The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  And she offered him a fucking yacht. Like her next potential gigolo. Bordel.

  Sketches lay beside him, a pile of ideas that had kept kaleidoscoping through his brain all night, as if his finger had been thrust into some creative electric outlet. His skin hummed with tension, it shivered on the edges of his teeth, and he kept wanting to take one firm bite of her just to soothe it.

  He had finally started sketching out the ideas at four a.m., when it became clear he wasn’t going to get any sleep. His back teeth clenched at how fragile the ideas were, so full of sunshine in darkness, so utterly lacking a proper layer of tough cynicism.

  But now, as he formed a dark, curving shape out of chocolate, reminiscent of a cupped hand, the muscles of his jaw slowly unclenched. He relaxed into his power.

  She had never heard of him? And she was coming to him after years away from civilization, where her only sweets were probably coconut juice? It was almost embarrassing to target her, she was going to fall so easily.

  He smiled. So easily. All her sunshine, yielding to him in a generous rush as if he was impossible to resist.

  Her eyes were going to grow wide with wonder, her mouth was going to soften helplessly in longing, and she would never again press careless money into his hand without seeing him. As if he was a child sent down the seats of the Métro with his hand held out and his head hung low, sullenly waiting to see if he had danced well enough for the polished, lofty commuters to glance at him. No. Nobody dismissed him now.

  “Well, somebody couldn’t sleep.” His senior adjoint, or sous-chef, Patrick Chevalier, stopped in front of the bulletin board to pin up a newspaper photo of Luc kidnapping a beautiful blonde, his face wild and feral. L’Été revient, read the title. Summer returns. Right above it was the guiding quote Luc had put up for his kitchens: “Everything beautiful comes from control.”

  Luc clenched his teeth harder.

  Patrick tilted his head to study the effect of that photo under that quote, grinned in complete self-satisfaction, and came to nod at the sketches and the chocolate sphere into which Luc was carving holes. “Have I been inspiring you again?” The younger man reached up as he spoke to pull plates off the wall and lay them out for prep.

  “Endlessly,” Luc said dryly, easing the chocolate from its mold and trying to figure out how he was going to get that photo off his bulletin board without giving Patrick the satisfaction of knowing how much it got to him.

  Instead of beginning a subtle Japanese pattern of gold dust and cocoa powder on the plates, Patrick leaned his hands on the marble counter and gave Luc a bright, expectant look. Patrick always looked—and acted—like a surfer, all bronze-haired and half-shaved and goofy, with a lithe, relaxed way of moving, but his work was brilliant, so Luc put up with him. Fine, actually, he liked him, and it was going to be a severe wrench when Patrick abandoned the nest to set up his own place. As he would be doing any day now, probably. Patrick was ready to fly.

  The very idea made Luc more brooding, more bitter. He could just sink into this fucking nastiest winter in history and never have any sunshine in his life, anywhere, how about that?

  “And here I was thinking you came in on time to get to work,” Luc said.

  Patrick made a pffing gesture with one hand. “I’ve got more important priorities going on here, mec. Gossip.”

  “You know I don’t gossip, Patrick. Especially about myself.”

  Of course, Patrick ignored that. Patrick had a real gift for ignoring things and still managing to come out ahead. “I heard you carried off a princess. In your foul clutches and everything.”

  “Foul?”

  “Well, your obsessively clean clutches, but admit it doesn’t have the same ring. Is she as pretty as they say? Can I come rescue her from your fell dungeons?”

  “I’m sure she’s comfortable in them.” An image flashed through his mind of her wrapped in that heavy silk rose comforter like some princess’s sleeping bag, her lashes drifting down over the circles under her eyes. His idiotic heart squeezed. Should he have walked out and left sunlight unguarded that way?

  Sunlight didn’t need protection, he reminded himself. It was a huge gas ball millions of miles away, and no one could hurt it, or even threaten it. Best practices for dealing with sunlight involved a lot of sunscreen and minimizing exposure.

  A little shiver ran over his left pectoral in the shape of his name. Traced through a thick shirt by a slim, raw-nailed finger. He didn’t want to minimize exposure. He wanted to invade her body and her mind with everything in him and have her close around him in welcome.

