All for You

by Laura Florand

  Oh, that bastard. It was now so easy to climb into his lap and bury herself there while she started crying again that her eyes prickled from it.

  She turned away in dramatic temper before she could let him see that and stomped back across the room and up the stairs.

  Dom and Jaime met her at the top of them, shifting from that spot in the glass walls where they must have watched the whole thing. Jaime shook her head with some bemusement. “It’s fascinating how little you guys care about what your customers think.”

  Oh, yeah, Célie had kind of forgotten about all the customers watching that scene.

  Dom gave that sharp, tear-someone’s-throat-out grin of his. “They’ll come back.” He pressed his hand to his chest and gave Célie a hopeful look. “My turn?”

  “Dom, I told you to leave him alone!” Célie stomped past him and grabbed a plated éclair off the counter in front of Thierry, whose job it was to both plate and descend the pastries and hot chocolate to the half dozen tables below. “Give me that.”

  “Hey!” Thierry protested. “That was for the woman at table three.”

  “Dom can make her another one.” Because it wasn’t as if she would have been able to talk him into making one for Joss. Célie stuck her tongue out at her boss and stamped her way into the ganache room with the plate. This room, on the opposite side of the laboratoire from the room with all the stoves and the variations in temperature and humidity that using them caused, also held the wire shelves scattered with metal trays of finished chocolates ready to be taken downstairs as the display cases needed replenishing.

  Stupid men. She pulled out some of those trays. Arabica again, yes. He’d liked the touch of coffee. And mint, because he used to have a weakness for chocolate mint patties, and boy would her mint chocolates knock his socks off in comparison. And honey-hibiscus, because she had come up with it all by herself, experimenting, and she liked to think it tasted like she would, if anyone ever knew how to properly taste her.

  Stupid, idiot men with their stupid, idiot excuses for making a woman cry her heart out for years. She slammed the little chocolates down on the plate around the éclair, a little circle of them, and then, remembering how fast he had eaten that box like a starving man, added a second one of each. Fine, a third.

  She stomped back out of the room. “Here.” She thrust the plate at Thierry. “For that idiot.”

  “Now you’re feeding him?” Dom demanded, outraged. “My chocolates?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “My chocolates. And don’t you dare charge him. It’s on me.”

  Dom made a feral noise between his teeth and pivoted back to his lion sculpture. At the first tap, the entire ear came off.

  “Ha!” Célie said. “That will teach you to always want to use excessive force.”

  Dom gave her a dirty look.

  “You know, I think I’ll just do the rest of my work today from your office,” Jaime said. “It’s mostly calls and computer stuff, and God knows what trouble the two of you’d get into without me.”

  Chapter 7

  Joss played with the chocolates on his plate. He’d eaten that little box she gave him too fast, and now he was almost afraid to eat these. They’d be all gone, once they were eaten, and he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore—this visible proof that she cared about him. Still.

  No matter how mad she was, she couldn’t let him sit here without food.

  No, it was more than food. These were her special accomplishments. The things she was so proud of, what she had made of her life when he left to make something of his. She was feeding him, but she was giving him something much more precious and intimate and proud than a croque-monsieur.

  He rubbed his thumb gently along the perfect smooth edge, circling the delicate design, a stylized red flower. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he bit into that, he would be biting into Célie.

  Damn, but he wanted to bite into Célie. Bite into that supple, saucy lower lip of hers, and bite into all those curves, that happy, athletic roundness of hers, vibrant with energy. As if it was her task in life to produce enough voltage to light a whole grim, bleak cité, all by herself.

  Clean that chocolate off her, that had smeared her forehead and one cheek and spattered in her hair. That winged, asymmetric hair. Wasn’t that just like Célie. Trying for the tough look and ending up resembling an elf longing for fairy wings.

  I think I’m tough enough for both of us and all the world now, Célie. You can relax about the toughness and just let all that natural happiness play.

  He bit into the red-flowered chocolate slowly. A hint of … something. It reminded him of the scent of Célie’s hair. He couldn’t put his finger on why.

  The waiter wouldn’t let him pay, when he asked for the bill. That made Joss smile a little and glance up at the section of glass wall visible at the top of those spiraling metal stairs. But he didn’t spot Célie, peeking down at him.

  Damn.

  “When does Célie get off?” he asked the waiter.

  “I don’t think I should tell you that,” the waiter said.

  Joss sighed. These people acted as if he wasn’t perfectly used to waiting all day in stillness if he needed to. Hell, he’d once had to wait three days, watching the entrance to a cave, with only a canteen of water and some rations to pass the time. “Fine. We’ll do it the boring way.”

  He studied the line of people behind a velvet rope, all wishing they could get at his table so they could eat one of these éclairs themselves. He supposed he’d have to give up his position of comfort, too. “Can I have a piece of paper?”

  “We’ve got this.” The waiter handed him a postcard-size bit of heavy white card stock. It was stamped with an aggressive silver DR and then, in a corner, the formal details of Dominique Richard, store address, website, telephone number, info@dominiquerichard … Joss scowled. Then he drew a line through that DR and wrote “Célie” instead and flipped it over.

