The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (7 page)

The sugar slipper shattered in Sarah’s hand. She looked down at the ruined fragments, not even understanding when she’d tightened her hand.

“Sarah,” came Luc’s cool voice. “Maybe you should work on the grapefruit for a while.”

Only the lowest job in the kitchen short of mopping floors. Not that anyone cared how badly an intern’s heat-blistered hands might sting with all that acid. No one should. No chef worth anything let a little pain in his hands stop him.

Sarah stripped her gloves off, her throat clogging. There, the tip of one had melted through and she hadn’t even noticed. She had probably left a stupid fingerprint on the stupid slipper, which would have made Luc kick her off the task even if she hadn’t shattered hers. Her throat clogged, but she would
not cry
over something so unimportant.

“Patrick,” Luc said. “Why don’t you show her how?”

Show her how to cut grapefruit? After nearly five months? Sarah’s jaw tightened, but Patrick’s eyes danced with delight, dimples sneaking into appearance as he tried to keep his lips straight. “I guess you’ll have to survive him without me,” he told Summer woefully, and then was joining Sarah completely on the opposite side of the kitchens, where the
commis
and lowly intern worked on these basic tasks.

“How are your hands?” He grabbed them and flipped them over, touching the faint hint of a blister. A tiny grimace of that mobile aristocrat’s mouth of his, a little squeeze of her hands to buck her up. “You’ll be okay,” he told her firmly.

She would. Yes, she would. These stupid, minor pains would not stop her.

“Hey.” Patrick gave her hands a little shake. “He didn’t think about what a bastard he was being to stop your work on the slippers. It was just the first excuse he could think of to get me away from Summer.” His eyes danced again at that.

Yes, Sarah was aware of that, of how she’d just been shattered by men who were using her as a cardboard prop. It took everything in her to fight that clogging in her throat.

“I’ll get you back on the slippers after she’s gone,” Patrick said. “Right now, I don’t want to make him lose face in front of her by arguing with him, okay?” He dropped her hands and turned to catch the
commis
next to her before the boy ruined a whole batch of financier batter.

Yes, of course.
Summer
mattered. What
she
thought about people mattered. Sarah gouged her knife into the grapefruit peel, and the fruit, too big really for her hands, slipped so that the knife stabbed right into the base of her thumb.

The blood spattered
everywhere
, red drops all over the counter and her coat, and even in the financier batter, caught in passing. Oh,
damn
. And it
hurt
. Hurt hands always made the whole body respond to the agony.

“Timothée, get some new financier batter going,” Luc said crisply, not pausing in his own work, even while beautiful Summer Corey drifted his direction. “And Sarah, bind that up, and get a glove on it. I need those grapefruit. Now.”

A warm hand closed over hers and pulled her to the nearest sink, cold water washing out the acid. "There you go, sweetheart.” Patrick gave her one of those quick, lazy grins that yanked her heart out of her chest every time. As if he
cared
about her. Probably exactly what every dog in the park thought whenever he scratched it behind its floppy ears. “And don't you feel guilty. Women stab themselves all the time when I'm around. I shouldn't have smiled at you like that, I know. I just don't know my own strength.”

Yeah. He really didn't. She clenched her hand around her knife. “I hate you.”

He blinked. Those golden-brown eyebrows went up over gorgeous, suddenly intrigued blue eyes. “You do?” He shifted in on her, his whole body changing from the involuntary, constant brushing of each other to something focused on her, intent. The cleft in his chin was so close she could bite
it. A warm hand moved on her right wrist and hand. "How much?" he asked softly.

"Utterly.” She yanked her hands away, not caring about the blood on her chef's jacket, or the fact that she was alienating the second most important person in their kitchen.

“Really.” Patrick's pupils dilated. For a second, the thought gasped through her body that he was going to press her back into the edge of the sink and kiss her.

“Patrick," a cool, controlled voice said, and they both blinked. Patrick pulled away from her, glancing back at Luc, whose black eyes touched both of them briefly before he focused on what was really important – the desserts he was finishing and in whose service they all were. Or maybe what was really important to him was Summer, for whom he seemed to be performing.

