Shadowed Heart (19 page)

“Luc must be deliriously happy,” Jaime said, smiling.

Cade grinned. “I have a bet with Sylvain about what he’ll have me hunting for at the American store next. Sylvain is having a field day with all this.”

“When Sylvain’s wife can’t even stand the smell of chocolate, we’re going to remember how hard he laughed at his fellow chefs,” Jaime warned.

Cade slid a wary glance back at the baby store but didn’t challenge the assumption that Sylvain might one day have to deal with his wife’s morning sickness. “And Dom?”

“I think Dom might need a few more years before he trusts himself to be a father,” Jaime said, with a subtle tenderness and patience. “He’ll be wonderful at it one day.”

Hunh. So even strong people could be nervous about parenthood. It wasn’t just something weak or spoiled about her. “Luc,” she said firmly, “is going to be wonderful at it, too.”

***

“What the hell is this about chocolate?” Sylvain demanded. “Right here
it says that chocolate is one of the top ten foods women crave when they’re pregnant. It’s number two!”

“After ice,” Luc said. “And just before lemon. Summer seems to prefer lime.”

“‘Chocolate,’” Sylvain read. “‘Why Pregnant Women Can’t Get Enough of It.’
Not
why they flee to a beach house to avoid even smelling it.” He turned his head and frowned at his wife, who was exploring Sainte-Mère with Summer and Jaime. The three women were still visible through one of the arches that led away from the
place
. “And ice doesn’t even count as a food. So clearly chocolate should be number one.”

“How about ginger?” Dom showed the screen of his phone.
Astuces qu’on s’échange entre copines
, it said. Girlfriend tips. “They recommend ginger.”

Sylvain leaned forward. “Also Coke.” He shook his head. “That’s just sick. You can’t feed your own child Coke in the womb, Luc. The peanut butter is bad enough.”

Luc decided not to confess that before he met Summer, he used to drink Coke at home at one in the morning, to accompany the chips and all the other junk food he was consuming in his greed for effortless calories. All top restaurant chefs did that, as far as he knew, but outside of the Christmas and Easter and Valentine’s seasons, chocolate shops had a calmer pacing. Apparently Sylvain managed to remain above all the junk food cravings, and the last thing he wanted to do was confirm any of Sylvain’s convictions of superiority.

Summer had taken over feeding him once she found out about the chips and soft drinks. He’d had three months of bliss, leaving the restaurant and arriving home to be
fed
, to be
nourished
, before the baby had stolen it from him by making her too sick to cook. But he forgave the baby. He’d forgive his baby anything.

God. Would his baby forgive him? He didn’t want to get anything wrong with his baby, no matter what Sylvain said. He wanted to be perfect for her.

“Luc!” A big voice boomed into his concentration. “Luc Leroi!
Merde, alors
!”

The identity behind the voice penetrated before Luc even finished turning around, easing muscles in him, as if the voice itself was an exuberant embrace. “Gabriel?”

Big, brown-haired, blue-eyed Gabriel Delange was the pastry chef who had once trained Luc himself and who now had a fountain built to him in this very town, and he was larger than life in every way there was. He dropped his wife’s hand to reach for Luc’s and then, as soon as Luc put his in it, just yanked him forward into a giant hug. “
Petit salaud
, it’s about time you came to see me! What are you doing? How’s this new restaurant going?”

Smashed up against his chest, Luc tried to process a strong, male hug. Good God, that was two in one week. The last time a man had hugged him before that had been his father’s, twenty-one years ago, just before Luc was dragged away from him to a foster home. Even Patrick didn’t hug him except in pretense. There was some kind of prickle, of mutual challenge, in their relationship that didn’t allow for it.

It felt so disconcertingly as if having arms as strong as his, a body as strong as his, just embrace
him with warmth and affection had reached deep inside him and given him something he needed.

Gabriel grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back to look into his face. “Trying to compete with your old chef, are you? We’ll see about that.”

Luc started to smile. “Worried?”

Gabriel snorted. “No, kid. I taught you everything you know.”

Luc’s smile grew. “I might have taught myself a few things since then.”

