No. And it was absurd to be that disappointed. He had moved on from that dessert, that was all; it held too much pain for him. It wasn’t as if he had ever held back from her, or—she remembered uneasily his statement I tried—not that she had noticed. She didn’t know why she felt that if he made that Rose for her, she would be able to trust him with her. Maybe it was because it would feel as if he was trusting her at last with the most vulnerable part of him. That for all the ways he wanted to push his way in, take over her life, grab it for his, he would invite her into this most fragile, most precious part of himself.
She sighed and pressed her forehead a moment against his shoulder before she pulled herself together and to her feet. “It’s probably a bad moment to mention this, but I need to get moving, if I’m going to catch the train,” she said.
And Gabriel went to the window and stood there, staring across at his apartment, one fist clenched and his jaw rigid.
Well, there went the life out of his week, Gabriel thought an hour later, watching the train pull away. He curled his fists in his pockets—trying to channel elegant princeliness as hard as he possibly could—and wondered, abruptly, how badly the life went out of her week.
When the train pulled away, and she settled into that six-hour commute to go face her father’s depression, did she feel all her energy being sucked away? Did it convince her that was what men did, suck the life out of anyone who let herself love them?
Did every kilometer back toward that depression make her more wary of love in general and of loving chefs in particular?
He couldn’t even share the commute with her, because if she knew what he was planning, there was no way she would let him take over her life like that.
He really, really wanted to be a prince for Jolie. But he was afraid that what she needed was a beast.
Chapter 26
Pierre Manon wasn’t quite as tall as Gabriel, but he wasn’t small, and he had always had that Russian KGB look to help him seem bigger and tougher. He had let himself go, about the way you could expect of a man used to burning through thousands and thousands of calories a day who suddenly stopped working and went off to sulk for years. But the slight drag at the left corner of his mouth wasn’t nearly as bad as Gabriel had feared. Fortunately. Otherwise, even Gabriel might not have been able to go through with this.
“Gabriel Delange,” Pierre said flatly, when he recovered from the shock of seeing Gabriel on his doorstep. “Come to gloat?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said and shoved his way in, bumping the older man out of his way and striding into his living room. He could have gotten past Pierre without bumping him, but he wasn’t here to make friends with his old chef, or to baby him, or to pamper him into feeling better about himself in any way whatsoever. In his pocket, his phone rode reassuringly against his butt. He’d texted Jolie a couple of hours ago from the train, just to make sure her session with Philippe Lyonnais was still on for this afternoon, and she had texted him back a photo of one of Philippe’s beautiful desserts just being offered to her by the man to tease him.
It had done more than tease him. He’d had a strong desire to punch the other man, but he supposed he was going to have to get used to that, since Jolie was a food writer. So he just channeled that extra dose of aggressive energy into what he had come here to do—be the damned beast.
He could hear Pierre’s outraged gasp behind him. I bet that woke up some old instincts, didn’t it? Let’s see how long you put up with me.
He turned and looked Pierre over with a sneer. “I told you when you fired me you were going to regret it. Look at you now. You’re pathetic.”
Pierre Manon went rigid with fury. “You try having a stroke.”
It made him feel sick with dread to even imagine it. He shoved the compassion away. “Well, if you’re still alive when I do have one, then you can gloat. If you still have a gloat in you, the way you’re going.” He upped his sneer. “But you were pathetic long before you had the stroke. You’ve never been worth anything without me, have you? Even your cookbook had to have my Rose on the cover to get any attention.”
Pierre’s eyes had gone brilliant. Funny, for all the times they had glared at him, Pierre’s eyes had never stuck in his mind, but they were the exact same color as Jolie’s. “Without you?” the older chef sneered right back. “You’re nothing but a pâtissier with delusions of grandeur!”
“Yeah, all three stars’ worth,” Gabriel said.
Pierre’s mouth firmed. Even that stricken left corner of it pulled tight into line.
“Did Jolie tell you she’s writing my cookbook next?” Gabriel forged ahead, before the other man could speak.
“She’s what?”
“Oh, you fell for that Daniel Laurier story, did you?” Gabriel said derisively. “What’s the matter, are you so out of touch that you didn’t even remember what other top chefs were around Nice?”
“I remembered the memorable ones,” Pierre sneered, in his turn.
Ooh, nice one. The man would be back to his old salaud self in no time, at this rate. “And I bet the cookbook she does for me sells well. Since the name on it won’t be some has-been. I’ll be glad to demo and do signings with her until she thinks the sun rises and sets on me.”
A flicker in Pierre’s green eyes. Yeah, we all like the idea of Jolie’s hero worship, don’t we? We’d all like to be the fucking prince in the scenario. Not—this.
Damn it, did his eyes have to look so much like Jolie’s?
“It’s too bad you haven’t bothered training any new chefs in years. Maybe if you had at least been able to land a few consulting jobs, there would be someone around who still respects you enough to host a promotional event for you. A few people willing to act as your sous for the demos.”
“I never tried to land consulting jobs!” Pierre Manon hissed.
Gabriel laughed. “I can’t believe you just used not trying as an excuse. And I thought I didn’t have any more respect to lose for you.”
