The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  “Are you all right?” Summer asked.

  “The surface is matte! You can’t even see yourself in it. You have no proper ingredients or equipment.”

  “It’s still going to be the best thing anyone here ever tasted, you know,” she murmured, looking around at the happy faces of the islanders. Nobody like Luc had ever popped into their lives before. And while a couple of them might possibly have been exposed to French pastries on trips to larger islands, most of them could never have had an éclair.

  “Thank you,” Luc said dryly. “You relieve my mind.”

  Summer burst out laughing and wrapped her arms around him from behind in a hug that smeared icing all over the edge of the pan. He stopped work just long enough to catch one of her hands from his chest, lift it to his mouth, and kiss the palm very hard.

  The delight in the éclairs was so extreme that the children begged him to make another batch right away, begged so hard that he might very well have done so if the ingredients were available. Instead, everyone threw together a great barbecue, shifting the center of operations to the neighbor with the best grilling equipment, a few houses down the beach. It was close to midnight before they could slip away, some of the islanders nudging each other and grinning after them, others—mostly the younger, single ones, including Kelly—looking rather hostile.

  The waves washed in, the gentle glow of tropical moonlight tranquilly beautiful. Cool, damp sand shifted, a gentle, reassuring massage into bare toes. “Jeannine said it was the worst mistake I could have made, to tell you I didn’t need you,” Luc said, almost as quiet as the waves, his hand locked tight around hers. “She said that was probably what you needed more than anything else, someone who needed you and wouldn’t let you go.”

  Like you, Summer thought, looking up at his profile against the Southern Cross and the moonlit sea. That’s what you need most, too. She had wanted to see him walking on the beach with her forever. Before she even knew him, she had wanted it. “You talked about me to Jeannine?”

  “I had to talk to someone, Summer. And I’ve always wanted a grandmother.” Luc fished in his pocket and pulled out a linen square. “She gave me this.”

  One of his Valentine linens. Unlike Jeannine’s, this one was pathetically hemmed, and the black embroidery of his name was a hopeless choppy mess. She had tried to do it right after he told her he kept his toys forever, and she had abandoned it, stained with several drops of her blood, when she had heard him coming.

  “I was bored,” she said defensively. “I thought maybe I could learn how to embroider.”

  Luc’s thumb traced over the three red drops of blood, scattered across the white linen and his black name, mangled by her unpracticed hand. “It’s a better present than a Bugatti,” he said quietly, and suddenly turned, crushing it between their palms, kissing her and kissing her. “I need you,” he muttered roughly into her mouth. “I need you. All right? God, how I need you.” He tumbled them onto the beach, half-sheltered by the outrigger canoe Summer’s next-door neighbor kept pulled up there midway between their houses. “And I’ve always wanted to make love to you in the sand,” he whispered fiercely. “And wash you off in the waves afterward.”

  So he did. They made love with a desperate tenderness, gasping, clutching, stroking, hungry. And much later, Summer dragged him to her hammock and pushed him down on it.

  “Your house doesn’t even have walls,” he muttered, “and you sleep on a mattress on a concrete floor. Summer, there’s so much more to you than you let people in Paris see, and I am going to taste every single layer of you.”

  “I can’t believe you let Kelly see you in a hammock before I did. That was my dream.”

  “I’ve barely spent five minutes in a hammock since I got here, but it’s not my fault if Kelly has been spying on me. This place is one giant fishbowl. I never realized that busy Métros and kitchens are actually fairly private places compared to a small island where everyone has plenty of time to investigate everyone else’s affairs.”

  “Five minutes? You need to learn how to relax, Luc.”

  “Well, come teach me,” he said and pulled her down on top of him. “Ah,” a sigh as her weight settled on him, and that chronic tension released out of his body like a loosed rubber band. “That does make it much better.” He rocked them gently for a while, sinking into the moment. “Isn’t it Valentine’s Day?”

