Unmasking Juliet (19 page)

The cream arrived at its boiling point, and Juliet reached for it while flipping the burner to the off position. She poured the cream over a bowl full of broken bits of dark chocolate and immediately began to stir. As she was blending the ganache, her elbow grazed Leo’s, and she felt a ribbon of longing wind its way down her arm.

Her hand tingled.

Distraction. Most definitely.

Leo poured warm cream over his chocolate, but instead of stirring it right away, he stuck it in the big, walk-in refrigerator. Interesting.

He looked at his watch, then approached the proctor. “Could I trouble you for some ibuprofen, or maybe an aspirin?”

“Certainly. I’ll be right back.”

And then they were alone.

“Aspirin? Are you feeling sick?” Juliet stared into her ganache as if it held the mysteries of the universe, willing herself to concentrate. She could not screw this up. No matter how good Leo looked in those chef’s whites and no matter how her heart started beating harder and faster with each step that he took in her direction.

“Just a headache.” He walked up behind her and slipped his arms around her, pressing his warmth into her back.

She closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to look at those white sleeves, those forearms. But not being able to see only heightened her other senses. He smelled absolutely heavenly, like every kind of chocolate in the world. And with his arms surrounding her, she somehow felt both safe and in the gravest danger imaginable.

She took a shuddering inhale as he bent to rest his chin on her shoulder, wrapped one hand around her waist and the other around her stirring hand, moving the silicone spatula through the chocolate right along with her.

She really needed to put a stop to this.

“I thought you weren’t feeling well. What are you doing?” she heard herself ask in a breathy whisper.

Way to go. You really told him, didn’t you?

“Helping you.” His breath hot on her neck almost made her crumple to the ground.

“Helping me or trying to sabotage me?” she asked, no longer stirring at all but letting the languid movements of his arm and wrist move her wherever they wanted. She hadn’t realized that stirring chocolate could be so...well...stirring. But he moved with a confidence and finesse that was almost mesmerizing.

“You don’t really think I would try to sabotage you, do you?” He kept guiding her arm in smooth, rhythmic circles, and it felt as if they were slow-dancing rather than cooking.

She sighed into him, letting her head fall to the side, welcoming his mouth when it dropped to her neck. The touch of his lips still shocked her eyes open, and she quite accidentally got a glimpse of her ganache.

Did it look runny? Surely not.

She peered into the bowl. “This isn’t a joint project. I think you should get your hands off my chocolate.”

“If you insist.” He released the spatula.

Juliet watched it sink into the ganache, thinking that she should really pick it up. But Leo’s hands slid to cup her bottom, and she decided to hold on to the counter because her knees were growing weaker by the millisecond.

“Leo.” It was a good thing his name was short. She could barely form words.

“Yes?” His caress was slow, leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world.

When, in fact, the proctor could return any minute with Leo’s ibuprofen. And weren’t they supposed to be making truffles? “Don’t you think you should get started on your ganache?”

“I always leave it in the refrigerator for exactly five minutes before blending it with the cream. I’ve still got...” He removed one hand from her backside long enough to take a look at his watch. “An entire minute.”

She could last another sixty seconds without completely falling to pieces and forgetting what she was doing. Right? “One minute. That’s not very long.”

“Long enough for this.” He spun her around, pinning her between the counter and his wall of hard, lean muscles.

Then he pulled her against him and kissed her in a way that made her remember everything that she’d been trying so hard to forget over the course of the past few hours. Not that she’d been all too successful at forgetting.

He groaned into her mouth.

She remembered. Dear God, she remembered every forbidden detail.

“Time’s up,” he said, pulling back and grinning down at her with one hundred percent male satisfaction.

Leo was no dummy. He was well aware of the impact of that kiss. She was on the verge of forgetting all about the competition and begging him to take her right there on Calantha Vineyard’s kitchen counter next to her runny ganache and the tea bags that still needed expressing.

“You’re horrible.” She swatted at his chest, right at the spot where Le Cordon Bleu was embroidered across his impressive pectoral muscle.

“Me? Horrible? You’re equally as guilty. Just your presence is a distraction. And kissing you...” He aimed a smoldering look at her mouth. “Let’s just say there’s more peril in your kiss than twenty swords.”