“And I have respect! Luc Leroi is begging me to come to the Leucé for an event.”
“Really?” Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “That’s the first I’ve heard of an event for your cookbook. It didn’t get much attention, did it?”
Pierre Manon’s lips slammed together again.
“Wait. Luc? Luc Leroi? My old sous-chef at the Luxe? You can’t tell me he has fond memories of you.”
Pierre glared at least as hard as the time Gabriel had gotten fired. “I made that kid,” he said between his teeth.
Gabriel snorted. “More likely he wants to impress your daughter.” Merde, and Luc Leroi looked like a damn god had decided to walk out of the Fires of Creation and make sure Earth got built up to his standards. He made an elegant prince look like a step down. Gabriel’s heart tightened anxiously, because it couldn’t help it, because the damn thing was always yanking his emotions around like that.
“More likely he wants to impress me,” Pierre Manon retorted. “Hugo Faure is retiring next year. They’ll need the best to replace him.” Hugo Faure was the head chef de cuisine at the Hôtel de Leucé, and Gabriel thought it extremely unlikely the Leucé would replace Faure with a chef known for losing a star for their rival hotel, but Pierre locked eyes with him, with a hard defiance, when he said it, so Gabriel contented himself with sneering, to give that hard defiance a little nourishment.
“You tell yourself that, Pierre. In fact, tell me again why your daughter has to do all the commuting back and forth while she’s working on the Côte d’Azur? What’s the matter—you can’t even land a consulting job in the south of France anymore? Is that because you’ve been sitting on your butt for so long?”
Pierre’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything else at all, but that green glittered and burned.
“Well, I just came to gloat.” Gabriel glanced at his watch. Yeah, he wanted to give himself plenty of time to get out of here before Jolie finished up with Philippe. “By the way, just so you know. That Rose you stole
from me? My girlfriend? My life? I don’t even give a fuck. Because I’ve got something better. I’ve stolen your daughter.”
And he turned around and walked out of the living room—and straight into Jolie.
“Oh, fuck,” he said on a gasp, sick.
She was standing stark still in the hall, a purse slung over her shoulder, her face white, her fists clenched. He hadn’t even heard her come in.
“Jolie.” He reached for her shoulders.
She wrenched them away. “This was all about the two of you, all the time?”
What?
“All that time you were screwing me, it was really just to screw him?”
Gabriel made a low sound, as if someone had just gutted him. He couldn’t believe she had just said that. All the times they had made love, all that beautiful, hungry happiness—screwing her? In some vindictive game against her father?
How could he feel that wonderful, ready to do anything for her, ready to risk even her—for her—and she find it so easy to think he was so horrible?
Yes, she had caught him essentially ripping out a kitten’s entrails, but couldn’t she at least stop to wonder why?
When he held out his heart to her, what the fuck hell had she seen? Why did people always think his heart must be so damn ugly?
“You bastard,” Pierre said from the living room doorway, and Gabriel looked up to find the older man staring at him, both fists clenched, eyes glittering. “You really went after my daughter? To get back at me?”
“Fuck you,” Gabriel told him, va te faire foutre, and grabbed Jolie’s shoulders again, dragging her out of the apartment. He locked her back against the door, his arms on either side of her head.
“It’s still all about you two, isn’t it?” Jolie said bitterly, and even though her mouth twisted and her jaw set hard, the gold-and-green eyes started to fill with tears. “I can’t believe even you came all the way up here just to hurt him, through me.”
Even you?
Even? She was supposed to know that he was—better than this. Her prince. Merde.
Maybe the problem was that what he had just done was in a way some of the best of him—the ability to be ruthless to reach an end.
“You—I knew some part of you was just using me to get back at him! I knew it!”
All the color drained out of Gabriel, as if she had unplugged some great hole in his soul. “Oh, you knew that, did you?” he said between barely parted lips. “Nothing I ever did made you think any better of me than that?”
“Well, if it did, it was because I was as stupid as my mother!” she spat at him.
He spoke each word as if it cut his mouth, precise and perfect. “The mother who dumps a man for being who he is, after ten years? Was that how stupid you were? Who destroys a family because it’s easier than sticking with someone?”
Jolie stared up at him, her face very white.
Gabriel pressed his face down close to hers and spoke between his teeth. “You go back in there, and you tell your father how much I hurt you. And you see what happens.” He straightened away, because he suddenly hurt so much he couldn’t stand it, and strode toward the elevator.
He had only gotten two paces when he turned back. Anger was a deep, powerful, protective thing. Almost like putting protective gear around his heart. “Jolie. I know you heard me say it. But I still can’t understand how you could believe it. Damn you. Deep down, you always did think I was just a beast, didn’t you?”
Jolie let herself back into the apartment, feeling lifeless, as if everything around her had turned to shades of white and gray. Maybe it was something like what her father felt in his depression. Maybe.
Her father, who had just been horribly, verbally abused by the man who claimed he loved her. I’ve stolen your daughter. Ha, ha, ha. How’s that for payback?
