Meanwhile, make sure to catch the other books in the Amour et Chocolat series. You can find the story of Luc and Summer’s tempestuous courtship in The Chocolate Heart and Patrick and Sarah’s story in The Chocolate Temptation. Dom and Jaime’s story is in The Chocolate Touch, Sylvain and Cade’s in The Chocolate Thief, and Gabriel and Jolie’s in The Chocolate Rose. Keep reading for a glimpse of The Chocolate Temptation as well as a complete book list.
Thank you so much for sharing this world with me! For some behind-the-scenes glimpses of the research with top chefs and chocolatiers, check out my website and Facebook. I hope to meet up with you there!
And this book is lendable, so if you enjoyed it, feel free to loan it to a friend. Anything that encourages discussions around books makes the world a richer place. Kind of like love and chocolate!
Thank you and all the best,
Laura Florand
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THE CHOCOLATE TEMPTATION, excerpt
She hated him.
Tossing around dessert elements as if they were juggling balls he had picked up to idle away the time and, first try, had dozens flying around his body in multiple figure eights.
Patrick Chevalier.
Sarah hated him with every minute painstaking movement with which she made sure a nut crumb lay exactly the way Chef Leroi wanted it on a financier. She hated him with every flex of tendons and muscles in her aching hands in the evening, all alone in her tiny Paris apartment at the approach to Montmartre, knowing someone else was probably letting him work the tension out of his own hands any way he wanted.
She hated him because she knew he probably didn’t even have any tension in his hands. That after fifteen or more brutal hours in one of the most mercilessly perfectionistic pastry kitchens in the world, he was still as relaxed as if he’d been sunning all day on a beach, occasionally catching a wave.
She hated him because five thousand times a day, his body brushed hers, his hand caught her shoulder or touched her back to guide their bodies around each other, in that constant dance of sixteen bodies in a space much too small for so many people working at blinding speeds. She hated him because every time his body controlled hers so easily, she felt all the lean, fluid muscles from his fingertips to his toes – and knew that however lazy he looked, those muscles knew tension.
She hated him because most times when he touched her he didn’t even notice, and once in a while, when he did, those vivid blue eyes laughed into hers or winked at her as if she was gobble-up delicious, and then he was gone, leaving her heart this messy, unthawed lump that had just tried to throw itself into his hands and ended up instead all gooey over her own shoes.
Fortunately black kitchen shoes were used to receiving a lot of gooey messes on them over the course of a day.
“Sarabelle,” he called laughingly, and she hated him for that, too. The way her ordinary, serious American name turned so exotic and caressing with those French Rs and dulcet Ahs, like a sigh of rich silk all over her skin. The way he added belle onto it, whenever it struck his fancy, as if that couldn’t break someone’s heart, to be convinced someone like him thought she was belle and then realize he thought everybody was belle. He probably called his dog belle, and his four-year-old niece belle when he ruffled her hair.
And they both probably looked up at him with helpless melting, too.
She hated him because she knew he couldn’t even have a dog, given his working hours, and that somehow her entire vision of Patrick Chevalier, which was all of him he let her have, could not possibly be true.
* * * *
Available Now!
ONCE UPON A ROSE, excerpt
It’s the start of a new series! Set in Provence, in the south of France, La Vie en Roses series takes us into the heart of a powerful family in the perfume industry and into the hearts of the five male cousins who are its heirs. Here’s a glimpse of Matthieu Rosier, the rising family patriarch, in his valley full of roses…and the American upstart who just stole a chunk of his land.
“You still have the key,” Layla said.
Matt braced his hands on the doorjamb, on either side of her above her head. That moved him into her space—caging her in the size of him, and all his body wide open to her. But of course, she could always take one step back and just shut the door. “It’s in my back pocket,” he said. That little smile as he held her eyes, and that deep, deep voice. God, a smile was a gorgeous look on him. She wanted to play with it, run her fingers over it, nurture it. “And I think my hands are dirty.”
His jeans looked as if they’d been through a lot more than dirty hands. And, anyway, he’d just wiped his hands off so carefully she’d been sure he was about to touch her with them. But now they gripped the doorjamb above her, not touching her at all.
Meaning she would have to touch him, if she wanted any touching to occur.
His back pocket. Her palm itched to slide over the curve of that taut butt. “If I—if I got it out, what would you do?”
The biceps to either side of her face grew more pronounced. He gazed down at her, eyes not grumpy at all, oddly quiet. Intent. “What would you want me to do?” His voice didn’t boom. It slid over her, textured, strong and rich, entirely reassuring.
“N—nothing,” she admitted. Well, kind of that was what she wanted. With, like, the only two neurons that seemed to be functioning in her brain right now that was what she wanted. The other two hundred billion seemed to want something entirely different.
Evidently a big, hot body that smelled of roses short-circuited all synapses.
His low, deep voice rubbed over her. “Well, I guess I’m going to do nothing, then.”
Oh, really? Would you really do that for me? Hold all that big, aggressive need to do still for me?
He tightened his hands on the doorjamb. “I told you, it’s not that easy to do.”
