He couldn’t. But, God, he’d far rather trust his restaurant to the hands of an inexperienced second and a chef de cuisine who wanted to turn it into a soup kitchen than trust her to go back to a place she was happy and still return to him.
And, merde, but was that ever a sad reflection on his ability to handle a relationship. “I should trust you, I know,” he said.
“You should,” she agreed. “But I guess you don’t know how yet. Trust therapy still in order.”
The tense muscles in his face eased at her quiet tone. That was Summer. She denigrated every single negative feeling she had, but she accepted even his most inappropriate, craziest ones as just the way he was. You’re all right. I love you just the way you are. But she never quite believed he could do the same.
“You’re like one of your brand-new interns,” she said. “You have to practice at this relationship stuff.”
His heart lightened. That was…oddly apt. Envisioning himself as a clumsy intern in love made him want to laugh. He’d been a clumsy beginner in pastry once, after all. He’d gotten where he was today, from that clumsy beginning.
She held up her pinched thumb and forefinger. “Maybe next year, or the year after, your trust muscles will have grown bigger.” Judging by the three-centimeter gap to which she opened thumb and forefinger, she wasn’t expecting any huge trust-on-steroids growth there.
He caught her hand and pulled it back to his lips to kiss it. “You don’t mind my baby steps?”
“Luc.” She sighed. But patiently. A sigh filled with patience. “You know, I really, really love you.”
That made the biggest smile break out on his face. He couldn’t help it. He knew it probably looked ridiculous—he wasn’t, by nature, someone full of smiles—and yet sometimes she made every cell in his body glow.
“Besides, I kind of like you being clumsy at it. I mean, sometimes it hurts, but it also means it’s all new to you, and important enough for you to try with all your heart.”
Well…yes. He laid his hand over her heart. That fragile, stubborn heart that had let itself get broken over and over in her search for love, until she found him. “You realize you’re kind of an intern at all this, too?”
“Oh, God, yes.” She dropped her head to his chest. “We really rushed into things, didn’t we?”
He petted her head and twined a lock of her hair around his fingers to give her a little tug so she would let him see her face again. “But we’ll manage,” he told her firmly.
It seemed to be the right thing to say. Her eyes lit, and a real smile blazed out. “Yes,” she agreed, equally firmly. And then: “But you have to help me shop for baby things.”
“I’ll take time off.” And pray no critics came. Or maybe think about what Nico had said, about priorities.
“And, Luc—if you can’t come to Manunui with me and I go by myself, and after two days of travel to get there I find out someone is getting married the next weekend and they would love it so much if I stayed on a couple of days extra to be part of it—you have to tough it up, Luc. Relax. Trust me. You can’t die of despair.”
“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes. Imagining her not showing up when he expected, and not showing up, and… “Will you at least call?”
“Sometimes I can’t, Luc.” She sat up astride him. “They need another satellite in that region. And my father is not exactly in any hurry to fulfill that promise to invest in one.”
He dragged a hand over his face rather than let her see the truth of him again: I really don’t know if I can handle that.
Except…the whole point of this conversation was to let her see the truth of him. To let her understand what a mess he was. “I’ll go with you.”
“I’d like it better if you went with me, anyway,” she said softly. “I love it with you on the island. But I’m not trying to threaten you into it.”
“I know.” He pressed his hand against her belly again. “Summer—” This was an even scarier topic than her island. He almost couldn’t broach it. But he had to. “Why are you so worried about miscarriages?” His voice was barely over a whisper. “Is there a reason?”
Her face shuttered. She tried to cover it with one of her careless, absent smiles, but she couldn’t, quite. “Just something my mother said. And other people say. Almost like they want it to happen.”
Luc stared at her. “Well, fuck them,” he said, filled with rage.
She tried a firm nod, mouthing fuck them silently.
His hand tightened on her belly. “I want to talk about baby names. This is our family, and we’re going to be happy.”
When her eyes held his, he knew that here was one of the things she needed from him, that he hadn’t been giving her: solidarity, his strength, his ability to tell the world to go to hell. A real smile started to relax her mouth, and she wormed her hand around to find his and close firmly around it. “Lucie?” she suggested. “If it’s a girl.”
That made him so damn happy, just the thought of a little Lucie. Or Lucienne? “Summer doesn’t work in French,” he said, reaching up to play with her sunshine hair again. Plus, his babies were all bound to have dark hair and dark eyes. Yes, his genes would swamp those blue eyes and blondness she had, but maybe they would get her fine bones. “Maybe…Océane?”
Her face brightened. “I love that name.”
“I guess we shouldn’t rush quite so much into the next one, but you know I would really love to have both a Lucie and an Océane.”
She pressed one hand to her stomach and held up the other in a warding gesture. “Let’s get through this one first.”
“Did you try the peanut butter?”
“Uh—”
“What about pretzels? Dom found pretzels suggested on a website.”
“Dom did?”
“We were brainstorming.” Luc shrugged.
She stared at him. “Is that what you guys were talking about the whole time? Food?”
“What else would we talk about?” he asked blankly.
