Kiss the Bride

by Deirdre Martin

  Simon had to turn away and cough, which he did with a great deal of respect for the rules of hygiene in food industries, covering his face completely with his elbow for a long moment. When he turned back, his expression was quite compassionate. “And yet you continued on here while he was carried off to the hospital. What a difficult choice that must have been for you.”

  “Well, um”—Hmm. “I think he was glad to get out of it, to be honest. He hates all this wedding stuff.”

  His eyebrows rose a little. “To the extent that he prefers a broken leg?”

  Well, that ... that did sound a little odd, didn’t it? “He’s very stoic. Endurance athlete, you know.”

  His eyebrows went very high up indeed. He grinned suddenly, a white flash, and then caught his mouth back to its usual firm line. “Is he? How ... interesting. Being laid up for at least six weeks will be hard on him, then. It’s lucky he has such a ... sympathetic fiancée.”

  Darn it, she really needed to start thinking her cover stories through. Still, a tough-as-nails reporter would leave her fiancé at the hospital for a story, wouldn’t she? No need for guilt.

  “But it was thoughtful of you to put me first,” Simon said blandly.

  “Well, of course,” Ellie said blankly. Fake fiancés only cost about $35 so far, cubic zirconium being so cheap. A chance to find out Simon Casset’s secrets—that was priceless.

  Simon Casset’s white grin started to flash again and was bitten severely into line. “But I’m so sorry to have forced you to choose between me and him. If only I had imagined something like this could come up, I would have given you my number, so you could call and cancel,” he said solicitously.

  “I thought of that, but you had my phone,” Ellie pointed out triumphantly. See, she did have a good reason for her behavior, didn’t she?

  “Ah, oui, how could I have forgotten?” He slipped a hand under his chef’s jacket into the back pocket of his jeans, offering it to her so that she had to walk up to him and that magical dreaming sculpture of his to get it.

  The phone felt warm in her hands. Ellie stared at it as if it had been transformed into an alien object by its ride on one of those firm butt cheeks. A flush mounted inexorably, and she had no excuse to offer for it and no way to hide it.

  She had kind of thought he would leave her phone lying on the desk in his office. She was never going to be able to use this phone to call her mother again.

  She slipped it into the back pocket of her little white capri pants, where it seemed to burn against her butt, and looked down at the pixie-dragonflies with their filigree wings. The fineness of the work was incredible, as if their wings were made out of bright glowing spiderwebs. The stylized little bodies made it hard to be sure, but, “Are they fées? Or humanized dragonflies?”

  “Is there a difference?” he asked, amused. She glanced up to find an unexpected gentleness in the blue eyes that had heretofore speared her like a laser, as he watched her study his work. Maybe her interest was just so naked to him, he didn’t have to x-ray her anymore. “Which do you think?”

  “Something magic,” she said definitely. Which could include dragonflies over summer water, certainly. “Is this for a wedding?”

  His eyes flickered. “Une excellente question. I”—a very long pause—“can’t say. No one has ordered it, no, but I felt inspired this morning. I’ll probably put it in the displays.”

  “Could you do something like that for my wedding?” Ellie asked longingly, before she remembered that if she tried to go through with this wedding, Cal Kenton would leave her standing at the altar. Bastard. And she had had such hopes for him when he picked out such a nice ring, too.

  An odd little smile played around Simon Casset’s mouth. “Évidemment.”

  This was what she needed to write about for her readers, these fantasy wedding pieces. She slipped out her little digital camera, with which she could capture some truly beautiful shots. Nobody might ever hang her in museums, but she had lost track of how many weddings she had been asked to photograph for free. “Do you mind?” she dared to ask this time, from her power position of potential client.

  Lying potential client who couldn’t actually afford to pay him for anything he might design for her. Oh dear. Why had she thought this was a better idea than introducing herself and confessing to being a food blogger and passionate fan?

