The Chocolate Thief

by Laura Florand

  The waiter reappeared with Christophe’s coffee and her apricot juice. Sylvain shook his head at the juice. “How do you get away with consuming so much sugar?”

  “I tried to order milk,” Cade said defensively. “They wouldn’t sell it to me.”

  Sylvain raised his eyebrows and went over to the bar. Cade saw him exchange a few casual words with the man behind it, then push two minuscule coins across the counter in exchange for a small carton of milk. He came back and set it down in front of her without a word.

  When she closed her hand around it, she had a sensation strangely similar to when she closed her hand around her talisman Corey Bar—as if she held something that made her feel special, cherished.

  She really had to get a grip.

  He had used tu when he spoke to her, she realized. Tu, like a stamp of ownership, while Christophe had to use vous.

  Tu and milk and the bitter, bitter chocolate. She smiled a little, fingering the corner of the milk carton.

  Sylvain sat down with them without being asked, took the tall, slim cylinder of a glass that had been provided with the bottle of apricot juice, and poured the milk into it, then slid the glass into her hand. Cade stared at it, feeling once again like a cat. Which would make him—what?—her owner, if he was pouring out milk for her?

  Under the small table, his leg crowded hers.

  Funny how she knew so absolutely it was his and not Christophe’s. She wished she could think he was doing it on purpose. But the fact was, it was a tiny table. Where else was his leg supposed to go?

  How was she supposed to feed Christophe some kind of better image of her to propagate to the media when Sylvain was there distracting her, shattering her focus? She wondered if she could hire someone to become a famous food blogger who only disseminated positive images of Corey Chocolate.

  Of course she could. It was called advertising. No one bit the hand that fed them. “I’ve been thinking that Corey Chocolate should take more advantage of the advertising potential of food bloggers,” she said, with a sneaky smile. “You take advertisements on your site, don’t you?”

  “That’s interesting,” Christophe said. “Mars contacted me just yesterday about that.”

  Those snakes. She could just see their smirky faces as they thought that up.

  “But I think it would be a conflict of interest,” he said. “Honestly, I would rather just keep the advertising from small, artisanat places. It’s more in keeping with who I am.”

  Cade slumped, defeated. Was there a single problem money could solve for her in this country?

  A silence fell. Both men gave each other frustrated looks. But neither one seemed willing to get the other’s message and leave.

  The waiter appeared with a double espresso for Sylvain. He gave it a jaundiced look, as if he would much rather have a bed than coffee right now, but he took it and drank a large swallow.

  “Tu as aimé ton chocolat?” Sylvain asked her.

  She shivered all over, with pleasure and darkness. “It was very good,” she said slowly. “But it was very bitter.”

  “Would you want another one after eating the first?”

  I think I would take anything you gave me. Her eyes held his a moment. Then she forced herself to look away. “As a customer? Perhaps one, at the right moment. But then I would want something a little sweeter.”

  “Have you created a new chocolate?” Christophe inserted with interest. “A bitter one? How fascinating. Could I try it?”

  Sylvain drummed the fingers of one hand hard on the table, likely in lieu of Christophe’s head. “I’m not planning to sell it in the shop.”

  Bullets bounced off Christophe’s exuberance. He lit from within. “A one-off chocolate that I would be one of the few people to try? And you said it was bitter? A bitter chocolate? Could I?”

  Had he made it just for her? Cade thought. Just once, just for her?

  She studied that tired face. He had just told a group of journalists she was desperate for him, a poor little rich girl of chocolate. Then gotten her milk.

  What, exactly, was she supposed to think about him?

  Sylvain hadn’t planned to follow her or even to say a damn word to her ever again. He had waited all night for her, and she hadn’t bothered to show. He wasn’t going to crawl after her now.

  And he was tired. He had not slept all night, and only four hours the night before.

