The Chocolate Heart (16 page)

Oh,
she realized for the first time, a sweet, confusing grasp around her insides.
He sent that basket to me. It had to have been him. After he walked out on me, left me freezing there . . . he sent that basket of warm gold for me to have as the first thing when I woke up.

“And I need the concern very much,” he said quietly. “You don't think I'm human
at all
?”

“Oh, come on, give her a break.” Sylvain picked up a knife and went back to dicing mushrooms. “Who does?”

Luc gave the chocolatier a steady, dangerous look. “Why, thank you, Sylvain,” he said silkily. “I had no idea you were one of my worshipers.”

Sylvain's white grin flashed.
Touché.
“Luc, just because we think you're inhuman doesn't mean we think you're a
god.
Can't you think of any other inhuman things? A statue, a robot, a monster, a demon—”

“The Lord of Hell,” Summer muttered.

“That's a good one,” Sylvain agreed. “Fits him perfectly.”

“And what would be
hell
?” Luc asked Summer between his teeth.

“The hotel.” She waved a hand. “Paris.”

Everyone stopped serving drinks and prepping food to stare at her, dumbfounded.
“Paris?”

Yeah, that was right. Only a spoiled brat could be unhappy here. This place always took precedence over her own emotions. She pulled back into herself, which ironically meant closer to Luc, still seeking him like shelter. “All right, fine. You can be the Goblin-King instead.”

“The
what
?”

“You know.” She twined her hands through the air, trying to imitate his when he worked. “Weaving wonders to lure mortals to their doom.”

A tiny beat's silence. “To their doom?”

“Like in
Labyrinth,
” Jaime explained helpfully and grinned. “He's better looking than David Bowie, though. You have to admit. Maybe he should be a Fairy King, at least.”

Dominique Richard stiffened at the compliment to the other man's looks, but Jaime tucked her hand in one of his big, scarred ones and smiled up at him, refusing to take back her comment even while she reassured him, and his hard mouth softened.

“I was thinking of his kitchens as the hell, myself,” Sylvain said cheerfully. “I hear he's a merciless taskmaster.”

“Like you aren't,” Cade retorted.

“Only when you want me to be,” he told her outrageously, and Cade laughed and pretended to pinch him. Summer felt so jealous of happy couples she could have clawed something.

“Did anyone ever mention to you that Summer spent her teenage years in a Paris boarding school?” Jaime asked Luc, suddenly serious, holding his eyes. “What was that like, Summer? Hell, by any chance?”

Why
would Jaime bring that up in front of Luc? Like he needed to know how she had spent five years rejected and despised by every single person who walked the earth? His opinion of her didn't need any reinforcement.

“Oh, a dream come true,” Summer said lightly. “But I'm on to other dreams now.” She forced herself away from Luc to explore the little living room and the rainy view, trying not to let the Corey sisters' happiness get to her. It was better than spending an evening alone looking at the Eiffel Tower, right? Or going out with the first man who looked at her twice, as her father put it. Just so she wouldn't be alone.

Luc joined her at the window, curling her fingers around a wineglass. With everyone else in the kitchen and the rain sheeting just the other side of the cold window, the moment married too strongly with the one under the umbrella, at the door below. As if they had shifted to that cozy place they were meant to be together. Her heart tightened. She would have given anything, just then, to never have offered him a yacht. To have walked up to him that first moment in the hotel, laid her head on his shoulder . . . and been welcomed. Sometimes she wondered whether everything about their relationship could have been different if she had had enough trust in her first instinct to do just that.

It hurt too much to think about. “Did you take care of that?” she asked of the cut on his cheek.

His hand lingered on hers around the wineglass. “Would you bandage my wounds, Summer? Actually care if I got hurt?”

What kind of horrible person did he
see
when he looked at her? “Yes, but only because I need psychotherapy,” she snapped.

“For anger management?” he asked helpfully.

“For being attracted to you!”

A tiny pause, while her words echoed back to her. She winced, eyes squeezing shut.

“You might think about the anger management,” said the man sporting multiple bruises, his voice almost a caress. She peeked at him. He was looking at her as if she had suddenly dropped all her clothes and stood there naked. And as if this time, he liked the view. “You say the most fascinating things when you lose your temper. “

She flushed, setting her teeth, and whispered: “That whole thing about . . . the wall, I was just trying to be offensive! I don't actually want you to—” She broke off, in despairing rage at herself.

“Of course not,” Luc said soothingly, and she almost relaxed. Did he really understand? Maybe forgive a little? “Not right now. But it's interesting to note that when you are in a real rage, you think that's how you would want to be dealt with.”

“Fuck you,” she said bitterly.

His eyebrows rose. “Is that just an example of your foul mouth or another Freudian slip?”

She turned away.

“I started it.” His voice curled around her and held her still. “So it's all my fault.”

“You started a fight?” Luc? “Was it some kind of long-range plan, or did you actually lose control?”

His eyebrows crinkled. “You have a very odd idea of me, Summer.”

Right. Just because he didn't lose control with her didn't mean some other person might not be worth it.

Her nostrils stung unexpectedly, and she fought it back. She wasn't crying again for him. But she asked despite herself: “What was the fight
about
? Did a critic insult one of your desserts?”

That cut lower lip tightened in a way that had to hurt. He didn't relax it to relieve the pain, though. “You don't know
anything
about me, do you?”

“No more than you know about me,” she said flatly and started to turn again.

He braced his arm against the window frame, blocking her in. Holding them in a tiny cave of dark glass, rain, and him. From the kitchen, warmth and laughter washed over them, in little ripples. He leaned in on her. His black-silk voice caressed her, arousing her and opening her to him before she even absorbed what he said, so that the words hit straight into her sex. “Do you know that I could strip you naked in less than a second? Do you know how fast I could touch every part of your body? And how long I could keep doing it? You've seen what I can do with my hands, haven't you?”

