Summer was silent for a long moment. And then, low, “Obviously that would be a spoiled thing to do, wouldn’t it? No. No, I don’t know what I could possibly have been thinking. I’ll apologize.”
After all, obviously when a woman offered a beautiful, exceptional man a yacht to run away with her, and he left her lying on the damn bed and walked out, an apology on her part was in order.
The first step into the kitchens shocked the smile off Summer’s face. Hundreds of milling souls, fermenting chaos, lava bubbling, geysers shooting up, cries of “Hot, hot, hot!” “Chaud, chaud, chaud!” and the caught souls ducking away, pressing to their counters.
Oh, wow, this was so much better than her lonely, elegant hotel room. Or wandering around the echoing vastness of the Louvre, trying to force her mind to dwell on the art, until the museum guards kicked her out at closing and forced her to slink back to her boarding school, the way she used to the last time she lived in Paris.
Fascinated, Summer stepped forward. Metal clanged. Figures in white twisted around each other between open flames and boiling liquids as if they had been doing this for all eternity. Counters and stoves and stainless steel stretched in all directions. Black demons slipped in and out, tuxedoed waiters carrying great trays.
She pushed deeper, staring at flesh being hacked with great butcher knives, entrails being twisted, blood boiling over a low flame. Blades flew over roots and fruits of the earth she didn’t even have a name for. White souls glanced at her occasionally, solidifying into chefs who were wondering what she was doing in hell.
“May I help you?” someone asked when she nearly ran into him as she rounded a corner. One quick hand touched her shoulder to steady her and then dropped politely away.
She looked up at a lazy smile, a sun-gilt, golden-brown Achillean hero who had got caught down here by accident, or maybe a confused surfer who should be hanging out watching for waves on some Hawaiian beach. He wore white chef ’s attire, as did most of the people around her, but was bareheaded, no toque or white cap. “Just exploring. I’m Summer Corey.”
“Merde. I was afraid of that. I suppose that means you’re looking for him.” He stepped back to reveal Luc Leroi.
Luc concentrated completely, not looking at her at all, that black hair clinging damply to his temples. She locked on him and all the chaos coalesced around her. A ferment of dangerous, beautiful creativity, completely controlled by that darkness at its center. A rich, complex dance where everyone knew his role, and those weren’t screams, just firm calls of warning as a great bubbling pot was carried from a stove to wherever its contents were needed.
He was working on something beautiful, and it was crazy how powerful need ran through her suddenly, for him to ignore it in her favor. Put me between you and that beautiful thing you’re working on, forget everything but me, make me forget everything but you.
Yeah, right. Not that she would have any trouble forgetting everything else, but she was trying not to be such a damned idiot about what she expected from men like him.
His focus had no room for her. Seeing it explained a lot about how easy he had found it to dismiss her. Amazing how driven men could do that, shut her out like she was nothing. The concentration that let him achieve so many great things was a black hole for her, sucking all her light toward it until she felt she could be pulled through it into something beautiful.
She had always wanted to be sucked into the black hole. To see what was so impossibly wonderful that it was more important than anything she could do or be or say.
Being screwed-up doesn’t mean you have to yield to your own screwed-upness, Summer.
But still, she drew closer, even as she fought the pull. All her father’s complex projects had been in his head, on his computer, things a child could never see. She could only see him not seeing her. Here, the fruit of Luc’s concentration formed into incredible fantasy under his hands. She couldn’t help looking at it: Something soft and gold nestled safely in a net of darkness, while the black-haired pâtissier carved holes in that chocolate darkness so that the gold heart was protected from the world, but not shut away from it.
She took a hard breath and looked away, trying to breathe under a high, crashing wave.
No. Oh, no.
She wasn’t going to start letting desserts have power over her again.
Especially not wielded by someone like him. Even right up close, she didn’t penetrate his concentration.
What was it with her? After three damn years of celibacy, of getting her act together, how had she possibly, on pure instinct alone, looked around a lobby of strangers and picked out the one man who could ignore her as completely and utterly as her father had? How had she let herself be reduced so instantly to that little girl begging for attention again?
Another step.
Look at me. See how pretty I am. At least look.
She needed a therapist.
Luc didn’t even glance at her. Long, lean, controlled hands flecked the heart with gold leaf.
Her own heart hurt so much, so suddenly. Her own heart wanted to ask, Why do you take so much better care of that one than me?
And then she did a bad thing. The kind of thing she used to do to her father, when she was still little and brave enough, or to boyfriends, in the early days of hope, only then it was usually a computer mouse she jiggled. This time she just reached out and touched his wrist.
The chocolate net shattered, pieces spilling to either side of the golden heart. Summer jerked back and ran into someone who steadied her with a light touch on her shoulder before disappearing in the fluid dance of bodies around her.
I didn’t mean to ruin it. She almost yielded to the urge to turn tail and run. Instead, she set her shoulders, lifted her chin, and waited for his anger to burst over her. And at last he looked at her.
Luc had known the instant she stepped into the kitchens, from the shift in activity, and his teeth sharpened, a lion for a gazelle. Oh, so she didn’t like sweets, did she? Watch this.
