“It’s a beautiful thing,” Léa said, and Jo realized she, too, was gazing at the guitar player and the gauzy, dreamy curtains between him and the woman in the other apartment. The curtains that kept them both safe. “To be loved like that.”
Jo could hear the other woman’s throat tightening, and she closed her hand around the balcony railing uneasily. She hadn’t realized how fast her question would lead her straight into a near-stranger’s heart.
Léa took a breath, her voice growing stronger again: “But you have to be careful of your—time for each other. And apart. For both your sakes.”
Jolie gave that some thought, rocked gently by that guitar song, and finally shook her head. “I think I must just be too selfish. I want space for myself.”
A little silence. “I’m not even sure I really understand what you mean,” Léa said, with a tone Jolie couldn’t quite place. Not sadness, not wistfulness, not envy. But something—some hint of something of those. “But sometimes I think it wouldn’t have hurt us at all, Daniel and me, to grow up a little bit more before we married, to each have had a chance to develop a greater sense of self. Selfishness, if that’s what you want to call it. It’s a rather delicate process, to start developing it at this stage of our lives instead.”
Hunh. Jolie tilted her head a little bit, trying not to too obviously stare at the other woman in the soft night, as if she was examining an alien species.
“I wouldn’t knock selfishness, if you’ve got it,” Léa said wryly and lifted her wine glass in a little toasting gesture. Before Jo could toast her back, she realized the gesture was intended for Daniel, through the balcony doors. “A little dose of it could go a long way, when making sure you don’t get swallowed whole by the most extraordinary person in your life.”
But you wouldn’t really know, would you? Jolie thought. Never having tried it.
Maybe, when she thought it through, she didn’t feel so bad not to be as generous with herself as Léa. Oddly enough, she might even feel rather proud.
Chapter 23
“You know, we didn’t get any work done today,” Jolie said, after the Lauriers had left, as she finished helping load the dishwasher. She had seemed so thoughtful after she came in from the balcony that Gabriel had been trying to let her finish thinking, all the way through to how much she loved him back. See how happy Léa is? She loves a chef.
Of course, Daniel was a damn prince. Maybe it was easier to love him.
“Hein?” They didn’t get any work done today? What the hell did that have to do with whether she felt any love in her hard little heart for him, too? To think he had told her how generous and unselfish she was. Gabriel shoved at the dishwasher with his toe as he closed it. Damn it. She could make a man pancakes until he wanted to bury his head on the table and cry, but she couldn’t tell him she loved him? What was wrong with her? Had she been warped at birth?
Oh, shit, yes, she was Pierre Manon’s daughter, she probably had. That man would warp anybody.
“We’ll have to focus more tomorrow, or we’ll never get anything done,” she said. “I’m not here for very long, remember?”
As if he could forget that.
“In fact, I should probably go back a little earlier Thursday, so I can check in on my father when I get in. Since I left early Sunday.”
Gabriel’s lips slammed together. “He does not need more of your life, Jolie! He’s out of danger, he has people checking on him when you’re out of town, he sees therapists, and you see him three days a week!” I need more of your life.
For all he took from me, Pierre Manon can give his most precious thing up to me.
And Gabriel would give him a nice little bras d’honneur while he took her, too. Maybe with the middle finger thrown in.
Her eyebrows knit, and she stared at him as if he was impossible to decipher.
Yeah, well, if you can’t figure me out, you’d better not be dreaming of Daniel. That’s how princes get so elegant, you know—by hiding most of themselves.
“Well, I should probably be going,” she said.
He gaped at her, so stunned that she managed to walk right out the door while he was still standing there struck to stone.
That’s it? I told you I love you and that’s all you’ve got to say back? You’ve had three fucking hours over dinner to figure out something!
It took her entire descent of his three floors to recover. And her ascent of her three floors on the other side for fury to build until the urge to roar could have silenced four kitchens and a whole town, too. And that damn guitar player down the street, who drove him crazy. Just go knock on that singing woman’s door and introduce yourself already, merde.
A light clicked on in Jolie’s apartment. Gabriel went out onto his balcony. “Are you watching, Jolie?”
A shadow stood still in her living room, just glimpsed through the balcony doors.
He swung up on the two-centimeter wide iron railing and launched himself across the gap.
Jolie screamed, a strangled sound, caught in her throat from pure fear. And then Gabriel was landing on her balcony, heavily, no issues with the gap at all.
Her heart began to beat again in a mad rage, blood throbbing in her head. “You idiot. You imbécile. You stupid, stupid”—His body hit hers full on, taking her down to the floor, one arm under her protecting her from the full force of the fall.
“Go ahead,” he snarled, making her body suddenly feel like a wisp of a butterfly, while his was all big, muscled, dangerous. “Tell me again how stupid I am.”
Her adrenalin latched onto those hard muscles immediately, with a soft, eager ooh. She fought herself and him, shoving at him and writhing. He kissed her, hard, with a low growl deep in his throat, and just when that had almost undone her ability to try to smack him, he rolled off her. With another snarl.