Well, then. She rather liked that.

“I’m getting back to my truffles now. I suggest you do the same,” she said, reaching for her spatula and waving it between them, like one of those twenty swords he’d mentioned. A bit of chocolate flew off the end and landed on his white coat.

There. At least he looked a little less perfect now.

He removed the drop of ganache with the tip of his finger and licked it clean. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

She turned her back to him, reaching for her tea bags and grinning secretly to herself as she got back to work.

This isn’t over.

She certainly hoped not.

17

By the time his truffles were finished, Leo was popping Advil like it was candy. He’d managed to ignore the throbbing in his head during his all-too-brief interlude with Juliet. But as the minutes ticked by and he worked frantically to produce something remotely resembling the challenge item, the pain worsened.

Juliet’s truffles were already plated, and she was running over them with a last-minute swipe of her pastry bag, drizzling them with streaks of white chocolate. Leo had no idea what they tasted like, but on the outside they were certainly identical to the challenge truffles.

His didn’t look half-bad, either. They could have been neater, but halfway through the allotted time period, his hands had begun to shake. Typically, he could pipe a line of chocolate drizzle finer and more delicate than spun sugar. Not so today. He wasn’t sure if it was the Advil or the pain in his head, concentrated mostly on the left side of his face, that had given him the shakes. Either way, he could have done without the added handicap.

He took a bite of one of the sample truffles, chewed, swallowed and then tasted one of his creations. His headache made it impossible to tell whether he was on the right track or not. The chocolate tasted like metal on his tongue. A wave of nausea hit him, no doubt due to the fact that he had nothing but chocolate and pills swimming around in his stomach. None of it mattered, anyway. It was far too late to change anything.

The proctor clapped his hands, and the noise resounded through Leo’s head like a thunderstorm. “Are you two ready?”

“Yes.” Juliet bounced on her toes.

Leo would have loved to gaze appreciatively at that bounce if only it hadn’t made him the slightest bit dizzy to look at it.

“Ready,” he said.

“All right, then. Shall we?” Their chaperone waved a hand toward the door.

As they headed back toward the barrel room, Leo wondered how many of the spectators had bothered to stick around for the final results. He suspected a fair number of them were long gone by now. An hour and a half was a long time to wait just to watch the judges eat a couple of truffles and declare a winner.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything, the audience had doubled in size. There were enough people packed in the barrel room to make him think the chocolate fair was in flagrant violation of the fire code.

A round of applause erupted as he and Juliet approached the banquet table with their plated chocolates. Leo closed his eyes in an effort to shut out all the noise and the light coming from the candelabras and torches, which seemed far brighter than they had before.

“Welcome back, Miss Arabella and Mr. Mezzanotte!” The announcer’s voice echoed off the wine barrels, hitting Leo from all sides.

More clapping.

More shouting.

More pounding inside Leo’s head.

He clenched his teeth. Couldn’t everyone just pipe down for a minute?

“Will the judges step forward, please?” The announcer approached the table and was joined by Ms. Baker, Mr. Collins and Mr. Weatherton. “First, our esteemed judges will taste the challenge item. Then they will sample each of our competitors’ attempts to duplicate it. Once they’ve made their decision, I will provide you all with a detailed description of the mystery truffle. And finally, our winner will be crowned.”

Leo flinched at the mention of a crown. That had better have been a metaphor, because he didn’t relish the thought of anyone or anything touching his head.

He watched as Weatherton and his cohorts tasted the sample truffle with looks of intense concentration. If Leo had been psychic or capable of mind control, he would have willed them to taste berries. Lots and lots of berries.

Juliet hadn’t so much as waved a berry over her ganache. Instead, she’d done something with tea. He’d thought she’d made a fatal error until he got a whiff of her finished ganache as she’d scooped her truffles into small rounds using a melon-baller. The smell of her chocolate definitely carried fruity undertones. Concord grape, if he’d had to venture a guess. But with his head about to split in two, he couldn’t be sure. The only thing he knew for certain was that one, or possibly even both, of them had missed the mark.

He cast a fleeting look at Juliet. She looked back at him, an almost-smile tipping her lips. He almost-smiled back.