  But then Christophe had scooped up her elbow as if finally catching his very own fantasy, and he had watched the man escort those slim legs in black lace and leather down the sidewalk. Fixated on those legs and the apparent lack of skirt to cover them, he had had to watch until Christophe disappeared with her into the café on the corner. He had to walk past that café to get home to his apartment and get some sleep.

  And now the man was being so irrepressible that Sylvain wanted nothing so much as to sit on him. Hard. Of course, he would probably feel as if he had kicked a puppy if he yielded to the urge. “Don’t you have a blog to write or something?”

  “Oh, I’ve got my laptop,” Christophe said cheerfully. “In fact, we could do a little live interview right now if you want. Built-in Webcam.”

  “Are you recording me right now?” Cade asked sharply, scanning the blogger for signs of any other small camera or recorder.

  Sylvain didn’t think it was the man’s style to record her without permission. But since he didn’t have the responsibility for a multibillion-dollar revenue on his shoulders, he didn’t have to be as paranoid as she did. He felt no urge to say anything in Christophe’s defense. Let her be suspicious of him. Invasive, bubbly, pseudo-journalist fantasy thief.

  “No, of course not,” Christophe said, taken aback. “But if you ever want to agree to an exclusive interview on my blog, you would make me a very, very happy man.”

  Why the hell should Cade Corey want to make him a very, very happy man?

  “How do you manage to make tens of billions of dollars off Corey Bars?” Sylvain asked, to change the subject from Christophe. He had looked up the Corey Chocolate revenue the night before, among the many other things he had done to try to pass the time while he waited for her. It was hard to imagine, tens of billions of dollars in responsibility. When he Googled her name, it showed up everywhere, and other than some references to donations or an appearance at a charity function, the mentions were usually in articles about company negotiations and initiatives. Working, in fact. She seemed to take her role in the Corey family very seriously. Seriously enough to get about 50,000 results from a Google search.

  He had to check his own name after that, the first time in his life it had ever occurred to him to do so, and discovered that he got over 250,000. He tried hard not to be smug about that.

  One wasn’t supposed to be smug about the natural order of things.

  “I don’t understand,” he continued. “That would mean people would have to buy tens of billions a year. There are only five billion people in the world. Surely most of them realize there’s better chocolate out there.”

  Cade gave him a simmering look. Good. At least her focus was on him and not Christophe. “Well. We have a lot of subsidiaries that sell other products besides chocolate—”

  “Oh,” Sylvain said, relieved. “That explains it.”

  He could see her perfect little teeth grind together. Was she getting as frustrated as he had been the night before? Hardly, damn it.

  “But, yes, we sell billions of them. It’s the most popular chocolate bar in the US, for one. There are millions and millions of people who eat hundreds of them a year.”

  “America is a very strange country,” Christophe said, in the tones of someone repeating a commonly accepted proverb. “It couldn’t even be called chocolate here until a few years ago, when the idiotic European Union passed that law.”

  “Corey Bars do not have any other vegetable fats in them,” Cade corrected tightly. “Only cocoa butter. They have always been legal chocolate in this country. And to set ma
tters straight, we lobbied very intensively against the passage of that law allowing vegetable fats. If your people had let money buy something for once, other vegetable fats might still not be allowed under the label of chocolate to this day.”

  “Do you have one with you?” Christophe asked. “I don’t think I’ve eaten one since I was a kid.”

  Cade hesitated a long moment before she reached into her purse and pulled one out.

  Sylvain almost sympathized. He wouldn’t have liked to show off a Corey Bar. If she had shown up the night before to rob his workshop, Sylvain might have tried to distract Christophe to save her. If she had shown up the night before, he wouldn’t even be here; maybe they would both still be in a nice, cozy bed. The sheets on his were crisp and clean and smelling of laundry soap, just in case.

  He remembered changing the sheets the day before, in happy hope, and decided she deserved what she got. She was making billions off the product; surely she could defend it in public.