  The blankness on the other side froze his brain, as it always had. He just didn’t know what to write to her. He never had. He always, always had needed to be that thing he needed to write, to be that thing there, next to her, touching her. What the hell was there to say?

  But maybe if he’d written back, after the first four months of training when he had the right to contact people again, she would have kept writing. She would have written, What the hell is this story Sophie is telling? and he would have managed to answer that one at least, so she’d know the truth, and then he would have had new little cards and maybe eventually even letters that kept coming all through his stint in the Legion, instead just those first dozen cards he kept on the shelf of his locker so he could take them out whenever he needed to touch them.

  He took a deep breath and scrubbed his face. God, it was a good thing he’d chosen the mechanic track back in school, because he would totally have failed his bac. He’d known it, too. Known he didn’t have a chance in hell of sitting in front of a blank piece of paper with his whole future in jeopardy and filling it with anything that had any worth or made any sense.

  What could he say? What could he possibly write that meant something and was true?

  “Célie” he finally wrote. Okay, there, that was true. That meant something. He stared at it a long time and then finally put a comma after it. Then sat there twisting and twisting the pen between his big fingers. Clearly not fingers meant to wield a damn pen.

  The waiter came back and hovered.

  Joss lifted his head and gave him a long, narrow look, and the waiter found another table to take care of. The waiter also sent a quick look up to the top of those stairs, like a soldier going into battle and making sure someone was ready to lay down covering fire.

  Joss followed the glance. Yes, Célie’s personal hero, that big, black-haired guy Dominique Richard, was back in that corner where he could glare down at him.

  Joss held the other man’s eyes a second, all his muscles firing for battle. Then he bent his head to the ca
rd again and wrote, in his slow, deliberate letters that always meant in school that the teachers were yanking his exams away from him before he finished: I would wait more than five years for you.

  He stared at it a moment more. And then he added a little heart over the I in her name.

  He shoved it at the waiter before he could crumple it in his fist. “If this doesn’t get to her, I’m coming back and killing you.” Best sometimes to leave things clear.

  The waiter blinked and backed up a step. “Dom won’t let you do that,” he said hastily.

  “Yeah, right,” Joss said. “Him and whose army?”

  He walked out of that beautiful, elegant, rough-and-romantic shop and went to find a much less comfortable wall to wait against.

  Chapter 8

  “If she wanted him to actually leave her alone, I think she would be handling this a little differently,” Jaime said.

  Ha! She knew it! Knew those two were talking about her. Célie pressed herself against the rolling wire shelves full of giant plastic containers of pistachios and almonds and raisins and every other possible chocolate ingredient that could be stored at room temperature in plastic containers, containers that currently shielded her eavesdropping on Jaime and Dom in Dom’s office.

  Dom rumbled something. Damn. She’d missed it.

  “Well, yes, probably she is confused, but what’s that have to do with anything? Caring about people is confusing.”

  “If he hurts her, I’m going to beat his damn brains out.” Well, that one boomed clear enough.

  A soft sound from Jaime. “You are such a sweetheart.”

  Célie rolled her eyes to heaven. Really, there was no reasoning with Jaime’s insane idealization of Dom.

  “I’m glad you’re trying to take care of your people, but if you get in a fight with him, I’m going to be seriously pissed,” Jaime said. “So just bear that in mind.”

  Dom grumbled something much lower and more wary.

  “No, not pissed enough to dump you, you idiot. Dominique.”

  A brief silence. Célie stood on tiptoe to peek over the top of a container. Through the window in his office wall, she could see that Dom had pulled Jaime into his arms.

  Oh, for crying out loud. If those two were going to get all mushy-faced again … Célie started to turn away and get some actual work done this afternoon.

  “You know she’s always had a crush on you,” Jaime said, and Célie froze.

  Hey! Was that nice? To just tell Célie’s boss about a perfectly private crush like that and embarrass the hell out of her for the rest of her career? What had happened to female solidarity and all that?

  “What?” Dom said. “I’ve never—I swear—”

  “Not a crush like that,” Jaime said. “More like a safe-keeping crush, you know? A safe place to put her feelings while she’s waiting for the proper place. Kind of like I used to crush on actors and rock stars before I met you. You know?”

  Célie peeked again. Dom was shaking his head.

  “You never did that?” Jaime said blankly. “Everybody does that.”

  “I think the only safe place I ever found for my feelings was you,” Dom said, so quietly and with so little extra rumble to it that Célie could hear it very clearly.

  It pierced her heart with this sweet tenderness for the two of them, this deep, precious gladness that the man who had been the big brother and refuge she had always needed and who had never believed he had the right to love himself had finally found that love. Finally found that place he felt safe.

  Now if he didn’t hurry up and set the date for a wedding, Célie would personally start hitting him over the head with something. Maybe buy one of those foam sledgehammers so she could bonk him with it every day he walked in still a coward.

  She went back to her work while Jaime and Dom did the mushy-face stuff, and maybe she might have peeked out the window to see if any clouds had rolled in.

  Joss looked up at her movement in it, but he didn’t lift a hand and wave or anything. He just waited.

