The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  Otherwise he would have to import the strawberries from South Africa or get them greenhouse grown, but sometimes you just had to steal spring into your life any way you could.

  “Oh, look,” Summer said from under the table. “It’s a little cupcake button. I never saw this one before. Your majesty, you should have this one.” She poked up to set it on the table in front of him. It was pink.

  He really should have known she had an affinity for other people’s buttons. “I do not make cupcakes,” he said between his teeth. Unless . . . “Do you like them?”

  Something flashed through her eyes—what was that roar of feeling she hid so quickly?—and then she disappeared under the table again. “I don’t know. Are they sweet?” she called back up merrily.

  If he ever made a cupcake for her, she might end up wearing the damn thing. On her face, or . . . actually he might rather smash it on her breasts, and . . . control. Don’t let her do this to you.

  “Do you want an unfinished hem?” Jeannine asked of his sketch. “To give it that pseudo-rustic touch? Or something very elegant, like a queen’s handkerchief?”

  “Unfinished. Give it an element that feels real.” Like you could actually reach out and touch it and it wouldn’t disappear on you with a smile and a promise of a yacht.

  “Like it’s not completely removed from life?” Summer murmured below, a little button clinking into the tin she held.

  He was the one completely removed from life? He filled lives with wonder, while she swung in a hammock on an island and . . . taught schoolkids, fine, in a place so remote that it apparently frequently lost electricity, but—

  “How many do you need?” Jeannine asked. He tried to focus. Not usually something he found hard to do.

  “Could you make eight hundred?”

  “As long as we can use one of the machines to embroider the logo and your name,” Jeannine said sternly. “Don’t start with your hand-embroidered spiel.”

  Luc folded his hands behind his back and fixed dark eyes on her.

  Jeannine made a humphing sound. “I don’t know where you learned to look at a woman like that, but it should be outlawed. I’ll see what we can do about the hand embroidery. Maybe my daughter would like to do some while she’s at home with the baby. No promises. But we’ll get you eight hundred, perhaps machine-stitched, by Valentine’s.”

  “The weekend before, really,” Luc said. “Since Valentine’s is midweek. You know we book up then.”

  “Anyone would think you were a very spoiled child,” Jeannine said severely. But he had a suspicion she knew he hadn’t been, because she laughed and reached out to squeeze his arm. It was funny how hungry he was, to this day, for touches like that—casual, friendly, breaking through his isolation.

  “I love you, Jeannine,” he said, quite sincerely, and she waved her hand at him and blushed, not buying it for a second.

  Summer poked her head out from under the table and studied him.

  “So how is it, exactly, that I look at you?” he asked Jeannine curiously to help him ignore Summer while the seamstress drew a copy of the linen he’d sketched, noting measurements. “That you say should be outlawed?”

  Jeannine waved her hand. “All that pent-up passion and you being so ruthless with it. We feel sorry for it. Plus, I figure passion is like the universe. You can compress it down into a tiny dot, but eventually it’s going to explode again.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have asked this question with Summer Corey in the room. “Origin of the universe theories? You read too much, Jeannine. Shouldn’t you be resting your eyes when you get home?”

  “Audio books are a wonder,” she retorted, as he turned away and headed past Summer to the door. “I’ve got a long Métro trip.”

  “Careful!” Summer snuck her fingers under his foot so fast she had to be trying to make him step on her.

  He didn’t, of course. Reflexes honed from much greater challenges than her, he didn’t even brush against her.

  “There’s the beast,” Summer called to Jeannine, holding up a carved black button. He caught a glimpse of a wild, fanged face as he opened the door. “I knew it was around here somewhere. Although myself, I still think it’s really supposed to be the Lord of Hell.”

  CHAPTER 8

  And another day. Summer finished writing postcards to each of her twenty-one schoolkids, packaged them up with various new toys and mementos from Paris that were going to make their eyes light with joy, and looked at her calendar, counting the eighty more days between her and escape.

