
Oh, boy, another one. He loved these analogies of hers. They made him feel—silky and thick and hot. Not very soft, though.
“It’s so . . . warm. It’s so—I feel precious. It’s like I could curl up there forever and never, never drag myself out into the cold morning.”
It shook his whole soul when she talked like that, opening up doors and windows he didn’t even know he had, and spilling parts of his soul out into odd tangles that gleamed like lost treasure. He looked at his big hands, opening and closing involuntarily on hers. He didn’t dare say anything, because he didn’t want to cry himself.
He glanced up sideways at his Victoire de Samothrace, which he didn’t know if he had carved more in her honor or in his—it was as if they had blurred together. The sight of it gave him the courage to smile a little, to try to tease. “Did you have a specialist check out that blow to your head?” he asked worriedly.
She burst out laughing. It ran over his skin like a waterfall, fresh and cleansing. “Oh, Dom, what am I going to do with you? The best specialists money could buy. What, did you think Cade went with the public health system?”
He pulled her in against his body, feeling a giddy secret kick of pleasure that he was covering her with his chocolate, that everyone would be able to see where he had held her, and picked up one of her hands, looking at it a moment in his. Chocolate from his hands smeared over her freckles. The same chocolate hid all of his scars, but if he had correctly understood her, she was promising to lick it all off and reveal them again. Not an offer a man could bring himself to refuse, even to protect those old wounds of his. Merde, protec
ting old wounds was what scar tissue was for.
“Yes, if you still want to marry me after four years, I’ll marry you,” Jaime said. “But I would probably feel more reassured if we got married tomorrow, because I’ll have to keep proving myself, too.”
“What? No, you won’t.”
She shrugged, clearly declining to argue with someone so blind.
He gazed down at her, so small in his arms, with that skin looking as if she were a beignet shaken in a bag of golden sugar. So small, but so steady and strong no matter what she thought, letting him hold her as if she could think of nothing better than to have his arms around her. “If you were only crumbs on a plate, I would pick every last one up with my finger,” he said quietly.
Her eyes started glimmering again.
“Could we get engaged?” he asked, rubbing her bare, thin ring finger. “I know you don’t like jewelry, and you don’t have to wear it when you’re visiting plantations, or I could get you something subtle, it doesn’t have to be gold, or—” He stopped himself from listing any and every way he would modify what he wanted to suit her, which would have taken days. “I would like that. A promise. Right here.” He rubbed the base of her ring finger.
“We could get married,” she said. “I’m not liking the way this negotiation is going.”
“We can’t get married, because I might faint.” But, surprisingly, he wasn’t feeling so light-headed now. The more she said it, the more she stayed in his arms, the more it seemed like something that could actually happen. Not like when he had kept trying to find his mother with his relevé de notes, his report card, on the off chance that learning he was first in his class would make her come back. And be his mother forever this time. This hope that Jaime had given him was one he was actually starting to believe in. “We have to build my strength.”
She turned his hand over, studying the base of his own ring finger. It was covered with chocolate. She rubbed a narrow band clear, and he wallowed as he always did in the pleasure of even such a small touch. “Four years.”
Maybe three. He wouldn’t entirely object if she kept bringing up the marriage proposal regularly until she convinced him. He would completely lavish her with chocolate—or jewelry, flowers, or anything else she might want, like, say, his body covered in chocolate—if she would keep proposing marriage to him.
His heart tightened so hard he was going to kill himself if tears showed in his eyes. “Do you know that if you married me, every time you said your name”—he swallowed, trying to make his voice sound less choked—“you would be saying you loved me?”
“Jaime Richard.” She smiled up at him and pushed herself up on tiptoe to kiss him. “And it would be true.”
Oh, shit, he had to breathe a minute. His nostrils were stinging.
Maybe two, he thought. Maybe in two years he could say yes. He couldn’t wait four years to give her his last name. Or . . . or . . . maybe in one?
She wrapped her finger around the base of his ring finger, like . . . a ring. “I’ll make it very, very masculine, titanium or something, and you don’t have to wear it while you’re working dough or chocolate,” she said. “But you damn well better put it on when you go downstairs to talk to your female clients.”
She was going to put an engagement ring on him. Oh, that so completely worked for him. He wrapped her up and pulled her against him again, there at the base of his Victoire de Samothrace, squeezing her too hard because she held so much of his joy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
With, as always, my infinite thanks to all the chocolatiers and pâtissiers who have helped me with my research, most particularly in this case Jacques Genin, whose salon and laboratoire were the inspiration for the setting of Dominique Richard’s, and who was very gracious and patient toward me and my many queries, as was his chef chocolatier (or chocolatière) Sophie Vidal. Also, many thanks to Michel Chaudun, another top Paris chocolatier who allowed me to research in his laboratoire, with great patience.
The poems on Jaime’s and Dominique’s placemats in the little bistro he takes her to are from the exceptional French poet Jacques Prévert: “Cet amour” and “Je suis comme je suis” from his book Paroles (Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1949). The translations are mine, and Jaime is skipping verses and playing with them in her head as she thinks about them, so these are not direct translations.
LAURA’S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR U.S. ARTISAN CHOCOLATIERS
Looking for good chocolate but can’t make it to Paris? Artisan chocolate has seen an extraordinary boom in the United States in the past few years, and it’s now possible to taste some amazing chocolate much closer to home. Try these . . .