But he waited, quite still except for the flexing of his arm muscles.
She slid her hand into his back pocket slow, slow, slow, afraid of what she was doing but tantalized by it, too, by that firm curve, by the warmth and snugness of the pocket, by the arms framing her that hardened and didn’t move. By his eyes watching her. Intent and pushing his will on her, as if he knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, but maybe this hint of caution, too, as if he wasn’t quite sure what she might do to him.
She came out with the key, iron and warm, but she didn’t step back into the house with it and shut the door. She stared up at him, liking her little space inside the cage of his body so much she could have stayed there for an hour, just with that warmth so carefully not touching her.
He took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I promised to do nothing, didn’t I?”
She nodded mutely.
Another huff of a breath, and he shoved himself away from the doorjamb and her. “Well, that was even harder than I expected.”
He picked up his toolkit and studied her another long moment, as if she was really hard to figure out. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced yet,” he said slowly and held out his hand. “I’m Matthieu Rosier.”
Her hand disappeared into his, slim and strong but engulfed by his strength and size. “Layla Dubois.”
He didn’t release her hand. “You stole my land,” he said, still studying her as if something here was a complete mystery to him.
“It was a gift.”
“I want it back.”
Yeah, but now that she knew what it was like to be here, sheltered and private and far away from any thought of media or performance, she didn’t want to get kicked back out into the world. The same way her hand, warm and snug inside his, didn’t want to be released. “The thing is…I like it here.”
She expected that flare of grouchiness on his part at her refusal, but instead a little light came into in his eyes, as if she had paid him a compliment. “Do you?”
She gestured out over the roses with her free hand. “It’s beautiful.”
&n
bsp; The light in his eyes grew brighter. “You really think so?”
She nodded.
His hand didn’t seem to know how to let go of hers. But then, she didn’t try to wiggle free either. It was such a nice, strong, warm hold.
“I’ll try to take good care of it,” she offered. “I won’t sell it to the highest bidder or anything.”
A hint of brooding snuck back into his expression. “The highest bidder is likely to be one of my cousins. They have more liquid assets.”
Not having ever had an extended family, she had no idea how to address that. “And you can keep picking my roses.”
That made his head rear back. “Of course I can keep picking those roses!” he growled. “We just planted those bushes three years ago, they—” He broke off as she shook her head, laughing silently at him.
“Or you could say, ‘Thank you very much for being so cooperative,’” she suggested sternly.
He studied her, one eyebrow going up. Then he leaned a tad into her, pressing his will onto her and seeing how she held up to it. “I could say that. But they are my roses.”
Ha, as if he was the first man who’d ever tried to get her to bend to his sheer force of male will. Busking around Europe and then dealing with the music industry had brought her into contact with plenty of men who wanted the little female to cooperate. Little females who couldn’t afford a personal bodyguard had to learn how to look out for themselves in the world. So she just raised her eyebrows, amused. “Every single last petal?”
“Every single one.”
“You’re very possessive, aren’t you?”
He nodded unhesitatingly, as if she had just affirmed one of his more admirable qualities.
“I’m pretty hard to hold.” Maybe she was changing the subject from roses to herself, but that was fair, wasn’t it? To make sure he knew that she was just fooling around, to make sure that they were on the same page about that?
He looked down at his hand, currently holding hers so easily and surely, and made the slightest moue of disagreement.
For some reason, that made a tingle run through her. “I’m tired of other people trying to own me,” she tried to explain.
His hand squeezed once, strong and gentle both, around hers. “‘Holding’ and ‘owning’ aren’t the same thing.” He released her hand. “Bonne nuit, Layla.”
“Bonne nuit.”
He got maybe ten paces before he glanced back over his shoulder and sent her a wicked little smile. “I meant it, by the way. My door’s unlocked.”
***
Once Upon a Rose, coming early 2015! Sign up here to be notified when it’s released.
ONCE A HERO, excerpt
An Amour et Chocolat novel
Célie worked in heaven. Every day she ran up the stairs to it, into the light that reached down to her, shining through the great casement windows as she came into the laboratoire, gleaming in soft dark tones off the marble counters. She hung up her helmet and her black leather jacket, and she pulled on her black chef’s jacket instead, and she ran her fingers through her hair to spike it back up, and washed her hands, and stroked one palm all down the length of one long marble counter as she headed to check on her chocolates from the day before. Oh, the beauties. There they were, the flat, perfect squares with their little prints, all subtle and adamant, the way Dominique Richard liked them. Perfect. There was the ganache and the praliné setting up in its metal frames. That was the third day on the mint ganache. Time to pull the guitare down off the wall and slice that mint ganache into those little perfect squares and send those to the enrober.
She called teasing hellos to everyone as she crossed them or they arrived: “What, you here already, Amand? I didn’t expect you until noon.” Totally unfair to the hardworking caramellier, but he had slept in once, after a birthday bash, arriving to work so late and so horrified at himself that no one had ever let him forget it.
