Kiss the Bride

by Deirdre Martin

  She made a little choking sound. See? There was more than one way to strangle an infuriating woman.

  “Just before you say your vows or right after? Which do you think? Or maybe both?”

  She flushed crimson. “That’s awful.”

  He placed a tiny chocolate mound in the center of the flower petals, its heart. “But admit it turns you on.”

  “I will not. I wouldn’t cheat on my—I wouldn’t—” She broke off, clearly stymied by the fact that she was cheating on her “fiancé.”

  He gave her a malevolent smile. “When you think about it, if it’s just before your vows, morally it really isn’t that different from what we’re already doing. Can I help you pick out your wedding dress? Because I’m getting a vision ...”

  “I’ve already picked it,” she said quickly, repressively.

  It always pissed him off when she added another layer to her lie. Was she just going to keep digging that hole forever, or would she someday tell him the truth? “Ah, oui? What does it look like?”

  She got the blank look she always had when pulling details out of thin air.

  “What color is it?” he asked helpfully.

  “White,” she said instantly and with a complete lack of creativity.

  “Ooh. Perfect.”

  She gave him a fulminating look that faded, as she looked away, to something very troubled.

  “Do you think you should invite his nurse so she can keep him distracted?”

  “Simon.”

  He smiled involuntarily at his name in her voice, the trouble she had with the N. He liked the anxious frustration in her tone. Figure it out, Ellie. Come out from behind the fiancé. We’re not playing hide and seek.

  “En fait, if this were a movie, there could be a happy ending to this story.”

  She peeked at him through her lashes, a shy, hopeful curiosity.

  “The French nurse and I could fall for each other when we meet, and you and your fiancé could realize how much you really love each other and how close you came to losing something perfect, and everyone could live happily ever after.”

  Her face fell dramatically. She looked as if she was about to cry.

  Making him immediately feel like a bastard. “Or, you know, the offer still stands.”

  “Which offer?” she asked warily, blinking hard and crinkling her nose as if it stung.

  He closed his hand around her wrist. “This offer, Ellie. To catch you.”

  But she had to have enough trust to throw herself off the cliff.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ellie was dancing with temptation. Her fingers itched to fly over her keyboard. She couldn’t believe she was keeping this from her readers: the whole story, spying on him, getting caught, the fiancé—oh God, her readers would have a field day with that one!—her being crazy in love, and all those lovely, luscious shots of him working chocolate, of his creations, the inside scoop on a top Parisian chocolaterie.

  Her readers were beginning to wonder what the heck she was up to, too. She could have claimed Internet problems if Paris had been a little more backward, but since the city insisted on having the greatest wifi access in the world, she was mostly reduced to filler: a few stolen shots of Philippe Lyonnais, all kinds of shop windows, and meanwhile, all those posts she had written about Simon Casset just sat there on her computer, clamoring to be published.

  Sometimes she had to bite her own hands to keep from hitting the button.

  She couldn’t just publish him to the world while tricking him, though. She couldn’t. She had to tell him the truth.

  And risk—how chilly could those eyes get, if he learned she had lied to him to get under his skin? Would he freeze her where she stood and drop her?

  Did superballs still bounce if they were frozen when they fell?

  “So what would you have to worry about?” Simon asked. They were sitting in the Luxembourg Gardens, in the shade of plane trees down one of the gravel paths, tucked out of the main pedestrian traffic. Simon’s chocolaterie was closed on Mondays, but this summer Monday was so beautiful, the gardens were drawing crowds despite the workday, both tourists and native Parisians, lots of mothers with their children. Simon was lounging, half-prone, his legs propped up on another green chair, his knees lifted to form an easel for his own “sketchbook,” a small leather journal he had pulled out once or twice already that day, to sketch something he had seen in a shop window. “Ideas,” he had told her briefly.