  She took a long, long swallow of her milk, the muscles in her throat working, her eyes closing as she drained her glass. Then she opened her eyes, braced her shoulders, and waited.

  “I like the wrapper,” Christophe said. “I always have. Gold, brown, plain font, clear stamp of a name. It’s pretentious in its very lack of pretention. It makes no show; it is what it is, naturally. You do the same thing, Sylvain, only in a more sophisticated way.”

  The man was so aggravating. Sylvain was never going to be nice to another food blogger ever again.

  Cade said nothing. Her hand lay so that her fingertips still brushed the edge of the paper wrapper, like a sleeping child might keep some contact with a teddy bear, just enough to know it was there.

  Experimentally, Sylvain pulled it a little out of her reach. Her fingers stretched automatically before she caught them back.

  Interesting. Of all the attitudes his chocolate evoked, he was willing to bet that a child’s affection for her teddy bear was not one of them.

  His mind started turning automatically, wondering what chocolate he could invent that would incite such affection, or be a nostalgic wink and a nod at chocolate loved as a child.

  Christophe unwrapped the bar neatly, careful not to tear the paper or gold foil. He broke a square marked with C off the bar and bit into it.

  Cade looked at Sylvain.

  If he ever thought he would come to this—eating Corey Bars to compete with an annoying food blogger for a woman’s attention? He broke off the O and bit into it.

  Christophe’s face screwed up. “I just don’t get it. Why do they like it so much? It’s got that sweet-sour taste to it.”

  “If any of those Swiss chocolatiers had let my great-grandfather steal their secret to milk chocolate instead of having to reinvent it himself, we wouldn’t have it. And now the way we create it is our most closely guarded secret.”

  “Why?” Sylvain asked, dumbfounded. “Who would want to steal it? You’ve got to have figured out how to make proper milk chocolate by now.”

  It excited the hell out of him when she looked at him like that, all silk and luxury and control but her blue eyes bubbling with the desire to strangle him. Go ahead, he thought. Launch yourself across that table and go for my throat. We can grapple together anytime you like. He wondered what he could say to make her actually snap and do it.

  The fantasy distracted him, her body struggling against his, his hands sliding over her as he tried to control her, maybe her weight in the lunge toppling him backward so she was on top of him. . . .

  “People like it,” she said. “They grew up with it; they prefer it. It makes them feel—warm. Happy.”

  “It’s got a decent mouth-feel,” Christophe allowed. “You’re right: no other vegetable fats,” he told Cade.

  The look on her face at being told she was right about the ingredients in Corey Bars was priceless. It almost made up for the fact that Christophe had drawn her attention from Sylvain to him.

  Couldn’t the man just go home? Instead of trying to grab Sylvain’s fantasies for his own?

  Then Sylvain could go home. And sleep. Instead of sitting here chasing after a woman who had not bothered to break into his laboratoire and steal from him the night before. He slouched back in his chair uncharacteristically, letting his legs jostle hers more aggressively. And incidentally bump Christophe’s legs well away from hers. Her boots rubbed against his calf through his jeans, shifting his mind into fantasies again.

  “Your professional opinion?” Christophe nudged Sylvain.

  He wanted to take a bite of his new bitter chocolate to clean his mouth of the milky, pale, faintly sour flavor—that was Sylvain’s professional opinion. But he also wanted to wrestle and tussle with Cade Corey among his freshly washed sheets, or in his laboratoire on cold marble, or in her apartment, or anywhere she wanted. So he tried to be diplomatic. “It’s a mass-produced chocolate for children with a minimal cacao content.” He shrugged. “What do you expect?”

  He didn’t know why that earned him such a burning look. How much nicer did she expect him to get about Corey Bars?

  “Children and Americans,” Christophe corrected.

  Sylvain spread his hands, feeling that any attempt to distinguish the two groups for their gourmet awareness was splitting hairs. He did do a strong business with tourists, expatriates, and a contingent of wealthy Americans who had his chocolates cold-packed and shipped to them once a week, but he had always assumed their appreciation of quality was an exception to the norm.

