Shadowed Heart (25 page)

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.”

***

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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. What
ever.
He was such a classicist.
Bo
ring. 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 Saturday, 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.

Strong eyebrows, strong stubborn forehead and cheekbones and chin—every single damn bone in his body stubborn—and skin so much more tanned and weathered than when she had last seen it. Dark brown hair cropped military-close to his head and sanded by sun.

Célie wrenched back out of his hands, her own flying to her face as she burst into tears.

Just—burst. Right there in public, with all her colleagues and their customers around her. She backed up a step and then another, tears flooding down her cheeks, chocolate crushing under her feet.

“Célie,” he said, and even his voice sounded rougher and tougher. And wary.

She turned and ran back up the stairs, dashing at her eyes to try to see the steps through the tears, and burst back up through the glass doors into the
laboratoire
. Dom looked up immediately, and then straightened. “Célie?
What’s wrong?
” Big, bad Dom, yeah, right, with the heart of gold. He came forward while she shook her head, having nothing she could tell him, scrubbing at her eyes in vain.

The glass door behind her opened. “Célie,” that rough, half-familiar voice said. “I—“

She darted toward the other end of the
laboratoire
and her ganache cooling room.

“Get the fuck out of my kitchen,” Dom said behind her, flat, and she paused, half-turning.

Dom Richard, big and dark, stood blocking the other man in the glass doorway. Joss locked eyes with him, these two big dangerous men, one who wanted in and one who wasn’t about to let him. Célie bit a finger, on sudden fear, and started back toward them.

Joss Castel looked past Dom to her. Their eyes held.

“Célie, go in the other room,” Dom said without turning around. And to Joss: “You.
Get out.
”

Joss thrust his hands in his pockets. Out of combat. Sheathing his weapons. He nodded once, a jerk of his head, at Célie, and turned and made his way down the stairs.

Dom followed. Célie went to the casement window above the store’s entrance, and watched as Joss left the store, crossed the street, and turned to look up at the window. She started crying again, just at that look, and when she lifted her hand to dash it across her eyes, he must have caught the movement through the reflection off the glass, because his gaze focused on her.

“What was that all about?” Dom asked behind her. She turned, but she couldn’t quite get herself to leave the window. She couldn’t quite get herself to walk out of sight. “Célie, who is that guy and what did he do?”

She shook her head.

“Célie.”

She slashed a hand through the air, wishing she could shut things down like a
man
could, make her hand say,
This subject is closed.
When
Dom
slashed a subject closed with one move of his hand like that, no one messed with
him.
Well, except for her, of course. “Just someone I knew before. Years ago. Before I worked here.”

“When you lived in Créteil?” Their old, bad
banlieue.
“And he was bad? Did he hit you? Was he dealing? What was it?”

She gazed at Dom uneasily. For all he was so big and bad and dark, always seeming to have that threat of violence in him, it was the first time she had ever seen him about to commit violence.

“No,” she said quickly. “No. He didn’t.”

“Célie.”

“No, he really didn’t, damn it, Dom!
Merde.
Do you think I would
let
him?”

“You couldn’t have been over eighteen.”

“Yeah, well—he didn’t.”

Dom’s teeth showed, like a man who didn’t believe her and was about to reach out and rip the truth out of her. “Then
what
—”

“He left me! That’s all. He fucking left me there, so that he could go make himself into a better person. Yeah. So
fuck you
, Dom. Go marry your girlfriend instead of playing around with this
I-need-to-be-good-enough
shit and leave me alone!”