The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (9 page)

They reached the parks along the Champs and turned north away from their bare trees, cutting toward the Ninth past stately buildings from whose elegance wild-haired face carvings peeked out as if the architect had just had to let something savage out.
Yeah, you and me both.
“So did you like it?” he asked again. “Materials science?”

“It was fine, I just–” That crease between her eyebrows. His thumb itched so bad. “You know, I always liked making cakes and things. The way my sister’s face would light up. The look in my mother’s eyes. I would try to do such elaborate things. But it wasn’t serious, you know? It wasn’t something that could make my mother and stepfather proud, something that could reassure my mother that I would always be okay. That she had made the right choices about me.”

So her parents had screwed her up, too. Did he know
anyone
from a happy family? Maybe top kitchens attracted insane people. It would explain a lot.

“But when I was at Caltech, I did a year’s exchange at the École Polytechnique here–”

Merde
, Caltech
and
the Polytechnique? If she told him next she’d turned down an offer for graduate studies from MIT, she would have conclusively thrown away every single dream he had ever had. And which his mother had thrown in the trash for him, over his wild rage and despair.

“– and – you know, at heart, I probably learned French in the first place and chose that Polytechnique
exchange because I dreamed so much of French culinary school and it was the closest I could imagine getting, back then. But that year I was here, when I could just go into all these little shops and
see
and
taste
what they did, see people’s faces when they first bit into their beautiful, beautiful dessert – I don’t know. I think I never recovered. And from then on, I couldn’t stop dreaming of it. As something serious. As something that, with enough courage, I could actually learn how to do.”

It was probably the longest she had ever spoken to him since that first month or so of her internship, when he could hang out in the bar with everyone and coax things out of her, all while pretending to just be including her in the conversation. That power had dwindled, as she drew back further and further from him, that shimmering force field of hers growing stronger to keep him out.

“I just had a dream.” She sighed again, that little crease in her forehead
killing
him. “Maybe the dream was like some little girl’s princess dream, like imagining myself in a fairy story, instead of anything to do with reality, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I just wanted to go after something that was
me.
”

What a fascinating concept. And she had just done that openly? Let people
know
what she wanted before she even had it locked tight in her hand?
Merde
, she needed someone to look after her. He slid her a wry grin. “What, we’re not your fairy story, Sarabelle?” He struck an arrogant pose, angling his chin. “I could be the prince.”

She gave him that straight, dark, incomprehensible look of hers, the one that just sank pretty-nailed hands into his chest, curled up a great fistful of what it found there, and pulled it across the counter for her inspection. He hated that feeling. And he loved it so damn much he practically panted like a dog to get more of it.
Yes, please, rip my heart out of me some more. And more and more. I think it might be an inexhaustible masochist.

Not that it would be a good idea to let her know that, of course. He smiled. “When I wanted to be an engineer, I wanted to do astronautical and aeronautical.”

That stunned expression was amazingly attractive on her. He could do a lot of things with those parted lips. “What changed your direction?”

He had made the mistake of revealing the dream to his mother, mostly, and so she had yanked it out of his reach the way she always did whenever she brought her erratic focus onto him, got suddenly pissed off about how wild he was running, and decided to take the thing he most wanted or loved away from him to punish him for it. “I was only twelve or so.”

She smiled wryly. “It seems like a better age to change your career path than twenty-three.” Her age when she started at Culinaire. She had abandoned engineering pretty damn fast. Shit, the Polytechnique
.

“What about twenty-seven?” he asked idly, gazing at the great Greek columns of the Église Madeleine as they came out onto its Place. The acropolis-style church rose above them like some eerie glimpse of Olympus.

Her head jerked around to him. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he said indifferently.

“Is that how old you are?”

He shrugged and put his arm in front of her before she stepped out in front of a passing car.

“Are you thinking about changing careers?” She gasped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m thinking about changing careers?”

“You’re a
MOF
,” she said incredulously. “You
can’t.
”

“Plus I’m Luc’s foster brother,” he agreed.
So – I really can’t. He
needs
me. And he was there when I needed him.

“His
brother
?” Her jaw dropped. She stared at him. “Wait, his
foster
–”

“Yeah. I know.” He shrugged, overriding her, so they didn’t have to wallow in the foster home thing. He sure hadn’t. Thanks to Luc. “No one ever realizes that. Luc had already moved out, and I was barely in the foster home more than a couple of months before he let me come on as his apprentice and move into the little apartment next to his, so it’s not like we really had a
brother
relationship.”

Her forehead pleated until, honest to God, he wanted to just lean forward and
nibble
there. Just a little. He’d bet that would release all the tension in her forehead like a snapped rubber band. She could put it instead into her hand when she slapped him. “How old were you when you apprenticed to him?”

“Fifteen. The usual age.”

“So he kind of finished raising you?”

“Look,” he said brightly. “Ladurée.” He put his hand on her back to turn her toward its windows, watching her face. The iconic
salon de thé
meant
Paris
to half the world, Paris and
macarons
. Elegant stacks of mint-green and pink boxes and great
pièces montées
of
macarons
filled the windows under the dark green awning. Patrick could do better
macarons
in his sleep, but whatever. Sarah’s face filled with longing, and she forgot all about him. And, more importantly, all about their conversation. He didn’t know what had gotten into him to mention the damn word
foster.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “To have your own pastry shop like Ladurée?”

“Mine wouldn’t be as famous, obviously,” she said, embarrassed.

His eyebrows went up. He didn’t see what was obvious about it. Anything he himself had anything to do with would be legendary.

He’d gotten into the habit.

And he was training her, so…didn’t she know what that meant?

“I think I want something a little like that place Philippe Lyonnais’s wife has. Have you ever seen it?”

