Dom sighed. “I suppose this will wear off and you’ll turn back into a halfway decent chocolatier one day.”
He should talk. He still mooned over Jaime. Célie stuck her tongue out at him. And then the full impact of his statement hit her. “A—halfway decent? Did you just say—” She started for him as Dom grinned and ducked into his office.
Just then, Jaime ran up the stairs and pushed the glass doors of the laboratoire open, and Dom reappeared immediately.
Those two were so mushy. Célie smiled a little as she turned away from their kiss to peek out the window again.
Hey! There he was. Coming down the street. Happiness lilted through her, this crazy chirp of it that was like being caught in a hiccup of joy. It was almost too much. It shook her too hard.
And yet she loved it. She hugged herself, watching that long, strong, steady walk. Joss really wasn’t in the least pushy with all that power, politely shifting to one side well before he reached someone coming the other way on the sidewalk, and yet she could see the normally assertive Parisian pedestrians part and flow around him like boats giving a very wide berth to an iceberg.
Jaime leaned in the open window beside her, smiling. “How’s it going?”
Célie shrugged happily and hugged herself.
“You guys are so cute,” Jaime said.
“Hey, we’re not as mushy as you and Dom.”
Over setting some trays of fresh-made chocolates on the wire racks, Zoe made a choked sound of amusement.
“What?” Célie asked indignantly. “Nobody’s as mushy as these two!”
Zoe smothered a grin and turned away.
Hmm. Célie glanced sideways at Jaime, who seemed to be smothering amusement, too. Heat touched her cheeks, but she hugged herself anyway. It was kind of … nice to be mushy.
“Try not to draw hearts and Js over every surface while I’m gone,” Dom drawled. “I’m a little worried about you leaving you running the show.”
Célie stuck her tongue out at him, too happy to let him get much of a rise out of her. As if she couldn’t run this show. Ha! The only problem was that she was jealous. She wanted to go see the cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire with him and Jaime, too. She’d been curious about visiting an actual cocoa farm for ages. But the thought of not having to leave Joss for a week right at that moment made it easier to be left behind this time. Maybe next time she could come.
“You don’t mind me stealing Joss?” Jaime asked.
Hunh?
“I feel bad to do it so soon, but we need him to get started. I could really use his insight in West Africa.”
Célie turned her head and stared at Jaime. Her diaphragm hurt suddenly, as if one of those hiccups of joy had frozen right in the middle and wouldn’t release her.
Below, Joss lifted a hand to her, smiling, and glanced up and down all the buildings around him with that quick Legionnaire glance before he started to cross the street.
“What are you talking about?” Célie’s lips felt funny around the words, bee-stung.
Jaime blinked. And straightened from the window, her expression going wary. She glanced toward Dom, who was dipping a finger in the ganache to taste what Célie had come up with, and Dom lifted his eyebrows at the glance and shifted toward them.
“You don’t … know anything about it?” Jaime said. “Didn’t you guys spend the weekend together?” The Sunday–Monday weekend of those in the restaurant business.
Yeah. They’d gone out to Rambouillet on the new bike—Joss driving them out of Paris, just like some teenage fantasy of wrapping her arms around him on a motorcycle while he broke them free of their childhood—and picnicked in the woods and then Joss had rolled her under him on that picnic blanket and…
“Tell me what you’re talking about,” Célie said between her teeth.
“Just the … trip down to Côte d’Ivoire with us tomorrow.”
Célie’s brain buzzed. Joss reached the sidewalk below them and stood with his head tilted back, waiting for her to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The, the …” Jaime looked from Dom to Joss below. “Did nobody mention to you that I’d hired him? That he’s going to be advising Corey on security issues? That he’s going down to Côte d’Ivoire with me tomorrow?”
Breath hissed between Célie’s teeth. She felt as if she’d just been hit in the stomach. Almost as hard a punch as that morning when she’d learned that Joss had gone off without a word to join the Foreign Legion. “No. Nobody mentioned that.”