Miel Bon Bons (www.mielbonbons.com)
Ferrandi- and Le Nôtre–trained chocolatier Bonnie Lau works out of her tiny jewel box of a shop in Durham, North Carolina. Exactly the kind of place you might discover a top chocolatier, thanks to the recent growth in artisan chocolate in the United States. In the past, I’ve described Bonnie’s chocolates as “fanciful, warm, adventurous, and reassuring.” Rich, dark ganaches pair with whimsical and sophisticated flavors, and Bonnie’s passion for chocolate and what it can do is palpable. My favorite quote from her: “I’ve saved so many marriages in this shop.” And I can guarantee that with her chocolate, she has.
Chocolats Du Calibressan (www.chococalibressan.com)
My first discovery of Jean-Michel Carré’s chocolates was a red-painted caramel-filled chocolate Buddha that, as a surprise gift, had been sitting on my doorstep in mid-July in North Carolina, rising to a melty soft temperature that made it one of the most exquisite flavor-texture combinations I have ever bitten into. I’ve had an addiction to those Buddhas ever since, and to all the other gorgeous and sumptuously delicious hand-painted chocolates Jean-Michel makes from his place in Carpinteria, California. What is this excellent French chocolatier doing on the American Riviera? It’s a love story, of course! His American wife was homesick . . .
Christophe Artisan Chocolatier (www.christophechocolatier.com)
My family was exasperated at my dragging them through Charleston searching for this chocolatier instead of visiting gardens . . . until they stepped inside. Then they realized it was all worth it. Third-generation French chocolatier Christophe Paume makes his hand-painted chocolates in the heart of historic Charleston, luscious ganaches flavored with everything from tomato-basil to a classic vanilla to . . . gasp . . . peanuts. (“The American market! I had to!”). Check out also his salted caramel chocolate bars, which, out of all the salted caramel chocolate bars I’ve ever tasted, remain my standout favorite. And what is he doing in Charleston instead of Toulouse, where he was born? It’s another love story!
Escazu (www.escazuchocolates.com)
A bean-to-bar microbatch producer that was one of the earliest of its kind to launch in the United States, going full-scale bean-to-bar in 2009. Chef Hallot Parson got pulled into chocolate on a trip to Costa Rica, helping friends track down a cacao farm. He now maintains personal relationships with that same farmer, flying down once a year, as well as with another in Venezuela, and his passion for and investment in every stage of the process shows in the final results: delicious bars with unique notes to their chocolate, for those as passionate about their chocolate as an oenophile is about his wines. This exceptionally good chocolate also gets used for the truffles and confections chocolatier Danielle Centeno makes on the premises, making for an unusually fine texture and flavor. If on the premises, check out also their varieties of hot chocolate, everything from adaptations of half a dozen recipes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary versions. Check out my website (www.lauraflorand.com) for some behind-the-scenes glimpses of their bean-to-batch process, including their century-old Spanish grinder and roaster.
John and Kira’s (www.johnandkiras.com)
One word: FIGS! The “drunken” figs from John and Kira’s are worth a trip in and of themselves. They had the inspiration to stuff delicate dried figs, imported from Spain
, with a rich ganache just faintly infused with whiskey, then dip the whole in chocolate again, and the rest is history. For me, anyway. I am now addicted to these figs. Those living in Philadelphia can find John and Kira’s chocolates frequently at the small farmer’s markets, but they also have an efficient catalog service, having grown from two people to a team of close to a dozen, still continuing to make all their chocolate by hand. And they have a wide variety of other chocolates to taste as well, including adorable ladybugs and bees. Many thanks to Mina de Caro of the blog Mina’s Bookshelf (minadecaro.blogspot .com) for pointing me in their direction.
Readers Also Recommend
Readers have joined a chocolate hunt to help me find even more top U.S. artisan chocolates, resulting in more recommendations than even I have yet had time to taste. Come check out my website at www.lauraflorand.comto join the discussion about the best U.S.ar tisan chocolate or see whom others have recommended. Here are a few:
In San Francisco, Linda recommends Recchiuti (www.recchiuti.com) and Xocolate Bar (www.thexocolatebar.com). I’ve had Recchiuti’s and will concur: Linda knows her chocolate.
In Atlanta, Chanpreet recommends di Amano (www.atlantasbestchocolate.com). I’m often in Atlanta, so these are next on my list. Besides, I like their confidence in buying the web domain “atlantasbestchocolate.”
In Kansas, Jan Leyh recommends Christopher Elbow (www.elbowchocolates.com). I had a chance to try both his chocolates and his hot chocolate. Both are delicious! And the chocolates are absolutely beautiful.
In Texas, my own sister Anna recommends Wiseman House Chocolates (www.wisemanhousechocolates.com). Dark, rich truffles such as Wild Woman to please the wildest chocolate hearts. And their hot chocolate (or sipping chocolate or drinking chocolate as artisan chocolatiers often prefer to call it in the U.S.) is delicious. A rich, full, rounded flavor, just perfect for the whole family on a winter’s evening, from only-eats-plain-pasta small child to her just-give-me-plain-chocolate father to her gourmet chocolate snob mother.
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