Shadowed Heart (9 page)

Silly worries. How did she manage to make such a big deal out of things in the dark hours of the night?

She stepped into the doorway. Luc. Her whole body lightened when she saw him, his attention focused utterly on something he was making, some pale white sphere with the faintest tint of green, and raspberries.

His graceful, intense movements always seemed to cut the shadows in the room to pieces, until they slunk to the corners in awe and stared at him. The long, lean, elegant, muscled form of him, so graceful and so ruthless with the demands he made on himself. A mortal man so determined to be a god. She’d called him the Lord of Hell once, for that fire-forged purity of his face, the beautiful high cheekbones, the golden skin. But he wasn’t the Lord of Hell. He was just a man. Her man. This incredible, extraordinary man who had given himself to her. Who had let her steal everything he had ever accomplished away from him and force him to start over here, where she could be happy.

So she was supposed to be happy. And right now, watching him, she was.

The beauty of his focus had always lured her so powerfully that it had taken practice on her part not to just force herself into the center of that concentration in her desperate need to make herself its heart.

I’m already its heart.
Over and over he tried to teach her that, this precious knowledge—that she was the heart of everything he did.
He might even be making that for me.

The green-white sphere, fresh from a dip in liquid nitrogen, looked like an oasis of crisp, cool freshness, there across the intense, bustling kitchen, the same way Luc was an oasis of dark control. That perfect gorgeous profile would turn in a moment. He would see her. He would smile, and she would make her way to him as if that smile parted hell and led her through it straight to his heart.

Her phone beeped, and she hesitated a long moment, but then pulled it out. Another message from her mother. She needed to turn off the alerts on that thing.

But now that she had seen it, she just kept
craving
...something. Something feminine and supportive, some maternal promise that everything was fine, that she wasn’t the first generation to have a baby. Luc was right there. If her mother said one of her more mind-wrecking things, Summer could talk to him. Touch him. Watch him work. That always relaxed everything about her.

She took a breath, and more scents crept into her, wriggling unpleasantly in her stomach. But she read the text.

PS I haven’t told your father yet, I promise. We’ll wait until it’s sure. Or better yet, until you know the sex, so he won’t get his hopes up for a boy like he did with you. You know how long he stays disappointed about that kind of thing. (Smiley face.) Love you, sweetie!”

“
Chaud!
” a man called, passing with a great pan of madeleines straight from the oven, lemon and butter crawling through the air, thick and strong. And “
Chaud!
” another chef called, a whirl of white chef’s jacket and the thick, buttery, sweet scent of caramel as he passed with a pot.

The great wormy mass of scents roiled into her mouth, clogging it until she could barely stop herself from gagging. She stared at Luc across those odors, so close, if she could make it ten steps she could touch him. And everything would be all right.
Just breathe.
But at the breath, the wiggling odors stuffed themselves down her throat, and she dove back down the alley, making it half a dozen steps before she bent over a jasmine planter, gagging dryly.

Nothing came up but a thin bit of ghastly bile, her stomach already emptied by the salon, but her body heaved and heaved trying to make something come out, until she finally could sink down to her butt on the cobblestones, pulling her knees up, her back against the wall, pressing her damp face into her hands. Tears pricked her eyes, at the way her own body defeated her. God, this throwing up thing was exhausting. As if the baby was trying to beat her down into something limp and resistless so it could swell in her, take her over.

It kind of reminded her of being harangued by her dad, actually, when he was pissed at her—broken down into nothing, over and over and over.

When the nausea calmed finally, she rolled her head wearily against the wall behind her, enough to gaze up the alley at the restaurant back door. Sounds still carried to her. Yells from one end of the kitchens to another. Clashes of pans. The fast, repeated banging of someone settling macarons onto their sheets. A calm resonance that prickled over her skin—Luc.

She curled her knees up to her chest and sat there a long time, listening for that rare vibration of Luc’s voice raised enough for her to hear it this far away.
Talk louder, Luc. I can’t hear you. Yell at somebody like most chefs would do.

