The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) Read online

  And then he’d done it.

  Done all kinds of things. The next time he came up close behind her in the kitchens to help her get something right, while she was working at one of their marble counters, and his breath drifted over the top of her head, she was going to shatter everything she touched.

  It had been nice to sleep late, after that. Sleep as if she’d never known a restless, tension-plagued night in her life.

  Outside, clouds glowered over Notre-Dame, the real reason for how soft the light was through those great windows. She smiled at them for making it so clear how very glad she was to be exactly where she was and rolled over, pulling a white sheet over her shoulder. She was sprawled across the bed, she who never sprawled, her face tucked against the corner of the pillow on the opposite side, as if even in her sleep Patrick’s charisma had pulled her out of her space into his.

  The bathroom door opened, and Patrick came out, hair wet and, from the tousled look, combed just by a run of his fingers. It looked really good on him, that wet hair – fresh and relaxed and intimate. So much more naked than the strands that could cling, sweat-damp, to his temples and nape after a mad two hours at lunch or dinner. He wore only a towel and the daylight that filtered over him. She hadn’t actually gotten to see him naked that much yet, had been touched but barely gotten a chance to touch him.

  He looked as good in just a towel as he did in black-on-black elegance laying a woman out to be his feast. Strong shoulders and narrow hips, with the definition of a man whose work kept him in constant, gymnast motion and who relaxed from the tension of that work by going to the gym or skiing.

  She smiled a little. “Do you ever even lie around watching TV or reading a book?”

  “Sarabelle, we can stretch out on that couch and watch TV the whole damn day.” He crouched by the bed to put his face on level with hers and reached into the nightstand drawer at the same time. A slim black tablet appeared on the mattress. “Or download whatever you want, if you’d rather read. If you’re nice to me, I might even brave the cold to get us some potato chips and popcorn. Or didn’t you say there was that chocolate witch place you like, just over on the Île Saint-Louis? If we get sick of wallowing, you can show me it. It’s a good day for hot chocolate. Then, if you’re extra, extra nice to me – let’s say you smile at me a couple of times – I might even make you dinner.”

  Wait. His plan for their day off was cuddling? Relaxing together?

  He made it sound so…easy to get right.

  She looked up from the tablet to meet his eyes tentatively. His were narrowed, watching, but as soon as their gazes met, he threw up his arms to shield himself. “Oh, merde. You’re about to tell me something horrible, aren’t you? Don’t, don’t, don’t, Sarah, please don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian.”

  He made her laugh, every time, this surprise right in the middle of seriousness, as if a little firecracker of happiness had gone off in the darkness. He used to do it in the kitchens, until she had gotten to the point where she could hate him so adamantly it didn’t work any more.

  “Well, I don’t eat a lot of meat,” she said cautiously.

  He groaned and flopped forward so that his face smashed into the mattress, his arms flung out dramatically. Then he turned his head enough to give her one blue wink. “We’ll take turns with dinners,” he promised, as if they might be feeding each other indefinitely, and her heart just…it was as if it jumped out of a plane, and instead of dropping, just found itself floating there. Checking above it – no, no parachute – how long could a heart float like that with no means of flight?

  My internship ends in a few weeks. By “indefinitely,” he doesn’t really mean “until the end of time.”

  He grinned at her. “You can cook me something – Korean? Do you know how to cook Korean? Did your maman teach you?”

  She nodded, relaxing into a smile. Her mom loved to cook. Loved it. She had stuffed and stuffed her daughters and every other child she saw in a kind of manic obsession to give them enough. It might be why Sarah had turned out so thin – revolt. Or more likely a complex shame at eating, when she knew that others had starved. It was so much easier to make beautiful fairytales of food for others than to take food for herself. Her older sister, Danji, Dan Ji at birth or Danni as people outside their family called her, had a little bit more trouble with her weight, still struggling to find a balance between her need to grab food every chance she saw, their mother’s need to feed her, and the fact that there were an infinite supply of chances in America.

