The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  Summer nodded.

  He laughed and then was serious again. “Do you think you can learn to trust me with yourself, Summer? I know I’m terrible at this so far, but I really do know how to take care of beautiful, precious things. And I love you. I really, truly love you, however bad I am at it, just the way you are.”

  She could feel herself growing more and more luminous with every word he said. But she repeated firmly, “I’m not a thing. Not for anybody. I think I had to learn that, too.”

  His fingers, which had started to pick up strands of her hair and weave them again, paused. “Does that mean I don’t get to play with you anymore?”

  She blushed. “I’m not talking about that at all. Hush.”

  He laughed a little, low and pleased. She could feel him growing a little aroused against her again, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to do anything about it.

  She sat up enough to look down at him. “And to answer your question—if you can trust me, I can trust you. If not, it all falls apart.”

  He looked so perfect lying in that hammock in the moonlight. Exactly as she had imagined him there. Even to the stars in his eyes as he looked up at her. “If what you need to trust is that I will love you, and take care of you, and try not to hurt you, and try to give you what you need, forever, then . . . it would be my very great honor, Summer. But I’m going to need a lot of help.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “Since I’m not planning on being just the object in a couple ever again.”

  He smiled, his hands stroking gently over her lower back. “All that softness, all that gentleness, all that flippant, beautiful sunshine. I’ll need you to give it to me. Just pour it out over me and trust me with it, Summer. I’m worth it. I promise.”

  “Luc. Of course you are worth it.”

  His face lit in one of those rare moments when you could see all that brilliance inside him. “See? That’s what I need.”

  She felt . . . soft and light, and utterly beautiful for it, when he talked like that. As if soft and light was an okay way to be. Maybe even an extraordinary way to be.

  “I love you,” she said solemnly. “I know I’ve said it too many times before, to other men. I’m sorry. I’ve always been trying to find someone I can love.”

  “I know.” He kissed her palms, cradling them to her mouth. “I think I’ve figured that out about you. Don’t apologize for yourself to me, Summer. Just—stop. Stop with me. Don’t look anymore.”

  “I did stop. For three years. When I first threw myself at you and you looked at me the way you did, I thought I was right back where I left off, when I ran away to the islands. But I think maybe I grew just as much as I thought I had while I was here. That maybe I grew enough to actually go after the right person. As soon as I saw him.”

  EPILOGUE

  Luc paused in the doorway to the garden, resting his shoulder against the jamb, letting the day sigh off him and pleasure fill him. Summer sat on the wooden swing under the arbor, their six-year-old, Océane, in her lap. It must have been one of those moments when the oldest still needed to get her share of mommy lap time, too. Their three-year-old, Lucienne—Lucie—was busy chasing the kitten the girls had begged to adopt a couple of weeks ago, when it showed up mewling on their doorstep. Scents of lavender, rosemary, and thyme were released into the air, as Lucie pursued the kitten through the bank of herbs against the wall, which she wasn’t supposed to do, but she was three and the herbs were sturdy, and no one reprimanded her. At first charmed by the kitten’s antics, Luc and Summer had soon found themselves taken aback by how much trouble one small kitten could get into, never having had pets growing up themselves. But he supposed they were figuring it out. Océane had promised to take on the responsibility of feeding the kitten and cleaning her litter, and so far was being extremely good about it, barely needing reminding. Luc nurtured the parental hope that giving their children certain chores would somehow keep them from being the most spoiled kids in the world, but he knew—God, how well he and Summer knew—that their kids were truly spoiled, right down deep to the heart spoiled, with that complete, trusting belief that they were utterly, entirely loved.

  He was kind of getting spoiled that way, too, though.

  Summer was gazing up through the grape leaves at the sky with that expression on her face that meant she had been cuddling Océane for a while now, that dreamy maternal pleasure of a mind half on other things even while her whole heart sank into the pleasure of a small body curled into hers. He loved his own moments like that.