Their family members still sat on the edges of their seats, also still in frighteningly close proximity to one another. It was a flat-out miracle that a fistfight hadn’t broken out. What had they done for the ninety minutes when he and Juliet had been sequestered in the vineyard kitchen? He supposed he was better off not knowing.

He averted his gaze from the audience, Uncle Joe in particular. If there was one thing that was sure to exacerbate a headache, it was his uncle.

“And now the judges will test Miss Arabella’s chocolates,” the announcer boomed into his microphone.

So Juliet was first up? Leo wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad news. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care. He was more than ready to get this whole ordeal over with. It seemed as though the noise, the lights and, last but not least, the crazy feud, were all working together to render him incapacitated. His stomach churned. Bile made its way up his throat, and he felt as though he could no longer breathe.

What the hell kind of headache is this?

“Very good, Miss Arabella.” Mr. Weatherton grinned and nodded.

“Yes. Exceptional job,” Ms. Carter gushed.

Leo stared at his truffles, anxiety worming its way into the painful fog in his brain.

“Mr. Mezzanotte, the judges will now taste your offering.”

Leo made his best attempt at a smile. It hurt to move any part of his face, especially anything left of his nose. “Welcome. And thank you for your consideration.”

Weatherton bit into one of the truffles. He lifted an eyebrow, aimed a curious look at Leo and took another bite. “Nice work, Mr. Mezzanotte.”

“Thank you, sir.” Leo nodded, then thought it best to keep his head as still as possible.

“Very good.” Ms. Carter was too close, and whatever perfume she was wearing seemed to lodge in Leo’s throat.

His head began to swim. The room seemed to fade in and out, flickering like one of the many candles that surrounded him.

Keep it together. This will all be over in a few minutes.

“Thank you very much.” He squinted as the three judges blurred into six, then back down to three.

Leo pushed his thumb against his left eye socket. Oddly enough, the pressure helped. A little.

He glanced at Juliet, standing less than two feet away. She gazed impassively at the audience with her hands folded in front of her. Everything about her posture was detached, but as her cool green eyes flitted ever so briefly in his direction, he could see something there. An engaged look that spoke of secrets and, if he wasn’t mistaken, affection. It made him think that if he could lie down and rest his head in her lap, everything would be just fine.

He looked away. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to bring hellfire and damnation raining down on her by daring to interact with her in public. But on some level he was aware of the fact that he shouldn’t be thinking about resting his head in his competitor’s lap when they were on the verge of hearing who had won the chocolate fair. He wasn’t so incapacitated that he couldn’t appreciate how ridiculous that sounded.

The judges didn’t take long to come to a decision. After exchanging what appeared to be a few sentences and one or two head nods, they approached the announcer, and the deed was done.

Leo’s head began to throb with renewed intensity. He could no longer blink without feeling like his skull was about to crack down the middle. He longed for someone to hit him between the eyes with a sledgehammer and put him out of his misery.

The announcer moved toward him and Juliet, drawing out the suspense by making sure not to focus on either one of them too long. “I’d like to thank everyone in attendance for sticking with us for the exciting conclusion to the Napa Valley Chocolate Fair. As I said earlier, this is a first for us. We’ve never had a competition result in a tie before. Let’s have one last round of applause for both of our finalists.”

Please. No more clapping.

Leo took a deep breath and held it until the noise stopped.

“Our finalists were asked to duplicate the flavor of a mystery chocolate, which I can now describe as a tea-infused black currant truffle.”

Leo froze and waited for him to say something about berries. He didn’t.

“And I’m thrilled to announce that our winner once again is Miss Juliet Arabella.”

The world erupted in noise. And even though Leo could see the Arabellas jumping up and down and cheering and his own family yelling their objections to the ruling, the origins of the cacophony seemed to be coming from inside his head.

He turned to Juliet to congratulate her. She mirrored his movements, angling toward him at the same time. He reached for her hand, thinking that she looked so happy, so damned beautiful and full of life, much like she had when they’d first met in the moonlight. And as his fingertips barely grazed hers, her touch evoked the memory of what it had been like to lift the bejeweled mask and gaze upon her face for the very first time.

Time slowed. All the noise around him quieted to a soft hum. Then his fingers fell away, unable to fully grasp her hand. She was right there, looking at him with those luminous eyes of hers. So close. Yet impossible to reach.