“Oh.” Jaime put a hand to her lips, glancing worriedly at Dom. “Uh-oh.”
Below, Joss lifted an inquiring palm, asking maybe, Will you be long? Or, Why aren’t you smiling at me?
Célie stared down at him. Her brain hurt, swelling against her skull as if it was trying to get out. That damn clutch in her diaphragm still hadn’t released, the pressure of that interrupted hiccup of joy growing unbearable.
Joss raised his eyebrows at her in smiling inquiry, no clue in his head what might be wrong. Because, yeah, it would never even occur to him to have told her any of this himself.
And all of a sudden, all that pressure burst. “Joss Castel!”
His smile faded at her tone. He searched her eyes from the distance of a floor below.
“You—you—you—” On a surge of pure rage, Célie grabbed up the bowl of ganache Dom had just tasted and dumped its entire contents out the window, down onto his head below.
That would teach him to try to treat her like a princess in a tower who had nothing whatsoever to do but be his object. She knew how to defend her ramparts, if that was the way he wanted to be.
The ganache splattered all over his hair and face in this giant slosh of chocolate. Several customers leaving the shop stopped dead. Then they pulled out their cameras.
Jaime clapped both hands to her mouth, twilight blue eyes enormous.
“Nice shot.” Dom leaned in the window beside her. “That one’s going to be all over the blogs. Good job on the publicity, Célie.” He held up a hand to give her a high five. Célie ignored him, glaring at Joss below.
Joss shook himself, scraping chocolate off his face until he could open his eyes again. “Okay, what the hell?”
“You—aargh!” Célie grabbed up the nearest ammunition she could find—chocolates—and threw whole handfuls that bounced off his shoulders and head.
“Hell, Célie.” Dom grabbed her wrists. “Now you’re getting expensive.”
“You go to hell, Joss Castel!” Célie yelled through the window. “I—you—” She pulled her wrists free and grabbed her hair, yanking it as she strangled her scream. One of these days, she was going to take a rowboat out into the middle of the ocean for the pure purpose of being able to scream as loud as she possibly could over Joss Castel.
“Célie,” Joss said, in that firm, warning note that always ran a little jolt of eroticism through her. You are over the line, that note said.
And her body responded: Oh, yeah? What you gonna do about it?
“I—I—” Célie grabbed another chocolate and threw it at him.
“Damn it, Célie!” Dom grabbed for her wrist again.
Joss caught the chocolate and looked at it a second, his eyes narrowing. Then he looked up at her.
A frisson of expectation ran through her body. It was the Legionnaire look. And it was turned on her. Very deliberately, holding her eyes, he ate the chocolate.
She licked her lips.
He launched himself straight toward her—one powerful lunge of his body upward, a catch of some point in the wall she hadn’t even known existed as a possible hold. Involuntarily, she stretched through the window to try to follow what he was doing—and his body surged into her vision, both hands gripping the edge of the window as he pulled himself into it.
Chocolate coated most of his face and shoulders, except for the smeared somewhat-clear spot where he’d wiped it off his eyes and nose. His eyes locked with hers.
She took two
steps back before she caught herself and braced her feet, putting her hands on her hips.
“Can I just push him?” Dom asked Jaime. “This is my territory, damn it.”
Jaime grabbed Dom’s hand and pulled him toward the door of the ganache room. When he stopped at the doorway itself, she shifted behind him, put both hands on his butt, and shoved him. It was a considerable tribute to Dom’s utter adoration of Jaime that he actually let that move him.
“Good chocolate,” Joss said meditatively, rubbing his fingers across his chocolate-smeared mouth. “You want to tell me what the hell, Célie?”
“I’m—going—to—kill you!” Célie gripped her chef’s jacket to give her hands something to strangle. He couldn’t even guess what the hell?
Joss came away from the window in one easy, lethal move and caught her, lifting her up and pressing his face right between her breasts, holding her there while he rubbed his face clean against her chef’s jacket.
