Turning Up the Heat (5 page)

He twisted to sit cross-legged facing her, pressing her palmful of sunscreen against his right pectoral. It was true that it was his least favorite part. He hated the way it smeared in his chest hair. He had several times, in fact, threatened to shave his chest if she insisted on the sunscreen, but always yielded.

She knelt in front of him, watching her hands knead the cream into his muscles. She loved his chest, too. Liked the feel of it, when she curled up against it, liked the taste of it, liked to rub her face back and forth against all his textures when they made love...

She got lost in the pleasure of kneading cream into his chest, her hands running over and over him, until a hand curled into her hair, and he kissed her, a long, slow, deep hello of a kiss, like he kissed her sometimes at one in the morning, sliding into bed beside her. Like he kissed her sometimes on those rare Monday afternoons that were like sunlit, precious daydreams scattered through her life.

Her mouth warmed to him instantly, as if he was some heady ambrosia she could drink to make her glowing.

He made a hungry sound, his other hand coming up to join the first, angling the kiss as he dragged her into his lap. “Léa,” he muttered into her mouth. “Léa. I missed you.”

Really? There were moments in his life when he had room to notice she was gone for a few days?

“Ow,” she whimpered softly, still angling for more of his mouth despite the pain. “Daniel. That hurts.”

Startled, he loosened the hand still in her hair first, his mouth lifting. But that just brought more pressure from the hand on her back. She made a tiny sound of distress, part hunger for more of him, part sting at the contact.

Both hands flew away from her. “What did I do?”

“I’m sunburned,” she said, hating to stop him and at the same time inexplicably relieved. If they made love, surely he would assume he should move into that bungalow with her, at the very least. Why did that make her feel as if nothing would ever be possible again?

He peeled the tunic off her body enough to peek down her back and grimaced. “
Chérie.
”

“And
that
was with sunscreen,” she told him. “So”—She slid her hands down his ribs to get the last bit of taut stomach that tightened still more under her hands, and he drew a breath, gazing at her. Hands held wide. So very clearly wanting to touch her and not able to.

Trapped by his own respect for her pain.

She came up onto her knees again and kissed him for that, because he was so entirely wonderful. He made a little sound, responding hungrily, and she stayed on her knees a long time, kissing him more and more. There was something so—thirsty about the position. About his inability to touch her, so that she could lean into him and drink until she couldn’t drink another drop...and yet still want more. She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, in unassuageable thirst.

“
Ma chérie. Minette. Léa.
” He got lost in the kissing, too, whispering her name in ragged breaths, a flush mantling his cheekbones when she at last raised her head. His hands had dropped and dug hard into his own thighs.

He looked inexplicably, intensely—relieved. “So you’re still—so that’s still okay,” he breathed and leaned forward, hands gripping his legs, to grab another kiss. And then another. And one more. He seemed insatiable, as if he had never kissed her before and didn’t know if he would ever have a chance again.

She gave her mouth to him again and again. Yes, he still made her hungry. Even she hadn’t gotten that tired.

The kissing and kissing and wanting more but not taking it reminded her with a strange sweetness of when they were teenagers. When they would kiss and make out in some secret corner, always hungry for more than they dared do. “I love you,” Daniel whispered, as he would sometimes then, that little cry of kiss-maddened longing.

The three words that always made her whimper in hunger and try to bury herself deeper in him.

At last, she pulled back, feeling as if the sunburn had spread to her entire body, hot and prickly and in need of healing.

Daniel was breathing long and deep, his eyes eating up her face, something brilliant in the gray. “All right, then,” he said very softly, lifting a hand to curve around her cheek. “That’s good to know.”

And he plunged straight into the shoulder-high water, sinking into it, the slightly overlong cut that had become part of his image floating like fine seaweed against his skull, his eyes turned up to hers even through the seawater. She had to reach down a hand to him, because he looked so much as if he was drowning.

* * *

CHAPTER SIX

Kayaking with Daniel was fun, more fun than Léa could possibly have imagined, since she could never have imagined this. Each in a kayak, they could race, splashing and bumping each other, at first by accident, as Léa got the hang of it, and then on purpose. They could wait for each other and point at something, or one or the other of them could drive ahead. The pain of it was constant—the pressure of the low plastic seat on her sunburned back and on the backs of her legs, sweat adding its sting. But Léa never mentioned it.

They finally stopped at a little beach by a rocky outcrop that had drawn them because every third or fourth wave water blew out of a hole in it, so that from a distance they had been half-convinced it was a whale.

“If we hike back along this stream, we should find a waterfall,” Daniel said. “According to the man renting the kayaks.”

“Let’s eat first.” Léa pulled out the bag from the hotel.

Lots of tropical fruit, freshly picked and freshly cut for them, and cold pork that had been pulled to shreds. Daniel lounged on his side to eat. She sat up, to avoid too much contact between her sunburn and the grating sand, and smiled, watching Daniel taste the food, the way he sank into the flavors and thought about them, about what they did for him and what he would do differently to them.

He looked up to find her watching him and smiled back, offering her a sliver of mango from his fingers straight to her lips. It sank slow and sweet into her body, and he sucked the juice of it off his thumb as he watched her swallow.

Heat spread through her, uneasily.

“You’re so pretty,” he murmured, and the heat grew stronger, tickling her away from something important. It was so impossible to resist it, and yet if she lost herself to it...what chance might she lose? What was she
afraid
to lose, when they had made love so many times before?