“I always told you not to fall for a chef,” her father said softly. Pitying her. “We’re self-absorbed bastards. The last man in the world I would want you to get involved with is someone like me.”
That wasn’t entirely true, though. The thought came slowly through Jolie’s fogged white-and-gray brain. The last man in the world he had wanted her to get involved with, at least these past few years, was someone other than himself. Of course he laps up the attention. So would I.
She walked to the window. Gabriel was halfway down the street below, eating up the distance with angry strides.
“He can’t help it, you know,” her father said, an unusual gentleness in his tone. It reminded her of the times they would lounge on his couch at two a.m., discussing the world. “He can’t help thinking of beating me first, before he thinks of you. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you at all.”
Jolie’s jaw set against tears, her nostrils stinging.
“But if he thinks he’s going to steal you out of my life like your mother did, he can go fuck himself,” her father said abruptly, descending into kitchen language as if Gabriel had woken it in him. “I can make a place for myself in Provence. I can have restaurants on the Côte d’Azur begging me to come consult with them. I’m Pierre Manon.”
She looked away from the street, blinking. Her father’s face looked—cleaner, the muscles tighter. He was opening and closing his left fist.
“When did Luc say he wanted to host us for the cookbook demo?” he asked sharply, in a tone she hadn’t heard from him in five years.
“Next weekend,” she said slowly. “At least, that was the original idea.”
“Then we need to start running through how we’re going to do it,” he said firmly. “I want it to be a show-stopper.”
Jolie turned her head swiftly to look back at the street. But Gabriel had already disappeared around the corner.
Chapter 27
Gabriel sank back against the alley door to the kitchens, the last one to leave, and stared at the opposite wall, so close he could punch it. If he wanted to break his knuckles on stone.
He tilted his head back to gaze at the thin sliver of stars through the narrow gap of buildings above him. Then he closed his eyes. He felt—defeated. He felt like he needed that year’s safari in Africa, far away from anyone or anything but elephants and wildebeest. He had known he was taking a huge risk for her, but part of the way he had managed it was to never truly acknowledge the possible negative consequences.
How he did most things, really.
But just right now . . . the negative consequences of holding his heart out there one more time were far too obvious. His heart still felt like someone had bludgeoned it with rolling pins.
Something touched his arm, and it flew out in reflexive testosterone, slamming into a small body. He saw who it was a half-second too late, Jolie, knocked back against the wall.
“Putain.” He dropped on his knees to check her ribs and because he sure as shit did not want to loom over her after he had just accidentally hit her. “Are you all right? Jolie, bébé. Oh, fuck, you should never sneak up on a man in the middle of the night like that. And what are you doing taking the train at this hour? I told you—oh, fuck, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
Jolie began to cry. Just burst into tears.
“Putain.” He sat on the old cobblestones and pulled her into his lap, fingers checking her ribs , stroking the whole length of each one, compulsively. “I’m so sorry, bébé.” He rocked her, like a child.
“I’m all right.” She ran her hands over his hair and face and shoulders, digging her fingers into the shoulder muscles to clutch him hard. His whole body responded to the touch in startled relief. He had not really thought he would feel that again.
Well . . . maybe his heart, huddled in wounded self-defense, had nevertheless already been starting to come up with a little plan that might show her he was not a beast, but—
“I’m just so glad to see you,” Jolie said. “I didn’t—I ran after you, as fast as I could. But you were already gone.”
“Really?” Now he could feel those tight-furled petals around his heart blooming
open, in startled wonder. “To . . . make up? Was that just a bad fight?”
“I shouldn’t have said that about—screwing me,” she said, on another burst of tears. “I love you. I didn’t mean it. I can’t believe I even could say that. You’re so wonderful.”
His heart stopped. Those last petals clutched tight around it. He couldn’t understand why they gripped in such panic. Hadn’t this been what he wanted? To hear her say I love you?
Except they were—they were only words. Anyone could say them.
His old girlfriend had said she loved him, too. Several women had said they loved him, in fact. They’d meant it at the time, too. If you started believing in that kind of thing, you left yourself wide open when they decided they didn’t really love you enough to love . . . you.
He stared down at her. In his arms, she felt small and entirely his. A man could fall so easily for that feeling. A man could give up his whole damn heart for it and then wake up one day to discover someone had gotten tired of his heart and fed it to the dogs.
He had pressured her and pressured her to say those words, until anyone would think he was almost trying to leave her no other choice than to bash him over the head and run away—afraid to let up on her in case she shut him out, afraid to slow down in case she softened and let him entirely in. But she hadn’t run away. She’d still kept looking at him as if she found him entirely enticing.
He had run away, this afternoon. And she—she had come after him.
He rubbed his hands against her ribs again, surreptitiously checking that he wasn’t imagining this—that she was right here. Saying she loved him.
She was. Those were her slim muscles, and that was her softness. That was the scent of her, stale from a train ride. And those were her unfamiliar tears, cried over him. Cried over them.
Now he had to make a choice. Now that he had her, he had to actually believe in her.
No.
It was harder than that.
With nothing held back, with nothing kept safe, with only her own guarantee because life had none, he still had to make the choice to leave himself wide open to her.
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