The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (34 page)

“What if we
turned it into ours?” he asked quietly. “It’s a somewhat trickier negotiation, I grant you, but I thought I’d proven over the past twelve years that I’m good at negotiating other people’s needs with mine.”

“Good at negotiating them to get what you want,” she said wryly.

His face shuttered. She had
hurt
him, she realized, before he even said, lightly, idly: “Oh, is that the only person who gets what he wants when I’m around?”

“I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on his chest. What a stupid thing to say. “No.” All the things he made sure happened right in those impossible kitchens, all the people he kept working together. “No, you make everyone’s dreams come true.”

“Sarah.” He pulled her into one of those sudden embraces of his, too hard, as if he was squeezing her with all the words he couldn’t say.

“It’s true.” She stroked his lips. “Mine, Luc’s, all those people at the tables.” His eyes were starting to grow heavy-lidded under her caress of his lips, as he sank into the pleasure of it. “Everyone’s…except yours.”

He closed his eyes immediately, all the way.

“Patrick.” His lips were so soft. All that aristocrat’s supple sensuality veiled with silk. “Why don’t you go after your dreams?”

A tiny flicker of a wry smile, while his eyes stayed firmly closed. “I am, Sarah. You just can’t seem to tell.”

Was he really? Or was that claim, too, just another distraction, another way of keeping even himself from knowing what mattered most?

Why don’t we turn it into ours?

She looked down at him, her heart beginning to beat so hard. As if looking down at him was like looking down at that mile of sky below her as she jumped out of a plane.

Why was she so scared of his power? Could it be because it had taken all her strength and courage to develop a sense of self strong enough to come to Paris for her own dream – and then a cute guy with just the right blend of gentleness, firmness, and humor had winked at her after a workshop, and she’d twisted all that dream into something he wanted? It was a beautiful twist, it was a leaping, striving, glorious twist, like one of his sculptures of sugar reaching for the stars. But all that time had she known, deep down, that in stepping into those brutal, demanding Leucé kitchens instead of the little shop she had imagined, she was changing that dream for him?

And yet she didn’t feel she had come out poorly in the change. Her dream didn’t feel small or shattered. It felt ambitious. It felt beautiful. It felt as if it was reaching for the stars.

It was hard to breathe this far up in the stratosphere, air grown shallow and insubstantial, failing to fill her lungs no matter how much she tried. “You know, in the U.S.–” She cleared her throat, and looked down at his face, and all her internal resistance to this offer just dissolved away. She could do this. She could do this for him. “It’s, ah – not as hard to go back to college as an adult as it is here.”

His eyes flew open.

She held his eyes with difficulty, cheeks heating. “There are two of the top engineering schools in the world in California. Caltech, for example. And some…some smaller ones, you know, if you had to take courses first before you could get into those.”

His hand flew up to hers at his face and closed around her wrist, too hard.

Her face was burning. Her voice felt strangled. “I could – I could–” She took a deep breath, thinking it through one last time, and firmed her decision out. “I could go back to work as an engineer for another couple of years, so we would have a steady income, if you wanted to go back to school. Or, or – you could take classes part-time at first, to see if you really like that dream as much as you used to think you would when you were twelve. You might not, you know, not anymore. I have a hard time seeing you sitting in front of a computer.”

Patrick was staring at her, his face oddly pale.

“But, but – it might be something you really need to at least try,” she managed, wishing he would let go so she could go hide now. “So that you know.”

“Sarah, that’s not your dream.” His voice sounded very severe, strange. His mouth was compressed like someone facing his worse nightmare.

“I know, Patrick!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “But I can manage a few more years, all right? If it’s what you really want. I’m not convinced it’s what will suit you, but if that old dream is what is keeping you from going all out for your dreams
now
, if you just have to try it – you can go to school during the day, and I’ll go to work, and at night you can teach me how to get better at all the techniques I’ll need for my shop in a few years.” A few years wasn’t any time at all, in a span of life. An incredible sense of strength, of rightness, filled her.
I think I know how to do this: give to him, help him, and still be me.
Maybe, in this past year, that’s the strength I gained.
“I do need to get better, before I open my own place. And, and – I can help you with math. Because it’s going to be hard, you know, catching up on the math.”