  Ellie also had her sketchbook out, happily dabbling with different ways to express the pure joy of having sunlight dappled over her in this elegant, peaceful heart of Paris, while Simon Casset sat angled toward her with a little smile on his face. She tried to catch the play of light and shadow, doodled caricatures of herself jumping for joy in the margins, and didn’t even try to draw Simon because, as much as she would love to be able to capture his sculpted body on her pages, she knew he was well beyond her skill. Simon, on the other hand, kept glancing at her as he drew.

  “Me?” she said, startled. “Worry?” Right now? Who could worry at a moment like this? The air was just perfect, its heat cooled slightly by the shade, the sound of children laughing reaching them from the play area, a group of men sitting at chess tables just faintly glimpsed through several ranges of trees.

  “From your ideal fiancé. You said you wouldn’t have to worry about him cheating. What would you have to worry about?”

  She frowned severely. What was the matter with him? Could he not just enjoy a beautiful day when he had it? “If he’s perfect, I shouldn’t have to worry about anything.”

  “There obviously must be something you worry about more than being cheated on, though. Since you’re willing to stay with someone who might cheat on you, rather than face that worry.”

  Ellie contemplated hitting Simon over the head with her sketchbook. She didn’t even have an engagement ring anymore. What part of let the fiancé wink out of existence when the moment felt right did Simon not understand?

  “What are you drawing?” She redirected the subject firmly, getting up to see.

  He closed the journal and slipped it into his pocket before she could get close. But he tilted his head back against the green metal of the chair and smiled up at her lazily, as she stood over him. Ellie’s own mouth softened helplessly at that smile. She didn’t know—but she almost thought—that Simon hadn’t smiled like that before he met her: as if life was very good and he could take a long, long time lingering in it. “You did promise to dump your fiancé if he didn’t like my sculptures, didn’t you?”

  “He wouldn’t be that stupid,” Ellie said decisively.

  Simon snagged her wrist with a hand she didn’t even see move, all without losing his lazy ease, and pulled her onto his lap. “Cheating on you with a French nurse is pretty damned stupid, Ellie.” He settled her body effortlessly, finding just the right spot so that her weight snuggled against his chest. It moved under her in a long, deep breath as he rubbed his nose into her hair. “There. Now this day is just about perfect.”

  “Just about?” she checked uneasily. See, that was one of the things that worried her. His standards must be incredibly high. “What else do you need?”

  His hand stroked her back as if he was reassuring a small child. “A clean conscience,” he said promptly, in direct prickly opposition to that stroking hand.

  If she could find enough loose skin on those ripped ribs of his, she would pinch him.

  His face tucked into her hair, his arm cradling her to him. “All right, I lied,” he murmured. “There’s more than one kind of perfect. This is one.”

  She relaxed her head against him, smiling. He smelled so good: clean, golden warm, and a hint, as if it had been showered off but just kept breathing through his pores, of chocolate.

  He went back to stroking her. “So what worries you, Ellie?”

  Not much, just then. She took a deep breath of him and nuzzled her face more deeply into him.

  “Because ... I m
ight know of a—Parisian—endurance athlete—who gives you the best chocolate in the world—who wouldn’t cheat on you with anyone. Actually, might have far too exclusive a focus on you for your own sense of freedom. If, you know, you’re still in an—exploring your freedom stage.”

  Suddenly and to her complete chagrin, her eyes filled with tears. She fought it back, steadied her voice: “Bouncing.”

  Oh crap, that made it worse. Two tears actually welled up and managed to spill out onto her cheeks. Her face was against his chest, he wouldn’t notice—but then her nose stung so much that she had to sniffle.

  His arms tightened. “Bouncing?”

  She nodded, pinching herself hard to give herself something else to think about and quit being such a public baby. It didn’t work. She had to sniffle again, and two more tears spilled out.

  “Minou.” One hand stroked firm and gentle all the way up her back, and he cradled her neck, pulling her back to see her face. “What’s this?”

  Her lip trembled. The eyes that had been so cool and penetrating on their first meeting were so tender. “I don’t want to do it anymore. Bounce back. I’m here, in Paris, and this time I’m going to fly.”