  Cade Corey was definitely an exception, on so many levels that he wanted to grab her and hold her as his prize more than anything he had wanted in a long time. He felt as if he was reliving his days of burning, desperate, high school passions.

  Which had never ended well for him. They loved the sex, they loved the chocolate, but women always, always had other things on their mind.

  Where had she been last night? How could she have not come?

  “People love them,” Cade said. “They write letters to us telling us how much they love them. We’ve got a wall at our headquarters with a collage made of our favorites.”

  “Vraiment?” Sylvain said, disturbed. “They write letters to me telling me the same thing.” Often signed at the bottom by someone very famous, including a French president, an American one, and multiple movie stars on multiple continents. He read them and smiled, shared them with the others in the laboratoire, and filed them discreetly away. It had never occurred to him to splash their contents across a wall. Sounded like someone’s desperate desire to reassure themselves.

  How was it that Corey Bars were receiving the same kind of letters his chocolate was?

  There really were a lot of gustatory idiots in the world.

  “It’s fascinating how much you two have in common, in fact.” Christophe smirked.

  Sylvain turned his head and glared at him.

  At his open resentment of that comment, Cade tilted her head and gazed at her hands on the tabletop. Sylvain caught himself. She looked . . . tired, maybe. Sad? Merde, had he hurt her feelings again?

  Mostly he seemed to infuriate her, in a way that perversely aroused the hell out of him. But that was twice now he had hit a sensitive spot. She had this fragile side to her indomitability, as if part of her strength was that she cried when she needed to and then picked herself back up and went straight back at it.

  “I think I’m going to have to go get something to eat.” She reached for her purse. “Christophe, it was nice to meet you.” She slid a card across the table to him. Sylvain stiffened. Had she just given out her direct numbers and e-mail? To Christophe?

  He didn’t even have those things. He had chased her out of his laboratoire that first day before she got a chance. Note to self: never get so annoyed that you drive a pretty woman away without getting her cell phone number. You might live to regret it. For example, it would have felt awkward the night before to call her secretary and find out why the hell she wasn’t breaking into his labor
atoire again like she was supposed to.

  Almost as bad as the gift of her private contact information, she waited a moment with hand extended until Christophe realized what the gesture indicated and found one of his own cards. Under the table against his thigh, Sylvain’s fist clenched.

  Both men stood automatically when she did. Just for a second, as she reached for her jacket, he could glimpse the full effect of her outfit—the gray knit that clung to her slim body, the slender neck so vulnerably exposed and highlighted by those blue earrings, the challenge of the black lace leggings and the high boots, the stretch and flex of her muscles as she pulled on her leather jacket and left only those legs for a man’s focus.

  She shook hands with Christophe, in that firm, confident American handshake she had, but only nodded at Sylvain.

  Of course, what was she supposed to do? A handshake or bises seemed completely false, and a kiss on the mouth gross presumption. It was like the tu/vous dilemma. Exactly what were they to each other?

  He kind of liked that dilemma. It was exciting. It was a fun edge to play with. But he wasn’t sure how long he wanted to stay there.

  “Wow,” Christophe whispered as Cade and her legs reached the door of the café. Sylvain shot him a glare, but the man wasn’t watching her legs. He was staring at Cade’s card, cradled in both hands, held up to his face so that Sylvain couldn’t even get a glimpse of the number on it. “When I wrote my first blog post, I never, ever thought that I would end up here.”

  Suddenly, Sylvain had to laugh. If it hadn’t been for Cade Corey, he would have liked the man. “When I made my first chocolate, I didn’t think so, either.”

  Mostly because his first try had been a disaster. By the time he had made his third batch, he had known exactly where he planned to end up in life.

  He had always had a very good eye for what he wanted. And the persistence and focus to go after it.