She jumped to her feet, quite furious about being able to. She had been enjoying that particular bodice-ripper fantasy quite a lot, thank you. “You idiot!”
“It’s only two meters, Jolie. What, are you scared of heights?”
Conscious of all the open windows the length of their street, she snarled her second scream low in her throat.
He sat up. “That’s kind of hot. Why don’t you go run so I can catch you some more?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, fulminating so hard she was seriously tempted to kick him. She turned around and stalked into the kitchen. Which had the only light turned on in the place.
She slid a glance back into the shadowy living room. Hesitated just one moment of delicious trepidation.
And turned the light off.
Absolute silence from the living room.
In the blackness, Jolie slipped out of the other end of the kitchen, sneaking down the hall.
“Jolie?”
She hesitated before the doors, her heart beating like a mad thing now that she had started this, wondering where in the world she was going to hide.
“Jolie.” The rumble was back in his voice, low, dangerous. “You’re asking for trouble.”
Well, yes. If he hadn’t figured out she liked trouble by now, he must have a very unrealistic view of himself.
Silence again. Her breathing sounded too loud.
A floorboard creaked.
She dove through the nearest door into the unfurnished spare bedroom. Shoot. Nowhere to hide. She plastered herself behind the door.
Silence. She strained for the creak of floorboards, trying to follow him. He moved like a—beast. So big but so light on his feet. So prowlingly graceful. She could imagine that prowl in the dark, his eyes hunting.
Why did she provoke him to catch her? If she was afraid to lose herself, why did she love so much the idea of being caught? Did she want no choice? Did she want him to make it impossible for her to get away?
A little growl crawled through the apartment, raising all the hair on her body and melting her sex. Pleasure tangled through her, mixing with adrenalin, and her heart slammed out of control as he
pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Quick as she could, she darted out of the room, feeling the brush of his fingers and the low growl again all over her nerves.
She dove all out for the next room, something big and menacing behind her, coming for her.
She gave an involuntary little scream, of primal fear and primal delight, as he almost caught her.
Almost? There was no way she could escape him in that small space, not with his reflexes. He was letting her get away. Playing with her like a mouse.
Just so she knew she didn’t really want to.
And he kept doing it until, like the poor mouse, she was about to go mad with terror. Low wicked laughs brushed over her just as she snuck by. Fingers grazed her, again and again, until she was a mass of adrenalin and desire and deep, delighted fear.
He played with her until she couldn’t take it anymore, and finally she cracked, leaping out from behind her door as he came into her room and landing on his back with a loud, “Boo!!”
He jumped at least a foot.
Her adrenalin escalated into laughter, almost hysterical with satisfaction at the coup and the still crazy pressure of heart-thumping hunger.
He began to laugh, too, but lower and much, much more dangerous as he peeled her off his back and carried her to the bed. “Oh, Jolie, you are in so much trouble.”
Chapter 24
Well, that had been good for his temper. But she hadn’t cried out, I love you, I love you, you gorgeous sex-god of a man you, in the middle of any of her orgasms either.
He hated it. It made him so mad. What the fuck was wrong with his heart? Why didn’t she want it?
She wanted everything else about him.
“I don’t understand,” Jolie protested, as Gabriel dragged her through the streets the next morning to the parking lot below the walls. “Aren’t we supposed to be working on the cookbook at some point?”
“I don’t feel like it,” he growled. “I get two days off a week, I might as well enjoy them. We can work tomorrow.”
She put her hand on her hips indignantly. She might have tried to brace her feet, because he felt a tiny smidgen of resistance, but by the time he paid attention to it, he had already run right over it and had her halfway down the stairs. No sense backing up now. “So you blackmailed me into spending four days a week down here so I can be your sex slave for two of them?”
“If that’s what you call four days, you have a counting problem. Four days minus thirteen hours, maybe. And I am your sex slave. You’re the one who only thinks about one thing. No wonder I’m exhausted and need time to get out of town and think.”
She glared at him. He unlocked his car and held open her door.
She looked down at the sleek silver car for the first time, and her eyebrows went up a little. “To attract girls?”
“Well—yes.” With hours like his, a man had to try whatever he could.
“Does it work?”
“No,” he said indignantly. “It mostly attracts men. It’s a beautiful car, too. I’ll never understand women in a million years. What do you care about?”
Her fingers grazed over the back of his hand holding the door, as she slid into the low leather seat, and the touch shivered a little delicate brush of pleasure all through him. She smiled up at him, and he forgot to be annoyed at how easy she found it to make him her sex slave. “You’re so cute. You, of course. If you’ve been dating people who care about something else, that explains your problem.”
Which flummoxed him into silence for the whole winding trip up into the high hills. They wound through garrigue, the tangled mass of Mediterranean brush and herbs spotted with yellow flowers, on roads that seemed narrower than the car and where he could only manage to pass cars coming the other way by nearly hanging two wheels off a cliff. The top down, they soaked up scents of thyme, lavender, rosemary, and pine, the intense, unforgettable, sun-baked scents of the garrigue.
