Turning Up the Heat (A Novella in the Vie en Roses Series)

by Laura Florand

  Lock her back up to him. Make sure she wouldn’t even think about slipping away.

  Putain, articulated like that in his head it made him seem—vile. Léa could have reminded him, he thought defensively. It wouldn’t be the first time she had to whisper don’t forget. So why hadn’t she this time? Just lost in that trust that she gave to him so easily, or was her subconscious trying to do something, too?

  He grimaced, running his hands over his face as he heard the shower shut off. Yes, they needed to have a discussion, and putain, why did it seem like such a dangerous one?

  Coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a blue hibiscus pareo, Léa grinned at the sight of Daniel on his back with one arm thrown over his face and aloe glistening on his chest. He so hated that stuff.

  He had such a gorgeous body, though. It was a damn waste to feel it mostly at one in the morning. They needed to take more vacations. Do more things where she could just stop and enjoy the view of him. A mechanic, hunh. It was oddly easy to imagine it. He would have ended up one of those mechanics who made one-off models for Ferrari auto shows. Or, seeking greater independence, started his own custom-built motorcycle business and ended up with a television show following him around as he turned old plates from the Eiffel Tower into new works of chopper art. Professor was more of a stretch, but it wasn’t a bad one: the thought of him quieter, more cerebral, all that drive poured into his intellect, until he probably would have become the next Sartre. He might not have ended up with quite the same gorgeous definition in his body, but then again, knowing Daniel, he would be quite capable of becoming Sartre while running triathlons on the side. Still, imagining him with a slightly geekier physique made her smile.

  She stretched out on the bed beside him, cuddling her head against one folded arm, pretending she was a professor’s arty wife, maybe an art professor herself. Letting the vision lull her, content to drift toward sleep with him even though it wasn’t even ten a.m. yet. It was that kind of day, and the bungalow that kind of spot, soft and shady and at peace, filled with sweet scents and the lullaby of waves.

  And if she thought too much past him and them, tried to think about her, she felt tired again. So she pushed herself out of her mind, in order to dwell in the more important pleasures of the moment.

  Daniel rolled to his side and propped himself on one elbow just as her lashes were drifting closed. Her eyes flickered back open enough to be caught by the brilliance of his, very intent, and for some reason she wanted to squeeze her eyes shut again.

  “In answer to your question the other day,” he said, just before her lashes reached her cheeks. “Yes. I would like for us to have kids.”

  Her eyes flared wide open, her contentment gone as if he had stabbed straight through it and through her, impaling her to a wall. Oh, God. She had known this was coming. She should have known. She was nearing thirty. And she wanted to run screaming, please no, no, no, I can’t, I can’t. Daniel—not more.

  He was over her in a second, grabbing her shoulder as she started to roll out of bed, holding her to the mattress. “What?” he said between his teeth. “Why? Léa. Tell me why you look like that, at the thought of my kids.”

  She jerked a little on her shoulder, and her heart rose up in her, strangling her with tears. Oh, those damn tears. “It’s nothing to do with yo”—The tears spilled out, only this time not a quiet secret, this time something ragged and painful.

  “God damn it.” He flung himself out of bed and to the nearest open window, silhouetting himself against azure ocean and a coast of tawny volcanic sand and verdant green. “Now my kids have nothing to do with me?” He reached up to grasp the window frame.

  Léa sat up and curled over her crossed legs, trying to stop crying. “I’m sorry, it’s so stupid, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  He hung his head, gripping the frame until his knuckles turned white, and watched her. “Léa.” His voice ground, processed with great effort. “You’re killing me.”

  “Why?” she cried suddenly, frantically. “I told you I just needed a little break. I told you I just wanted to get away on my own for a few days. I told you I love you still. Why is this so wrong? We’ve been married for over ten years, and I’ve never taken a break once!”

  His hand flexed until it was a wonder the frame didn’t rip right off. “Neither have I,” he said low, harshly.

