“Isn’t it?” Her fingers kneaded into his shoulders as her eyes searched his face.
Pregnant.
In a hammock in the South Pacific, he’d first created this tropical lagoon of a dream for them: four black-haired children, eternal bliss, them wandering hand in hand. Under southern stars, cradled in a hammock swinging by an aqua sea, they’d drawn gorgeous visions of happily ever after.
It felt as if that tropical lagoon had just risen up in one great tsunami wave and knocked him flat.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. Had he just said that?
Why were Summer’s eyes getting so big? Was she scared?
Don’t be scared.
When people were scared, they ran away.
The tsunami wave must have shattered his great glass shadow. Its fragments swirled low in his middle now, throwing back reflections of his broken, shadowy self. Only sometimes those shards caught the light wrong and that self didn’t look like an adult. It looked like a black-haired baby screaming, Mommy!
How long did a baby cry for his mother when she left him, before he gave up and decided monsters must have eaten her?
No monsters had eaten his mother. She’d just decided his father’s world was too tough for her, so she’d gone back to the Pacific island home she loved and not bothered to take Luc with her.
As if maybe Luc was really what was too tough for her.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, shit, why was that stuff coming up again? As soon as Summer got pregnant, everything about him was supposed to turn right. Be healed. Be strong and secure and…oh, shit.
“Are you happy?” He made himself smile at her when he asked it, so that she wouldn’t know that, right when she needed an adult male in her life, her own husband had remembered that he was still a screwed-up kid.
“Of course I am!” Summer dropped her hands from his shoulders to press against her flat belly, blinking out the dark reflection of him just for a second before she opened her eyes again and turned her smile up to full voltage. That beautiful shield of a smile. Luminously gorgeous. His wife was quite literally the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The world thought so, too, and nipped and bit at her for it, wanting to rip pieces off her to make her less beautiful, like a pack of rabid dogs. “Of course. Isn’t this what we wanted?”
Oh, God, he wanted it so damn bad. He wanted to walk hand in hand in lavender fields behind four gamboling children with delicate features and black hair, everything in their lives as secure and happy as an afternoon in a hammock by a lagoon. He wanted it so badly he could taste it.
But to get to it, he first had to get through the part where she could run away. Not all women run away from motherhood. Stop it, you idiot. Stop it.
His heart beat too hard. He felt dizzy, and he had to keep pressing his forearms into the stone wall to keep from slumping his head against it.
“Really.” He looked down between them at her belly but didn’t dare touch it. He could touch anything. He could hold his palm down on a hot pan, as his foster father had forcibly taught him, he could handle molten sugar, he could place an exquisitely fragile net of air and sugar on a dessert and never break a thing. Hell, he’d touched Summer’s body every possible place a man’s hands could touch. But all the sudden, he couldn’t touch her belly. “Are you really happy?”
“Of course I am.” She smiled at him.
If only half of Summer’s smiles weren’t lies. He knew she couldn’t help it. He knew it was her defense mechanism. And yet it would be so damn helpful if he actually knew what she was thinking.
“Come here.” He turned to rest his back against the wall, pulling her against him as if he was the strong one, as if he was the one who could keep them secure. Not as if he was relying on a wall to hold him up. “There you go.” His fingers kneaded into the base of her spine. There, just on the other side of those bones, his little baby was growing.
Don’t you dare faint, bordel. That would not reassure Summer that he was strong enough to handle everything at all.
I am. I swear I am. You can always count on me. You won’t ever need to dump me and your baby for a better life.
And if I can knead molten sugar, I can keep kneading her spine without jerking my hand away.
A man could always handle more than his body wanted him to realize.
Summer’s hands slid around his waist, fighting their way between stone and his skin, holding on hard.
I’ve got you, he thought to her as he tried not to pass out. He stroked her spine. I’ve got this.
Her body slowly relaxed. When all her muscles were melted against him, when all her weight was his, she slowly rubbed her face against his chest in this intimate caress of herself against him. “I love you so much,” she murmured.