More or less clean. When he lifted it—still holding her off the ground—liberal smears still decorated it and his military short hair, but at least half his skin was visible in random streaks and stripes of chocolate.
He looked kind of yummy that way, actually. He made her mouth tingle.
And if his hair had been even a centimeter longer, she probably would have yanked his instead of her own.
“You—you—you—I can’t believe you haven’t learned one damn thing!”
“I’ve learned plenty. But apparently not about you.”
“You’re still acting as if I don’t even have anything to do with your life! You don’t even tell me! And you just go off—” Her voice choked her. She struggled to get her breathing to calm down but it kept coming more and more hysterically. “You’re leaving me again. And you said—you said—you—” An onslaught of ugly sobs bottled up in her, and she fought to keep them contained.
He pushed her back against the wall, between two shelving sets of chocolates, capturing her inside a cage made of her own rich-scented work and him, still half covered in chocolate.
“I had a plan.” He pushed the words through her incipient hysteria. “Calm down.”
Her breath hitched at the command … and then came in with one long, deep pull and held a second, and then slowly released. The threat of raging sobs eased at that long breath. She stared up at him. God, he looked hot like that. She wanted to lick that chocolate off him so bad. And she was so mad at him.
“I’ve got something for you.” Those hazel eyes held hers. Behave, Célie. And, Listen to me. She hiccupped a little, staring up at him, taking another deep breath. He smelled so good, too, the chocolate and that scent of sand and sun and wild herbs. She needed to make a chocolate that captured sand and sun and wild herbs … “It’s in my pocket.”
But his arms stayed braced on either side of her to keep her captured.
She looked at his shirt. He was wearing, actually, what was a pretty nice shirt for Joss, a dress shirt, pressed, unbuttoned at the collar, rolled up at the sleeves, and now thoroughly stained in chocolate. And there was a small square box in the front pocket.
Her breath hitched in again. She stared at him until his stubborn, beautiful eyes seemed to fill her whole world.
“You want to get it out?” he asked.
Her lips pressed together vulnerably. She shook her head.
His eyebrows drew together faintly. He didn’t release her, but he pushed his body a little farther back from hers. “You don’t want it?”
“Not … not like this. This isn’t a good idea. You’ll—this is really not a good idea right now, Joss.”
“I had a plan,” he insisted, adamantly, pressing the words into her.
Oh, God, of course he had. That he’d decided on all by himself.
“Remember that night I said good-bye to you? And you didn’t know you wouldn’t see me again, and I didn’t tell you? I didn’t offer you that ring?”
She nodded, struggling not to cry.
The hardness in his body gentled. His hand framed her face, and his thumb grazed gently under her damp eyes. “I wanted to undo that. I wanted to do that night exactly the opposite way.”
Oh. A tear spilled out. He caught it, rubbing it carefully against her cheek.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said quietly, full of all that intensity that Joss packed into him, “that I had to leave for a few days, but that I was going to be back. I wanted to talk to you about this job I’d taken and reassure you, if you had worries about it.”
He couldn’t have talked to her about the decision? Like, before he made it? As if she was part of it? Was he still so convinced that she would hold him back?
“And I wanted to ask you”—he reached into his pocket—“if you would wear this.”
He opened the box. Light sparkled off the diamond ring, like sunlight off a glass mountain. She had never thought she liked diamonds, had never been the girl who fantasized about receiving one. But this one sparkled like joy.
Célie covered her face with her hands. But she kept her fingers parted, so she could see that ring, and how utterly beautiful it looked when held in that callused hand. She’d never even noticed diamond rings before. It was the frame of that strong, male hand that set it off. Made it beautiful.
“Because it would make me so proud,” Joss said. “Incandescent with happiness. People would think I was running around in sequins, if you were wearing my ring.”
The utter wonder of Joss sparkling … over her. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I’d probably look ridiculous, I’d glow so much,” Joss said. “But I wouldn’t care. If you were wearing my ring.”