  “But you wanted that! My God, Daniel. I know you said you did it for me, but you’re the one who kept driving, long past any reasonable success. You’re never satisfied! You always have to do more!”

  His head flung up. He stared at her. “I—I wanted that? Léa. You found the TV spots. You cheered when I succeeded. You handed me your father’s restaurant and expected me to save it.”

  “We were in it together!” she said, stunned. Him and her, shoulder to shoulder, against the world. There hadn’t been really any way to distinguish what he wanted and she wanted, those first few years, or even who she was and who he was, both focused on the same goal. The restaurant’s success. His success. Not letting the restaurant become the albatross around his neck, the weight he took on too young, but turning it into the tool that let him become all that he could be. She hadn’t realized, until the day before, that Daniel had ever admitted to himself that the restaurant was too much for a nineteen-year-old chef-in-training to take on. But she had always known it. And she had so desperately wanted him to be able to fly as high as his oversized ambitions pushed him.

  “I know that. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget how brave you were or how much you trusted me. Léa—when a man climbs a glass mountain, it’s not usually for the damn golden apple. It’s for the person he gives the apple to.”

  Her tears sprang out again, harder, but sparkling somehow with the beauty of what he had just said. “Daniel”—

  “And I’ve told you this already, Léa. Yesterday, I told you. The day before I told you. How many different ways do you need to hear that every damned thing I do is for you? Putain. Even if you don’t know what’s wrong,” he said, low and stark. “Just try to tell me what it is. Just try, Léa. I need to know.”

  Something snapped. She clutched fistfuls of the quilt suddenly and, when that wouldn’t rip, flung herself off the bed. “How the hell should I know, Daniel? I can barely even see me. It’s you, and my brother, and my sister, and the restaurant, and the numbers, and the damn personnel issues, and you, you, you. You’re everything, and you’re not even there, you’re so busy being so huge, the best of the best of the best, it’s like I wave to you from far away in the stands to cheer you on, hoping you’ll glance up and see my little flag and know I care. Now you say you do it for me, but from where I’m sitting—I think you glance up. I think it matters, that I be there in the stands cheering. I think it makes a difference. But God knows...it’s not about me. I don’t care what you say, don’t you think that I would know it, if ever once, in the past eleven years, there had been something really about me? Sometimes, Mondays, at lunch with my cousins, I can almost breathe, I can almost feel myself, no, I can almost feel as if I have a self—and then someone calls and needs me to solve something, or there’s a consulting request for you and I need to figure out your schedule, or my brother’s girlfriend dumped him, or...you just look at me, and I’m all gone again. I love you so much and you are so big, and I am nothing. Just nothing.”

  And she stood there, too exhausted to even slump back down on the bed, her head hanging as those silent tears gushed out and dripped wearily down her cheeks.

  He just stared at her, stunned. His arm had dropped from the windowframe.

  She brought her hands up to cover her face. “And I can’t—I just can’t—have kids on top of it right now. I can’t. I think I’ll drown.”

  His face had gone very white. He reached both hands behind him and gripped the lower part of the frame now, for support. “So you do need even less of me.” His voice was stretched and twisted, like some bent, hard-worked piece of metal.

&n
bsp; “No.” No, that wasn’t right. She—

  “If I leave you feeling you’re nothing.” He dragged one hand over his face, too hard, leaving white marks on the sun-flush. “I—nothing? I gave all of me to you—all of me—and that made you feel as if you were nothing?”

  Léa stared at him, across a small tropical room that seemed as vast as a great void. “I gave all of me to you,” she said, low, muffled. She had never even realized it before. All of her. To him. To everyone else. “And I didn’t even get you back for it. You were too busy.”