He drove all the way to a tiny, old village, so high above the sea one could almost forget the population crowding the coast, just them, the ancient stone, the deep blue of the Mediterranean, and the dark green of the hills. A haven of peace, with its old church and its little stone fountain rippling quietly, the village so empty of people at this hour of a workday that it felt almost deserted.
Be a nice place for someone to say, I love you, too, he thought and sighed heavily, leaning back against the church and sticking his hands in his pockets the way Daniel always did. Was he just going too fast again?
And why did falling in love with him inspire so much greater caution on her end? Did he look that bad?
Fuck, what if she was always this enthusiastic and hungry and admiring with all those other boyfriends she eventually dumped? You’re so cute. Of course I care about you, but. . . .
“My mom always said not to get involved with a chef,” she said suddenly, sitting on the wall near an old, gnarled cypress, staring out to sea at one of the hazy green islands, so that he could only just see her profile from his sulk against the church.
He stiffened. And slumped against the stone, feeling defeated. Everything that was the best and most wonderful about himself, what expressed everything in him, all the energy and beauty and love, the heart of him that he could only communicate that way because every other way people always thought it was such a beast’s. Everything beautiful—and women always thought it was what made him the worst. What they couldn’t love.
I can’t do this, he thought to the village. A dove called a soft, pitying roucoucou, but otherwise the old stone village gave the thought the silence it deserved. And his brain shook it off him like water off a duck’s back. I can’t do this just wasn’t a phrase that stuck to him very well.
“Maybe your mother didn’t like it,” he said.
Jolie angled her perch on the wall enough to give him an ironic look. “You think?”
“The obsession with food, and being the best, the emotions and the temperament, the fact that she had to be alone sometimes.”
“It destroyed our family. Do you know how little I saw Papa, after I was five years old?”
Gabriel was silent for a moment, searching through his words, aware that he couldn’t just say them the first way they popped out, as he often did. “I barely remember your mother, she came to the kitchens so rarely. But Pierre . . . I hate him. But he never changed. He was the same man when I started working for him as he was when he fired me in a crash of pans. So it’s hard to believe he was different before he got married. It may be that your mother married him wanting him to be someone else, wanting him to change.”
Fuck. If he thought that being dumped after a month hurt, or after six years, what about being dumped after ten fucking years and three darling little girls?
Fuck-shit-fuck. Maybe I can’t do this after all. The thought of it, Jolie dumping him like that and stealing their children away to the other side of the world, made him want to curl over his knees under that cypress and vomit.
He took deep breaths, planting his back hard against the stone, staring out at the sea, breathing in cypress and sun and age. An eternity of endurance. Putain, non. I’m not going to crawl back into my beastly hole of a kitchen and brood over my wounds until I die alone because I’m afraid. “Maybe your mother didn’t like it,” he said strongly. “But Jolie—you do.”
Her hands curled into the stone wall. She turned suddenly, putting her back to the ocean, and faced him. She looked beautiful that way, half-framed by the cypress, with the sea beyond her. He wished he had a camera. In case you don’t see her this way again?
“You love food. You know you do. You love coming into my kitchen. You love it when I feed you. And I love to feed you. We could probably build a lifetime on just that, right there. Every day, that happiness.”
Her eyes widened at the word lifetime. Too fast again, damn it. He would never, ever, ever learn to hold himself back to something other people could handle.
He forged on. “You like my temper.
You—play with it. You enjoy it.”
Her mouth curved sheepishly. “You’re like a big marshmallow, Gabriel. It’s not exactly scary.”
He was a little offended at the idea that he wasn’t scary, especially after she had nearly made him hit the ceiling when she jumped on his back out of the dark the night before, but he plowed ahead. “And you like being alone. You’ve said so. You love to be able to curl into yourself in peace and quiet at least part of every day and sink into the introspective side of your own work. Maybe the balance between my work and yours solves your problem with men, your need for space.”
The curve of her mouth deepened. Her eyes were very green. “And you don’t drape very much,” she murmured.
Whatever that meant. In his entire life, no one had ever compared him to drapery. “You even like the rhythm, as far as I can tell. I never asked you to get up at five-thirty, and I never asked you to stay up until midnight for me. You just do it.”
She shrugged. “I’ve always been like that. It started as a teenager.” Her eyes slid away from his and then back. “When I was visiting my father.”
If he ended up owing Pierre Manon for the best thing to ever happen in his life—namely, his daughter—it would be the weirdest full circle.
“So. See?” He held out his hands, palms up, his heart kicking into overdrive again. “I think we’re a perfect match.” Except for the fact that she was her mother’s daughter, and her mother had shown her how to dump a man even after ten years, of course. He pushed the treacherous thought away and kept his hands extended, even as his heart begged pitifully for him to close his fists back around it and lock it away somewhere safer.
Did it look all yucky to her again?
Putain, a marshmallow? After all the beautiful things he had shown her, that was the best comparison for his heart she had come up with? She was a damn food writer!
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