  Not so bad, right? She had gotten through ten days. She was miserable, but God, she had been far more miserable than this, and with no end in sight to it, either. Five years, her time in that boarding school. She could do three months.

  She tried and failed to get through to her schoolkids via a video link. Connections must be out again—they really did need another satellite in that region. Funny how when people talked about what a wonderful philanthropist her father was—because he did give away a huge chunk of change—they mostly remained oblivious to how much that philanthropy worked to other purposes, always getting him something he wanted in exchange. Even from his own daughter.

  She thought about pretending to help run the hotel, but for God’s sake, Alain had enough to suffer through just having her here. So she added some more photos to the island ones she kept scrolling on her big-screen television, playing with the different options for the slideshow until she really didn’t have any excuse to play with them anymore. She loved those photos. They reminded her that sunshine and happiness did exist somewhere, and she had found it for herself, and she would get back to it very soon.

  She supposed she could have read a book or something after that, but by then the solitude of the room was eating at her, bringing back all those years of loneliness. On her island, she had finally found a place where she could shower love on people and get loved back, and being separated from it . . . God, it was like this place was sucking her down into an old black quagmire, drowning her in that muck.

  She picked up her stack of phone messages. No women, of course. Women never liked her. Well, except for on Manunui, her island, but that was probably because she was such an exotic there she was easier to tolerate. Plus, she lived like a damned nun. Old boyfriends—a lot of those. At least three of them were married. Enough paper slips with journalists’ names on them to start her own little bonfire. Penthouse, Playboy . . . she crumpled them up hard and tossed them in the trash. Men whose names were only vaguely familiar, meaning they were people working a tenuous connection in the hopes of landing her and through her, her father. Her father might be encouraging some of them. A porn filmmaker. The industry must have some fresh blood in it, ignorant of what had happened to the last person who tried to approach her with a porn film offer, back when she was in college. Her father had destroyed an entire film house. Lashing her viciously all the while for having behaved in a way that would “encourage them to think she would be willing.”

  Vincent Morin.

  She stopped at that, a chill rising all along the back of her neck, and her stomach knotting into nausea. Oh, God. How dare he? Hadn’t her father obliterated him? Had he climbed his way back? One word to her father, and the man would be history again, but oh, God . . . nausea threatened to overwhelm her at the thought of what her father might say to her again. The memories.

  She shoved herself away from the desk and gave the Eiffel Tower one vicious glare through the curtain of rain. The empty hotel room pressed on her like some fist trying to squeeze every last bit of life out of her heart, but Summer knew exactly how the rain would spatter cold against her legs if she walked the length of the Seine under a big umbrella to get away from that loneliness. She had done it so many times. She had tried all kinds of colors of umbrellas: rainbow, pink with glittering silver sparkles, a jaunty yellow. In the end, the umbrella might as well be black. All the others just made you feel more pitiful, more desperate, that loneliness trailing behind
you and curling back around you at every opportunity like a vampire’s cloak.

  She hauled on the old Harvard sweatshirt she always kept with her. XXL, swamping her. She had bought it once after a breakup, after she had returned yet another boyfriend’s sweatshirt, during her college years, and thought that maybe the warmth and reassurance she was seeking needed to come from her. It had been the beginnings of a change, but it had still taken years in the islands to reach . . . well, her current pathetic point. Throwing herself at supposed bellmen and going out with men who wanted her father, just so she wouldn’t have to face the loneliness again.

  A text from her mother indicated that her parents were postponing their planned swing back through Paris yet again. “Love you, sweetie! Hope you’re having fun! Wish I could be in Paris with you!”

  She dropped the phone in the trash, but no matter how many times she did that, someone in housekeeping always fished it back out and put it on the little stand near the trashcan.

  She could go for a swim, or she could go to the Louvre, yet again. Or she knew one place where it was warm and she wouldn’t be alone. Where she would be distracted. She knew she wasn’t supposed to let herself go there, but . . .