He was just staring at her, turned to stone.

“It’s going to be at least as hard as catching up on all these apprenticeship skills has been on me. You might go ballistic, Patrick. I can’t imagine you sitting still for that long.”

“This is a serious offer,” he said abruptly. “You’ve thought it through. You
really mean it.
”

Her eyebrows drew slowly together. “Patrick – why would I do that to you? Toss your dream into the conversation like some toy, without having thought about it? Without meaning it?
I’m not you
.
” Oh, wait, that wasn’t fair. What a nasty thing to say. Sometimes she still fell for that self-protective trick of his, of thinking he was being careless when in fact he never was.

“Oh, no, you so very much aren’t,” he whispered, and sat up abruptly, so that she was astride his lap and they were face to face. “Sarah. Sarah. I think you’ve ripped me right in half. I honest to God can’t take this. I love you
so much
.
Merde
.” He took a harsh, shaky breath and then lifted her off his lap suddenly, turning to brace his arms against his knees and hang his head.

“Do you need a paper bag?” Sarah asked with a kind of tender wryness, stroking his back very gently.

He shot her a desperate glance. Like she was pushing him off a cliff. “I might.
Merde,
but I’m glad I got that out.”

“That you’re being ripped in half?” she asked cautiously.

“It’s the same thing.” He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, where his heart was thumping like mad. “This part, Sarah,” he said very softly. “That I got that part out. But you knew, didn’t you? Have you always known?”

“I still don’t
know
, Patrick. Because, I mean – how could you? I’m not perfect, like you. I have to
think
to know, but once I think it through, that L word you’re so afraid of is the only thing that makes sense of everything you do.”

“Oh,
God
, you’re so much better than perfect.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing the palm and then just burying his face in their joined hands. “Sarah.” His voice sounded muffled. He took a breath, started to say something else, and then just subsided into their palms again. “Sarah.” The one word seemed to encompass everything he had started to say.

She watched his golden head a moment. He didn’t seem inclined to move any time soon. “It might be helpful if you could articulate once in a while,” she ventured. “Because instead of my brain coming to logical conclusions as if it’s some structural problem to solve, all the time, it might be nice once in a while to just
hear
it.”

He said nothing. But after a second, he kissed her palm again.

That tiny, hidden gesture just dissolved her. “Or maybe I’m just fine with this,” she whispered, petting his hair. “Maybe you make it more than clear.”

“I can’t believe you just…said that.” He spoke into their hands. “About the engineering. Even Luc never–”

“He probably didn’t know how.” She stroked his head. “He was making his way up from the streets, wasn’t he? And not much older than you. Pastry chef was probably the only way he knew to become all he could be, and therefore all he could show you. But I know how. I know how you can become an engineer still, if that’s what you really want. I can’t promise you Mars, but you can try for it.”

He still hadn’t lifted his head from their palms. She could feel the contraction of his facial muscles against her hand, the struggle of his expression. “Sarah. It’s as if, when you say you love me, you mean you want all my dreams to come true
.
”

Yeah. That was kind of what it felt like to her, too, loving him. Her own dream felt so fragile, now that she had put it in his hands. But he knew how to handle things delicately. He had always handled her dream with care, hadn’t he? Teaching her strength, never taking it. “I would love to see your face,” she said softly, “when one of your dreams came true.”

He finally lifted his head. His face was very flushed, and if she hadn’t had the proof from her palm that his eyes had stayed dry, she would almost have thought he had been crying. “See, Sarah, when I say I love you, I just mean I want you in my life, I want to keep you, you’re mine. When you say all this
shit
about being perfect, I don’t even understand how to tell you how much better than me you are.”