  Both girls were black-haired and dark-eyed, with Summer’s delicate features, and he knew people accused fathers of being biased, but good God, they were gorgeous. Utterly, adorably beautiful. It wrenched his heart out every time he thought about them growing up, going out into the world. Since the French system required school attendance from age three, Océane was in school already, of course, and Lucie had to start this fall, something he and Summer both had a lot of trouble with. He didn’t want to let them leave yet, not even as far as stepping into a classroom. He would still like at least one more, because even though it was not humanly possible to love his little girls more than he did, a part of him longed to give a little black-haired boy all this happiness, too.

  Océane spotted him and her face lit. “Papa!” She spilled off Summer’s lap and ran across to him, and he caught her up and hugged her, fighting as he always did not to hug too hard, not to just crush her to him and keep her forever. Oh, baby, baby, Daddy’s going to have a hard time letting you go.

  Hands tugged at his jeans, and he looked down to find Lucie demanding her share. He shifted Océane to one arm so he could pick Lucie up with the other, and the damn kitten jumped at his ankles at the wrong moment, so that he sat down with an umph on the grass, both girls tumbling into his lap.

  He laughed out loud, something his little girls had taught him that even Summer hadn’t been able to do all by herself. She loved it, though. He could always tell by her smile. That real, brilliant, happy smile.

  A familiar hand touched his shoulder, and he tilted his head back to catch that smile now, and they were both smiling when she bent her head and kissed him.

  Seven years, and that sense of love and security and trust was still something that grew in them, still had to grow a little bit more every day. He liked it, nurturing its slow but steady growth. If it had started out as a small seed, it seemed well on its way to being a very healthy baobab tree one day, and he was happy to nourish it and let it be nourished any way he could.

  He had had it easier than Summer, in that growth of belief in them. Not at first. The first year after Océane’s birth had been exhausting beyond anything either of them had been prepared for, and he had gone around with a knot in his stomach he could never admit existed, because he knew Summer wouldn’t run out on him and their child, he knew it, he told himself that a million times, but he just couldn’t get that knot to loosen. Some of the things he caught himself doing that year were so insane, like pouring himself more and more into proving he could feed them and care for them, feed them better than any man in the world, that Summer didn’t have to run away to a better life like his mother did. It was a particularly illogical drive, given that Summer’s level of wealth and privilege made the comparison with his own mother’s choices ridiculous, but for a while there, he couldn’t stop himself.

  Océane had never seemed to sleep more than fifteen minutes straight, something that in retrospect might have been connected to the fact that neither of her parents could let her cry for more than two seconds. And Summer’s hormones had swung all over the place postpartum. The doctors had made her supplement Océane’s feedings almost right away, claiming she wasn’t producing enough milk, and Luc knew better than to mention this out loud, but he still sometimes wondered if it hadn’t been her body shutting down in some way in reaction to the intense stress Summer put on herself to be the perfect mother. Or maybe the doctors had been wrong and they should have persevered with the nu
rsing, who knew, but Océane had cried from hunger, and that had been about all either of them could handle before they obeyed the doctors’ orders. Luc could not allow his own daughter to go hungry for anything in the world.

  Luc had loved stretching out on a couch with his little baby nestled against his chest while he fed her a bottle. It had filled him with so much joy that his old iron carapace had shattered forever, and even today he could only occasionally catch a ghost of that iron shield back, when he needed to deal with some problem in the external world. In his happiness, it had taken him a long time to realize that while he was feeding their baby, Summer was crumpled on the edge of the bathtub behind a locked door, silent tears of grief and failure streaming down her cheeks.

  Nobody could beat herself up quite as well as Summer did. Especially if her parents had been recently visiting, as they had briefly after Océane’s birth. Some vulnerabilities lasted forever, he supposed; he was usually a bit of a mess just after his own father showed up, too.

