The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  What was that supposed to mean? “You’re just jealous.” He knew it could be a little wearing on other people, his insistence on being perfect absolutely all the time. But . . . it worked. By trying hard enough, he could be perfect.

  “Yeah, that has to be it,” Patrick said dryly.

  Neither man said anything for a long while. They just sat there and froze. “I suppose I’m going to have to give you a raise,” Luc sighed eventually.

  “Oh, sure,” Patrick said. “I mean, I’m precious. And giving me the chance to hit you once in a while only goes so far as a bonus. Although, putain, you have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to haul off and punch you. If I kiss Summer Corey again, do I get to hit you some more?”

  Involuntarily, Luc’s fist clenched. Damn it, where was his control?

  “I do,” Patrick said, delighted. “Well, merde, Luc. This could be a real stress reliever for me.”

  Luc half turned on him, rage surging back.

  Patrick’s eyes glinted. He scrubbed his hand elaborately over his bruised mouth. “Look. I’m wiping it off, see? It’s all gone. I can’t even remember what she tasted like.”

  So Luc hit him again.

  It was better than losing his control with Summer, after all.

  “You are in serious shit,” Patrick said after that bout. “You nearly got us arrested that time. You’re giving me moral qualms, mec, it’s like shooting a sitting duck. Plus, you’ve got to think of your hands: neither one of us is going to be able to do anything decent tomorrow, with our hands all bruised, and we’ve got a banquet of five hundred. I’ll tell you what: I think she’s a pretty little sweetheart, and if she needs someone to snatch her up, I’m more than happy to do it. But since you’ve got it so desperately bad . . . go after her yourself, merde, and I won’t.”

  “I am,” Luc said between gritted teeth. “Unlike you, I want her to know my name first.”

  Patrick gave that some thought and finally shook his head. “Well, that’s fucking fastidious. But isn’t that just like you?”

  Luc sliced him with a look.

  Patrick shrugged. “I would wish you luck but I’m not sure you deserve it. Must be your humble sous-chef here isn’t understanding your technique. You might need to demonstrate it more clearly.”

  Luc shook his head, massaging his nape with one bruised hand. “She doesn’t like sweets,” he muttered.

  An eyebrow went up, and then Patrick’s white grin flashed. “I can’t claim to have ever tried you personally, Luc, but I bet you don’t taste sweet.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “No fucking way.” Luc glared at the damn spreadsheet on his screen, which never, ever wanted to add up in a way that made sense. But it had already been such a bad day, why the fuck not do accounts to top it off? I failed her, didn’t I? There in the lobby. I never fail at anything, but I think I keep failing her. “Go to hell, Sylvain.”

  Over the phone, Sylvain’s voice was rich as chocolate with amusement. “I told Cade you would say that. Here’s another idea: you can come over for dinner by yourself. We’ll invite Summer another time.”

  “And just happen to get the dates crossed? I’m busy, Sylvain.”

  “Fine, but dinner is a time-honored custom for getting to know a woman. As opposed to, say, dragging her off into an elevator or beating up on an employee in such an obscure way she doesn’t even realize it’s over her.”

  “She had a Penthouse spread, Sylvain. If she doesn’t know it was over her, she’s being deliberately obtuse.” Shy was one thing, but she knew damn well what she was doing when she breathed into his ear that she could get her mouth around almost anything.

  “Ha!” Sylvain’s chocolate voice got richer with gloating. “I told Cade I’d get it out of you. So it was over Summer.”

  “The next time we’re at a Championnat, Sylvain, I’m going to crush your pathetic chocolates into the ground.” Luc hung up. And accidentally took the call from Dominique coming in at the same time.

  “Luc. What the fuck? Are you having some kind of psychotic breakdown?”

  “Dom. Have I ever shown any urge to talk about my mental health with you before?”

  “You attacked one of your employees!”

  “It was Patrick, for God’s sake.”

  “Patrick! Luc.” Dom’s voice turned severe. “You know he hero-worships you.”