  “So are we working on your captured heart today?” Patrick asked merrily, painting cones of dark chocolate with a rippling pattern of gold. Luc flicked him a quick, narrow glance.

  “Aïe!” Patrick ducked. “How many times do I have to talk to you about that look? I’ve got scars from that thing.”

  “Then don’t ask for it.” Was that why she called him the Lord of Hell? The way he could look at people when they were out of line?

  “It’s a reasonable question! If we’re going to put your heart on the menu, you have to warn me, as it’s the last thing I’ll ever get to make for the rest of my life. You know it’s going to be popular.”

  “It’s not my heart,” Luc said between his teeth. “And no. We’re not working on it today.” The photos of her and Derek Martin at that perfume launch had peppered the Web this morning. Summer’s face turned up to Derek’s dark one, smiling. Not even Patrick had dared put those on his corkboard.

  Patrick nodded thoughtfully. Pursed his lips in a silent whistle while he sprayed gold. Glanced at Luc. “Too sweet?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Patrick, you fu—”

  He broke off as the door opened and the kitchens went quiet.

  Quiet that lasted the length of a glance from Summer to Luc, a second of stillness. She gave them all that bright smile of hers. “Do you mind if I watch?”

  Just for his ear alone, Patrick gave an incredulous little huff. “Do you mind? You mean she doesn’t realize what a narcissist you are? You two need to work on your communication skills.”

  Luc ignored him, because it would give Patrick far too much pleasure if he reacted. “Not at all,” he told Summer, his heart starting to beat too hard. She wanted to watch him? Just—stand there and watch?

  Was this another manipulative game? Had she realized that weakness of his, how being the center of her focus would reduce him to pure craving? Had she any idea that when she asked to watch him, his whole body flooded with pure, sexual delight? He bet she did. She was bored, and he was an easy toy for her.

  She tucked herself up very small just inside the door, pressed back against the wall. Like she was trying to efface herself out of existence, which was ridiculous given her beauty. No one was going to forget her existence.

  Still, he tried, because what else was he supposed to do? Dance for her? Shake his little tambourine and hold out his upturned palm and hope she would put something in it? After she had dismissed his entire worth, over and over and over?

  He hated himself for the compulsion, but his body started performing for her anyway.

  Watch me. As he dipped the prongs of a whisk into caramel and whipped them through the air, spinning sugar off them like some Fairy King spinning gold into sunlight.

  She folded her hands behind her, tucked firmly back against the wall. No, don’t resist. Come here. Catching the hair-fine sugar in his hands, making a net of it to settle over a tiny, stubborn dark heart.

  Coolness emanated off his team toward her, since she kept negating their entire worth by not eating sweets. Only Patrick gave her a quirky, inviting grin, and, just for Luc’s ears, a wolf whistle.

  Seriously, Luc might kill him someday.

  Come here. Look. Look at what I’m doing, right now, crave it, come in reach.

  She stood so quietly. In a giant sweatshirt from Harvard that made him want to kill someone. What old boyfriend had given it to her, that she still turned to it whenever she wanted to be wrapped up in warmth? What had she done with Luc’s own coat, hung it up amid a mass of garments collected from all the men overwhelmed by the instinct to hide her, protect her, make her theirs?

  It was surreal, how steady and quiet Summer Corey was, the beachcomber diva who smiled at men as if she expected their world to turn on it. As simple and still as a ray of light that had slipped through a high window by mistake. He might as well have been some shriveled pale bean sprout left in a closet as an experiment, finally given sunlight. He could feel himself expanding, leaves unfurling, as she watched him.

  Was she going to stand there until he went insane? Her presence prickled over his skin, no matter how fast he moved, no matter how lithe and strong and in control he showed his body to be.

  Crack. Look at what I’m making. Come over here and I’ll put it in your mouth. You don’t even have to beg. You just have to crack. Not me for you. You for me.