  “I think so.” Summer tried to count, making allowances for the international dateline. “Patrick said to tell you that he has taken your extended leave as a sign you wanted him to do his own Valentine’s menu.”

  Luc stiffened. “That’s a joke, right?”

  Summer hesitated. “It can be a little hard to tell with Patrick, but I don’t think so. He had his own sketches spread out all around him when he told me. He promised he wouldn’t waste Jeannine’s linens, though.”

  “Putain.” Luc started to surge off the hammock. Stopped halfway. And sank slowly back down into it, muscles relaxing again as he snuggled Summer back into her spot. “I can’t really do anything about it right now, can I? You should have seen what I was going to do at the restaurant on Valentine’s Day for you. It would have—” He caught himself, clearly dying to describe it. “I’ll have to do it next year. Or maybe when I propo—” He caught himself again.

  “I liked having one of the world’s best pastry chefs travel by air and boat to a remote location to make éclairs on a picnic table with hand-carved tips for my entire adopted family,” Summer said. “That worked as a Valentine’s Day present for me.” She thought she was speaking lightly, and then right at the last, her voice choked up suddenly, her nostrils stinging, and she clutched at him.

  He squeezed her gently in return. And said, “ ‘One of’?”

  So she laughed, even as the laughter knocked one tear out onto his chest. “I love you,” she whispered.

  He squeezed her again, his finger drawing great hearts over and over on her back. She wasn’t even sure he was aware he was doing it.

  “Did you know I’ve never even had an éclair before?”

  “I hate your parents. At least my father couldn’t afford them. And much, much better éclairs await you in your future. Summer. These stars are incredible. I lied about the hammock. Around one every night, I’ve been lying here, looking at those stars and thinking of you. I’m so proud of our three at the Leucé, and you have millions.”

  “Yes,” Summer said wistfully, turning so that she could look up at them, her head resting on his shoulder. She was going to miss those stars.

  “You’re never alone here, are you?”

  She shook her head against his chest. One giant fishbowl. “I can take out a canoe or go for a long hike or swim. I can be alone if I really, really want to.”

  “Which happens . . . never, at a guess.”

  “No, once in a while,” she protested. “I got used to it, you know. Being alone.”

  His hands wove through her hair. “It’s funny, I was never alone. But I think I got used to it, too.”

  “Oh, Luc.” She pressed a kiss into his bare shoulder.

  “I want you to be happy, Summer. I thought I knew how to let things go.” His arms tightened around her. “I guess, in the end, I’m still too much like my own father. Do you know he came back year after year to try to make contact with me again? That he got arrested twice? And until a week ago, I thought he just . . . let me go.” Tension flexed through his whole body. “I thought maybe that was what you had to do sometimes, for people you loved. Accept that you were bad for them.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. His own arms closed around her convulsively. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered.

  “How did it go? With your—father?”

  Luc grabbed fistfuls of her hair and used it to cover his face. “It was horrible. Coming right after you—” He broke off and shook his head. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked not to get ripped apart that way anymore? It was horrible. And I’m al
ready giving him money, and he’s already feeling threatened by my success, I can see it. When I marry you, it’s going to explode his head. Unless you can get your father to disown you, maybe. That might help.”

  Summer blinked at the word “marry,” but Luc didn’t even seem to realize what he had just said.

  “It would have been so much easier to leave him out of my life. But—he did come after me. Tu sais? He never forgot me. And I think he’s proud of me, too, and just as torn up as I am. And”—could the moonlight off the ocean possibly be catching moisture in his eyes?—“I really needed you after that meeting, Summer. I really. Really. Really. Needed you.” His arms squeezed her too tight. “You ate the damn pomegranate seeds. You ate my heart. You weren’t supposed to still want to go.”

  “I didn’t want to go. I was thinking how much I would miss this place and that it was going to be so sad to say good-bye to everyone here. And then you started in about how you didn’t need me. And what is this about pomegranate seeds? You’re not Hades, Luc.”