  He pulled her ponytail out gently, letting her hair spill, so that it slid between his skin and hers when he kneaded his hand against the nape of her neck. “Of course you are. You have pixie dust.” A thumb skated, barely touching, over her cheekbones. How had he even noticed she had freckles? They were so faint. “Minou. There’s nothing I handle that’s resilient. You might be, yes, I can believe that you can handle absolutely anything and come out more beautiful for it, but this”—his hands flexed into her waist and pulled her closer against him—“you with me—trust me, I’m not going to drop it and hope it bounces.”

  She kneaded her hands into his chest, insofar as the hardness under his silk-soft T-shirt allowed for kneading. His words made her so blissful, like a cat finally settling down into the perfect lap, that it was a belated second before it occurred to her: she was still playing him, in an elaborate lie that got more extended every day. Oh crap. “What if you got mad?”

  He gave a crack of laughter. “Let me think. Mad like during the Championnat du Monde, when I discovered that the premade pieces we were allowed to bring had been lost by the airline? Watch the old videos of the competition. See if I dropped anything. Mad like when I finally, finally qualified for Hawaii, and my wetsuit ripped, and my bike tire blew, and I banged the shit out of my knee just before the run? My time was lousy, but I didn’t quit.”

  She knit her brows, against his shirt. “Have I mentioned that I think a long walk is plenty of exercise?”

  His hands flexed into her. “One where you gaze around with your eyes all bright and stop and take pictures of everything? I think I figured it out. I don’t know if you can put up with the way I am, but Ellie—j’adore comment tu es.”

  I love how you are ... It wasn’t the first time a man had told her that he loved her the way she was, or even that he loved her. But maybe it was something about her position—cradled safely in iron hardness, being handled with such delicate care—but this time, she actually felt as if he might mean something more than the enthusiasm of the moment.

  “Put up with the way you are? You’re perfect.”

  He wound his hand in her hair and pulled her head back enough to look her in the face again. “Yeah, but I’m a pure bastard about the cap on the toothpaste. We can have separate bathrooms, if you want.”

  The leaves dappled shadow and sunlight over her as the implications of that slowly sank in, her eyes growing wider and wider. She had just settled into her own apartment in Paris, of which she was ecstatically proud, and she didn’t entirely know if she wanted to give up the independence of her adventure yet, and—

  “Oh, I beg your pardon.” Simon kissed her, a warm stamp of possession. “I forgot you were marrying someone else.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  If she couldn’t talk to her readers soon and get a little feedback about all this, she was going to go completely nuts. Maybe she could beat around the bush: “I think I’m in love!” she caroled on her blog, showing photos of chocolate sculptures, pastries, little chocolates named Elle. Everyone who knew her knew she could be in love with a chocolate.

  “More later!” she said at the end. “Maybe. Wish me luck!”

  And felt a flood of relief when the comments started coming in, teasing, curious, complaining she was being a tease, or just thanking her for the pictures to brighten their day. It helped her, the blog, made her feel that when she flung herself out there to the world, well—the world liked her.

  Oh, really? Simon rubbed one hand over the back of his neck, and a slow, slow smile grew, deeper and deeper, until it was lodged in him somewhere from which it could never be knocked out. She thought that, did she? He had hoped, but—putain, but she made it hard to be sure.

  Every damn one of those chocolate works under that “I think I’m in love!” was his.

  It looked as if he was just going to have to go head-to-head with that fiancé of hers.

  Fighting an imagined man for a woman’s heart. He knuckled his crazy head but then had to grin. Just when he had been thinking he had mastered most of the challenges in his life ...

  Come kiss me, the text said.

  Ellie, who had been trying to sneak a picture of chocolatier Sylvain Marquis’s display when her phone burped, gave the woman behind the counter a guilty look. The woman raised her eyebrows disdainfully.

  Ellie frowned at her, lifted the phone and snapped a picture openly, and turned to stroll out of the shop.