And everything faded to black.

* * *

One minute Leo was looking at Juliet as if they were the only two people in the room, and the next his hand was slipping right through hers. She searched his gaze for an explanation of why he suddenly no longer wanted to shake her hand, and that’s when she knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

His eyes were dead, lifeless. Then they closed, and his body crumpled toward the ground.

“Leo!”

She reached for him, but it was too late. Instead of breaking his fall, she went right down with him. The two of them landed on the floor of the barrel room in a tangle of limbs. Juliet somehow ended up flat on her back with Leo’s head facedown right between her breasts.

“Oh, my God. Leo, move.” She nudged him in the shoulder, but he didn’t move a muscle. “Leo, are you okay?”

“Oh, my. Mr. Mezzanotte?” The announcer didn’t seem to know what to do. He just stood there with the judges gaping at Juliet and Leo sprawled on the floor.

“Someone, do something! That lecherous loser is accosting my daughter.” Juliet’s mother leaped from her chair and practically hurdled over the row of seats in front of her. It would have been amusing had it not been so abjectly mortifying.

“He’s unconscious,” Juliet said, tapping him again. He stayed right where he was. If anything, the sheer weight of his motionless form caused his face to burrow farther into her cleavage. “See?”

She looked back up. Mom, Dad, Nico, Alegra, Joe Mezzanotte, Leo’s sister, Gina, and Gina’s husband, Marco, were standing in a circle over her, staring at Leo’s head nestled in her breasts. Only a few feet behind them, the contest judges and announcer had moved in for a closer look. As far as fainting spells went, it couldn’t have gotten any more awkward.

Then George chimed in, proving her wrong. “Unconscious? What happened?”

She didn’t want to talk to him. Especially not with Leo on top of her, awake or otherwise. So she addressed her answer to everyone else assembled. “I think he fainted.”

“In that position?” Marco blew out an incredulous huff. “Sure he did.”

Gina jammed her hands on her hips. “What is wrong with you lately? My brother is flat on the ground, unconscious. Call 9-1-1. Do something.”

Mr. Weatherton pulled a cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“I just called.” George waved his iPhone in the air. “There’s an ambulance on its way.”

Joe Mezzanotte thanked him, while every member of the Arabella family pretended not to hear a word he’d said.

“I’m simply saying that’s an awfully convenient position for him to land in.” Marco crossed his arms and aimed a disbelieving glare at Juliet.

Then Leo stirred. Finally.

Juliet gave him a little shake. “Leo, are you okay?”

He groaned as if he was in pain. He lifted his head, just barely, and blinked at her with a faraway gaze. “Juliet?”

She nodded.

“Baby.” He gave her a naughty smile and dropped his head again, moving his face back and forth over her breasts. Before she could stop him, he let out another, much less painful-sounding groan.

Marco threw his hands in the air. “I rest my case.”

“Oh, my.” The announcer averted his gaze.

One of the judges snickered, and Joe Mezzanotte turned such a dark shade of crimson that Juliet worried he might pass out, too.

Juliet scrambled to get out from under Leo. It was no use. He was pretty much dead weight. And there was the added problem that his hands had begun to close around her waist, holding her in place underneath him.

This was definitely not the ending to the chocolate fair that she’d envisioned. Well, perhaps it was. Only not with an audience. “Leo, you really need to get up. If you can. You’re at the chocolate fair. You fainted.”

“Get off of her.” Juliet’s mom picked up Leo’s leg and tugged.

“Ouch,” he mumbled, right into her chest.

Juliet did her best to act as if a semiconscious Mezzanotte talking to her breasts at point zero range was a perfectly ordinary occurrence and tried to wave her mother away. “Mom, stop. You’re hurting him.”

“Who cares?” Nico’s voice had a distinct brotherly edge to it. “I’m on the verge of knocking him out all over again.”

Leo lifted his head, squinted and frowned at her mother. He shook his leg, and she let go. His foot flopped to the ground with a thud. “No, it’s not my leg. It’s my head. Dear God, my head hurts.”

Juliet propped herself up on her elbows so she could see him better. “You had a headache earlier in the kitchen, remember? Do you think that’s why you fainted?”

“I don’t know, baby.”