  “It wasn’t—” Luc broke off, torn between guilt and reason. Yes, Patrick did hero-worship him, in his very complicated way, but no, Patrick was not some vulnerable dependent he had just abused. “He kissed—” Luc stopped, cursing himself.

  “Fuck. Luc. This wasn’t over that spoiled blonde, was it? She got to you?”

  Did people think he was not human or something? Every other man in the world could salivate after her, but he was supposed to be immune? When she was running those careless fingers right through his soul like it was her dog’s fur?

  From inhuman because he was some kind of animal beneath them all, begging in the Métro, to inhuman because he had perfect deity status . . . how had he missed out on the chance to be real in the transition? He didn’t want to only be alive through what he made anymore. He wanted to pour himself into that little, beautiful body and—

  “What is she doing to you?” Dom asked, appalled.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Luc snapped.

  “Putain. Seems as if it would have been better to ruin your reputation and draw every restaurant critic out there down on your doors, looking for flaws, over something.”

  Dom was so annoyingly right sometimes. Luc hung up on him for it, glared at his fucking accounts, and then called Sylvain back. I can get you right, soleil. I can get you . . . exactly . . . perfect.

  It was raining again, heavily, as if to make up for the dry day when Summer hurried into the town car under the umbrella a doorman held for her. Cold drops spattered through her sexy filigree hose, making her flinch and shiver as she slid into her seat. She probably should be wearing jeans to have dinner with Cade and Jaime when the only other men around belonged to her cousins. She was so bad about this stuff. She just could not, in such intimidating company, release the one value that this elegant, ambitious world had always acknowledged in her: that of being able to draw all eyes in a room. Look at me, see my pretty dress, don’t I look pretty?

  She sighed, closing her eyes, and leaned forward to tell the driver to wait while she ran back and changed into jeans. No point alienating the only two women in Paris willing to allow her near their husbands.

  The door opened before she could speak, and a long, lean body slid in, matte-skinned, dark-haired, bringing with him a whisper of vanilla and—nutmeg?—and something crisp. Cade, she thought viciously as he relaxed back into his corner. Cade Corey was playing boarding school games. The car pulled away before she could regroup, into the strobe-play of dark and light in the wet streets. Water pounded on the roof and blurred the lights running like a string of diamonds up the Champs-Elysées.

  “I’m not interested,” Luc said. His body blended into the leather seats, darkness on darkness, black coat, black hair, black eyes.

  Her teeth snapped together, grinding in a way they hadn’t in years of Pacific peace. “Yes, all right, I got that.”

  “Not in the way you wanted,” he said, as pure and indifferent to her as the glossy night-black Seine rippling through the sheets of rain as they crossed over the Pont Alexandre III, lamps glowing.

  She stared at the string of wavering glowing bridges stretching all the way to a blurred and feeble Notre Dame, wondering how much it was possible to loathe someone. Damn you, Cade, did you actually mean well? Or was it just a boarding-school trick to bring the spoiled blond bitch down?

  “On a longer acquaintance, perhaps in different circumstances and an established relationship, if it’s something that turns you on . . .” He made a little moue, an opening of his hands and shrug of his elegant shoulders. “I wouldn’t necessarily be averse.”

  “To a yacht?” Su
mmer asked dryly.

  He held her eyes, his jet-black like the Seine, jewel-lights dancing in them from every car and lamp they passed. “To a wall,” he said very gently.

  She flushed beet red, tearing her eyes away from his.

  “But I don’t leave women on the floor,” he mentioned, as the car slowed for the narrower streets in the Sixth Arrondissement. “Disturbing indication of your sense of self-worth as that idea may be.” The car drew to a halt. “Or perhaps of my worth.” He flicked his fingers as if ridding them of an unpleasant texture as the driver opened Summer’s door.

  She scrambled out under the great golf umbrella that the driver held for her. Luc slid across the seat and rose behind her, his body pressing full-length to hers as he took the umbrella. “We’ll call the hotel when we’re ready,” he told the other man, negotiating Summer’s body forward in tandem with his so they could keep the driver covered while he slipped back into his seat.