But Luc never needed to yell. That firm command of his carried over the whole kitchen when he made it. And almost, almost reached far enough to brush against her skin.

She sighed, closing her eyes. Luc worked so hard. He needed to be able to focus. He wanted to win his baby a star. A little smile twitched her lips as she remembered his face as he’d said it, so vulnerable and hopeful.

He was
such
a sweetheart, under all that control of his. He needed her support. She couldn’t be spoiled and needy and complain that she needed more of his time.

She was only pregnant, Jesus. Women did it all the time. According to her mother, it wasn’t even that sure of a thing.

She slipped her hand over her belly, to shield it from her mother’s words and the whole world. Her whole body tightened—her skin, her hand on her belly, the muscles in her butt against the cobblestones, her back against the wall—in need of someone to talk to.

A visit to her island. The more she thought about it, the more that seemed like such a good idea. She could let Luc concentrate, not bother him with her ridiculous, clingy nerves, and just take a week to relax, to get her head back on straight.

The women there would laugh at her, they would tease her, they would be happy for her. She closed her eyes, as she leaned against the wall, imagining it so vividly her whole body relaxed into it.

Just a little trip. Luc wouldn’t even miss her.

“A critic,” Luc said. “From
Nice-Matin.
” The big regional papers were the worst. They just had to prove their superiority over Paris chefs.

Damn it, where was Summer? Why hadn’t she come in today? He had designed a lime sphere for her that she would
love
. He hoped. Since suddenly now she liked lime.

Nicolas shrugged his stocky shoulders as if he’d just been shearing three hundred unruly sheep. No critic in France, New York, or Tokyo would ever have expected to find Luc Leroi working with a chef who came across as a philosopher-farmer, but Luc figured Nico’s handful-of-earth approach didn’t have to be incompatible with his jewels-of-creation one. After all, that was where you found jewels, right? In the earth. They’d get the balance between them right soon. He liked what the man was doing too much to want to separate from him already, before they had properly tried.

“That’s what my cousin said,” Nicolas said cheerfully. “Sounds as if the review is lined up for Sunday’s paper, so you know they have to be coming in tonight or tomorrow.”

Right. Damn it.

He glanced at the clock.
Merde.
Their house wasn’t even that far away. That was the whole point, to have it only a couple of streets over from the restaurant so it would be easy for Summer to stop by, for Luc to get home to her. But minutes could count as hours in the restaurant business. He could accomplish a lot in a minute.

And his team as yet could not even reliably temper chocolate. Apparently.
Damn it
, he needed Patrick.

“You know, one of these days I need to get home to my wife,” he said acerbically. “Figure out what to name the baby.”

Talk to her. Except what if she tells me something is wrong?

Nico stopped dead. “What to name—
merde.
Really?” He grinned, grabbed Luc, and pulled him into a great hug. “When?”

“Just the other day,” Luc said, totally confused. Had somebody just hugged him? It
felt
that way, but—what? He and Nico were practically strangers. Actually, maybe that was why Nico had done such a weird thing. Nobody who knew him hugged him. Even Patrick only pretended hugs, and that was just to throw Luc off-kilter.

Nico’s beam grew. “Really? You just learned it? No wonder you’re acting so crazy.”

Luc was acting crazy? That was, in a way other people could tell? “I think I always act like this.”

“You do?
Merde.
” Nico stared at him with a mix of incredulous pity and respect.

Luc frowned.

“But I meant, when’s it due?” Nico asked.

“February.”

Nico whistled a little. “You gave yourself a really tight deadline for getting this restaurant in shape to run without you, didn’t you?
That’s
why you’re so intense.”

Luc stared at him a full ten seconds before he could even come up with a response. “I’m always—did you actually do any research about who I
am
before you agreed to take this job?”

Nico grinned. Sometimes Luc had the impression that Nico found him very amusing. Like a cute baby lamb that was still finding its legs. Given that they were roughly the same age and Luc was the one who’d already landed three stars in his life, it was pretty damn annoying. “Luc Leroi, right. I was a little worried about it. I mean you’re photogenic and all that, so you look great on television, but are you any good with
food
?”

