The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  “I know, honey.” Her mother’s fingers stroked so gently, a maternal healing touch. “That’s what worries me about these. You’re so young to have lines already.”

  “They’re from laughing.”

  “And being out in the sun too much while you do.” Her mother patted her shoulder with affectionate reproach. “Try holding it back to a softer smile when you can, sweetheart. It will help.”

  Sam Corey slammed the door of the Marie Antoinette room shut. Luc suspected it was Sam Corey’s favorite conference room in the hotel, one where he could imagine everyone else losing their heads to him.

  “What are you doing with my daughter?” the older man snapped.

  Luc smiled sweetly. “Whatever I want.”

  A fist thumped hard on the carved gold door. “Goddamnit, man.”

  “You know, if you didn’t want your daughter to fall in with so many wrong men, you probably should have spent more time with her, teaching her how to recognize the right ones.” He noted that on his very short list of rules on how to bring his vision of a happy, black-haired, delicate-featured little girl to successful fruition . . . way down through to when she got married and lived happily ever after and had kids and . . . whoa. He pulled himself back from a dizzying brink.

  “Has she been complaining about how little time I spent with her again?” Sam Corey snapped.

  “No. She never complains. I think she might be afraid to.”

  “And well she should be,” Sam Corey said roughly. “There’s never been a more privileged child in the whole freaking world.”

  Luc closed his hands around the edge of a table, leaning back against it, and just looked at the older man. Second note on his short list: If you give her everything but a belief in herself, you’ve screwed the fuck up. Also, no matter what trouble your fifteen-year-old daughter gets herself into, never, ever call her a whore. “Let’s talk about something else. Why don’t you tell me your daughter’s good traits?”

  The other man glared at him and shrugged. “She’s beautiful, but she knows it. She’s got a brain on her like you wouldn’t believe—given the way she’s wasting it. She could talk P/E ratios when she was five years old—”

  Luc supposed it was a better way of being a performing monkey than playing a damn tambourine, but it still made him nauseated every time he heard that.

  “—and instead of doing something with it, she’s teaching a dozen kids on some godforsaken island.”

  “Maybe it’s not godforsaken,” Luc said whimsically.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.” He hadn’t been in a church since he left his foster father’s house, and even back then it had only been for foster-cousin baptisms and first Communions. It was a weird thought to pop into his head. But if he had been one of those little kids or their parents, a bright, loving woman who was happy to do her best for them and didn’t think there were “better” things she could do with her life would have seemed like a gift from God to him. “Can you say one full sentence about your daughter without taking away the compliment in the second part?”

  Sam Corey set his jaw and glared at him.

  “Try,” Luc said. “Try hard. It will do you good.”

  “She could be so much better than she is!” Sam Corey burst out. “The privileges she had. The opportunities.”

  “You’re right. It’s a good thing we’re not having this conversation in front of Summer. Back up and try again. You’re not convincing me it’s a good thing for Summer to have much contact with you, and I might end up having some influence on that.”

  Sam Corey’s jaw locked. His eyes tried to bore through Luc’s skull, but that iron only weakened for sunlight.

  “Allez. Your precious daughter. You want her to go to a man who can take good care of her. Right? Work it from that angle. Tell me something special about her.”

  Sam Corey strode across the room to the portrait of Marie Antoinette. At first, Luc thought the older man had dismissed him, and maybe that was his intention. But the hard face slowly relaxed, with memories. Her father gave a little laugh, suddenly, and turned. “All right. She always had focus, that girl. I remember how she used to slip into my office and just watch me. She’d watch me for an hour at a time.”

  “That must have felt nice.” Luc could fit a little girl of his up on the counter beside him and delight her whole little world. He had no idea how to do anything else, where little girls were concerned, but he figured he could handle that part. Right, and if a nine-year-old boy helping a little girl climb on the monkey bars could have such an impact, he bet his little black-haired vision would be all over having her own dad do it. Three things on his list, now.

  “Yeah. Of course, you had to be careful. Give her any attention, and she’d try to climb in your lap. Clingy, that kid. Real needy.”

  “Because she wanted to climb into your lap?”

  “Yeah.” The older man was silent for a moment and then sighed. “I miss it, though, sometimes. Wonder if I shouldn’t have taken advantage of it more when I had the chance. I kept trying to make her more independent, but . . . maybe we needed another daughter so we could get the next one right. God knows, Summer went off the deep end later. Still trying to get all the attention, I guess.”

  Luc just looked at him. “So, the lesson is, if I have a daughter, I’ll let her climb in my lap as much as she damned well wants. Thanks for the tip.” He would let her mother climb in his lap as much as she wanted, too. His heart clenched at the thought of having them both in his lap at once, Summer holding a black-haired baby, and him holding them both.

  Sam Corey sent him a hard look. “You think you can do better?”

  “I always think I can do better. And so far, I’ve always been right.”

  Sam Corey grunted. “You know, from one arrogant SOB to another, I almost—‘like’ is not the word.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to like me.”

  The blue eyes glittered, so much harder than his daughter’s, so much tougher. “That’s a first. A man who would rather have my daughter like him than me.”