He kissed her pale gold hair, his dizziness slowly starting to fade.
“Soleil.” He chose the man he wanted to be for her and not the man who hid deep inside. “We’re going to be so happy.” He focused on the feel of her hair under his stroking palm. On the weight of her relaxing into him. His arms tightened. He found that knot of joy inside him and breathed on it, trying to coax it to uncramp and trust the air, to let itself become a bonfire that burned out all fear. “We’re going to be so, so happy.”
Chapter 4
“Oh, my God!” Summer’s mother exclaimed over the phone from Hong Kong. “Pregnant already? Honey. I told you to give him a few years with his beautiful wife first. You don’t want the only thing he associates with marriage to be a fat wife who’s always throwing up.”
Summer sucked in her stomach. Damn. She took a deep breath, trying to relax it, but her muscles just wouldn’t un-tense from that effort to keep it flat, not while her mother was on the phone.
She wished she’d had a chance to talk more to Luc. He’d acted kind of weird last night—not radiant with happiness, more like scared to death with it. And then he’d slipped out so early that morning and so quietly, as if he was afraid to wake her.
Shouldn’t he have wanted to linger? So she could tell him, excitedly, Hey, I think I’m feeling sick! This must be morning sickness!
“Although I’m sure you’ll be an adorable pregnant woman, honey. But you know, none of us look our best. Keep track of the calories when those cravings hit. There’s no excuse for gaining more than twenty-five pounds, my doctor said.”
Who could eat? Everything looked revolting today. Except possibly a Popsicle. A Popsicle might be nice. “Right now, I’m starting to feel sick a little,” she mentioned tentatively, fishing. What’s it like, Maman? Can you give me any tips?
Damn it. Why had she told her mother?
But she knew why. She’d had no one else to tell.
“Oh, good. Honestly, I know it doesn’t feel that way now, but you’re lucky if the nausea goes on longer than the usual couple of months. Otherwise it is so hard to keep the extra pounds off. Although my friend Tru was telling me her daughter found this milkshake that’s the perfect amount of nutrients and calories. It’s called Perfect Mama. Did you tell Luc yet?”
For one tiny, odd moment, Summer almost understood something about her mother. Something alien and a little sad, that Mai Corey would assume Summer would call her first before she told her husband. Did her mother think she and her daughter were close? Or did Mai just have that emotionally distant a relationship with the husband she accompanied all over the world? “Yes. He’s…thrilled, of course.” Summer kneaded her belly.
Her mother laughed. “Your father was terrible. I mean, he was very proud to be a father, of course, especially when he thought you were going to be a boy, but oh, my goodness, he couldn’t stand the morning sickness and the big belly getting in his way when he wanted to—well, you know. Never mind. I’m sure you don’t want a picture.” Her mother laughed again.
No, Summer didn’t. She really didn’t. And it had nothing and everything to do with her sudden image of her father’s impatience with his wife’s fat belly when he wanted to have sex. “Don’
t tell Dad.”
“Oh, no, of course not, honey! Not until after three months. There’s no point, you know. Until you pass three months, the odds of the pregnancy failing are so high.”
Summer’s breath left her as if she’d just been punched in the stomach. Right in the womb, while she stared from the terrace of their house down to the Mediterranean.
She wanted her island. To curl up at the feet of a comfortable mamie, help her braid leis while she held one end steady in the grip of her toes, tell her all her worries and listen to tips and stories about babies and pregnancies and eat green mangoes—
Oh, that would be good right now—a green mango. That crisp apple-like consistency but the flavor all its own.
Oh. That would be so good, it was all she could do not to hop straight on a plane in pursuit of some. And maybe curl up in all those scents of tiare and jasmine and take a few days to sink into a world of normalcy and reassurance. A lot of pregnancies failed the first three months?
“I—I didn’t know that.” She’d thought it was a done deal. She was pregnant. They were going to have a baby. She needed to find some YouTube videos that would teach her how to change a diaper.