  So he had bought them a wider couch and gotten Summer to stretch out with them, and that had seemed to help everybody, her seeing how happy they were, how happy he was, because he was very happy. He was incredibly happy, while his baby and his wife fell asleep against him, Summer’s arm stretched across his chest to curl over him and Océane both.

  Lucie had been so much easier, not because she herself was an easier child—she had quite a temper, to tell the truth, and came up with crazy things to do that had never crossed Océane’s mind and so her parents weren’t expecting—but because Luc and Summer had relaxed more by then. And that made everything easier. Lucie actually slept, for God’s sake.

  He knew, though, that, despite the relaxation in each other and in their family, despite the growth of that seed that should someday be a great, old baobab tree, that Summer still had to reaffirm to herself sometimes that she was valuable and valued. Sometimes he saw her do it—take a breath, pull into herself, assert a smile.

  Whereas he—there had just been this moment. Océane was about two years old and curled up on Summer’s chest, asleep with her thumb in her mouth and Summer half-asleep. He had been watching them, a little amused, mostly just relaxed and happy, wondering which one of them was most likely to wake up on him if he tried to carry them each to their beds. And Summer’s lashes had lifted, and their eyes had met, and she had smiled at him. It wasn’t that the look was any different from a million other moments when their eyes had met and she had smiled. But all of a sudden it hit him so hard that he believed it: She’s happy. She’s so incredibly happy. She’s as happy as I am. She’s never going to leave us. Never. She’s mine forever. She’s Océane’s forever. She loves us.

  And that fear, that knot, that thing low in his belly . . . it was gone.

  And that tree just grew and grew. Sometimes he thought of himself as the tree, the strength, and of Summer as the sunshine and water that poured herself out and made it so strong, but sometimes he thought he probably should come up with another analogy.

  Still, he liked the way that growing tree sheltered people, too, the foster kids Jaime and his own foster father Bernard sent them when they were old enough to apprentice. Those kids—when they fully grasped what their new chef ’s wife was like, it was as if they had died and gone to heaven, and Luc still sometimes looked at them with incredulous jealousy when Summer was wrapping them up in bandages for tiny wounds and in warmth for everything. A lot of them were severely illiterate, and she sat them down and taught them and gave them stickers. And pretty pencils. And even store-bought lollipops occasionally, until Luc broke down and started making her those teddy bear marshmallow ones to use instead, while they argued back and forth about whether sweets should be used as rewards. They’re not rewards, Summer insisted. They’re just . . . because. And then she kissed him. Thank you for making them, chéri.

  So . . . he made them. And she gave them out with abandon.

  His new restaurant still only had two stars, which he figured it had gotten almost automatically on his name alone. He meant for it to get a third star eventually—he really did—but he just had so many other priorities right now. He went home evenings, for one, or at least most of them. And he let those foster kids get schooling and playtime, and didn’t make them practice something ten thousand times, and that meant sometimes a dish reached the tables that was just a hair off perfect.

  Weirdly, this had made him immensely popular, and he had found himself centered in some kind of “back to what matters” cooking movement, some strange confluence of fair trade and locavore and who knew what else. It helped that the chef cuisinier who had joined him to build the restaurant here had a kind of rough-and-ready deliciousness to his style and liked to go out into fields of apple trees or vines after the harvest had passed and physically glean the food that would go on the tables himself.

  It was all very strange and very different from the first thirty years of his life, but God . . . it was good.

  It was so very, very good.

  “I love you,” he mouthed to Summer, as he hugged their kids and the evening sun angled across her hair and made it glow nearly as much as her smile turned down at him.

  “I know,” she said, resting a hand in his hair and stroking his head. “I think I’m beginning to figure that out.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With all my thanks to Laurent Jeannin, chef pâtissier of Epicure, the Michelin three-star restaurant of five-star hotel Le Bristol in Paris, for his infinite generosity, enthusiasm, and patience, in welcoming me behind the scenes in a Michelin three-star restaurant’s pastry kitchen. There are only eighty Michelin three-star restaurants in the world, and to be the chef cuisinier or the chef pâtissier of one is a coveted title, but as if that is not enough, Laurent Jeannin also won the “Pastry Chef of the Year” award in 2011.