Because he had figured out that dessert for her. It wasn’t something melting and gold held in a palm of darkness. It was something melting and gold entirely surrounded, a sphere of darkness that held it prisoner, that wouldn’t let it get away. And the mousse of the melting heart would be—passion fruit. Tropical, delicate, unforgettable. Saying, Take me, oh, no, sorry, you can’t, I’m only his. Held in this embrace of darkness.
He lured her in step by step. Knowing exactly what was happening to her, the way her mouth was watering, her body melting, the way temptation was rising in her until she was ready to beg for a taste. He would grant that taste with a smile and watch her get lost in him. Unable to find her way back out. You think I want a pathetic yacht? When I could have you?
That elusive sunshine gilded over him. His chest tightened in hunger. I’ve got her. She’s mine. Maybe no one else could catch sunshine, but these days he could do even that. It was what, after all, he had worked so hard to learn how to do.
Control. It was all about control. The only way he could share his soul and turn it into a form no one could resist. This is the sublime. This is who I am. Don’t you ever drop money carelessly in my hand. But when you drop yourself—see how well my hands will take care of you?
Rich, feral satisfaction surged through him as she took that last step. As she reached, uncontrollably, for that chocolate sphere.
And then her touch on his wrist ripped his soul right out of its firm seating and lodged it under those two fingers, pulsing madly against them like a caught human heart. The chocolate shattered. She jerked back.
And his whole world swirled dizzily. No. No, don’t go, come back, I think you have my heart stuck to your fingers.
She rubbed her thumb over the two fingertips that had touched his pulse, as if she felt something unfamiliar there. Something unfamiliar and a little sticky that she needed to wash off.
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes flicked from the mess to him. “I didn’t mean to—”
She relaxed visibly at his quiet tone. Had she been hearing stories about temperamental chefs and imagined him throwing pans at her head? If she thought he was capable of losing control so easily, he had only himself to blame.
“I just—you weren’t looking at me,” she said and bit her lip too late to catch the words back.
No, you weren’t looking at me. “I’m looking at you now.”
She flushed. His fingertips caressed the marble counter in hunger for the heat of her skin. They stood completely still as chefs and assistants brushed by everywhere. “Is there something I can help you with, Mademoiselle Corey? Did you want to see how we work, perhaps?”
Oh, yes, his whole body shouted fiercely, watch me. Grow all absorbed in me. Unable to look away.
Her eyes flickered to his with a flash of pure hunger.
Yes! Triumph licked him, thorough hot licks of her mouth on his skin. Oh, yes, I can make you hunger for me.
And then her smile turned her whole beautiful, luminous, delicate face into something so impossibly wonderful that his hands—his hands—almost shook with the need to grab it to him, to crush it to him, and never let it get away. His hands. Shaking. Crushing.
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to disturb you.” She sent a rueful glance at the utter mess she had made of his—her heart. “They always did say I shattered their concentration.”
The “they” she used, in French, was masculine, ils. Jealousy burned across his palms, pushing their urge to crush her to him. “Who?”
“Oh”—she waved a dismissive, amused hand—“my father. Boyfriends.”
He had been controlling insanely temperamental people—including himself—in kitchens for all his adult life. And he had never realized he had a jaw muscle that could tighten quite that way. “I’m not your father. And I’m most certainly not one of your boyfriends.”
Again that little shimmer in her smile, as if it had slid and settled back into place. Did she do it on purpose, the way she made that silk dress shiver over her body, until a man wanted to lock her in some dark closet with him and spend the night just running his hands over and over that silk against her skin? Fighting himself for control, to make her his and his and his again without cracking?
“Oh, dear, of course not,” she said lightly and reached up to touch his jaw in caressing condescension, right there in front of his whole team. The touch hissed through him. “I forgot we were still working out the details on that. It’s such a quandary, about that yacht.” She tapped her lower lip with the finger of one hand while the other stroked down from his jaw to smooth the shoulder of his chef ’s jacket, driving him completely insane with the need to strip it off, to feel that stroke against his bare skin. “I can’t think what else to . . .” Her eyes lit. “I know. What about a penthouse apartment?”
Their eyes locked. Rage roared up in him like a furnace, and he clamped. Locked it down. “I don’t think so,” he said very precisely. His whole team had just heard her offer him a fucking penthouse apartment as if she was upping her bid on a whore.
“Oh, dear.” She looked anxious. “You are hard to buy presents for. Well.” Her hand patted his jaw again, and he hated himself for the arousal that shot through his body. “I’ll keep thinking.”
And then she turned and was gone, that blond head glimmering like some beautiful deity flitting back to heaven. Luc’s jaw was set so hard he thought he might break the bone. He had no other choice. It was either that or lose control. He pivoted. Multiple people gazing at him with shocked, rounded mouths suddenly ducked back to work in all directions.
Except for Patrick, who leaned over and inspected the oozing ruins of the chocolate-gold heart. “Aww. That’s so cute, Luc. You’ve finally let it out of its cage.”