“I had one before you.” Summer blinked at this news. “Just don’t count on anything too much, all right, honey? And I won’t tell your father yet. Oh, he’s coming. Listen, I love you, sweetheart. Let me know once you’re sure!”
I was sure, Summer thought as the lights on her phone faded at the ended call. Just for a minute there, in the doctor’s office, before I tried to tell anyone, I was so damn sure.
Chapter 5
“Everything all right?” Antoine asked Luc about ten minutes after the sous-chef got in that morning.
Luc glanced up from his work barely long enough to nod at his second. He’d done his best to find a replacement for his long-term sous-chef Patrick when he opened LEROI in the south of France. Trim, compact, brown-haired Antoine was a good guy, and did good work, was a careful mentor to their hires, did really all the things an excellent sous-chef should do. And right now, all the sudden, Luc viciously hated him.
For not being Patrick. His real right-hand man, who had worked beside him for twelve years, whom Luc had practically raised from the age of fifteen, who had been, in so many ways that had nothing to do with the tiny overlap of their foster home experience, his damn brother. He needed Patrick. The flippancy, the humor, the way Patrick would be needling him right now until he got Luc to laugh or crack or even let slip, discreetly, this tiny venting of what was actually wrong. Everything bright and beautiful always leaves me, damn it. Luc slammed the mass of chocolate against the counter, breaking it inside its bag.
“It’s fine,” he said briefly. And then: “Why?” Begging his second with that one word to be Patrick, to not let it drop, to poke and prod with wicked humor until Luc could let what was wrong escape out of him. Until he could understand that wrongness. Master it.
“Well.” Antoine eyed the sketches, new molds, and chocolate around his chef. “You must have gotten in here at 5:30 in the morning.”
Yes. Slipping out of bed in the dark. Summer had murmured, her hand catching at him, but it was better this way. What if pregnancy changed her rhythms and for once in her life, she got out of bed first in the morning and left him?
And he turned into a bawling mess right there, dropping to his knees, clutching her legs, begging her not to leave him?
While she tried delicately to free herself because she needed to go pee.
Yeah.
No.
No, it was better he come in here and work than become that man. He had that man hidden. He had that man compressed down inside him so tiny he’d gotten as close as the universe would allow to undoing matter’s existence. And just because the pressurized containment made that man—that boy, that stupid boy—seem such dense, intense matter determined to explode outward again right now didn’t mean he had to yield to it. He could keep control.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and went to his favorites. He only had five: the restaurant line, Antoine’s cell, his chef de cuisine Nicolas’s cell, Summer, and Patrick. And then, in the regular contacts, all the dozens of suppliers he had to call every single time a delivery went wrong. For the whole restaurant. It had been rare, at the hotel, that he had to correct a supply issue himself. So rare that up in Paris when Luc himself took the phone, about five words, cool and cutting, were all it took to resolve an issue.
Here he had to call suppliers all the time. It seemed as if half the deliveries a day went wrong, and he’d never even had to think about the savory side of supplies before this. Damn it, Gabriel Delange, the pastry chef for whom he had once been sous, long ago, had become a restaurant owner down here—a three-star executive head chef with a pastry background, something no chef de cuisine wanted to admit was possible at the time. So Luc could, too.
Anything anyone else could do, Luc could do better. If he set his mind to it. He just had to set his mind hard enough. Not get distracted and not let anything drop, no matter how many fragile things he juggled in the air. So he had twice as many fragile sugar balls to juggle these days than he ever had before—he was Luc Leroi, damn it. He could handle anything.
He stared at Patrick’s name a minute. But what was he supposed to say? Hey, I’ve got some terrifying, fascinating, utterly enticing news? Also, I think you might be getting a little godson or goddaughter soon. That sounded almost like something a normal man would say.
Or: Look, I know you ditched me and went on to live your own life, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t figure out how this is funny. I need you to tell me, so I can laugh.