Luc’s lips parted. He didn’t ever actually do that—lose control of any part of his body, right down to whether his lips were pressed together or not—but he’d just been sucked down a rabbit hole.
Was
…
he
…had Nico spent that ten-year gap in his résumé locked up in an insane asylum? He’d always thought those obscure references to a family farm that Nico had made during the interview seemed vague.

“But it’s okay,” Nico said reassuringly. Luc could practically feel his baby lamb wool being petted. “You’re a little obsessive, but you do all right.”

“I—do—all
right
?” Words entirely failed him.

“With the food, I mean.” Nico made a fist and bumped Luc’s stomach lightly. Maybe Nico was smoking something? That would explain the easy-going manner. Lots of chefs did, after hours, to release the adrenaline, but if he was doing it while he was actually
on
—shit. Luc would have to find a new chef.
Merde,
that was the last thing he needed. “Deep down here, you still respect it. You still remember it’s food. And that the whole point of it isn’t to make people say what a god you are, but just to feed them and make them happy.”

Luc just stood there. There were so many things to think about in what Nico had just said that suddenly all he could think about was Summer: her face that first time she realized that he truly meant these desserts not to control her, not even to make her fall in love with him, but just to make her happy. Maybe it had been the first time she realized it because it was also the first time it was true.

He thought of her face as he slid that chocolate tulip well toward her, that metaphor for trapping her with him where she couldn’t get away, and of the revulsion he’d caught on her face as she pushed it from her.

Maybe…maybe she’d been right to push it away.

Damn it, where was she?

“I mean, Paris chef and all,” Nico said easily. “You can’t blame me for having some reservations. But at heart, you’re not so bad.”

Luc’s brain was going to explode. It didn’t have synapses for this.

“Nico. We’re trying to be a three-star restaurant here. Obsessiveness, intensity—that’s how it
works.
We did talk about the star goal when I—when you came on?” He’d almost said
when I hired you
, oops. Luc knew better than to emphasize who was hiring whom with a chef de cuisine. He was lucky he could find a good one willing to work
for
the pastry chef in the first place.

“Yeah, I thought it would be interesting. And it is,” Nico added thoughtfully. He picked up one of the white freestone peaches he’d brought in that morning for Luc, having collected the fresh-fallen fruit on the edge of a field on his way in, and sliced it with absent deftness. He bit into a slice. “Mmm. Perfect. Fresh from the tree like that. You can’t even get them that ripe at a little farmer’s market. They bruise too easily.” He held another slice out to Luc.

Luc looked at that callused hand holding the gleaming white slice out to him, confused. But then he took it and bit into it and…damn, that was good.

Just for a second, all his world slowed down, and he closed his eyes, lost in how good it was.

“But sometimes,” Nico said, “I’d rather be doing that.”

Luc’s eyes opened. Nico was watching him rather quizzically and with considerable satisfaction. As if he wanted to pat the little lamb on the head. “What?”

“That.” Nico nodded at him. “What I just did.”

Luc stared at him. His mouth watered. He wanted another slice of that damn peach.

Nico smiled and put the whole fruit into his hand, the remaining slices falling gently away from the seed into Luc’s palm as he released it.

“A family style restaurant,” Nico said, as he headed back to his side of the kitchen. “Where kids can come and laugh and wander among tables. Or maybe a farmhouse kitchen, with hungry hands pouring in at the end of the day. Or a soup kitchen.” He shrugged as he disappeared and then leaned back with a quick, reassuring smile for the lamb: “But don’t worry. You’re pretty interesting so far. Although—I don’t mean to be giving advice, since you won’t appreciate it, but you might want to think about finding time to talk about baby names with your wife.” He disappeared again.

Luc stared after him. Then he looked down at the white peach falling apart in juicy petals in his hand. He took another slice before he could help himself. God, that tasted so damn good. And it made him think of Summer again. How she liked fresh fruit. How the first thing he had ever made her that she’d eaten had been when he
listened
to her, listened to how much she was missing her island, and sliced up a mango.