He couldn’t even remember Philippe’s wife’s name, just an image of her legs in really high heels. But any excuse for an excursion. “You’ll have to show it to me.” It made her eyes light up, and that was probably all he needed to know to get him to go see it with her.

A darting sideways glance, as if she expected to see the truth of him if she caught him unawares. He winked at her, his guard not that easy to penetrate.

“It’s like a witch’s shop,” she said. “A real witch’s shop. I think I want something like that, only not so…witchy. But not as big and famous as this.” She gestured at Ladurée. “Something more secret, more private.”

“Your own little jewel box.” She gave him a surprised glance, as if she thought he had somehow guided her through nearly five months of interning without ever actually seeing her. “In California.” The nape of his neck tightened, trying to send a sick chill out over his skin, and he shrugged to get it to behave.

Her eyes tracked the movement of his shoulders, and her face set, closing him out again. She massaged her bared hand with her gloved one, deep pressure into the tendons.

He was getting sick and damn tired of not holding her hand.

And it was a little known fact about him – because he never made the mistake of letting people know
his
goals – but he always got what he wanted.

Chapter 10

Sarah could never get over the beauty of Paris streets at night. They emptied, under the rain and the cold and the late hour. Emptied of everything but old streetlamps out of another time, of cars, rare or frequent, depending on the night of the week and the narrowness of the street, of glowing storefronts. Emptied of everything but its promise for another day. The kind of city you could carry off to bed with you, curl up with it as you gazed out your window into its lights and darkness, nestle into the haunting dream of it as you feel asleep.

She had learned, over time, not to give in so often to that exhausted consideration of the Métro, with its metallic, chattering ride shared with the occasional disturbing late-night stranger, an efficient trip that left her grim and tight and ready to give up. The half-hour walk through the after-midnight streets of Paris had become her ritual, the thing that unwound her, that consoled her, that made her feel simultaneously heartbreakingly lonely and determined, hopeful.
Yes, I can do this. Yes, this is where I dreamed I would be. I will not quit until I have this for my own, until I’m so imbued with it that I can take it away with me, when I go back home.

Until she could always have Paris.

Until she could take the dream of it to anyone who needed it.

When she stopped in front of Ladurée, she usually grasped one wrist behind her back to keep her hands from pressing to the window. She loved the exquisite, deceptive simplicity of those iconic pink and mint-green boxes, of the aged green look of the door, of the curling motif around the packaging, of those cones of world-famous
macarons
. Christmas Eve, she had stood before that window, draped then with brilliant star-shaped lights, lonely and dry-eyed.

She rubbed her thumb between her knuckles now, worrying at the tension of them like she worried at all the other things that she wanted so much and that stayed just out of her reach.

“Sore?” A big, firm hand closed around her wrist, such a familiar grasp from the kitchens as Patrick slipped in to make sure she got something right. Fast, subtle fingers stripped her glove off before she had even processed the touch, all while somehow leaving the impression that he was lazing in a hammock with his hands locked behind his head. Before she could reclaim herself, his thumb pressed in one deep, exquisitely slow circle into her palm, and she lost her mind.

Oh, that felt so…
good
. Night after night, she had rubbed at her own hands like a child might try to rock herself to sleep. And now his warmth closed over her, with exquisite, perfect pressure. He knew exactly where the tension built up, exactly how to release it. Her eyes drifted almost closed as he kept them walking, her entire being focused on the feel of his hand on hers.

He laughed, low, the friendly mentor, his fingers tracing gently around the bandage from her wound earlier and shifting back into the center of her palm for more deep pressure. “How’s that feel? Helping you relax? I’m quite sure I would have sold my body any number of times for a good hand rub, that first year or so.”

“Sounds like a fair trade,” she mumbled in agreement, unable to think past the pleasure and relief he was bringing to her tight hand, expanding all through her body. Oh, God, what would it feel like to have his clever hands like that all over her body, releasing tension everywhere…

Damn him.
Damn him for making her long for that, so carelessly.

His laugh sounded sleepy, but then again it was well after midnight, and maybe he was winding down. Being Patrick, his hands never faltered or lost their skill, no matter how sleepy he seemed.

She peeked up at him, and just for a second the hot-pink glow from Fauchon did something so odd to his face – transforming it into something ruthless, carnivorous. But then they passed out of the Place, and the instant of weird lighting washed off him, turning him back into night-shadowed gold and an easy, friendly smile.

Easy.
Friendly.
While he reduced her to taut longing at the edge of his golden aura. An aura so extravagantly huge and all-encompassing that everyone who came near him got lapped into it. Everyone bathed in it. Even she sometimes felt as if she could.

Her mouth twisted ruefully as she tried to laugh at herself.

“Tell me the joke?” Patrick drew his grip in a slow, twisting motion down one finger, and all her laughter shattered in pleasure. Her hand felt so utterly safe in his hands that had handled so many slender, delicate things in his life, and so many things more resistant, and never broken either, neither the things that resisted nor the things infinitely fragile, always turned them into something even better.

It was terrible how beautiful he was. How golden and irresistible. Worse than every fantastical, gleaming dessert that she had ever stared at through a Paris pastry shop window, until she threw her whole life over for the right to possess them.

“Nothing important.” She was sure as hell not going after another impossible dream that would make her fail at the first one right now. At least desserts didn’t care how shy or uptight she was. Desserts
liked
you to be always obsessed with making everything perfect until it hurt the back of your forehead, that throbbing, persistent failure.

A glimmering smile. “But I think everything about you is important, Sarabelle,” he said soulfully, threading all his fingers with hers, base to base, his larger ones forcing hers wide, then tightening delicately, just the right pressure, as he slowly pulled them back, lengths stroking against each other until his fingertips reached just the tips of hers. Then his hand folded hers into his again, rubbing it all at once.