  He looked at the camera for an odd, restrained moment. “For your fiancé?” he asked meditatively.

  She nodded enthusiastically. “It will cheer him up while his broken leg is mending!”

  “Even though he hates dealing with wedding stuff?”

  Why was it that he could keep her story straighter than she could? “If he hates this, I would have to dump him,” she said firmly. “This is extraordinary.”

  He shifted in pleased discomfort at such open praise. She gave him her biggest-eyed, most enthusiastic look, her hands clasping the camera in front of her hopefully.

  “By all means,” he said, in a resigned tone, and stepped back well out of range. Now why couldn’t she be brazen enough to just start wandering around taking more pictures, of every single thing? What if he looked at her with merciless coolness and kicked her out, though?

  She would do better at hard-nosed journalism when she did her pieces on Sylvain Marquis, she promised herself. Someone who didn’t make her feel so, so ...

  So.

  She finished her shots and slipped her camera back in her purse with her iPad.

  A lean hand caught hers. Just like that, as if it had the right to.

  She stared down at her small hand lying across his palm while pleasure rushed through her. Oh. Okay, you can have the right. And a beat later: Did he want it?

  His thumb touched her engagement ring, wiggling it fractionally on her finger. “So your fiancé finally got you a ring?”

  Just how observant was he, exactly? “No, he gave it to me when he proposed.”

  His eyes lifted suddenly from her finger to hold hers, with that look as if he could see right through to her bones. Note to self: find some silkier, lacier underwear. “Which was?”

  She blanked. Which was, which was ... when would it have been logical for her fiancé to have proposed to her, if she was now looking at food for the reception? “Three months ago?”

  His eyebrows lifted faintly. “You don’t remember?”

  “April first,” she said firmly. “How long ago is that now? Three and a half months?”

  His eyebrows went up a little higher. “He proposed to you as a poisson d’Avril?”

  A fish? What—oh, damn it, had she just said her fiancé proposed to her on April Fool’s Day? “That’s when we met,” she said even more firmly. “It was a romantic reference. The proposal was a very elaborate April Fool’s joke, in fact.” Elaborate a joke, fast. “He managed to hide the ring in an eggshell, so that when I cracked it open that morning, or thought I was cracking a raw egg open, out fell the ring.”

  “With the raw egg?”

  “No. He got the raw egg out and—” How the heck would a man manage to hide a ring in an intact eggshell? There had to be a way, right? If there wasn’t, one of the top chocolatiers-pâtissiers in Paris would probably know it. “I’m not sure exactly how he managed it.”

  Simon Casset’s lower lip looked just a little odd, as if he might be biting into it. Otherwise his expression was quite serious, as befitted someone seeing through to her bones. “You weren’t wearing it yesterday.”

  Okay, see, how could he know that? He had been so busy gazing at her face as if he saw every thought in her head, and then that one glance up and down her body that made her feel she was posing naked for him. How could he possibly have spotted her ring finger? “I forgot to put it on.”

  “You take it off regularly?”

  Why did that make her feel so naughty? “It pokes my eye if I sleep with it.”

  This time, the corners of his lips definitely twitched. “An inconvenient accessory?”

&nb
sp; Well, it was. It felt so odd on her hand and very confining. “If you were married, you would take your ring off every day for work!”

  If? Something cold congealed in her. He could very well be taking off a wedding ring every morning. Her phone could have been snuggling up to one in his back pocket the whole time.

  He gazed at her a moment, still holding her hand, still playing with her ring, as if debating several paths. “I’m not,” he said finally.

  She couldn’t help her face perking up in hopeful inquiry.

  “Married. Or engaged.” He released her hand.

  Really! Excitement sparked through her in multiple exclamation points. Single hot man who worked well with chocolate plus—oh wait. She was engaged.

  She cleared her throat and tucked her hand firmly down by her thigh, feeling sulky about it.