“Pfff.” Gabriel waved a grandiosely dismissive hand. “I’m not worried about
that.
”

Luc laughed, a sound that rang all through him, as if something important had been released. He was not good at laughing. Summer occasionally could get him to laugh from pure happiness, and Patrick with his wicked, twitting humor, prying laughs out of him mercilessly. But even after twelve years of Patrick and six months of Summer, it still wasn’t something he did every day. He’d once thought that if Gabriel hadn’t gotten fired when Luc was his nineteen-year-old sous-chef, if he’d had a few more years training in the glow of that man’s expansive heart, he might have turned out halfway sane.

“Damn, it’s good to see you.” Gabriel pulled him back in for another spontaneous hug. “I heard you grew up to be all famous and everything.” He grinned, since he was at least as famous himself. “Had good training, did you, kid?”

The last time he had seen Gabriel had been a year ago, when Gabe had asked to use Luc’s kitchen at the Leucé when he wanted to propose to his girlfriend, Jolie. That man never shrank, did he? All that size, all that heart, all out there. If anything, he was even bigger these days, with a happiness and energy that expanded to fill everything and everyone around him. Luc found himself allowing something close to a grin back. “Well, I might have had a chef once who taught me a thing or two.”

“A thing or
two
? Ha! Ungrateful brat. And what are you doing here?” Gabriel turned to Dom. Dom had worked alongside Luc as sous under Gabriel just before Pierre Manon, Jolie’s jealous and difficult top chef father, fired Gabe.

Braced, Dom extended his hand, and since Gabriel couldn’t yank him off his feet when the man was forewarned, Gabe just surged forward instead and still wrapped Dom up in another big hug, as if rough, big, I-am-the-baddest-man-in-the-room Dom was his personal, cute teddy-bear.

Dom came out of it blinking, entirely befuddled, and…hell, was that a hint of a flush rising on Dom’s cheeks? Luc cherished a private glee.

“Sylvain, too? What’s the matter?” Gabe demanded of Luc. “Did you have to call on all your Paris friends for help to have a chance at competing with me?” He grinned and then shoved Luc lightly in the shoulder as if he just couldn’t contain his energy or happiness. “
Shit
, kid, I can’t believe you waited so long before coming to see me. You know, I could have helped you get set up.”

It was why Luc hadn’t gone to see him when he first opened the restaurant. He didn’t know how to be the person who needed help.

“He sulked,” Gabriel’s wife Jolie informed them, standing up on tiptoe to reach the men’s cheeks. Belatedly, Luc bent to exchange kisses with the much smaller, golden-haired woman he’d last seen when Gabe proposed to her in Luc’s kitchens. “He brooded and acted all temperamental and swore he was
not
going to go see you first and he stomped around every week and complained you
still
hadn’t come see him and…I was seriously about to come hit you over the head to make you behave right.”

Luc’s eyebrows went up. Jolie thought she could hit him over the head to change his behavior?

How the hell had he gotten so approachable? Being hit over the head by a woman was almost like some weird, affection-starved man’s idea of a hug. Like when Summer pretended to smack him on the arm, although she always turned it into a caress instead. He glanced toward Summer, who was looking their way curiously. She and the Corey sisters headed back toward them.

Gabriel had folded his arms and was scowling just at the memory of Luc’s behavior, but then he remembered he hadn’t properly greeted Sylvain yet and turned to give the chocolatier’s hand a firm, friendly shake. “You should have told me you all were in town, we would have had you over for dinner.”

By his side, Jolie gave a resigned sigh at the idea of having three of the most famous chocolatiers-pâtissiers in the world over for dinner, but presumably by now she was getting used to it. Hell, her father was Pierre Manon, and she’d been living with Gabriel for a year now. They’d gotten married last winter, just before Luc met Summer. She had to be used to quite a lot, when it came to dealing with top chefs.

“Summer’s iffy with dinners right now.” Luc waggled a hand in the air to indicate his guess at what was happening inside her tummy. “But why don’t you join us tonight at our house?” At least that way, whatever cravings she got, he could leap to satisfy them.

Jolie’s head tilted alertly. “She’s…iffy…?”

Luc stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded, feeling so funny. As if this great huge beam was trying to break through his self-control and bask out there in the open air.

“Really?” Jolie broke into a huge grin.

“She’s what?” Gabriel looked back and forth between his wife and Luc. “Sick?”

Jolie stood on tiptoe and whispered in Gabriel’s ear.