  “Yes, but pining,” Patrick said enthusiastically. “Pining for a prince to rescue her from the evil sorcerer king. Or should I think of you more as the Lord of Hell?”

  “Patrick.” Luc placed one hand flat on the marble, stretching out his fingers. Callused, they held the long, lean elegance one might expect from a pianist, and even more strength. Piano keys didn’t weigh very much, and even the best piano players didn’t practice sixteen hours a day. “These are not clutches.”

  Patrick grinned and placed his own hand beside Luc’s, inspecting them. Patrick’s palm was squarer, the tips of his fingers broader, the hair on the backs of his hands golden. Both men’s hands could play cat’s cradle with a bit of hot sugar and spin it into a net to toss over a dream.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Patrick said. “That’s an evil sorcerer hand if I ever saw one. Look at that black hair. I’m pretty sure the golden boy gets to be Prince Charming. Plus, you’re mean.”

  “Making you redo a screwed-up job is not mean, Patrick.”

  “And you’re so controlled. That’s got to be an evil sorcerer trait.”

  “I thought evil sorcerers got to act on insane rages with wild, diabolical laughter.” He had always been a little jealous of evil sorcerers, in fact.

  “You watch too many Disney films at one in the morning,” said the person who was inventing a fairy tale with an outrageous wave of his hand. “I’m quite sure real evil sorcerers are excessively controlled.” He gave Luc a pointed look. “Just speaking from my personal experience about how evil that feels to the rest of us. Which makes last night’s gossip all the more interesting,” he added, exaggerating his manner like a dog enthusiastically salivating over something juicy. “I heard she cracked that control like a raw egg.”

  Luc gritted his teeth.

  Eggs slipped into Patrick’s hands as smoothly as a magician’s trick and cracked neatly into a pan, deep golden yolks glowing. “I need to get her to tell me her secrets.” Patrick smiled smugly down at the whites already starting to cook over the gas burner.

  Luc gave the pathetic eggshells lying on top of the nearest trash can a hard look. “There’s no secret, Patrick. It has to be all over the hotel. She tried to tip me to carry her bags to her room.” It wasn’t in his nature to confide in anyone, but there were some things that rankled too much even for him.

  Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “She did wh—? Putain!” He gave his head a stunned shake. “Merde. Bordel. You?” As he thought about it some more, a grin slowly rose through his first shocked sympathy, and he started to laugh helplessly. “Sorry, Luc. Pardon. But since you think you’re God, there’s a side to that that’s pretty damn hilarious.”

  Luc gave Patrick a narrow look, then dipped his head to focus on his work and allowed the hidden corner of his mouth to curl. “I do not think I am God,” he said with deliberate emphasis.

  Patrick grinned. “That’s why I worship you, mec. There’s really no question as to your godhood. Now allow one of your humble acolytes to rid you of this rude princess. I’m sure, if she’s as pretty as everyone is saying, that I could take care of her for you.”

  The half smile disappeared off Luc’s face. “Patrick. Stay away from Summer Corey, or I’m going to be lord of your own personal little hell.”

  Patrick’s tawny eyebrows flicked up a little. “Sérieuse-ment?” He slanted Luc a vivid glance as he set the perfectly fried e
ggs on a custom-designed fifty-dollar white plate and, with one deft flick of his wrist, slid it ten feet down the marble counters to stop precisely in front of their intern, Sarah, just beneath the cutting board she was about to set there. Sarah Lin, the American who had abandoned her engineering career to train in French pastry in Paris, stiffened, that perpetual self-pressuring crinkle of her eyebrows relaxing just for a second in surprise. Her eyes flew to Patrick’s back. Patrick never even glanced over to see her reaction, already prepping plates again. “What an interestingly villainous thing for you to say.” He gave Luc a fond pat on the shoulder. “Not that it would change anything: You already are, mec. You already are.”

  A weight lay on Summer’s sleep like a heavy, warm body, and whenever stress tried to prickle her awake, she just snuggled into that heavy warmth and sank back into the depths of sleep, oddly cosseted.