  She looked at the card she’d propped in the corner of the marble counter, tucked under the wall of frames in all different sizes. She had it propped face forward, so no one could see what was written on the back, and because she liked the way Dom’s eyebrow rose and the ironic, challenging glance he slanted at her when he saw his own name crossed out and replaced with hers. Ha! Take that. Because she didn’t want the responsibility of running a business like this in Paris, and she didn’t want the financial pressure, but she poured her life into these beautiful chocolates just like he did, and she did like getting some of the credit.

  She touched the card. And then she knew she really shouldn’t, but … she peeked at the back again. That stubborn, determined handwriting, and the little heart over the I in her name just like she always did for him, as if he’d noticed that, and, and … I would wait more than five years for you.

  Her eyes filled again.

  Blast it! She scrubbed at them, but not before two people spotted her and shook their heads. She knew she shouldn’t have risked looking at those words again.

  She glanced at the clock. It was nearly five. On normal days—not, obviously, the two weeks leading up to Valentine’s or the week before Easter or the whole month of December—she left at five, having started at eight. Of course, her afternoon had been about as unproductive as it was conceivable to be, and she wouldn’t normally leave without a heck of a lot more done, or else she’d have to come in at five in the morning tomorrow. And Dom got kind of grouchy when people came in too early unnecessarily—he liked having the kitchens to himself for a couple of hours. These days, he was torn, because he apparently also liked lingering in bed later than he ever had before he shared that bed with Jaime.

  It must be nice, Célie thought wistfully, to like sharing a bed with someone so much you didn’t want to leave it.

  “I need to go,” she told Dom abruptly, washing her hands. Dom came to fill the doorway of the ganache room and gave the quantity of work she had done that day an ironic look. “I’ll come in early tomorrow,” Célie said. That was a little meek. She stuck her chin up. “To make up for all those all-nighters I pull at Christmas.”

  Dom pretended to look grumpy, but his dark water eyes gleamed touché. “He still out there?” Dom checked the window. His hands closed automatically into fists. “Célie—”

  “It’s fine. Dom—I’m not worried. It’s Joss, okay?” He often used to show up just a few minutes before she was due to get off, to lounge against the wall of the building opposite her bakery. It had made her heart sing, every time, when she saw him out there waiting for her. “You guys just don’t understand because I overreacted.”

  “If you’re trying to protect Dom—an effort I deeply appreciate—can I just mention that I could put a Corey security detail on you if you need it,” Jaime said, coming into the room.

  Dom stared at his fiancée. “I think you must have me mistaken for someone else.”

  Jaime smiled at him and shook her head, laying her hand on his arm. Dom sighed, looking down at it, and then covered her smaller hand with his.

  “I need to go,” Célie said again. She went into the bathroom to change into her street clothes—jeans and a short-sleeved knit shirt, because it wasn’t as if she had been expecting to have to look hot on her way home from work—and grabbed her leather jacket and hibiscus-printed helmet. She hesitated, and then swooped back into the ganache room to fill a little metal box with chocolates. “Shut up,” she told Dom.

  He hadn’t said anything, of course, busy rapping his knuckles against the nearest marble counter and looking from her to Jaime to the casement window.

  “It will be fine,” Célie said. “Damn it, men are such idiots.” She stomped down the stairs.

  Outside, she hesitated, glancing between her moped up the street on her left and Joss, leaning against a wall in the opposite direction. But she couldn’t resist the pull of that muscled body, those hazel-green eyes.r />
  She turned toward him, and he straightened from the wall as soon as she did, coming toward her. He moved differently than he had five years ago. He’d always been strong, fit, someone who made her feel safe, but now he had this hardness to him, as if he could cut a path through stone and steel just by walking toward it.

  Or through bullets. Her stomach knotted even to think about it. She’d read about the Foreign Legion when he first disappeared into it—about the training he would be going through, about the brutal dog-eat-dog world of it, about the situations they were sent to handle in the world—and she would crawl between her own bed and the wall to hide, like she had when she was a little girl and her mom brought home a doubtful boyfriend. She’d clutch her arms around herself there, fighting in desperate anguish the knowledge of all he must be going through.

  He stopped in front of her, taking her helmet for her but keeping his other hand at his side, his eyes sweeping over her face as if he was touching every part of it. Her skin burned from the look, and she flexed her hand around the box of chocolates so she wouldn’t drop it on the ground and just fling her arms around him. You’re home, you’re home, you’re home.

  “You’ve still got chocolate on you.” That sand-rasped quality to his deep voice now made her want to go up on tiptoe and kiss his throat, to slide silk over it so he remembered what softness felt like.

  “I’m a chocolatier,” she growled. “It’s a hazard of the trade. Like mud and blood for a Legionnaire, only … much nicer.”

  His face closed, and she wondered abruptly if she had just said something terrible. Like … maybe that was a really stupid, flip thing to say to someone who might actually have seen a lot of blood in the past five years.

  She thrust out her chin, somewhere between defiance and apology. “What I mean is, you might be tougher, but I taste better.”

  Wait. Did that sound—

  Joss clasped his wrist behind his back, going into parade rest, his face almost completely blank. Except for the gleam of gold in those hazel eyes. “You don’t know what I taste like.”