“Patrick.” She curled one hand around his wrist, stroking his pulse. “You try to make everyone’s dreams come true. It’s not a great gesture of love on your part, because you love
most
people that much; you do that for everyone, as automatically as breathing. So it’s okay for you to feel love for me as something more selfish, more greedy.” Her mouth curved a little. “I kind of like it. You feeling greedy and selfish about me.”

“Sarah,” he said reluctantly. “I’m greedy and selfish all the time. I’m the most selfish person I know.”

The half-shamed sincerity in his face floored her. “You actually think that.”

His eyebrows drew together in clear bafflement. “I am, Sarah. Can’t you
tell
? That’s why you’re here right now. I
always
make sure to get what I want.”

“Patrick.” He was kind of hopeless, wasn’t he? She leaned in and kissed him. “No, I can’t tell. And if you can usually manage to get what you want, despite all those other imperatives driving you – helping people to their own dreams, trying not to admit yours – then more power to you. Because that is quite a tricky negotiation.”

He just gazed at her, completely flummoxed. She stroked his wrist, not sure what else to do. “Sarah.” He lifted that wrist enough to kiss her knuckles. “You might need to hang around for a few years. So I can get used to this.”

Her eyes crinkled in amusement, her lips compressing as she fought a smile. “A few years? Patrick. If you think I’m supporting you through college so you can ditch me for someone younger as soon as you’re done, I think your brain needs to warm up a little bit more before you take on engineering school.”

“Well, a few years.” He waved his hands with extreme vagueness. “Give or take a few.” He frowned at her. “Let’s talk about that somewhere a little more appropriate.”

She was starting to laugh, shaking her head. He was so hopeless.
I love you
, she mouthed at him again.

“Well, I’m
not
going to discuss it on my damned living room couch.
Merde
, Sarah. I thought you knew me better than that.” He came to his feet in one lithe move of that strong body, as if he just had to feel his own strength, and scooped her up in his arms.

“Uh-oh.” She laughed. “Need some control of this situation?”

That fine, chiseled mouth curved just the tiniest bit as those blue eyes looked down at her. He shook his head minutely and carried her over to the bed.

“What?” she said, a little nervously, but even her own nervousness made her excited. She liked not knowing what he was going to do to her. She liked knowing that no matter what it was, he would make sure she liked it.

“Would it be too terribly boring, Sarah” – he stretched them both out on top of his comforter, face to face – “if we just did this fantasy?”

She waited a moment, arousal building, but he just lay there, propped on one elbow, toying with a strand of her hair, and then shifting to rub her shoulder gently. “What fantasy?” she finally asked, confused.

“Oh, just, you know…” His gaze touched hers briefly, this tiny glimpse of a shyness so much like her own, so hard to believe of him even now, and then he focused on her chest, golden lashes hiding his eyes. “The one where we spend a lazy, cold, rainy winter evening making love – to each other? Like maybe, once in a while, it’s safe enough for us not to play games.”

She blinked, and then, unexpectedly, her face flooded with heat. She wanted, instinctively, to flinch into him, to hide from this intimacy and its dangers by burying her face in his chest and letting him wrap his arms around her.

She took a deep breath – and then did. Just tucked herself into him, overwhelmed by vulnerability. And his arms did come around her, instantly promising her she was safe.
Oh, I love you
, she thought.

“Of course,” he murmured, his hand rubbing up her spine, his voice deepening. “I can take control if you want me to, Sarah. I like it, you know, as much as you do.”

“No,” she whispered. “No, let’s do this one. The one where we can both touch each other. But can I do it from here?”

He laughed, that low, sandy sound his laughter made when desire was dragging through it, vibrating against her face and arms pressed into his chest. “We’re a work in progress, aren’t we? Of course you can,
ma chérie.
It’s a really nice thing to feel as strong as I feel right this second.”

“It’s a really nice thing,” she whispered into his chest, “to feel as safe.”

The warmth of him encompassed her entirely. “I love you,” she whispered into that safety.

His head bent.
I love you, too
, he breathed so softly it didn’t even count as sound, but she felt it, brushing across her hair, coming from that strength.

Chapter 33