  When she woke, she couldn’t remember where she was. No sound of waves, no smell of tiare, no humid heat.

  She opened her eyes and stared straight at the Eiffel Tower. Serene and dark against a gray sky, framed by the foot-wide silver scrollwork of the perfectly placed picture window.

  Oh, it’s you, Summer realized. Oh, damn it, you got me again.

  What was it with this city that made parents think it was such a perfect place to get rid of their kids? The trashcan of the rich and famous.

  She rolled on her back so she didn’t have to look at the gloating iron bitch through her window anymore and instead got a sumptuous view of the heavy rose and pearl-gray silk drapes over the embroidered headboard. Even though she closed her eyes, her inevitable glimpses of the room seemed to ripple its image around her, as if she was a pebble lost in it: the heavy silk and embroidery of the cushions and art deco chairs, the muted, elegant rose-and-gray tones, the perfect mahogany wood floor.

  She threw her arm over her face. Images flooded her mind, shell leis thrown on the water so she would come back, her father’s hard determination when he had kicked her out of paradise, her mother’s laughing refusal to understand, all her schoolkids. And black eyes looking down at her, a firm sculpted mouth softening.

  Her eyes widened under the shelter of her arm, her lashes tickling her skin, as she remembered that mouth. Her own mouth softened helplessly, hungrily. She scrubbed both hands over her face abruptly, dashing the softness away. What had she been thinking?

  She wanted to get back to heat and sea and happiness. She did not want to get caught in some Greek god’s toils and be stuck here.

  It was probably just as well that he was likely to sue her for sexual harassment. It was probably just as well that he had turned on his heel and left her, burning her with his contempt. It was probably just as well that Greek gods had a lousy reputation for cuddles. A woman could get in real trouble with a man who knew how to cuddle when she was stuck in an elegant hotel room in the unhappiest place on earth.

  She climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom.

  Where 180 degrees of glass displayed her like a sacrificial virgin to Paris, spread out below her. Who thought up these things? Even if you could trust no one to be out there with a telescope, who wanted to take a shower with the Eiffel Tower looking down her nose at you?

  She gave the Eiffel a silky, sweet smile. Fuck you. My water is warm at least, and you’re out there getting drenched in forty-degree rain.

  The Eiffel Tower kept glowing as if she didn’t give a damn what Summer thought of her, which she never had. Meanwhile, all of Paris condensed itself in Summer’s imagination into one black-haired, beautiful, naked man looking down at her own naked body with some hauteur, and she felt her nipples peak.

  Great.

  Summer turned her back on both the Eiffel and that imagined beautiful man, but then just felt as if both were watching her naked wet ass, with a little critical moue: Pas mal.

  She had never considered herself an exhibitionist, primarily because she wasn’t that introspective. So desire hit her so hard and so fast that she had to curl her hand around the showerhead, stunned by its impact: Desire to have somebody pushing her back against that shower wall, a human shield, blocking the world out of her mind even while she thumbed her nose at it. Protecting her and taking her.

  The body that pushed her back was golden, the hair dark, and that shouldn’t have scared her, since her fantasy lovers always had matte skin and black hair, gorgeous Polynesian sea-gods.

  But this man was a stranger, with a face forged by fire and cool dismissive eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut tight on her own fantasy, blurring his face in her brain, something that forged face resisted adamantly.

  Let him just stay a stranger. Okay? Nothing wrong with the sex-with-a-stranger, exhibitionist shower fantasy, was there? She could guarantee she wouldn’t be the first woman to indulge in it.

  And the nice thing about a fantasy was she could dismiss him when she wanted to.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Summer got out of the shower, a linen-lined basket of golden financiers sat on the table like a gift of sunshine. One of the little gestures to welcome guests, no doubt. The buttery fresh scent drew her, heat from them caressing her outstretched palm. She started to touch one, oddly consoled against the vista of cold, rainy Paris misery, when there was a knock on the door.