  His mouth twisted. “I did try to tell you that.”

  “I think the Fairy King was closer. But mostly—mostly you’re just a man.”

  One eyebrow went up. His mouth was very bittersweet, wry. “Never say so.”

  “That’s what makes it so incredible. What you do. You’re just a man. A human mortal man. And you do—what you do.”

  There was a long silence. “Merci, soleil,” he said softly. “After all those people who call me a god, I never realized you could give me a promotion.”

  Again, a long silence fell, peace stretching, as they unconsciously let the hammock swing to the rhythm of the waves.

  “I had an idea,” he said. “That isn’t a choice between here and Paris. That has more sunshine in it for you.”

  She traced a hand between the panels of his shirt, left open when he pulled it back on after they got out of the waves. He had such a lean, gorgeous body.

  “The south of France. A nice old stone house and a garden. Maybe bordering on a lavender field. Or maybe an old house in one of the old hill towns, with a little courtyard for our garden, so it would be close to the restaurant. We would have to look around, see what house we fall in love with. Maybe you can help me with the business plan, since I’ve never had to do one, and you’re so good at asking all the right questions. One of the first chefs I worked under did that, Gabriel Delange. He was chef pâtissier at the Luxe, and the chef there, Pierre Manon, fired him in a fit of jealousy at how much attention he was stealing. So he opened his own place in a little hill town near Grasse. He got his third star three years ago. He did so much for his little town’s tourism, they built a fountain to him.” Luc gave that tiny, contained grin of his and admitted: “I wouldn’t mind having a fountain built to me. And”—his voice got all funny again—“I have a really powerful vision of you with four black-haired kids in lavender fields.” He took a deep breath and watched her.

  She got all funny. As if her whole being had disappeared into a burst of butterflies, fluttering upward, outward. It felt dizzying and tickling and terrifying and lovely. “Oh,” she said very low and hard. A breath. Another breath. Butterflies were dancing in starlight. “Would you be watching us from a wooden swing under a grape arbor?”

  Their eyes held, one of those moments when they realized that, despite all the surface differences, their souls were exactly matched. “That’s what I imagined at first. Especially if it’s been a hard day and I just want to watch you for a while and feel happy. But now I think I’ll want to get up and play with the five of you.”

  “F-four kids?”

  A little shrug under her body. “I don’t know. That’s just how many I see.”

  Summer’s tummy could not whirl more. She squeezed her arms around him again, because she had to squeeze onto something for stability. She could see this, too. It felt so happy, as if they could patch together their two love-starved childhoods and make one whole family so full of love it was overflowing.

  “You might have to help me. I don’t really know how to play, except with food. Do you think you could help me with the restaurant accounting, too? Or at least help find someone good we can pay to do it. I hate to make you, but I do not have a summa cum laude from Harvard in economics, and I loathe doing it.”

  “This is a really beautiful vision,” Summer whispered. She could barely speak. Butterflies made out of starlight couldn’t speak. “One where I’m—an important part of it.”

  “Oh, soleil.” His arms tightened hard around her. “To make a happy family? You’re crucial. You’re the one who figured out how to do that, all on your own, while I was just figuring out how to be the most important man in the room. I wonder how many years of living happily ever after in lavender fields we’re going to need before we trust each other’s role in it. I’ll try to trust that you can stay with me, if you can try to trust that I will value you.”

  “This is good practice,” she whispered into his chest. Scent trailed over them, with the breeze—sea and salt, and the gardenia plant growing by her bedroom half-wall.

  He curved a hand over her shoulder, seeming entirely content to dust grains of sand off her skin, one by one. “Yes. It is.” They swayed for a while in silence. “I know it will be a wrench for you to give this up. I know it will break your heart. I just—do you think it’s possible it might break your heart to make it wider? So you can move on to your next thing in life? You don’t have to abandon this world entirely. I would love to come back here for a month every year on vacation, and you could teach me to relax. But I know you’re probably worried about the school year, about who will take as good care of your kids as you.”