  And she had missed him so much. Tears poured down her cheeks again at the memory of all those times he had been so far away, in the kitchens while she handled business in some other part of the restaurant, on a TV set while she sat in the green room, in Paris while she helped her sister move into her new apartment in Nice. The distance that had grown until she looked back on those first few desperate years with nostalgia, because at least then they had seen each other sometimes, when she and her siblings pitched in every way they could, setting tables, waiting tables, on the line in the kitchen, prepping whatever needed prepped. Watching Daniel be glorious, watching him drive everyone before him, even her, though he reached out from time to time to squeeze her shoulder or the nape of her neck in apology, when he realized what a taskmaster he was being. She had never minded. She understood him, the need that drove him, and she knew they were in it together.

  “Léa.” His voice was strained and cautious. “I can’t do Top Chef, and consult all over the world, and run a three-star restaurant, and be home more often. You have to choose.”

  “I have to choose?” She scrubbed her face, trying to get a grip. “Daniel, it’s your choice. I don’t want to limit you.” She never wanted to do that. “Fly as high as you want to. I’m behind you.” She was, she really was. She always had been, and so proud of him. This was just a little, stupid moment of collapse she was having.

  His jaw was very hard. He clenched the windowframe behind him. “Léa. I’ve never taken a single appearance, a single consulting job, that you didn’t book for me. Or, if they spoke to me directly, that I didn’t think, ‘Oh, she’ll like that, I should do it.’ And send them to talk to my wife, about scheduling. In case she should ever look at my calendar and decide I was too fucking overbooked and maybe she would like to see me some weekend.”

  In the tight line of his jaw, in the rigid muscles in his arms clenching the windowsill, there was so much anger that the realization of it shoved straight across the room into her, like a truck collision. Léa stared at him.

  The moment stretched, breakable or buildable. Like molten sugar that could be formed into anything wonderful, as long as you didn’t let it chill too much and drop it, shattering everywhere. “I—when they came to me, they always said you wanted to do it,” she said, pleating her hands. “So I would find a way to fit it in.”

  His mouth twisted, bittersweet. “Maybe I should have made my priorities clearer to you. Maybe a day with my wife, the woman I’m doing all this for should have been in your calendar system as one of those first-precedence entries that can’t be changed. At least once a week, putain.” He leaned his head back against the window frame, looking exhausted.

  As exhausted as she felt. Daniel, who was indefatigable.

  She found herself drawn closer to him, step by step, with the urge to stroke that tension off his face, to tell him it was all right.

  He watched her come to him. His mouth twisted again. “You say I take up too much of your space, you say I leave you nothing, but here you are, ready to care for me again. That might be your problem, Léa.” A dark, bitter pain in his voice. “The problem besides me. You make us think that care of yours is inexhaustible. Because it—almost—is. And nobody can get too much of it, chérie. Nobody is ever going to turn it down. It’s up to you to not offer it sometimes, if you need some for yourself.”

  She reached up and traced those lines by his eyes. Daniel had started developing fine lines of tension around his eyes years ago, by his mid-twenties at least. They relaxed a little under her fingertips, his face weary, stricken. “I like taking care of you, actually,” she murmured. “I always have. It makes me feel—special.” Those damn tears filled her eyes again. “As long as you’re there. As long as it seems to matter.”

  “I’m quitting Top Chef,” he said suddenly, harshly. “I’m sorry, Léa, that’s over. If we need some influx of cash at some point, you can talk them into paying me triple, and I’ll come on as a special guest. I’m sorry, I just”—His head arched back, his neck muscles corded. “Fuck. As long as it seems to matter. When it’s all that’s ever mattered. This drives me insane.” His hands flexed on the frame of the window again, and she saw the nails that held it to the wall shift.

  “No!” she said, appalled at her own selfishness. “Don’t quit for me! Daniel! I’ll be fine.”

  The nails shifted more. He was literally going to rip the frame out. Strong chef’s hands. “I’m not quitting for you. Have you listened to anything I’ve said? I’m quitting for me. If you want anything else for you, Léa, you’re going to have to do it. Damn it, Léa. You say you can’t give me any more. I can’t give you any more, either.”