  He studied her a moment, amused and intent all at once. “Mademoiselle Layne, were you thinking of just a centerpiece or perhaps favors as well? Perhaps we should talk about whether you want a special form for the favors or just a little box of two or four chocolates, and if so, which flavors. Which of mine do you like best?”

  She could barely avoid shuffling her feet. “I’ve—I’ve never tasted any of them.”

  He checked. In the first instant, he looked taken aback, offended. Then an odd expression crossed his face, much more mixed. “Might I ask what made me one of your top choices then? Reputation?”

  In part. A longing to taste what she had heard so much about, and what was physically so beautiful. She gestured helplessly toward the half-finished structure, so magical, as if something as earthbound as food could be transmorphed into an airy grace that touched the sky. He made her feel like she could fly. Like it was all worth it. Eating. Life. This was the kind of thing you lived for. Right? “I’m an artist. Your art is extraordinary.”

  He smiled involuntarily, that unexpectedly awkward pleasure at her praise. “But you’ve never tasted anything of mine?”

  She would have bought something yesterday, a small something that her budget allowed, except he had flustered her so easily into flight. She shook her head, trying not to show how much she was starving for him.

  “Ah.” Something happened to his face, something honed, intense, like a hawk that had seen a helpless mouse. In the steel-blue eyes, the pupils dilated visibly. “This is going to be fun.”

  The oasis was real, Simon decided. Not a mirage. Something he could plunge in and drink from. And he was damn well going to reach it.

  It was real, but its nearness was illusory. Because it felt as if he could reach out and take her right there, just sink his fingers into that soft flesh of her hips and butt and pull her against him. She was wearing snug white capri pants through which he could make out the even, no-lace edge of her bikini panties when the light angled against her butt. And over that, a top with tiny straps and a gathered ruffle across her chest and again at her hips, in a soft blue printed with tiny darker blue flowers. Her shoulders looked so soft and smooth and naked, as if she needed his whole body over her to clothe her. How was she surviving, walking around Paris all perky and happy and delectable like that? The dragueurs must be nipping at her bare heels in their little white sandals everywhere she went. Mademoiselle, vous êtes charmante ... The bastards.

  She was, though. Charmante. With her life and color and eagerness and her fiancé run over by a moped and abandoned by her in the street.

  It would help if his countrymen weren’t such flirts, he decided severely. Now he was going to have to figure out some other way to communicate how charming he found her, one that didn’t get him immediately categorized with all the aggressive strangers harassing her on the street.

  Reaching out, sinking his fingers into her, and dragging her against him, as much as it felt as if he should be able to—she’s right there, his atavistic urges cried, and we want her—that probably wasn’t the way to do it.

  And obviously, he couldn’t ask her out. She would be honor bound to say no, thanks to that bedridden fiancé of hers. There was only one way to reach a woman who had declared herself out of bounds, committed to someone else.

  He grinned a slow wickedness as he turned away from her to pull trays of his chocolates from the racks in the cooling room, feeling more pleasure than with any of the ambitious goals he had set for himself in a long time.

  Seduction.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was the moment that proved the whole decision to throw her life over a windmill and come to Paris had been worth it. That moment when those long, lean, tan fingers held out a small triangular shape of chocolate, the surface so glossy and gleaming she could almost catch a reflection of her fingers as she took it from him.

  She was about to eat one of Simon Casset’s chocolates, at last. From his own hand!

  The brush of her fingers against his traveled the entire length of her body, in little shivers she couldn’t shake off her skin. Even when she broke the contact. Even when she held the chocolate just an inch from her lips, teasing herself with that last anticipation of its taste. She took a breath, letting the chocolate scent caress down the nape of her neck and sink into her body.

  Simon Casset watched her. He always looked intense, alert, and as if he could see her underwear, so it was hard to say what this moment meant to him. Probably nothing, why should it? He had seen any number of people eat his chocolates for the first time.