He drew a finger gently down the back of her hand and then looked back to sea, his expression for a moment softened, as they ate.

As she ate. After the first few mouthfuls, Daniel mostly contented himself with feeding her. She took some mango and fed him back, and he liked that very much, his smile curving against her thumb and his lips catching her fingers to suck the juice off.

But he stopped bringing anything to his own mouth.

“You don’t like it?” she asked at last. Daniel was, God knew, fussy about his food. She had grown up in her father’s kitchens and knew how to cook quite well, even if she would never be a superstar, but so many times he had just picked at what she made him, leaving almost everything on his plate. It hurt her feelings, especially when she would take him out after one of his
Top Chef
victories to an up-and-coming bistrot and he would eat like a starving man. He infinitely preferred the latest bistrot over other starred restaurants, where he was always on the alert, like a general in a war zone, analyzing everything. And, fine, maybe the latest bistrot’s food was better than hers, but...
her
food
cared.
She had kept cooking for years, in the face of his rejection, because she could still remember her mother’s homey meals and how much her father had liked them, and because she had to feed her two younger siblings and she didn’t want to
always
take them to the restaurant. But now that those siblings had moved out, she rarely bothered.

He gave her an incredulous look. “The fruit? If only I could get fruit this fresh in the Relais. It makes you realize you spend your whole life trying to bring people something that catches just the faintest hint of this—lying on a beach with a beautiful woman feeding you mango. I guess chefs have to offer all that elegant food to try to make up for the fact that we’re damn well not going to give away the beautiful woman.”

She flushed a little, looking down and then looking up again. She wasn’t beautiful. She was perfectly fine, she didn’t have any qualms about herself. But she was angular and freckle-dusted brown, and her straight, straw-colored hair tended to get all dry at the ends before she remembered to take care of it. Compared to those elegant television women, she was a gawky, overeager student, a good eight years too old to be one. But Daniel was clearly looking at her, when he said the word.

He sat up, and she felt him watching her under those black lashes of his in that way that had always turned her heart over. At seventeen, she had drawn and painted just his face in secret, over and over, trying to catch that look under those eyelashes and what it did to her heart.

“Léa. Did you—get bad news, from the doctor?”

It took her a second to realize he was back on that routine check-up months ago. His time just flew, didn’t it? Months gone by in a minute.

“That...you couldn’t have a baby? Something like that?”

She stared at him. “
No!
”

“Oh.” One of his arms was looped lazily around his bent knee, in a pose she couldn’t remember seeing since their escapes into the hills as teenagers. When he would lean over her in the grass and kiss her and kiss her, and they would go too far, but try not to go
too
far, and he would finally roll away, breathing hard, and stare out at the sea far away.

Now he gazed at the thumb and finger of that casually draped hand. They rubbed together, over and over. “Or...or something really bad...something like”—His face and voice tightened. “Ca-ca...something bad. That you haven’t told me.”

“
No!
” Léa said again, and he drew a hard gasp of relief. “Daniel. I just—I really just wanted to do something crazy. Escape to a tropical island. Haven’t you ever dreamed of doing something like that?”

That hard working of his jaw. His thumb and forefinger pinched together until she saw the knuckles whiten. “I didn’t dream of doing it alone,” he said in that same low, ground voice in which he had said something similar, earlier on her deck.

She looked away, not knowing what to say. And realized on a breath of surprise that she didn’t feel tired. Just profoundly wary of something she didn’t even know how to name. “Would you have minded? If I had been pregnant? Or not able to get pregnant?”

His head whipped toward her, gray eyes wide and brilliant with shock. He sat up all the way. “Do you want us to have kids, Léa?”

Married more than ten years. And they had never once even discussed it before. “Do
you
?” she said.
No. No kids. Please no.
The thought of them made her feel like a plastic bag dropped in the middle of the
autoroute
.

Something strange and intense happened to his face. “I would have to cut back,” he said flatly, as if she had been arguing with him. He twisted suddenly so that she could only catch part of his profile, his arms gripping his knees. “I won’t miss most of my child’s life, too,” he said, low and viciously. “I
won’t.
”

The tone cut through her even more than the words. As if he was fighting her. She scooted on her knees to get a better view of his face. “
What?
”

“The damn
Top Chef
thing, for example.
Putain
, Léa, I’m famous enough. We don’t need the money. Can’t we let that go?”

If he had held her out over a cliff, opened his hands, and waved bye-bye, she would have been less shocked. She gaped at him, feeling air sail past her on the fall. “
What?
”

“Something has to go if we have kids, Léa,” he said flatly. “I mean it.”

She was speechless. Sliding closer to him, she slipped her hand under the hard lock his arms had around himself and rested her hand on his knee. “You don’t like doing
Top Chef
?” she asked at last, blankly.

“
Putain
, Léa. Maybe the first few times, when it was my chance to prove myself to the world, to beat all the people who didn’t believe I could.”

She was utterly flabbergasted. She had always thought it was part of his relentless drive, the way he never said no when
Top Chef
called to ask him for another match. He
had
to beat every challenge thrown out to him, he
had
to show he was the best. “I thought you loved that.”

He turned his head at last and looked at her, his eyes oddly hard, as if he was facing an enemy. “Did you?”

She stared at him. “But—you always have so much grace in there. That little smile on your face. The commentators always talk about it, how much you thrive on it.”