CHAPTER 6
He sent it to her, the sphere, on a day when the rain sheeted down like the end of hope: a delicate ephemeral shield of chocolate around a treasure of gold so brilliant and so fragile that it seemed to pulse there, a frozen mousse coated in gold leaf, hiding, according to the waiter, a melting heart, begging someone to eat it up, swallow it whole . . . and crap it out later, she told herself harshly.
It lured her, just like it was supposed to. It taunted her with its efforts to control her. It made her hurt, wanting desperately to curl up inside some better shield than that fragile veil of chocolate threads, so no one could see her heart so easily and eat it, so no one could mock her for it.
She nearly shoved it off the table, the dessert she hadn’t ordered, and the waiter turned rather white. When he neared the door back into the kitchens with it, she saw him trying desperately to pass it on to some other waiter to take back instead of him.
“You’re hard to please,” the man sitting across from her said as if he liked that about her. He would, of course. If her father had given him her new phone number, he had to be ambitious and competitive. Mike Brodzik, one of his investment managers. Handsome and attentive and very, very interested in her father’s power. He was better than being alone.
She opened big eyes at him. “Oh, no,” she said with a limpid innocence, just to mess with everybody, especially herself. “I’m actually . . .” A slow, sweet smile straight into his eyes. “Very, very easy.”
Which kept his attention on her, all right, but made her kind of sick with disgust at herself. She wanted to go home.
When the fog crushed everything to gray, like the ghost of every misery past, he sent her three golden orbits of a star around a dark, proud mountain, the mountain a chocolate so pure and smooth it was like glass, to slide off, and hidden in amid the golden sugar orbits of the star, at the very peak of the mountain, a tiny delicate apple covered in gold leaf. She didn’t know what the tiny apple tasted like inside the gold, or what was in the mountain, or how easily those golden star orbits would shatter at her touch, because she sent it back. Of course. Her throat closing, her hand curling slow and hard against her thigh under the table, as she tried very hard not to cry out her protest, to beg for it back.
When the setting sun sucked the last life out of the day, like a blood-gorged tick, and she was ready to sell her soul not to be alone in the night, he sent her a glowing ball of red sugar in the form of a most perfect apple; its red glistened in the light of the chandeliers, drawing the eyes of all the diners as the waiter carried it to her. Setting it as he had clearly been trained, the waiter turned it precisely one quarter, so that the other side of the gleaming perfect red showed: white. “It’s called Pomme d’Amour,” the waiter said. The French word for caramel apple. Or Apple of Love. And that was no caramel apple. She wet her lips as she stared at that tempting, tempting red and white and what it might hide. She could just reach out and take it. Unlike when she was a child, no one could stop her. No one could withhold it from her. Except, of course, the man who’d made it, should he gain that power.
“I’ll kiss you,” the man across from her murmured, an old fling from her wild college days come to look her up. “If it puts you to sleep.”
Snow White, right.
“I don’t eat sweets,” she told the waiter for the fifteenth time and pushed it away. Inside, the child in her panted hard as she fought not to cry.
He sent her hot chocolate. It was waiting for her when she came in from the hotel’s little skating rink with a band of little kids. Summer was laughing, deeply relieved to know she was capable of being happy even here. Proud of herself, the girl who had mostly hung out with her own nanny as a kid, finally able to get a few kids to play with her. Maybe that was why she had ended up teaching school, she thought wryly. A hunger to play with other kids. But at any rate, the ability to find a rapport with small children that she had learned teaching in the islands seemed to stand her in good stead with these rich hotel strays. They reminded her so much
of herself that it broke her heart a little bit for them, and she played far too long in the iced-over courtyard, all of them coming in frozen.
The children were delighted to see the hot chocolate waiting for them, waiters pouring it from elegant pots into little doll cups.
The cup a waiter offered her was adult-size, smooth, curving warm and perfect against her palm. It almost got her, that sweet. The scent of it was heady, reminding her of how her nanny Liz would sneak her hot chocolate after bouts of skating exactly like this, their little secret from her parents who, as Liz knew, wouldn’t let her have dessert later.
It had been years before her mother realized it, and Mai had kept the transgression to herself, not letting her husband know. Summer had sat through the whole conversation with her mother with acid eating inside her tummy, terrified Liz would get fired. But Mai had concentrated on Summer’s own responsibilities: “Sweetheart, it’s your body. Do you want to be beautiful? Do you want people to love you?”
Summer closed her eyes and set the chocolate down. Because anything—even never tasting another bite of sugar in her life—would be better than letting those tangled memories of her past control her again.
The next day she was in the hotel playroom with the six-and-under crowd, tossing a plush custom-made elephant sporting the hotel logo back and forth with a three-year-old, when a great tumble of candy arrived. Little penny candies spilled artistically across a great tray from a paper bag: chocolate-covered marshmallow teddy bears, strawberries and bananas made of marshmallow dipped in bright red and yellow sugar, little orange and yellow gummy rings flavored with peach. Only they weren’t worth mere pennies, she saw as she drew closer, amid all the other delighted, excited children. They were made by hand, and the paper bag was not paper but constructed out of some near-translucent, edible sheets.
The Chocolate Heart Page 6