“You’re going to have a
baby
?” Gabriel roared so loudly that Summer, coming across the
place
with Cade and Jaime, stopped, clasping her hands to her cheeks. “
Merde!
” Gabe yanked Luc in for another hug and pounded him on his back. “A little Luc? Hell!”

“I keep trying to imagine what repressed, control-freak perfectionism looks like on a three-year-old, but my imagination always fails me,” Sylvain said helpfully.

Luc slanted him a dry glance.

“Something like that.” Sylvain gestured to Luc’s expression. “Only…chubbier cheeks.” He approximated a child’s round face in the air with those ever-expressive hands of his, puffing air into his own.

“Don’t worry,” a warm, sandy voice said from behind Luc. “I was planning on making sure the kid had a good role model. You know, someone who could teach him how to leave his clothes scattered all over the floor.”

Luc went still. And then he spun to see Patrick lounging against one of the pine trees that shaded the
boules
court. His long, lean form slouched, gold hair tousled, jaw unshaved. “Or her,” Patrick said easily. “Or, here’s an idea,
twins.
That way, one of each.”

“Twins?” An image of two babies depending on him instead of one exploded in Luc’s head, and his ears started ringing again.

Patrick grinned and straightened lazily away from the tree to hold out a hand. “Hello, Luc. Heard you were having a hard time living without me.”

Luc had never felt so glad to shake a hand in his whole life. He held on too long, as if Patrick was pulling him from a freezing ocean onto his surfboard. “You got here fast.”

“You sounded desperate,” Patrick said kindly, his mouth laughing while his eyes forgot to, the blue searching and keen. “Of course, I always knew it was just a matter of time before you cracked without me,” he added soulfully.

Yes. Luc tried to figure out what to say. In one of the last fights they’d had, they’d each accused the other of being over-dependent. Fights were normal, for two men who had worked twelve years together in brutal, perfectionist conditions. But this one had been pivotal. Soon afterward, they had each chosen different paths, for the first time in twelve years.

“Sylvain. Dom.” Patrick shook hands with the other men. “Hell,
Gabe.
” Once a fifteen-year-old apprentice under rising star pastry chef Gabriel Delange, back when Luc was his sous-chef, Patrick now seized the older man’s hand in both of his, a huge, delighted grin breaking out on his face. “Gabriel Delange,
hell.
”

Gabriel grinned, and, for good measure, yanked Patrick into a big bear hug, too. Patrick reciprocated with complete aplomb and emerged to kiss Jolie’s cheeks and turn back to grin at Luc. “What did you do, call an army?”

“Summer was lonely,” Luc protested.

“Ah.” Another blue glance from Patrick, his eyes full of wicked laughter. He flexed his shoulders and gazed out at the Alps. “Well, it’s a good thing we’re up here giving Summer company then, isn’t it?” he asked the mountains.

Damn, it felt good to be controlling the urge to strangle Patrick for his ability to skewer straight through to the truth. “She’s got her cousins with her!” That was the whole point of this visit.

Seriously. It was.

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” Patrick said. “Sarah is just going to love all that female bonding with a horde of billionaires.”

Sarah Lin had been their intern at the Leucé. The fact that Patrick had gotten involved with her despite his role as her supervisor had been a factor in some of Luc’s and his fights there at the end. Of course, Luc’s tumultuous relationship with Summer Corey, the owner of their hotel, had been another factor.

“You brought Sarah?”

Patrick shrugged. “Can’t live without her, really,” he said idly, as if it was a joke. Which meant it was profoundly true.

Just then, the women reached them, Sarah slipping up beside Patrick, whose arm immediately looped her into his side, Summer and Cade and Jaime all greeting Patrick and then Gabriel and Jolie with cheek kisses and curious glances. Patrick ruffled Summer’s hair and winked at her. Sarah didn’t look jealous or threatened in the slightest.

“So.” Patrick rubbed his hands together and clapped them. “I know this great place to get drinks around here.” He pointed at Luc. “Or it will be a great place after I get done stocking it up.” He turned, clearly expecting that one movement to be enough to get everyone to follow him. But he paused just a second gazing at the mountains. “Damn, it’s beautiful here. And you never invited me to join you? That hurts my feelings.”

“Diaper changing!” Cade exclaimed. “Bingo. I knew
YouTube wouldn’t let us down.”