“Sorry,” Patrick murmured to Sarah, and set something in the sink. Then he was gone, lazy, casual, catching waves, and somehow six miracles of impossible perfection and beauty bloomed from under his hands in the next six seconds, slid through the pass to feed their avid guests.

The knife she had been holding when she told him how much she hated him lay in the sink. He had removed it from her, so easily she hadn't even realized it. She had been stupid enough to think he was going to kiss her.

Trust him to handle the risk of being stabbed with as much lazy aplomb as anything else.

Trust him to never even realize how much someone else might get hurt in the process.

He didn’t let anything get to him, did he? Or anyone.

She hated him, because she couldn’t manage to do the same.

Chapter 8

Patrick lounged against the wall by the door leading out of the kitchens, his heart beating so hard he thought it was going to beat right out of his skin. Butterflies swarmed his stomach until he wanted to rip their damn wings off. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sinking into the nervousness, going for the calm in the center of the storm.

The door opened, and he lifted his lashes and grinned. Immediately, adrenaline slammed him, his skin tightening until he felt he would burst out of it. All the energy from the nerves honed, focused on the kill.

Don't show you want it. Never show how much you want it.

Sarah. All bundled up in her winter coat and scarf, eyes hostile and then immediately cool and blank, shutting him out.

But not for long. All his lethal, competitive hunting instinct homed in on that target.

He shouldn’t do this. He knew he shouldn't. All her life and dreams were forced into her ambition to be a pastry chef, packed into it that same way Luc did with his work, as if it was the only way she knew to be her
self
, until her whole freaking world hung on it. And Patrick was one of the most powerful people in the kitchens. He shouldn't be
harassing
her. Putting her into a position. Nor should he be favoring her. Putting other people into a position of resentment at the injustice of seeing sexual attraction win over their hard work.

Yet here he was.

Shifting away from the wall, moving into her personal space, watching her eyes widen, her head tilt back, as they changed from co-workers to predator and prey.

And all that predator that filled his just-sunning-here-on-the-rocks surface woke up and stretched and prepared itself to send out a long, lazy roar that would fix this particular zebra’s gaze on him with desperate attention.

“So,” he murmured, and without seeming to move let himself fill her space still more,
made
her turn that intense focus of hers entirely on him. His whole body skittered with something tense and electric when she did. “Hate. That's such a strong word.”

It made him hot all over, how strong it was. His skin felt itchy and tight.

He had had no idea that he had gotten through that intense focus of hers enough to inspire
hatred
.

He grinned at her, and she jerked past him without speaking, tightening her hold on her little leather backpack.

He fell into step beside her. She was walking fast for someone her size, but his legs were far longer, as was his experience in top kitchens, where
fast
took on a whole new meaning. He kept pace with her easily.

“I’m sorry if I've been making life difficult for you,” he said. “Let me take you out for a drink.”
Don't turn me down, don’t turn me down
. “I worked my way up the same way you’re doing now, you know. I might have some tips about how to handle the pressure.”

He had been doing it most of his life, and yet it still astonished him sometimes how easily he could hide his ruthless core, gloss it with lazy friendliness.

“It’s midnight,” she said crisply. “A little late for a drink, don’t you think?” As if she didn’t go out with the guys at least twice a week. She watched him, those dark, slightly tilted eyes of hers wary, alert.

“So? Are you going to get any sleep if you go home right now? A drink and an hour relaxing in a bar will do you good, you’ll see. And you can get it all off your chest about why you hate me so much, away from work, no consequences tomorrow, I promise.”
No consequences tomorrow? You bastard.
“It will clear the air.”

Don't turn me down, don't turn me down, don't…

“I’m already going for a drink with the guys,” she said as the door opened again and Hervé and Noë spilled out. “Sorry.”

An invisible hand placed flat on his heart and shoved hard. He straightened away, with a quick grin. “Oh, good, then, they already asked you. So are we heading to the Aussie tonight?” he asked the other men, falling into step.

***

“Some people never learn.” Hervé grinned as Patrick slouched in the chair between him and Sarah. “Can you just not resist flirting with every woman who walks into the kitchens? Or are you trying to get Luc to hit you again?”