  She drew a breath as if he had struck her. He winced at the sight, wrenching the frame. “Fuck. Putain. Merde. Léa. We could have hired a business manager years ago. You could have been drawing and painting beautiful sights all over the world for the past three or four years at least, every time we went out for a consulting job, instead of making friends with the chef’s wife so you could help her learn how to run their business better. Merde, Léa, how much of our time do we spend up in Paris? It’s an artist’s paradise. Our house is an artist’s paradise, the views are incredible, I wish to hell I could enjoy them more often. Nobody stopped you but you, because”—He broke off and sighed suddenly, like a long, drawn-out collapse, all the air and muscles leaving him until his fingers loosened the frame to rise to her face. “Because you just don’t know how to take for yourself. Do you? Your giant of a father—you grew up cheering for the great man in your life, didn’t you? From the margins of his attention. Taking care of your siblings. Bandaging wounds, patting his apprentices on the shoulder and promising them they could survive. Taking care of people. Never putting yourself first.”

  “You put me first, for a while,” she said shyly. His release of anger and the gentleness that rose up in its place lured her in, making her want to curl into him and luxuriate in it. “When you met me. It was—I never felt anything like that. It was so wonderful.” The way his eyes would grow so brilliant, watching her, so hungry and intent and sweet, too, as he leaned over her in the grass, stroking her cheek with a flower.

  “Yes, and even that, you thought was partly for the restaurant, didn’t you?” He dropped his head back against the frame again. “Eleven years,” he said under his breath. And then, “I guess I did put myself first. It was so fucking addictive, being your hero. I have to say, you never made me feel like nothing, Léa. You’ve always made me feel like I was your whole world. To the point that if you stopped believing in me, I think I wouldn’t exist.” He gave a rough, despairing laugh. “You’ve got to admit, it’s a beautiful irony, chérie. I gave myself up for you. You gave yourself up for me. And we’re here scrabbling to find enough of each other we can hold onto.”

  “Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to establish boundaries,” Léa said, reaching up to rest both hands carefully on his sticky, sunburned chest.

  “Maybe,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t know if it’s something I’m able to do. I told you I can’t get enough of you. Of you being happy with me.” His mouth twisted again. His eyes met hers, a glimpse of dark, bittersweet humor in the beautiful gray. “I acted like a drug addict who had had his supply threatened, when I came after you here, didn’t I?”

  She shook her head, her mouth curving at last, and the relaxing of those smile muscles made two more tears spill out over her cheeks. She shifted
a hand to his cheek. “You acted like you. It just took me a while to realize you were acting like you. Like maybe we needed a chance to get to know each other better. Not better, differently. Out of our usual patterns.”

  “Yes,” he said softly, lifting his own hand to her cheek, so that their touches exactly matched. “I had kind of forgotten that you ever wanted to do anything but the restaurant and...sit in my stands, cheering me on. I’m sorry, chérie. It’s hard to refuse all of you, when you offer it so generously. And I sunk all of myself into this, too. It was hard to—see anything, but the work.”

  “Don’t you like it at all?” Léa asked doubtfully. It was impossible to believe that someone could rise to the absolute pinnacle of an insanely demanding profession without having a passion for it. Damn it, his passion for it was so obvious. In his mind was it really, always, a passion for her?

  “I hate Top Chef for days ahead of time, but I do enjoy the high afterward, when I win and you can’t stop talking about this or that thing I did on it like I’m some superhero. I hate it when I lose. I want to hide in some hole where you can’t see me for weeks. But I do love the rest. Food, and living with all my senses, and control. And I like being the biggest man in your life, bigger even than your father. I like being the best of the best. It’s only lately that I’ve started to realize that the price I was paying for being the biggest man in your life was...you.”

  “Daniel. You do understand that there’s never been any question of you losing me. I really, really only came here because I needed to...take some time for me. To figure out why I was so tired, what I needed to change. I never intended to not come back.” Although for a while there, the time she wanted to stay away had seemed to stretch infinitely, no end in sight. A figment of her exhaustion, and he didn’t need to know about it. Maybe some part of him suspected.