So that’s how she ended up laughing. And he ended up kissing her to get her to stop laughing at him. And then, and then…God, it felt so good to make love to her while she was laughing, to ease that silky top off, and that bra, and stroke her until the sparkle in her eyes got lost in hazy pleasure.
I can do this part, he thought, as he watched her, as he breathed in the scent of her arousal and his own surged through him. I think I have this part down.
It felt so damn good afterward to pull her in close to him, holding her as he fell asleep. As if he were a child pressing his face into a teddy-bear after a nightmare, breathing in a sweet, familiar scent and texture, all his worries just eased away. The last thing he remembered was her hand linking with his and the way all the tension seemed to leave her body in a soft sigh as she nestled between him and her pillow, falling asleep.
Chapter 22
“Patrice,” a sandy voice said. Luc closed his hand around the little flower bracelet and looked around. “An excellent name for a baby. Or perhaps Patricia?”
It was five in the morning, but Luc had been fostered by a baker-pastry chef, and he had long since lost the ability to sleep in. Patrick pretended to be better at lazing around, but given that he was up at this hour of the morning even after a late night drinking, the façade was pretty see-through.
“Up early looking for waves?” Luc asked dryly.
Patrick peered at the flat pre-dawn sea below and gave a huge, aggravated sigh. “Damn Mediterranean. You couldn’t have moved to Hawaii?”
“We talked about it.”
“Yeah?” A quick glance. “Sarah and I, too.”
Really. “But we thought the south of France was a good compromise.” Sunshine, and enough of a clientele where he could still be one of the top chefs in the world.
“It’s not too shabby,” Patrick admitted. “Nice change from Paris.”
Yeah, except he’d lost his second that way. “How’s the engineering going?”
“Boring
.”
Luc blinked.
“There’s no speed to it, the textures are all metal and computers and wire, there’s no”—Patrick shoved his hands through his hair suddenly and flung them out—“flavor.”
Luc tightened his hand around the little bracelet and turned around.
“And putain, but it’s slow. Merde, Luc. You have to sit still.”
Luc took a careful moment before he spoke at all. It wasn’t his place to hold Patrick back, clip his wings, discourage him from going for any dream he wanted to. He hadn’t half-raised that kid to trap him in a cage. It wasn’t in his nature to ask for help either, damn it. To expose the fact that he needed someone. But… “Well, if you get sick of it,” he said very casually, “just let me know.”
Another little silence. Luc carefully didn’t look at Patrick at all, just gazed out at the dark Mediterranean. The stars were fading, a hint of color peeking over the horizon.
“Sarah doesn’t want to work in a three-star kitchen,” Patrick said.
“Really?” Luc said, utterly astonished. “But—she’s good. She was born to work in a three-star kitchen.”
Patrick smiled a little, in pleasure at the compliment to his fiancée. “You know, you could tell her that to her face once in a while, you bastard.”
“I let her work in my kitchens!” Luc said incredulously. Hadn’t they been through this once before? “How much clearer a compliment does she need?”
Patrick was starting to grin. “Women. Sometimes you just have to spell it out for them.”
Oh, yes. Over and over and over.
But he kind of needed it spelled out for him, too.
“She could work for me here, while you do some of your engineering studies in the area, too,” Luc said, very, very casually. “I mean—” He shrugged. “If you two want that option. She does need more training.”
This smile was growing deeper and deeper on Patrick’s face, all while Patrick wouldn’t look at him, gazing downward. “Yeah? Is that an option for us?”
Luc shrugged. “Or…I don’t know…I was thinking I might need to spend less time in the restaurant with fatherhood coming up. Might want to take on a partner.” This weird thing was happening to Luc’s cheeks. They felt…hot. Was he getting a fever? He touched them surreptitiously.
Patrick’s eyebrows went up. “Not a second?”
“I’ve got another second these days.” Luc sighed. “He needs a lot of work.”
Patrick slipped his hands in his pockets and gazed at the Mediterranean oh-so-casually. “I like that chef de cuisine you found. Seems as if a man could have fun working with him.”
Fun. Luc started to smile before he could stop it. See, that was what was missing from the kitchen now—Patrick’s sense of fun.
Luc tightened his hand around the bracelet until its little jewels cut into his palm. Maybe he had learned the wrong lesson, a long time ago. Maybe everyone he loved didn’t have to leave him. Maybe it didn’t all have to melt, if someone didn’t eat it fast enough.
“Be kind of fun to do a restaurant with two chefs. They could alternate menus and weeks, something like that. Two different takes around the season’s fruits. And that way they could both have some kind of work-life balance. Or one of them could, you know, go to school part-time or something.” Luc cleared his throat. “Personally I think I need to take a little bit more time off for the foreseeable future. Until my kids are all grown up, by which time I’ll be…” His imagination failed him.
“Fifty,” Patrick supplied. “At least.”
Fifty.
Actually, good God, probably more like sixty, if he wanted several.
Basically, the second thirty years of his life.
“Wow,” he said softly. “My life might be really, really different than what I thought it would be like, just last year.”
“Congratulations,” Patrick said, amused. And serious.