  He could hold her in his hands and put all her pieces back together again. His palms itched to take that raw perfect essence of her and stroke her into one pure expression of ecstasy.

  Allez, soleil. Crack. Or, merde, at least come here.

  “What is she doing?” he murmured to Patrick when he ducked into the refrigerator for a second to try to cool himself off. “Why doesn’t she . . .” Walk up and run her finger straight down his body to his dick, or whatever she was likely to do next. She was driving him so crazy, he couldn’t tell.

  A curious glint in Patrick’s blue eyes as he reached for some cream. “Did it ever occur to you that she might be shy?”

  The woman who walked up to men and ripped their souls right out of their bodies for her casual amusement? “No. It didn’t occur to me. She has a Penthouse spread about her, merde.” More an article, really, about how all the men she touched turned to gold, but they’d included some maddening photos. He could tell they were touched up and that a body double had been used, but it made him writhe with fury to think of other men looking at them. He should sure as hell not have looked her up on Google.

  Patrick sighed and shook his head. “You know, Luc, for someone so creative, you have an incredible lack of imagination when it comes to other people. Do you think it comes from self-absorption?”

  “What the hell are you even talking about, Patrick? You only ever see me with people who work for me. What am I supposed to be imagining about them?”

  Patrick gave him a deeply annoyed look and left the refrigerator. Meaning Luc had to go back out, too, because he would be damned if he’d let Summer’s eyes rest with such absorption on Patrick instead of him.

  He couldn’t claim she was disturbing him, Summer thought. Or being a spoiled brat. She knew how not to disturb driven, focused men. If you tucked yourself far away from everything amazing and were really quiet, they didn’t mind.

  Of course, she couldn’t stop her thoughts: Stop working and look at me. I’m so cold in this city, and you . . . are so dark and hot.

  Why did he have to be so beautiful? That gold-bronze skin, the forged, perfect face and fine, sensual mouth, the black eyes that saw everything, even—with occasional brief indifference—her. His grace and control coiled need in her, tighter and tighter, until it wanted to burst out of her like a spring.

  Damn it, that was the last time she went celibate for three years. Time to move on to
the Aladdin’s Cave pantry or the Coudrerie or some other, safer distraction. She took a breath and started to force herself away from the wall.

  “Luc.” Alain Roussel came through the door, followed by a small woman in a turquoise wool coat, her curly brown hair stuffed into a clip that couldn’t contain it, a camera clicking already. “Pardon. Ellie Layne is here. Remember, you said she could come get some pictures of you putting together a dessert for her blog?”

  Luc glanced up and smiled.

  Something punched through Summer’s middle and left her floundering at the huge hole left behind. He could smile? That sensual mouth curling, his eyes full of passion and a brilliant, glowing warmth. The camera flashed.

  He had that in him? But never once an inkling of it for her?

  She had told him she had been traveling and seasick for four days before she’d insulted him with that tip. How unforgiving and perfectionistic was he? And what had Ellie Layne done that was so perfect?

  “Ellie,” Luc said. He sounded amused. Friendly. For crying out loud, he could be friendly? “How are you?” Luc came around the counter to give the blogger a kiss on each cheek. “You’re going to ruin your nice coat.”

  Oh, come on, Summer thought, outraged. It was turquoise. In Paris. In the winter.

  “Here.” He hadn’t even acknowledged Summer’s presence for an hour, but he took Ellie’s coat off for her and tucked it up safe in his glass-walled office. And came back with a chef ’s jacket for her to wear, probably one of his own, while he himself had changed into that stylish white shirt he wore for the cameras. The one that made him look so freaking hot.

  Ellie, meanwhile, was burbling. So much happiness sparkled off her in all directions, Summer was surprised it didn’t sizzle when it hit the counters. “I can’t believe—your kitchens—thank you, Monsieur Le—I mean, Luc.” She clasped her hands over her camera and caught herself mid-bounce on her toes, trying to contain herself.