  The first cake Sarah had ever made had been for Danji’s birthday. Sarah had been five, her efforts at cake-making inspired by something on television – probably Sleeping Beauty – and her results comical. But edible. And with lots of frosting and sprinkles. Danji’s face had lit up like the Eiffel Tower.

  Their mother, Ji-Na – or Jenny, the American name she had insisted on until she met their stepfather, who had gently refused – had taught the girls how to cook very young, kind of a desperate inculcation of life’s most vital skill. But Ji-Na Lin’s culinary culture was not one that included many sweets. Desserts had been Sarah’s discovery – through TV, and books, and other children’s birthday parties, becoming determined to make her own beautiful cakes, assimilating it all into her life, watching Danji’s face light up over and over, watching her mother pet the counter near the latest cake as if she had to almost-not-quite touch it, Ji-Na’s eyes filling with unshed tears.

  But she thought she might actually like to cook regular food for Patrick. She thought he might like it. She thought that while she was cooking it, and while he was eating it, his appreciation might make her feel really, really good.

  Their eyes held too long, and she started to blush at the warmth that filled the moment. “Tu es si jolie,” he said softly, and straightened from the bed. “So – if we watch James Bond movies, am I going to have to compete for your attention with the blond guy?”

  She laughed, filled with more happiness than she could remember feeling in a very long time. “I think you’ve blown that competition out of the water, Patrick.”

  His eyebrows went up. And then he grinned a little. His smug expression lasted the whole time he was messing around in the kitchen. He was so funny. He always looked as if he was just messing around – and then he would produce the sublime with a yawn. Just so no one thought he had been really trying.

  He really, really hated for people to know he was trying, didn’t he?

  “You know what I like about America?” Patrick called from the kitchen space. “Breakfast. They’ve got some ideas about breakfast.” He was cracking eggs into a pan as he spoke.

  “France has all those croissants and pastries,” Sarah protested. “Fresh baked, with that scent when you’re walking by the boulangerie…”

  “You’re not getting pastries, Sarah,” Patrick said firmly. “You’re getting protein. Also” –he double-checked his refrigerator – “you can have some fruit. I’ll make it look pretty if you want me to, but that’s as far as I’m going in the dessert direction.”

  She had to catch three little words in a tight grip inside her not to just spill them out. She loved everything about him, the fact that he was bossing her around to make sure she ate better, the fact that he probably really would make that fruit look all pretty for her, because he wouldn’t be able to help it. The fact that he was standing there naked, pretending to be clothed.

  She wanted to tell him something to make him realize how special he was, but if she started, it might all flood out. Leave her heart splatted on the great rocks below, while he stood on the cliff above with his eyebrows raised. Wait, were you taking me seriously? And then dove agilely into the waves beyond, untouched in any permanent way by his enjoyable romantic interval.

  But what if she should be taking him seriously? What if she could?

  She rolled to sit, clutching the sheet to her. “Shirts are in the bag by the bed,” Patrick said. “But you have to wear them without a bra. It
’s a requirement. They said so at the store. You know how fussy those designers are. Or if you don’t want those, mine are in the top drawer there.”

  She looked warily down at the bag near the nightstand, silver tissue paper covering what was clearly clothing. Damn it, he was not going to bring this into their moment again, was he? That horrible, sick feeling when he bought her things as if she was his, his–

  She reached into the sack as if it was a nest of snakes and drew out the top shirt, a tee in the softest, finest, most perfectly cut sea green. The designer label made her drop it as if that snake had sunk its fangs straight into her wrist. “Patrick. You take these back.”

  “I ripped yours!” he snapped instantly, as if he had known exactly what was coming. “I’ll replace it. I haven’t had a chance to find the exact same tights yet. Oh, but…there’s another pair I really liked under the shirts.” His voice changed, a little undercurrent of hunger and masculine hope that made her wonder if that other pair of tights included feathers in some way. Or a garter belt.