“I’m in a cycle of abuse,” Patrick agreed mournfully, pouring a beer into Sarah’s glass while he tried to recall when he had been flirting. He couldn’t get his mind to go past that moment when Sarah had said,
I hate you.
It just cycled in his head, over and over, the look in her eyes, the catch in his body.

Hervé snorted. “You don’t even remember what I’m talking about, do you? Flirtation comes to you so automatically?”

Well,
yes.
How else was he supposed to keep people fooled about what he really wanted, unless he flirted indiscriminately? Plus someone had to crack their head chef out of his absorption in his work and make sure Luc didn’t lose the woman he was so crazy about just because he was an idiot. “I try to spread myself around,” Patrick said modestly, stroking his own arm as if it was a precious treasure. “Share.”

The guys laughed. Sarah twisted her beer and then gave it a little push away from her.

Shit, he was getting this juggling act wrong. “Besides, Luc
is
annoying,” he said lightly. “Any excuse.” A little flick of a sidelong glance at Sarah, but she wasn’t eating the nuts, and she wasn’t drinking the beer, and she wasn’t looking at him.

Because she hated him,
oui
.

He wanted to pick up that hatred like a mass of burning-hot sugar and mold its stubborn resistance in his hands. He didn’t give a shit how much his hands blistered in the process; he could turn that hatred into what he wanted. He could.

Anything
he wanted.

“You’re trying to get him to fire you, aren’t you?” Hervé said wisely. “That way you won’t have to make the decision yourself.”

“Exactly.” Patrick tapped a definite finger on the table. “
Particularly
if I can get him to do it before Valentine’s Day. Because the way his sanity is deteriorating, I’m going to be stuck making up the Valentine’s menu otherwise, and I am not doing that heart shit.”

Grégory grinned at him. “Make this giant bouquet of matching hearts out of chocolate, one for every woman who passes the table. That would suit you.”

That sounded like a pretty damn risky thing to do with his heart – give it out to every woman who wanted to mess with it. You had to be
careful
about whose hands you handed the things that mattered. You had to make sure the person didn’t
know she had something that mattered to you
, in case. In case she used it against you.

Oh, fuck, but what if, just for example, she was a direct, serious, careful person and you
could
trust her with what mattered, but only if you let her know it was important enough to deserve her care? He could hardly expect her to respect the very thing he treated like trash, now could he?

Shit, how had that juggling act he was used to managing with ease grown so delicate and fragile and complicated?

“You could make illusions,” Sarah murmured to the tabletop, brushing her fingers across its scarred wood as if her fingers were imagining the texture of those illusions. “Some kind of translucent sugar heart, maybe. That tricked people, luring them off the real heart that was hidden somewhere else.” She pulled out that little turquoise and silver notebook of hers and started to note something in it, one side bent up so he couldn’t see.

Patrick stared down at her.
Damn it, quit sinking those pretty nails into my middle and hauling out what you find there for your inspection.

Oh, but God, don’t
stop.

She looked up at him and flushed, shutting her notebook abruptly and stuffing it back into her backpack. After a couple more minutes of not looking at him, she glanced at her watch, then excused herself and headed toward the
toilettes.
Taking her backpack with her so a man couldn’t even think about stealing a peek in that journal.

He glanced at his own watch. “You guys are going to miss the last Métro again if you don’t hurry.”

Martin checked his phone and groaned. “And you kept us up until three last night.”

A shifting around the table as all the men thought about another late night and missing the Métro and either walking home or finding a taxi. Hervé tossed off the last swallow of his beer. “I guess I’ll call it a night.”

“
Ouais, ouais
, I’ll come,” said Martin, on the same Métro line as Hervé.

“We need to wait for Sarah.” Noë glanced at his watch, grimacing a little. If they waited for her, they might not make it. It was one thing to catch a taxi after a long, fun evening that made it worth it, but no one wanted to miss the Métro just for fifteen minutes longer in a bar when everyone else was heading home. People who worked in the Leucé kitchens earned more than the average restaurant staff, but that hardly made the lower-ranking chefs rich.