  She nearly ran into an absolutely gorgeous poet as he stepped inside, black hair tucked behind one ear, chocolate eyes laughing down at her with vibrant curiosity. “May I help you?” he asked. He bent and picked up her dropped phone, taking in the text as he did so. His eyebrows lifted, and he grinned a little.

  Sylvain Marquis, she thought with startled pleasure. It was amazing how she kept running into these famous chocolatiers around their shops. It was almost like they were real humans or something. Somehow, when she went into Notre-Dame, she didn’t expect to have a physical collision with God.

  She really should seize this opportunity to introduce herself, like the dedicated journalist she was, but—she glanced toward the text.

  Her phone burped again as Sylvain handed it back to her: I think I have the perfect pièce for your wedding.

  Would he drop the subject of her damn wedding? “Do you know Simon Casset?” she asked the top chocolatier smiling down at her.

  Sylvain looked a little disappointed. “Sure. We were on the same team for the Championnat du Monde. Why? Are you his?”

  Ellie frowned at him.

  “Apprentice,” Sylvain clarified, with the lift of one supple eyebrow, his eyes dancing. “Spying on me.” His lips twitched. “Being paid with kisses.”

  Really, she had to get more details on this practice of chocolatier espionnage. Maybe after she had beaten Simon over the head with something. And why didn’t anybody in America ever pay people with kisses? The greenback looked so sordid in comparison. “Did you often want to strangle him?”

  “Simon?” Sylvain looked startled. “No. Too much of a professional. Dominique Richard, now, if I ever have to work on a team with him again, I’ll kill somebody.”

  “Dominique Richard?” Ellie fished, briefly diverted. She hadn’t had a chance to go see the wild chocolate rebel’s chocolaterie yet, but she could tell good gossip when she got a whiff of it.

  “No, not him,” Sylvain said regretfully, misunderstanding. “You can’t go killing good chocolatiers. We might be able to transfer him to a remote location far from human habitation, though. No, I’ll kill the next committee that thinks we should work together. Poisoned chocolate.” He paused a moment to contemplate the vision. “Not mean enough, is it? They would probably die happy.”

  O-kay. No false modesty here. “And when you worked with Simon, he didn
’t have a perverse and sadistic sense of humor?”

  “Simon?”

  “Obsess on ideas he should just let drop?”

  “Oh, that, oui, bien sûr. L’idée fixe, c’est Simon.”

  “Hmm.” Ellie gave that some thought and then abruptly thrust out her hand. “Eloise Layne, blogger. It’s nice to meet you, Monsieur Marquis. I would love to do a story on you soon, if you have the time.”

  “Of course,” said the media’s darling. “I always have time for beautiful journalists. Just give me a call to set it up.”

  Belles journalistes. There really was something to be said for France.

  “Passez Simon le bonjour de ma part,” Sylvain called after her as she headed for the door. Tell him hello from me. He smirked. “It will drive him absolutely crazy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Your fiancé and I might not see eye to eye on this one,” Simon told her.

  Ellie studied the cloth-covered sculpture on his desk and wondered why they were in his office for this unveiling. Simon never had any concern about showing his work in public.

  “You’ll have to give me his honest reaction. Remember, if he doesn’t like it, you did promise to dump him.”

  “Well, that was really just rhetoric—” Why did she keep defending her relationship to a fictitious man she was cheating on? “Sylvain Marquis sends his love.”

  “Not to me, he doesn’t,” Simon said dryly. “Was that salaud flirting with you?”

  Ellie considered. Maybe a little.

  “What the hell am I saying? Of course, he was. Were you flirting back?”

  “You kept sending me texts about kisses! Who can flirt in that context?”

  “I’ll keep the technique in mind. This sculpture might be good timing.” Simon reached for the fine cloth that covered it.

  “Is it normal to actually make the different centerpieces you are proposing for a wedding reception?” Ellie asked uneasily. “Instead of sketches?” How much exactly was she going to owe Simon for his work when her fiancé ran off with the nurse?