Célie couldn’t stop crying.
“Maybe everyone would know we went together,” Joss said. “If you were sparkling that much, too. We’d match.”
She pressed her fingers against her tears, but they wouldn’t stop.
“And you say I’m terrible at communicating,” Joss muttered. “What does that mean, Célie?” He touched her tears through her fingers. “Is that a … yes?” This pause and hush on the last word, as if it held worlds of wonder.
Oh, God, this was so hard. This was killing her, it was so hard. As if great giant claws had sunk into her body and were ripping her asunder. “No,” she whispered.
“What?” He bent deep to hear her, his face close to hers, his eyes so pure and true and intent.
“No.” The word was so soft it was almost no more than a shape of her lips, all the sound choked out of it.
“What?” He gave his head a tiny shake and pulled back, staring at her lips as if they didn’t make sense, and then into her eyes.
She swallowed, like swallowing a mountain, cramming all of it down her too small throat. And shook her head. “I can’t, Joss.”
From the vicinity of the doorway past him came a sharp sound of protest. Everyone in the laboratoire must be jammed into the door of the ganache room, watching this show.
Oh, God, she was rejecting him before all of them. Shaming him.
“But—” Joss looked down at the ring and then back up at her. “I thought that was what you said you wanted. I thought you said you would have been incandescent with joy.”
“I would have, Joss. When I was eighteen. God, I would have been so happy. But now … now I know how crappy it is to be the princess in a tower. Now I want someone who will include me. I’m not very good at waiting up in my tower for the prince to get back. I want to be part of the life I live. And of the life you live, too. I want us to live together.”
“I’m working on that, Célie,” he said in a rush. “I’ve got an apartment for us and everything. I just—it’s not ready for you yet.”
“You got us an apartment?”
He drew back, dumbfounded, alarm flaring. “Célie—”
“Without even—without even—” She pressed her hands to either side of her skull, hard, trying to hold it in. “Without even talking to me about it?”
“It’s not ready. I
want it to be perfect first.”
She stared at him. Her fingers dug into her hair and slowly started to pull. “Good enough for me?”
“Exactly,” Joss said, relieved. “You really don’t want to see it in the state it’s in now. It—”
“And you figured that out all by yourself? What I needed? What would be good enough for me?”
He hesitated. And then he fell silent, staring at her.
“For us?”
His lips pressed together. That look, that dive-deep neutral look he got when he knew things were going to get really bad.
“There are two people in an us, Joss. One of them is me.”
“It’s for you, Célie. It’s all—”
“No.” Célie’s hands fell slowly from her hair. She straightened from the wall.
Joss’s hand shot out and covered her mouth. “Célie, don’t—”
She jerked her head away. “No, Joss. The answer is no. I’m not who you think I am, and I can’t and I won’t ever be that person again. But you—you’re still the man who would walk off on me because you thought I deserved better and never think to ask me what I really wanted. In case it obliged you to change your mind. Or bend your pride.”
He stood stock-still, staring at her.
“No,” she said again, even though he had chocolate smeared across his face and mouth and across his shirt and she wanted to take him home and lick him, even though his eyes were so beautiful and stubborn and true, even though he had the hottest body a woman could ever dream of. And even though he’d done it all for her. “No, Joss. You’re destroying all the happiness I ever built for myself. Please go away and leave me alone.”
Chapter 23
Joss stood dully in the middle of the apartment. God, he felt tired. As if he’d been through one of those training weeks with only an hour of sleep a night, and gotten nearly all the way to the end of the White Képi March, and then just sat down and given up, without ever earning the képi. Utter exhaustion. All coated and weighed down with unforgivable failure.
Finally he just lay down on the stained and rotting floorboards, half of which needed to be replaced and all of which needed to be sanded down and refinished. Hell, he’d probably best just rip out the whole thing, get some proper hardwoods in here.
All for You Page 23