“Yeah,” Luc said, more softly still. Wondering. As if he’d just blown gold powder over some dessert, making it all sparkly. He was afraid he would breathe too hard and screw it all up. So he held his breath and tried not to say anything at all, but then said, rough and tight: “It’s just…she’s going to need a godfather.”
“Aww, hell.” Patrick covered his heart with a fist, as if Luc had just hit him right there. “Really?”
Luc peeked again, just a subtle slanted glance, the way he would check people in his kitchens without them knowing it.
Patrick’s eyes were shimmering. He lifted his other hand against Luc’s glance, turning away a bit. “Give me a second.” A flex and deliberate relaxation of Patrick’s strong shoulders, hands dropping to hook thumbs in his jeans, and when he shifted back to face Luc, he could manage that lazy, easy shrug. “Good thing you asked me,” he said offhandedly, as if this was all nothing to him. “Saves all that awkwardness when I had to nominate myself for the role. I mean, somebody has to make sure that kid is raised right.”
“Yeah,” Luc said. That was what he thought, too. “I…yeah.”
One of those quick, blue looks of Patrick’s that happened so fast and saw so deep, all while Patrick kept that lazy façade of his. “I was kidding about that.”
But Luc just shook his head, his lungs so tight. “I don’t know how,” he said suddenly, low, to the terrace wall. “To raise a kid. To be a good dad. I’ve never even seen a good dad. And I don’t have anything to practice on.”
Patrick’s hands slid deep down into his jeans pockets. Out of the corner of his eye, Luc could see his throat flex as he swallowed. “Sarah thinks you did all right with me,” he mentioned awkwardly, to the terrace wall, his lazy shrug completely failing to make him look indifferent or casual.
It shook the breath out of Luc. His throat tightened up, and…shit, his eyes were stinging. Patrick sometimes thought of him as his father figure? He was only four years older than Patrick. And he’d been such a desperately struggling teenager himself when he took Patrick on.
But…but Patrick had turned out all right, actually. More than all right. Patrick had turned into an exceptional man.
“I don’t—I—” Luc rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, I think you mostly raised yourself.”
Patrick looked sideways at him. “Oh, you think that, do you?”
“Well…” Luc’s shrug felt like some awkward imitation of one of Patrick’s.
“All those apprentices you formed into top chefs who are now earning their own stars all over the world, they raised themselves, too, did they?”
“Well, I mean…”
“And those kids Jaime has you helping right now. The ones who are driving Sylvain crazy and you find easy to handle.”
“That’s all in the kitchens, Patrick. I don’t even see kids until they’re fifteen.”
“Fine.” Patrick shrugged, visibly pissed off. “All I’m saying is…you’ve had practice at parts of fatherhood, at least. And you seem to do pretty damn good at it. Now work with your wife, the one who loves to sit and teach little kids their letters all day as if that is something any person can do patiently, and I bet between you, the two of you can figure this out.”
Really? Luc couldn’t even start to encompass the softening of tension in him, that weird, shimmering thing that was happening to his heart, that the once screwed-up teenager he had tried so hard to raise right thought he would be a good father. “I think most of those apprentices that came through our kitchens owe a lot of their success to you, Patrick.” This was no exaggeration. Patrick was fantastic at guiding new apprentices and even higher level chefs, at helping them survive and grow good at their impossible profession.
Patrick…was Patrick starting to flush, too? Merde, it was a good thing they were having this conversation at five in the morning where no one else could see them. “I’ll tell you what,” Patrick said. “I’ll talk to Sarah. She’s mentioned lately realizing she wants to spend more time working her way up in a good kitchen before she tries to do her own place. Maybe she and I
could help out over the summer and see what she thinks of Provence. Help you and Summer get started.”
“Yeah?” Luc couldn’t help it. He beamed at that damn Mediterranean.
Patrick nodded slowly. “Luc. Just so you know. You were right to let yourself need people a little bit. You were right to call on friends.”
Well, it had been for Summer, not for him, of course, but, but…he decided not to say that. Not to Patrick, who knew damn well that Luc had called on him.
And people had come, hadn’t they? Here we are. We’re happy to help welcome your baby into the world.
We know that sometimes being a good father, being a good husband, being a good person is tough to do entirely on your own.
He had a sudden, flashing vision of himself, Patrick, Sylvain, Dom, Gabriel, and Nico all gathered around a black-haired one-year-old with her face scrunched up at all their coaxing spoons. In the vision, Nico had pureed peaches spit back on his face. Luc grinned, and his hand opened slowly on the little flower bracelet, so that it lay, pretty and fragile in his callused palm but revealed to the world.
“What’s that?” Patrick nodded at it but had far too great an instinct for what might be precious to reach for it.
“It’s a present,” Luc said. “It’s for my daughter.”
FIN
***
Thank You!
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed Luc and Summer’s story. And I’m working on a (free) short story about the birth of Luc and Summer’s child as a little holiday present. Sign up here to be emailed your own copy of the story when it’s ready and to be kept abreast of other releases.
Speaking of new releases, the first half of 2015 will see the launch of my new Vie en Roses series with Once Upon a Rose as well as another book in the Amour et Chocolat series, which takes you back to a well-loved place in Paris with a hero and heroine I am very attached to! Keep reading for glimpses.
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