  “I can buy my own clothes,” she said between her teeth.

  “Sarah, you don’t make shit right now! I do. Don’t start a fight for no reason, it’s a beautiful morning.”

  She looked at the lowering winter clouds. She looked at him mostly naked in the kitchen, cooking. It was a beautiful morning, but he – but she – “Patrick, my little tees cost like ten euros. These must be at least a hundred each.”

  By the tiny flicker in his eyes and the way his face stayed neutral, she could tell that she had radically underestimated the price.

  “Patrick!”

  “Sarah, I didn’t have time to go hunt down any cheap stores. And I don’t buy myself cheap things, so I’m not sure why I would buy you cheap things.” He slid the eggs onto plates, his mouth positively sulky.

  That was kind of a hot look on him.

  Oh, for God’s sake. She needed to bang her head against something.

  “Patrick, you are out of your mind,” she said severely, now torn between her own personal issues and the realization that he was an insane person, financially speaking. “Aren’t you supposed to be saving to start your own restaurant some day? And you spend hundreds on a stupid T-shirt?”

  His jaw set. “I like getting what I want, when I want it.”

  “I noticed!” she snapped, wounded.

  “No, you did not!” he retorted, outraged. “Five damn months. Merde. And I was trying to wait one more, until you told me you hated me.”

  “Five whole months was hard on you?” she sneered, shocking herself. She didn’t sneer at people.

  His hand tightened on the handle of the pan. “You have no idea, Sarah,” he said, his voice gone low and tight and dangerous all of a sudden. “None. That’s the difference between you and me. No matter how much I might try to draw it out when we have sex, no matter how much I try to make you crave it, I’ll never be able to make you feel a tenth of what I–” A clawing motion with one hand, and he turned suddenly to bury himself in the refrigerator.

  When he finally straightened, she was right beside him, and he jumped so badly the flat of raspberries in his hand smashed into the corner of the refrigerator door, sending raspberries up into the air and down over them in a rain of red fruit.

  “Merde.” He caught several mid-fall, casually, as a boy might catch a baseball he’d been tossing, and proffered them to her on his palm. “I’m, ah, not used to having anyone but me in this kitchen.”

  That little revelation made her just light from the inside with happiness again. She lowered her lashes, in case he could see that light glowing too brilliantly vulnerable out of her eyes, and looked down at the four beautiful red berries held out for her in that broad, work-hardened palm. That’s the most beautiful way he could possibly have presented them. More beautiful than any fancy plate in our kitchens. She wanted to bend her head and eat them straight out of his palm.

  But that seemed kind of…humble, for someone who was already humbled by everything about him, and so instead she took one in her fingers and – changed suddenly and offered it to his lips.

  He softened, so visibly that she finally realized how tense he had been. His lips closed around the raspberry, those aristocratic lips of his that revealed the truth behind his laid-back surfer’s demeanor, and he kissed her fingertips gently as he took it, a soft touch that sank sweetness all through her. Bumping the refrigerator door closed with his shoulder, he slouched against it, still holding the caught raspberries in one hand and the half-empty flat in the other, his gaze running over her in one of his T-shirts. “You would rather wear my clothes than some I bought for you?”

  “It feels different,” she said stubbornly. It did. The scent of him in the fabric as she pulled it over her head had felt – cherishing. But then, that was what he meant to do when he bought her things, too, wasn’t it? To take care of her.

  “I like it.” His voice deepened, a hungry possessiveness in it that caressed over her. His gaze lingered at the hem against her thighs and then trailed slowly back up. “Once again, I don’t think you can have any idea how much.” His eyes flicked over her earlobes, but for what was probably the thousandth time since she had shown up with them bare, he chose not to say anything. He straightened. “Eat your eggs, Sarah, before I have to throw them in the trash and start over. And don’t step on any raspberries, or I’m going to suck them off your feet.”

  And that was, that was…what in the world did a woman do with that? She sat on the stool behind the counter and ate her eggs, curling her toes toward the soles of her feet the whole time.