Because Patrick was so damn good at that. Luc would be getting all intense, because he was always intense, and Patrick would say something wicked, and suddenly the light of the situation shone through so brightly even Luc could see it and laugh and relax.
We’re pregnant. Come hand me a paper bag and push my head down between my knees and make fun of me for being such an idiot, so I feel sane again.
No. He couldn’t text that. Because he was Luc Leroi. He could handle everything himself. And because Luc had practically raised Patrick, and still Patrick had found better things in life than his old chef.
And that was normal. Merde, let Patrick have his wings and not be tethered by some co-dependent chef/foster brother who didn’t know how to laugh at himself. Fathers had to be able to laugh, didn’t they? They had to be able to let people go.
Oh, fuck, no. No, I don’t want to have to let anyone else go out of my life. Please, please, please let me lock them up in a box and keep them forever.
Luc shoved his phone back in his pocket and stared at the burst of desperate creativity all around him on the marble counter. Maybe Summer could come in for lunch today and he could feed her.
He could prove to her: I can feed you both. You’ll never go hungry with me. You’ll never need to dump us for an easier life. I can take care of both of you.
It was ridiculous, given how much money Summer had and how unlikely it was that her ability to find sustenance would ever affect her choices. But his mind finally settled, as he focused on the special something he was going to make for her today. On the way her face would light as she tasted it.
He could feed her.
Yes. That would be good.
***
Distraction fractured across the steel-boned foment of creation of the kitchens. Luc smiled before he even looked around, his shoulders relaxing. Summer was here.
He glanced sideways, watching her make her way through excited apprentices eagerly offering her their latest accomplishments. She tried everything, smiled at everyone, told them how wonderful they were. Hey, Antoine wasn’t an apprentice, he was Luc’s own damn sous-chef, trying to impress Luc’s wife. Why the hell did all his sous-chefs start flirting with his wife? The one skill Patrick had had that Luc didn’t want Antoine to channel.
Summer smiled at Antoine, too, of course, a
nd Luc barely managed not to shout at all of them: Damn it! Don’t fill her up! She’s mine to feed! Stupid, since everything his apprentices and cooks were making had come from his head. Or, fine, sometimes from the head of Nicolas Delesvaux, the chef de cuisine he had hired for the savory side. She liked Nico.
Sometimes the fact that she liked Nico made Luc want to stab him.
What are you trying to prove? That you can take care of her or that she’d starve without you? Let your chefs feed her.
Watch her smile for them. They were currently providing internship opportunities to two teenagers from Côte d’Ivoire, in a program Summer had helped her cousins Jaime and Cade Corey develop. It had been via Summer that Jaime got Luc involved—Summer’s eyes glowing with complete trust in Luc’s ability to help as she told him what Jaime had told her, about how few Ivoirian farmers had ever tasted chocolate or even knew what the cacao beans they spent their lives harvesting were for. Luc, Sylvain, Dom, and multiple other top chefs were now training a new generation who could produce chocolate—value-added product—in their own country.
Both the interns had come from exploitive labor situations in their childhood, with almost no schooling, and every afternoon, Luc let them off early so Summer could sit with them on the restaurant terrace and work on reading and math skills and how to set up their own chocolate business one day. The two teenagers adored her. They loved it when they offered her something they had made and she exclaimed in delight as she tasted it.
The kids needed this. He could share.
He could.
He could, he ordered himself, a whiplash of internal command.
“Hi, Gorgeous.” Summer smiled at him, and he had to bend his head to hide this weird, vulnerable, happy feeling that always ran through him at the nickname. She’d started calling him that flippantly when they first met, her way of protecting herself with that shield of superficial flirtation, but now the way she used it made him feel…well, gorgeous.
A feeling something like a blush. Or a…a dimple. Something weird he couldn’t possibly allow to show. But his lashes lifted to let their eyes meet and maybe it snuck out of him, that hidden, blushing dimple, because she blew him a kiss, her eyes laughing at him.
Shadowed Heart Page 2