  That took considerable time for Luc to wrap his mind around. “Putain,” he said finally. “That’s a first? Are you sure? She’s beautiful.”

  “Do you even know what a billion dollars is?”

  Luc tried briefly to imagine it and not very hard. He had a lot of other things occupying his head right now. “Not really. I could probably figure out how many zeros are involved if I felt like it, though.”

  One of the world’s richest self-made men gave a crack of incredulous laughter.

  Luc shrugged. “That’s the thing about zeros. If you don’t have any, they’re all that matters. But once the string of them gets long enough, they’re boring.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sam Corey said. “Why does she do this shit to me?”

  “I’m seriously the first man who ever thought your daughter was more important than your money? That’s insane. And you want her to marry someone like that? Why do you hate her so much?”

  Sam Corey stiffened. “I don’t hate her! What the hell has she been telling you? She’s my daughter. I love that girl. That doesn’t mean I want her to do any screwed-up thing that crosses her brain, though. And somebody has got to take care of this holding company after me, and it sure as hell won’t be you.”

  “That’s right, it won’t,” Luc said, revolted. “Find a fucking CEO or whatever it is in your business.”

  “Somebody has to keep an eye on the CEO afterward! And it’s not going to be a girl who wants to spend her life swinging in a hammock!”

  “Then get better board members, merde,” Luc said, bored. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you how to solve your business problems. If you do, may I suggest a serious shake-up in your management team?”

  Sam Corey glared at him, livid. “You know, it’s not going to work out as well as you think. That girl needs a lot of attention.”

  “I’m very focused.”

  “Yeah? A
nd when you’ve got a crazy day ahead of you, and so many things to do and decisions to make that you barely have time to breathe, and she’s pouting because you won’t drop it all for her, what are you going to do?”

  “I think that’s something for me to talk about with her, not with you. She doesn’t pout, by the way. I’ve never seen it once. I guess you broke her of that a long time ago, made her put on a smile instead.”

  Sam Corey bared his teeth. “Don’t you tell me all the things I did wrong with my daughter.”

  “I’ll tell you whatever I want. And unless you want to hire an assassin with all that money of yours, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop me.”

  Sam grunted. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “You should let her go, you know. Quit trying to butcher her into your idea of perfection just to show her off to the world. Set her free. And by the way, she doesn’t laze around in a hammock. She teaches school on a remote island to kids who would otherwise have to be shipped off to boarding school on another island, away from their parents, to get an education. You ever wonder why keeping them with their parents might be so important to her?”

  “Boarding school would probably do them a world of good,” Sam Corey said roughly. “What’s she educating them for? So they can grow up and laze in hammocks?”

  “You know when I said I didn’t want you to like me? I was understating the case. You couldn’t insult me worse.” Luc strode to the door.

  “I don’t even know what she sees in you,” Sam Corey said, disgusted. “It’s not all those pretty desserts of yours, is it? I thought I wore that one out on her when she was a kid. It was about the only way you could get her to behave at the dinner table instead of fidgeting and causing trouble all night, taking away her dessert. But she’s got more steel in her than you realize, from the outside. Got to the point where you couldn’t hold even that over her head anymore, she refused to care. Of course, by that time, she had learned how to behave herself, so I guess it worked over all.”

  Luc went stiff with shock and fury. He pivoted, like a whip cracking. “You bastard.”

  The older man’s eyebrows went up. “I thought I told you not to tempt me.”

  “You were the one who stole that from me. You fucking asshole.”

  Sam Corey looked supercilious. “For someone who’s supposed to be so controlled—”

  “I’m controlled. You have no idea how controlled I’m being. You held them over her head, didn’t you? You punished her for what? Not behaving up to your standards?”

  “Well, what the hell did you want me to do instead?” her father asked, exasperated. “Spank her? Let her get away with whatever she wanted? Tell you what, once you’ve finished raising your own kids, let’s have this talk again.”

  Luc closed his eyes suddenly. “Putain,” he murmured. “What a crappy grandfather my kids are going to have.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sam Corey demanded, outraged. “You’re thinking of giving your kids me as a grandfather, and you’re complaining?”

  Luc gave him his daughter’s very own glimmering smile. “I guess I’m just spoiled.”

  Sam Corey’s mouth shut into a thin line. He glared with a fury he clearly thought Luc should fear. Luc smiled back at him urbanely. Go ahead, do your worst. You have no power over me.

  The door opened, revealing Summer and her mother, and the quickest dress change Summer might have ever made.

  Sam Corey gave Luc a thin, hungry smile. “Summer, you’ll be happy to know your latest boyfriend has been arguing your case. It’s a stupid man who doesn’t take good advice, and he’s right. I should set you free. So I’ll invest in that satellite, since it means so much to you. You don’t have to stay here anymore. Just go on back to where you’re happy.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Set her free. You should let her go. Neither Luc nor Summer spoke until they were inside Summer’s suite. Luc was still ringing with the shock of her father’s announcement.