  Patrick rinsed the raspberries, patted them dry in a towel, placed them on her plate in a giant heart around the rim, and cracked five more eggs into the pan for himself.

  ***

  It was an absurdly beautiful day. Like…how could anything that effortless be so wonderful? It undermined her whole existence. Shouldn’t she be working hard if she wanted something to turn out so perfect? Or somebody should be working hard? Making it look effortless?

  She peered at Patrick suspiciously, but he seemed truly to find this as enticingly easy as she did. Of course, he always made everything look enticingly easy, but his relaxation and peace felt so complete.

  Her hair still lay damp on her neck from her shower after breakfast, because he didn’t have a hair dryer. When the movie failed to hold her interest, she shifted to the other end of the couch so that the tablet didn’t block his view and downloaded a book her librarian sister had recommended ages ago. A chef’s memoir Danji had thought she would like, since Danji still assumed Sarah had energy to do anything once she hit a bed but sleep these days. It was sweet, though, how many chef’s memoirs Danji had been reading ever since Sarah had shocked her family with her career change.

  Just this silent gesture of I will try to understand. Kind of like when Sarah had started making all those cakes for her mom and sister: I will try, too. I will try to make up for it. But – my way, okay? Engineering had been so removed from her family history, as if all her accomplishments at Caltech were just…self-absorbed. All about her.

  She blinked, as if her brain was a kaleidoscope and a tiny shift had just made her whole image of what she was doing change. But then it shifted again, a blur of her mother’s horrified panic at her leaving her engineering career, and that other image was gone.

  Patrick shifted his long legs to make room for hers to stretch out the other way and pulled one of her feet onto his chest, caressing it absently as he might have played with her hand – running his thumb over the tips of her nails, down her instep, deep and firm up her sole, exploring the undersides of her toes, all while absorbed in the French comedy he had picked out, which she hadn’t quite gotten but which he seemed to not only find hilarious but to have halfway memorized.

  Her tablet drifted to rest on her chest as she watched the expressions chase across his face, while pleasure ran all through her from his petting of her foot. He grinned at something said on s
creen and lifted her foot absently to his mouth to kiss the tip of her big toe.

  Sweetness sighed through her. “Shouldn’t I be doing something?” she asked finally.

  He yawned and paused the film, looking at her over the foot he kept playing with – squeezing all her toes and the ball of her foot in the grip of a man who could casually juice an orange in one flex of his fingers, then relaxing them. It was an unbelievable degree of bliss, just that one squeeze. How did a woman recuperate from this kind of attention, after it was gone? “Are you getting restless?”

  She shook her head. “Just – what did I do to deserve this?”

  “To deserve what?” he asked blankly.

  She gestured awkwardly.

  “Me?” He gave a crack of astonished, oddly harsh laughter. “What did you do to deserve me? God only knows, Sarabelle. You seem so sweet, but you must have done something.”

  “I do not either seem sweet,” she said, a little revolted. Because she wasn’t. Sweet women – smiled at everyone, and mothered, and always put others first, and she didn’t do any of those things. She had put herself first before her own mother, even after all her mother’s suffering, when she came here.

  Hadn’t she?

  “To me,” he corrected. “To me you’re sweet, because you let me in. I think to everyone else you’re sweet like a closed garden – one of those Japanese monk ones – or maybe a glorious, gorgeous steel katana.”

  She crinkled her nose, uneasy. “That sounds…painful. Cutting.”

  “Yeah, that’s not right.” He tilted his head a moment, considering her. “Enfin. Maybe not the cutting edge, maybe that doesn’t fit, but I like the steel image, that beautiful, supple strength.”

  Beautiful, supple strength? “Are we talking about the same person?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  “Maybe you look different from different perspectives,” he said wryly.

  “Evidently.” You must, too. To think I would have to do something bad to deserve you. “Korean and Japanese aren’t the same, you know.”