“Dom, when’s the wedding again?” Dom Richard, their boss, was diligently trying to resist marrying his girlfriend until he had given her enough time to figure out what a bad bet he was, and the only way to handle that was tease him. Otherwise Célie’s heart might squeeze too much in this warm, fuzzy, mushy urge to give the man a big hug—and then a very hard shove into the arms of his happiness.
Guys who screwed a woman’s chance at happiness over because they were so convinced they weren’t good enough did not earn any points in her book.
Like, fuck them. Maybe I wasn’t good enough either and could have used you around.
“Can somebody work around here besides me?” Dom asked in complete exasperation, totally unmerited, just because the guy had no idea how to deal with all the teasing that came his way. It was why they couldn’t resist. He was so big, and he got all ruffled and grouchy and adorable.
“I want to have time to pick out my dress!” Célie protested, hauling down the guitare. “I know exactly what you two are going to do. You’ll put it off until all the sudden you wander in some Monday with a stunned, scared look on your face, and we’ll find out you eloped over the weekend to some village in Côte d’Ivoire. And we’ll have missed the whole thing!”
Dom growled desperately, like a persecuted bear, and bent his head over his éclairs.
Célie grinned and started slicing her mint ganache into squares, the guitar wires cutting through it effortlessly. There you go. She tasted one. Soft, dissolving in her mouth, delicately infused with fresh mint. Mmm. Perfect. Time to get it all dressed up. Enrobing time.
She got to spend her days like that. In one of the top chocolate laboratoires in Paris. Okay, the top, but some people over in the Sixth like a certain Sylvain Marquis persisted in disputing that point. Whatever. He was such a classicist. Boring. And everyone knew that cinnamon did not marry well with dark chocolate, so that latest Cade Marquis bar of his was just ridiculous.
And she didn’t even want to think about Simon Casset with his stupid sculptures. So he could do fancy sculptures. Was that real chocolate? Did people eat that stuff? No. So. She did important chocolate. Chocolate that adventured. Chocolate people wanted to sink their teeth into. Chocolate that opened a whole world out in front of a person, right there in her mouth.
Chocolate that was so much beyond anything she had ever dreamed her life would be as a teenager that...God, she loved her day. She stretched out her arms, nearly bopped their apprentice Véro who was carrying a bowl of chocolate to the scale, grinned at her in apology, and carried her mint ganaches over to the enrober.
She’d been loving her day for a little over three hours and was getting kind of ready to take a little break from doing so and let her back muscles relax for fifteen minutes when Guillemette showed up at the top of the stairs. Célie cocked her eyebrows at the other woman hopefully. Time for a little not-smoke break, perhaps? Were things quiet enough downstairs? Célie didn’t smoke anymore, since some stupid guy she once knew made her quit and she found out how many flavors there were out there when they weren’t being hidden by tobacco. But sometimes she’d give about anything to be able to hold a cigarette between her fingers and blow smoke out with a sexy purse of her lips and truly believe that was all it took to make her cool.
Because the double ear piercings and the spiky hair were a lot less expensive over the long-term, but they could be misinterpreted as bravado, whereas—
A teenager slouching against a wall and blowing smoke from her mouth was always clearly genuine coolness, no bravado about it, of course. Célie rolled her eyes at herself, and Guillemette, instead of gesturing for her to come join her for the not-smoke break, instead came up to her counter where she was working and stole a little chocolate. “There’s a guy here to see you,” Guillemette said a little doubtfully. “And we’re getting low on the Arabica.”
Célie glanced at the trolley full of trays where the Arabica chocolates had finished and were ready to be transferred to metal flats. “I’ll bring some down with me. Who’s the guy?” Maybe that guy she had met Saturda
y, Danny and Tiare’s friend? She tried to figure out if she felt any excitement about that, but adrenaline ran pretty high in her on a normal day in the laboratoire, so it was hard to tell.
“He didn’t say.”
And Guillemette hadn’t asked? Maybe there had been several customers at once or something.
“I’ll be down in a second,” Célie said, and Guillemette headed back while Célie loaded up a couple of the metal flats they used in the display cases with the Arabica, with its subtle texture, no prints on this one. Dark and exotic and touched with coffee.
She ran down the spiral metal stairs with her usual happy energy, and halfway down, the face of the big man waiting with his hands in his pockets by the pastry display counter came into view, and she—
Tripped.
The two trays flew out of her hands as her foot caught on one of the metal steps, and she grabbed after them even as they sailed away. One tray knocked against her hand as she tried to grab it, and chocolates shot out of it, raining down everywhere just as she started to realize she was falling, too.
Oh, fuck, that instant flashing realization of how much this was going to hurt and how much too late it was to save herself, even as she tried to grab the banister, and—
Hard hands caught her, and she oofed into them and right up against a big body, like she was a rugby ball, except it was raining chocolates during this game, and she used to know someone who was really good at rugby, and—
She gasped for breath, post-impact, and pulled herself upright, staring up at the person who still held her in steadying hands. A man who had once been really good at rugby.
Wary, hard, intense hazel green eyes stared back down at her. He looked caught, instead of her, his lips parted, as if maybe he had meant to say something. But, looking down at her, he didn’t say anything at all.
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