  But she—she wanted to hand him her camera and ask him to take a commemorative photo as she bit into it. Except even she wouldn’t share erotic photos of herself with her readers, and the moment felt like that. Erotic. Naked. Exotically happy.

  “Did you know, they say that eighty percent of the pleasure in most food we eat is through the scent?” the chocolatier asked, all lean quiet. His focused expression revealed nothing particularly dangerous. But an image ghosted through her of a colorful bird in a yard and a cat coming out from behind a bush. “You can save that extra twenty percent, the actual taste, for the things that are really ... special.”

  The glossy finish of the triangular chocolate, starting to warm to her hand, blurred in her head with the thought of soft lamplight shining off a broad, bare shoulder. She looked from his chocolate to him. Had he grown closer? The steel-blue was softer somehow, as if rather than seeing through her with a laser pinpoint, his focus had widened and he was holding all of her in his gaze.

  “That you really, really want to taste.” His voice brushed over her skin.

  She looked up at him helplessly, wishing she tasted good.

  He shifted an infinitesimal bit closer. “But what those scientists don’t know how to take into account is that with chocolate, there’s a tactile pleasure, too.” His thumb traced over the marble counter as he gazed at her, the way she sometimes “drew” people as she was talking to them, on the nearest surface. What contours was he drawing while he looked at her that way? “The way it melts in your mouth, just at the temperature of your body, as if it was made for you and for nothing else. You can bite it, you can feel it yield to your teeth before it starts to soften. Or you can lay it on your tongue and let it slowly melt there. It won’t take—” he grew closer still—“long at all. For it to melt.”

  No. Not long. She was melted already. Just at the thought of his bite, his tongue. She looked at the chocolate and caught sight of the engagement ring and couldn’t remember why it was there. A promise. Some kind of promise of forever, something to do with this chocolate ...

  She brought the chocolate to her mouth, almost afraid to eat something that beautiful. Somehow biting into it felt like stepping out of a plane without checking her parachute. Her stomach rushing into her mouth, her whole world changing, and maybe, maybe she might be in trouble.

  That was ridiculous. It was one of the finest chocolates in the world, not a mile drop.

  Carefully, she closed her teeth over it. Felt the cool gloss of the surface on her tongue, warming so quickly, the most delicate resistance, the rushing pleasure o
f the insides, a ganache so soft and unctuous it felt almost molten, with some golden flavor to the chocolate she couldn’t identify.

  “Oh,” she whispered very softly. A tremble ran all through her. Oh, she really should have checked her parachute.

  He took a step forward. He was now completely in her personal space, but that seemed right, since he was in her body. Melting in it.

  “You’re beautiful,” she said on a note of wonder. “Inside, too.”

  The muscles in his body flicked, one long little whiplash of shock all through him. It seemed to shift him closer, angle his body, so that now her back was to the marble counter and he half-trapped her there. Around them, not near, but it seemed harshly invasive, far too close, people moved, working. Enrobing chocolate at a little machine that carried small squares of ganache through a chocolate-fall, carrying a bowl to weigh while adding something ground fine that smelled of almonds, spreading a fresh ganache between metal frames.

  “The—the chocolate,” she whispered. “The chocolate’s beautiful.”

  He blinked. “Of course,” he said blankly.

  That startled her. He truly didn’t realize she could mean him, too? That she did mean him, too?

  He held her eyes, as if he could parse every thought that passed through her mind and it was fascinating reading. His mouth softened, and he ducked his head to her. “You don’t know what I’m like inside yet,” he whispered.

  A haze of heat shut off her vision, so that she could only see his face bent over hers. Vaguely, in the distance, pots echoed on marble. “I think you’re like this,” she whispered, holding up the other half of the golden-flavored chocolate.

  His eyes widened. She wanted desperately to feel the feathered silk of his short hair, push back that black lock that kept falling over his forehead.

  “And like that.” She nodded to the sculpture with its pixies.

  He looked at it and then back at her. He shook his head definitely. “No. No, I’m not like that.”