Her nipples peaked. Her sex softened helplessly against her panties. Oh, God. She had always known that with the slightest effort he would catch her.

He leaned closer. His voice seemed to reach right down between her legs and rub her to his tune. “You may not want desserts, but I could make you one of mine,” he breathed.

And while her body was still jolting with the aroused, helpless understanding that until now, he had not even bothered to toy with her, Dominique and Jaime spilled out of the kitchen, carrying plates, and he straightened away.

 

Oh, yes,
that
sent her running, Luc thought. She didn't know what the hell to do when he took the sexual-aggressor role from her, did she?

Except scurry to tuck herself between her cousins in the kitchen. That was almost hilarious, that she thought she could hide from
him
in a kitchen. It was also endearing and sweet, and he was sick and tired of resisting his protective instincts. Because if Patrick was right, and she really did need him . . . God, but he wanted to be her hero.

“Mind if I take over?” he asked Sylvain. Sylvain gave a slow grin and handed him the knife.

“Not at all.”

Such a small apartment kitchen, and maybe Summer did not understand. She seemed to have lived much of her life far away from people. Seen by a camera lens but not close up. He, on the other hand, had almost never had a private moment: busking in crowded Métros all day; sleeping in the street; sharing bedrooms after his foster father took him because Bernard always took too many kids, unable to turn them away; working his way up through packed, intense kitchens.

He didn't have any problem negotiating that workspace to brush against her, over and over, every single time he reached for something. A tickle of his arm against the nape of her neck. A brush of his thigh against her butt. A breath against the top of her head.

Summer's hands grew clumsier and clumsier on the asparagus she was trying to snap, piece by slow piece. The urge to protect her grew stronger and stronger, protect her with himself, the danger. Damn it, how might their world have been different if, that first night, he had tucked himself in that comforter with her, given her his body heat, stroked that beautiful hair back from her face, and made her happy?

He nudged Cade out of his way—because Sylvain was far more secure than Dominique, who might ruin the whole evening if Luc dared nudge Jaime—and took the counter space beside Summer. Rolling up his sleeves, he picked up a knife—and barely avoided cutting Summer's finger off when she grabbed his wrist.

“
Merde,
Summer, do you know how sharp Sylvain keeps these knives?
Shit.
” Hair rose all over his body.

Summer flushed as everyone looked at them.

“Dis, donc.”
Dominique raised his eyebrows. “When you don't even shout at your interns.”

“Sarah doesn't do stupid things like that!” Luc snapped, and Summer's flush deepened.

“Allez,”
said Sylvain, the only one who could see Summer's face fully from the other side of the counter. “Luc.”

Luc sent him a vicious look, fighting his fury at another man intervening to protect Summer from him. Cade glanced between Sylvain and Summer, her expression shifting from surprise to a noticeable chill.

Annoyance and shocked pity hit him at the same time.
That
was why Summer had clung to his side when they got here, broadcasting
boyfriend
signals. If she didn't have a boyfriend, she didn't have
anything.
She was just too luminously gorgeous. Men pursued her, and women hated her, and there was no one she could relax with and confide in. She had to show up with a boyfriend just to appease other women's wariness enough to get within speaking distance of their husbands. Cade was supremely self-confident, her and Sylvain's relationship was so happy it made Luc's teeth hurt, and yet one involuntary kindness toward Summer on Sylvain's part and Cade was already prepared to defend her territory.

That was how alone she was. And he had left her to it. When she had walked straight up to him, so afraid of that loneliness that she had offered him a multimillion-dollar bribe to save her.

What a fucking fool he had been.

He took a long breath and touched the back of Summer's hand. “You scared me,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry.”

Summer's lashes lifted. For a second, he thought her eyes shimmered with something other than a smile.

“I'm sorry if I've hurt you,” he said slowly.

What if, all this time, under that easy, flippant dismissal against which he beat himself, she was exactly as vulnerable and sweet and warm as he had believed her to be, that first minute he saw her? When she was so tired that all her defenses were down.

“Oh, don't worry about
me.
” She backed away from her asparagus, task half-finished, wiggling those fingers around which she wrapped him so carelessly. “See? All intact. I was actually wondering about
you.
”

He slipped his hands into his pockets, against the surge of emotion in him, the burn on the back of one protesting. “I'm strong. Don't worry about me.”

Her mouth set, stubborn. “Have you at least taken care of it?”

I'm trying,
Luc wanted to shout. “Taken care of—what?”

“That!” Summer gestured toward his pocketed hand, annoyed. “It looks bad! It could probably get infected. And your knuckles are all skinned and swollen. What
have
you been doing to yourself?”

“At a guess, beating the crap out of someone,” Dominique said very dryly.

Luc shot him a look. “Honors were even. Shut up, Dom.” Spoiled bastard. Jaime probably lavished sympathy on him every time he stubbed his toe.

“And getting very clumsy in the kitchens. For some strange reason.” Sylvain sounded unbearably amused, but not unsympathetic. “Hot caramel? Sugar work?”

“A
commis
knocked the handle of a spoon, and the caramel landed on my hand.” Luc started to shrug, thought better of it, and tried to look bravely suffering instead. He knew, by the expressions on the other chefs' faces, that he was doing a shit-hell job of it, but he was pretty sure he could get better with practice. For the right incentive.

“We've got some bandages in the bathroom,” said Cade, who was an
angel,
even if an amused one. Thank God Sylvain had married her.

Luc tried impatient indifference, the kind of thing that might convince a woman who liked to take care of small children that he sure as hell wasn't going to take care of
himself.
“It's fine.” He reached for the knife again.