  He did that so easily, controlled her whole body. And she liked it so much. She fought not to lay her head back against his shoulder and yield herself to him.

  The rain closed them in an intimate bubble, giving her an excuse to stay close. She turned to look up at him—and gasped. One hand flew to her mouth and the other to stop just short of his cheek, for the first time clearly visible in the rain-dimmed circle of light that reached them from an old street lamp. “What happened to you? Are you all right?”

  A long, thin cut over one cheekbone, and a fresh rain-gray bruise swelling all around it that promised to be a mottled blue and yellow before it was done.

  His eyebrows went up. “You don’t know?”

  “No. I—was it an accident? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “That’s a good question.” He turned his head just enough to bump his cheek against her fingertips, and something shivered across his face. Pain, probably. She snatched her hand back. “Merde,” he said softly. “You’re completely isolated here, aren’t you?”

  She flinched back from him. The umbrella followed her, with no comment from him as the rain began to spatter his back. She clenched her fists and forced herself close to him again. “Nobody gossips to me about you, no,” she muttered. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He gazed down at her unreadably for a long moment. “I think that might actually put me at a disadvantage.” A smile ghosted unexpectedly across his face. “I can’t get them to shut up about you.”

  Yes. He was surrounded by people who knew him and liked him, or at least respected him and needed his fame and skill. She owned the damn place, and that meant nothing whatsoever, compared to him. Why should it? She hadn’t done anything to earn it.

  They headed down the pedestrian street, Luc’s body brushing hers in constant friction. He turned them into the alcove of Sylvain’s apartment building, a green door turned almost black in the rain-drenched night, and reached past her face to enter the code.

  The rain sheeted down around them, darkening the street, glistening in the storefront lights, a soft and beautiful sound. For one intimate moment, she could almost imagine winter in Paris being beautiful. An excuse to spend cozy hours curled up with someone, in a little world of two. The nasty weather a gift to lovers who needed each other’s shelter.

  This was the part where he should kiss her. Where they should sway together under the falling rain and . . .

  “Are you ready to up your stakes in this game?” His steady, quiet voice blended with the night. “Put in something more valuable than a yacht?”

  Game. She could barely hold herself off him, her need for him was so great, and he wanted her to put everything valuable about her into the pot for some damn game. Wasn’t that just like an ambitious man? “You would rather have a Bugatti?”

  The door clicked. He pushed it open, his eyes narrowing. And then that imperviousness of his broke suddenly, laughter glimmering in his eyes, an affectionate warmth that wrapped around her shoulders like a warm blanket after a chill. “I’ll tell you what. You can give me a Bugatti for my thirty-fifth birthday. Far be it from me to throw a car like that back in your teeth.”

  She turned back in the stairwell, confused. “Are you about to turn thirty-five?” She had pegged him for a few years younger.

  “My birthday’s December 21. You missed it this year, which is too bad, it was a big one. Thirty. The perfect opportunity to give a man extravagant presents. Although, of course, I couldn’t have accepted it on such short acquaintance.”

  Her eyebrows snapped together, a rare frown. “I’m not going to be here in five years.” God, no. The only worse thing she could imagine than spending another five years in Paris dependent on her parents for love and attention would be to spend five years here dependent on him.

  A muscle tightened in his jaw. But he gave her that still-surprising smile of his, so contained and so packed with brilliance it wrenched her heart out of her body, and gestured her to precede him up the stairs. “The trick, now, is going to be figuring out what to get you.”

  Laughing warmth embraced them as they stepped into Sylvain and Cade’s apartment. The place was so . . . homey. Great casement windows must let in beautiful light in the right weather, but now just emphasized how sheltered they were from the rain that poured down outside them. A colorful rug filled most of the hardwood floor. A comfortable couch faced a discreet flat-panel television. The coffee table had been raised and unfolded in some clever European way to spread itself out into a dining table that was already set.

  Fascinating. Summer would never have guessed that Cade, too, longed for a place that was real and home. Her bitter thoughts about Cade faded. Her cousin might think setting her up was funny, but it was clear by the mischievous warmth in her greeting that she didn’t mean harm.