  My thanks also to Leah Marshall, director of Le Bristol, the Parisian palace hotel that was named in 2008 “best hotel in the world,” and to Kevin Chambenoit, directeur de la restauration, for permitting and orchestrating the visit, as well—of course!—as to my Paris-loving agent Kimberley Cameron for creating the opportunity.

  For some behind-the-scenes glimpses of Laurent Jeannin’s amazing work, please visit my website at www.lauraflorand.com.

  WORTH ANOTHER TRIP TO PARIS

  (No, Paris is not paying me a commission. But I’ll look into that.)

  Of course, The Chocolate Heart is all about those rarest of rare jewels, the three-star Michelin restaurants and luxury hotels. Of those, I must particularly note:

  Le Bristol, 12 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré75008 Paris. www.lebristol.com

  Le Bristol is that rarest of jewels: a Paris “palace” hotel with a Michelin three-star restaurant. And afternoon tea in its Jardin Français—or, in my case, afternoon chocolat chaud—is a luxurious, elegant experience. Indulge yourself, even if only once, in this very special treat of supremely fresh macarons or a perfection of other pastries as well as an incomparable chocolat chaud made by Pastry Chef of the Year (2011) Laurent Jeannin and his incredible team. Most of the research for The Chocolate Heart was done behind the scenes here.

  Two other palace hotels with Michelin three-star restaurants from which I drew inspiration (from the décor and the chefs) are Le Plaza-Athénée, www.plaza-athenee-paris.com, and the legendary Hôtel de Crillon, www.crillon.com.

  But while three-star restaurants and luxury palace hotels might require six-month reservations (not to mention a luxurious budget), Paris is full of places that will allow you your own moment of elegance as you let yourself be tempted by pastries and chocolates and that magical wonderful gift of Paris called a macaron.

  Jacques Genin, 133, rue de Turenne 75003, jacquesgenin.fr

  Personally rated by me as one of the top ten gourmet experiences in Paris: sitting in this exquisite salon de chocolat, drinking chocolat chaud, while outside, winter sets in. Jacques Genin is considered by many to be one of the best chocolatiers in Paris. The rosebud wall and e
xposed stone of Dominique Richard’s salon in The Chocolate Touch were inspired by this beautiful spot. It’s just off the Place de la République, so enjoy it before or after your stroll up the Canal St. Martin, pretending to be Dom and Jaime.

  Ladurée, 16, rue Royale—75008 Paris, www.laduree.fr

  In The Chocolate Kiss, a little bit of Philippe’s fifth-generation pâtissier pride, the way he is emblematic of Paris, and the ornate, fairytale quality of his salons, are inspired by Ladurée. Ladurée invented the macaron and was famous for them long before they became the popular delicacy they are today, and sitting in the nineteenth-century salon of the original store on Rue Royale drinking Ladurée’s rich, dark chocolat chaud or savoring any of their elaborate and exquisite desserts is an experience in itself. Don’t just stand in line to grab a macaron and go—really, it’s worth taking a seat under that painted ceiling. Imagine yourself an aristocrat from another time . . . Ladurée has several locations these days in Paris, but if you can, the original Rue Royale salon is by far the most romantic.

  Patrick Roger, 3 place de la Madeleine,www.patrickroger.com

  Showman chocolatier Patrick Roger has multiple boutiques now, but his latest high-concept store right near Ladurée is not to be missed for his giant chocolate sculptures in the window. Patrick Roger’s chocolate sculpting ability was a little bit of the inspiration for Dominique Richard’s sculpting in The Chocolate Touch.

  Pierre Hermé. Multiple Paris locations,www.pierreherme.fr