  “Summer!” Her mother flung her arms around her, but peeled almost instantly back to get a good look at her. Scent flowed around Summer, not one she recognized. Once, as a child, Summer had snuck into her mother’s bathroom and tested out every perfume in her cabinet so that she would know what her mother might smell like the next time she saw her. It hadn’t worked. Too little to use tissue as testers instead of her own skin, she had ended up, toward the end, spraying little bits on each toe, having run out of all her other body parts, trying to keep the different perfumes apart. Her mother still laughed about the cacophony of scents when she told the story to friends. “How I wish I could have taken a picture of that! She had such a headache afterward, too, poor sweetie.”

  Not that Mai Corey had ever realized why her daughter had done it. Summer had gotten this idea she might need to find her mother in a dark maze and was trying to practice.

  “A spa.” Her mother touched the corners of Summer’s eyes. “We’ve got to get that sand scrubbed off you. Honey, you’re going to need more than just exfoliation if you keep this up.” She double-checked the corners of her own eyes and smiled with relief. Summer had been told many times that she and her mother could be twins. But today anyone could tell them apart by Summer’s too-tanned skin, her ragged, sun-bleached hair, her rough nails. “And what are you wearing?” her mother asked incredulously of Summer’s cotton, hibiscus-printed blue sundress and bare feet. “Oh, Summer.” Her eyebrows crinkled for a moment in pure confusion. “Thank goodness your father finally figured out a way to get you off that island.”

  “I don’t want to be off the island,” Summer pointed out. “I’m happy there.”

  “Summer. You told me yourself when we flew out there that you didn’t even have a boyfriend. How could you possibly be happy? Now come on, we’ve got four years of shopping to make up for, honey, before tonight’s gala.” Her mother spread her arms and waltzed through the room. “Oh, honey, I’m so happy to see you back in Paris again. This is going to be fun!”

  “Maman.” American by birth, just as her husband and daughter were, Mai Corey had always asked Summer to call her “maman.” So much more elegant. Summer took a slow, purposeful breath, the way she had been training herself to do, and tried something she hadn’t tried in a long time—honesty with her mother. “You do realize that I feel like I’m dying when I’m in Paris, don’t you? I hate it here.”

  Her mother paused in front of a mirror and gave her daughter a crinkled, worried look in it. Then she laughed. “Oh, Summer, what am I going to do with you? You are so spoiled. How could you possibly not be happy here?” Swooping up the basket of financiers, she upended them merrily in the trash. “Although you have to watch out!” she laughed
, grabbing Summer’s arm and heading her out the door, with a pinch of her waist. “Those chefs here will get you if they can.”

  “You found them in the trash?”

  Frederic winced and tried to look away from the empty basket Luc held in his hands. “You did ask,” he muttered.

  “All of them,” Luc said very evenly. “All of them in the trash.”

  The little basket of sunshine he had sent for her to discover as—what, exactly? He didn’t know how to say it in words, only with financiers. Little golden cakes that said things like I’m sorry for leaving you cold like that, here’s some warmth. Or, This is golden and warm and real, and is it at all possible that your golden, warm smile is real, too? Or, Think of me. I’m thinking of you. Do I taste good?

  See, a basket of his financiers was so much more elegant and compelling than all those words. And a hell of a lot safer way to express himself.

  The trash. His wrist flicked so that the empty basket landed hard on the room service cart as he turned around.

  And straightened immediately at the sight of the man who had just come in through the back door, one hand slipping into his pocket, the other extending. “Monsieur.”

  His foster father, whose degree of self-containment even Luc had never been able to entirely emulate, gave the basket a look of restrained indignation. “Someone threw your financiers in the trash?”

  “We get anorexic blondes from time to time.” Luc made his voice bored. Although she hadn’t felt anorexic in his arms. She had felt lithe and slender, a supple blend of muscles and softness, not bony. And she had felt tired and something else, clinging to him as if he was hauling her out of the depths of hell.

  Bernard Durand shook his neatly cut, gray-brown head. “She would have to be very spoiled not to appreciate you.” He gave his foster son that look that realigned Luc’s reason for being, that made him want to jump through any hoop out there, a look that held a world full of tightly contained pride. “You want to show me that Victoire of yours? I saw you on TV last night, but the camera crew missed the most important steps. How did you do that one?”