  You bastard. The cuddles in the afternoon, the time, the attention, the things she needs—she hasn’t seen I can give them to her yet. I’m still practicing. This isn’t as good as I can get for her.

  Of course those damned photos were scrolling, picture proof of how much happier Summer could be somewhere else. Summer’s gaze fell on them as soon as she stepped past the entry, and her face filled with wistfulness.

  Luc wanted to break something, to pound things in impotent rage, the way he had when he had first been wrested from his father. He had had ten more weeks, damn it! Ten weeks to show her how magical Paris could be with someone’s hand tucked in yours. Ten weeks to let her confidence unfurl, as she worked with her cousins, as she found her own strength here. Ten weeks to get over his mistakes, to show her how perfect he could be once he learned what she needed.

  Ten weeks to soak up all that sweetness, to get over the shaky sugar-shock reaction to it that made him so difficult and touchy, to learn to absorb it.

  It’s Paris, damn it! Not hell! Do you know how hard I worked to make this city love me?

  That bastard Sam Corey. Who would sacrifice anything, even his daughter, to prove he could always find a way to have power over someone.

  “It’s so warm there,” Summer said. “And they really do need me.” The photo of the kids tumbling over her scrolled across the screen.

  They need you? One long, wicked claw raked across him. How could you? How could you long for that? How could you want it more than you want me?

  And, deep down, a keening, desperate child’s cry: I knew she couldn’t love me enough to hold on.

  “Summer. You’re not going?”

  Summer looked back and forth between him and the photos.

  He fought to breathe. He had practiced this for twenty years of his life, having the most beautiful thing in his hands and letting it go. To disappear in a few forkfuls.

  But I love you! That desperate plea. You can’t leave me because I love you! He was supposed to have gotten bigger than that, better than that, more in control.

  He had just desperately wanted her to be that one thing he could hold on to.

  You should set her free. Why had he ever said that? Let her go where she’s happy. Let her go where she feels needed. Don’t drag her into your world just so she has to depend on you. Just so she turns toward you like a flower to the sun because you’re the only source of happiness she has.

  Don’t do that to her. Be bigger than that.

  That sobbing ball of misery he had held in his arms. Don’t force her to face that every second of every day, for you. When she could be happy.

  Even your own father, as bad as he was, knew in the end when to let you go.

  “Go.” He felt like he was dying. But he didn’t think she could tell. No, he still had that much control in him. Not to show his mortal wounds.

  Summer looked at him as if he had tossed her a float when she was drowning. “What?”

  Or was that look as if he had struck her?

  “You need to go back.” He—what he needed to do, he still had to figure out. Wait! A tiny voice of new knowledge yelled somewhere deep in him, trying to be heard past the belief of two decades. No, you’re wrong about that! Papa didn’t just let you go! And what the fuck does it matter what he did? He was screwed up! Figure out what you should do. For her.

  Summer had gone very still. On the screen, a photo scrolled by of her laughing up at some black-haired grinning giant of a man, probably a hundred pounds heavier than Luc and only some of it muscle, but jealousy and hatred hit him anyway. Was it someone like that who would make her happy?

  Undemanding, easy. Raised in some happy family and knowing when to hug her, knowing when something he said would hurt her. Not needing to practice.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said and realized it was really true. She couldn’t. This place killed her. She had found her own warmth and happiness and nobody, not even he, should steal that from her. “I want you to go back to your island.”

>   She rocked a little, as if he had hit her. “But I thought—”

  “It’s all right, Summer.” He could barely speak. He had no breath in him to speak with. But he locked the pain in, used all those years of fighting through humiliation and hunger and longing in the Métro. Locked it hard. So no one could see. “I’m strong. Don’t worry about me.”

  Her tan turned pasty, all light drained from it. Yes, he had torn her. She wouldn’t leave him easily. But she would leave him, just the same. “But who will—” She broke off. “Will you eat?”

  She should just go. Now. He couldn’t stand this. “Summer, I can take care of myself.” But I loved being taken care of.

  She looked stunned, confused. She scrubbed a hand over her face, and then folded her arms around herself. “Your—your shoulders get so tight. Don’t you nee—”

  If she finished that sentence with “need me,” he might crack into a million pieces again. And this time, he didn’t think bits of him would be floating out happily to the edge of the universe. “The hotel has an excellent spa, Summer.”

  “Oh.” She rocked back. If she mentioned next what he had told her in the bathtub, that he needed her body yielding to his, he would break one of these fucking art deco chairs.

  But she didn’t. Her face emptied out. The torn look was gone, leaving . . . nothing.

  And then she smiled at him. Warm, generous, blind, pat-him-on-the-head. “Oh, all right, then. Well . . . if you ever want a vacation in the tropics, I guess—”

  It was the smile that did it. After everything, after he had danced his hardest, poured everything there was of him out for her. Because it shredded him. Because, wild, he wanted to shred her in return. He had to leave before he could. Or maybe because he knew that leaving was the very thing that would hurt her the worst. He turned around and walked out.

  To his job.

  To the city he had made love him.

  To what he could control.

  This city doesn’t love you, you fool. This city eats you. It’s not the same thing.