  “Luc.” Sylvain clasped his hand, grinning. “You’re looking like hell. Tell me again how you got in a fight?”

  “A fight?” Summer jumped, bumping into Luc, who had to steady her. She gripped his coat sleeve. “Someone attacked you? Where was hotel security? Is it because you’re out in the streets getting home so late? I can have a car take you.” Wait, no, he hadn’t been bruised earlier that day. It couldn’t have been an attack on the way home the night before.

  Sylvain choked and slanted Luc a glance full of mirth as he bent to kiss her cheeks. “She’s worried about you, your majesty.”

  “I noticed,” Luc told him. “Why don’t you shut up?”

  Summer flushed. “Sorry,” she said stiffly. “I should have known your godhood didn’t need any mere mortal’s concern.”

  Luc’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you just call yourself a mere mortal? You’re exactly as human as I am, Summer Corey.” An odd expression crossed his face. “Exactly.”

  “That would be not at all,” Summer retorted.

  “She’s got you there,” Sylvain said and drew Summer into the kitchen to greet Jaime and Dominique. When Jaime’s fiancé bent for bises, Summer pressed herself back against Luc’s side. Big, rough, aggressive, and not very discreet about how little he thought of her, Dominique woke the wrong memories.

  Luc glanced down at her in surprise, then, to her shock, curved one arm around her waist. Summer’s whole body gave a little gasp of relief and pleasure. Thank you for not leaving me alone. For once.

  His arm tightened to bring her to face him. His other hand lifted, but he stopped it just short of touching her face. The way he held it, half-curved just shy of her cheek, reminded her oddly of the way she had held her palm over that basket of financiers that had greeted her the first morning in that cold hotel, soaking up their warmth.

  Oh, she realized for the first time, a sweet, confusing grasp around her insides. He sent that basket to me. It had to have been him. After he walked out on me, left me freezing there . . . he sent that basket of warm gold for me to have as the first thing when I woke up.

  “And I need the concern very much,” he said quietly. “You don’t think I’m human at all?”

  “Oh, c
ome on, give her a break.” Sylvain picked up a knife and went back to dicing mushrooms. “Who does?”

  Luc gave the chocolatier a steady, dangerous look. “Why, thank you, Sylvain,” he said silkily. “I had no idea you were one of my worshipers.”

  Sylvain’s white grin flashed. Touché. “Luc, just because we think you’re inhuman doesn’t mean we think you’re a god. Can’t you think of any other inhuman things? A statue, a robot, a monster, a demon—”

  “The Lord of Hell,” Summer muttered.

  “That’s a good one,” Sylvain agreed. “Fits him perfectly.”

  “And what would be hell?” Luc asked Summer between his teeth.

  “The hotel.” She waved a hand. “Paris.”

  Everyone stopped serving drinks and prepping food to stare at her, dumbfounded. “Paris?”

  Yeah, that was right. Only a spoiled brat could be unhappy here. This place always took precedence over her own emotions. She pulled back into herself, which ironically meant closer to Luc, still seeking him like shelter. “All right, fine. You can be the Goblin-King instead.”

  “The what?”

  “You know.” She twined her hands through the air, trying to imitate his when he worked. “Weaving wonders to lure mortals to their doom.”

  A tiny beat’s silence. “To their doom?”

  “Like in Labyrinth,” Jaime explained helpfully and grinned. “He’s better looking than David Bowie, though. You have to admit. Maybe he should be a Fairy King, at least.”

  Dominique Richard stiffened at the compliment to the other man’s looks, but Jaime tucked her hand in one of his big, scarred ones and smiled up at him, refusing to take back her comment even while she reassured him, and his hard mouth softened.

  “I was thinking of his kitchens as the hell, myself,” Sylvain said cheerfully. “I hear he’s a merciless taskmaster.”

  “Like you aren’t,” Cade retorted.

  “Only when you want me to be,” he told her outrageously, and Cade laughed and pretended to pinch him. Summer felt so jealous of happy couples she could have clawed something.