  “I thought I could start up a grant,” she said, and his arms flexed around her. “A teaching assistant fellowship for new graduates. You would be surprised how many bright, enthusiastic people in their senior years at top universities dream of just one year of adventure before they continue their competitive lives. And if I word the fellowship right, and make it properly competitive, this is one they could put on their CVs to show future employers how amazing they are.”

  Luc wrapped her hair around his wrist enough to nudge her head up off his chest. “Summer. How can you see how amazing that would be on someone else’s life experience, but not insist people see it as just as amazing when you do it?”

  She shrugged, instinctively self-deprecating.

  “Soleil. I need you more than you can manage to understand yet, but I was right, what I thought that first moment I saw you. You need me, too. I’m not going to put up with you belittling yourself this way, or with anyone else doing it for you.”

  “You used to do it yourself.”

  “One time, Summer. I had just handed you my heart and watched you pass it on to some other woman because you didn’t care for it.”

  “ ‘Higher standards?’ ”

  “Oh, for—higher standards than to be your casual pastime, Summer. Not higher standards than you. It wouldn’t be possible.”

  Her heart sparked with joy.

  “It wouldn’t,” he repeated, tightening his hold on her waist. Again they rocked in silence for a moment. “So . . . your grant idea suggests . . . you’ve given this some serious consideration.”

  She took a tight breath, a band constricting and releasing her heart, in a rhythm past her control, so that she had to grab for air whenever she could. “You don’t have to give Paris up for me. As long as we find an apartment with a fireplace, I’ll be fine.”

  That compressed grin of his that she had come to realize meant so much laughter and happiness was welling in him that he didn’t know what to do with it. “Summer, sometimes you have to let go of your past.”

  “I know.” She peeked past the edge of the hammock to give the ocean a firm nod. “I’m going to sit on the Champ de Mars and watch fireworks go off all around the Eiffel Tower and thumb my nose. Uh—you’ll be sitting with me, right? You don’t have to work Bastille Day?”

  H
e laughed, a deep almost sleepy sound. “I mean me. I want to let go of my past. I don’t want to spend my life striving not to be that kid in the Métro. I like that kid in the Métro. He won a princess, didn’t he? And I’m getting attached to the idea of sunshine and lavender and having a garden I can relax in with my family.”

  Summer’s happiness just grew and grew. “If we go to the south of France, maybe we could still take on some of Jaime’s and Cade’s interns and apprentices.”

  “What?”

  She explained.

  “You said I would be good at that?” He searched her face.

  She nodded firmly.

  “I’m sure I could be persuaded,” he said ruefully, stretching her hair out in a pattern along the ropes of the hammock. “If you want me to do it.”

  “Maybe we could even take one of the kids from here. If there was someone really interested in it. Dying to see the rest of the world. Or maybe they could just come visit.”

  “I’m going to end up like my foster father,” Luc said with an odd smile, alarmed and intrigued. “All those foster kids and apprentices.”

  Her hands closed over his palms. “Without the hot paraffin.”

  He shook his head, but his fingers linked with hers and pressed them gently. “Nobody uses hot paraffin anymore anyway, Summer. And my foster mother was . . . very rigid. Not like you at all. You would bring . . . warmth.” He cradled her hands against his face, in what seemed retroactive longing to have had that warmth for himself. “He’s a good man, you know,” he said softly. “He tried to do his best by us. It’s strange to think that you might help me to become an even better one.” He said that in a low rush, like a caterpillar claiming to believe in butterflies.

  “I love you,” she said, and his face split into a smile.

  “It just pours out of you, doesn’t it?” he said wonderingly. “I should have wrapped myself up with you that first night and never let you go. You might trust me now if I had. What an oversensitive, overcautious, arrogant idiot I was.”