The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) Page 24

  He was thinking about her and skiing and après-skiing, and maybe some things he could do with hot tubs and snow, when he walked into Luc’s office the next morning and checked. Luc was supposed to be doing accounts, which was, granted, enough to make any man regret he was in charge of the place when he could have stayed a much more intelligent second. But still…

  “Are you sick?” he asked blankly. Luc never got sick. Neither did he. It just wasn’t something they did.

  Luc pushed away from his desk and paced the small glass-walled office a step, as if he wanted to escape but had nowhere to go. Just in case, Patrick leaned casually back against the door, feigning such profound fatigue he needed a support to keep him upright.

  “No,” Luc said, his voice leaden. As if he just couldn’t be bothered. Luc, who was always crisp, cool, perfect, who could always be bothered, in order to make sure things were just right. “Patrick, go work or something.”

  “Did you and Summer get in another fight?” Patrick asked incredulously. This was getting old. Plus – Luc didn’t look energized, like he usually did after an encounter with Summer, so much of his heart pressing against that iron shield of his that he practically filled the kitchen with desserts just by flicking his fingers. No, he looked dull, as if his skin had aged and his hair had lost its gloss.

  “No,” Luc said.

  “Where is she?” Patrick asked suspiciously.

  “On a plane.”

  “What?” Damn it, you should never count on an internationally famous spoiled brat to help you get your life on track. But these past few days, Luc had started to seem so happy, in his intense, over-obsessive way. Patrick had started thinking the man might not need him anymore, to light up his life, and once that excuse was gone…he’d actually let himself start thinking about what he might want to do instead. “She just walked out and left you,” he verified between his teeth. “Without the two of you getting in a fight.” He was going to throttle Luc. He really was. Patrick was pretty sure that even he could manage to get in a fight with Sarah before he would let her just walk out on him. For God’s sake.

  “That’s right.”

  Patrick straightened from the door, his arms unfolding, his hands itching. The cords of Luc’s neck against his palms were going to feel so damned good. He’d been wanting to choke him for twelve years. “Did you, by any chance, try to stop her? Like tell her she mattered?”

  You had to do that, he reminded himself. Let a woman know how much she mattered. You had to, you had to, no matter how scary it was.

  Even if it leaves you feeling as if you’re standing in the middle of the Champs-Elysées, exposed to ten lanes of racing multi-ton chunks of metal.

  “She knows how much she matters,” Luc said severely.

  Patrick almost turned straight around and looked at Sarah. Did she? Did she know how much she mattered? God, he was trying to say it more clearly, he just couldn’t get it out. It nearly strangled him.

  He settled himself more firmly back against the door again instead, refusing to allow himself to turn. “Still. Never hurts to mention it,” he said, in the most hypocritical flippancy. I know it never hurts, all right? I know. God, I hope Sarah’s patient.

  She always seemed to be. Patient and steady and not giving up. Not ever.

  “I did mention it,” Luc said icily.

  “Not through a dessert, Luc. With actual words.”

  Luc just looked at him.

  Oh.

  Damn. That didn’t exactly reassure a man about what might happen if he let his own woman know she mattered, did it?

  “Why’d she leave then?” Patrick challenged. Come on, Luc, admit it. You screwed something up. I saw the way Summer Corey looks at you. You’ve got her heart in your hands, and you’ve got to be careful with something like that.

  He pressed his butt firmly into the door to stop himself from turning around to look at Sarah.

  “I told her to,” Luc said flatly, and Patrick’s arms dropped from his chest.

  “You what?” That’s it. I’m going to fucking kill you. You suicidal idiot!

  Even I wouldn’t do that to protect myself. Merde.

  “She’s not happy here.” All energy had drained out of Luc’s voice, leaving him nothing, except a kind of relentless determination. “She needed to go back to her island.”

  Wait. Patrick’s eyes narrowed. “And you told her that? Luc, putain, you’ve got to be careful with things like that. Say one damn clumsy thing, and a woman can take it all the wrong way. Had you been working eighteen hours when you had this conversation?”

  “The only thing holding her here was that she thought I needed her,” Luc said, in such a precise, even voice it was a wonder it had any life left in it at all. “So I let her go.”

  Patrick waited a beat, while he assimilated that, and then it hit him: “You – Luc. You didn’t tell her you didn’t need her, did you? Bordel de cul, Luc, tell me you didn’t.”

  Luc set his jaw.

  That was it. Patrick lunged across the office and just managed not to close his hands around the other man’s throat to shake him like a damn dog. Instead he grabbed the strong shoulders and shook them. “You idiot! What the fuck is the matter with you?”

  It took this new, deadened Luc a few full seconds to react and shove Patrick back from him. Patrick let him, beyond rage, as if he’d just walked out onto the top floor of the Eiffel Tower in time to see Luc jump.

  “I’m done.” Patrick grabbed the desk as one of the few things in the room too heavy for him to actually hit Luc over the head with it. “I’m done being your fucking crutch! That’s it. You want something happy in your life, you want your sunshine, you want to do something other than obsess in your fucking iron shell about perfection all the time as the only way you can communicate with people, then you go after her! And you tell her how fucking screwed up you are. I’m done.”

  Luc’s hands flexed into fists. Patrick had a flashing hope that Sarah would be smart enough to duck behind a counter if the two of them started throwing each other against the glass walls. Luc’s eyes glittered black. “You’re my crutch?”

  Oh, that – trust Luc to cut right to the bone with three words. “Oh, now you don’t need me, either?” You know you fucking do. You do, damn you.

  Luc’s hands flexed again. “If you’re my crutch, then why are you still hiding behind me?”

  Patrick whitened. That hurt so goddamned bad, after all he had done for this man. The part that was true hurt the worst of all. “Fuck you.”

  “Put your own self out there, Patrick. See how the fuck you like it.” Luc jerked the door open and strode out. Everyone in the kitchen was staring at them. Sarah’s eyebrows flexed together, her eyes very alert.

  Patrick followed him to the door and grabbed its frame to keep from tackling the man from behind. “Why don’t you show me how, Luc?” he taunted. “To put yourself out there. To really put yourself out there. Show me your technique. Why don’t you, for once, do it your fucking self?”

  Luc spun on his heel to face him again. No one in the kitchen even breathed. Sarah had one fist pressed to her mouth.

  The two men stared at each other, so much energy straining it was like the second before a closed can of liquid nitrogen exploded.

  And then Luc pivoted again and strode out.

  Fucking bastard. Patrick let the fight slump off him, hanging in the door, the release of adrenaline leaving him wiped out, tired, and very, very sore. Like he’d been wounded all over. That bastard. Putain d’enculé.

  He shook himself on a deep breath, and grinned at the kitchen. “Must be his time of the month.”

  There, maybe that bit of sexism would offend Sarah enough she wouldn’t break cover. He didn’t meet her eyes, afraid if she did she would come over to him. Try to touch him and make it better. Not that he would mind a gentle touch right about now, but it wouldn’t be good for any of them, for the intern to come console the second after a fight with the head chef.

/>   Even if no one but he knew how much of it had been over her.

  Chapter 29

  Sarah stepped into the service elevator after delivering several sheets of financiers to the bistrot that was one of the hotel’s secondary restaurants. Patrick had left the kitchens immediately after the fight with Luc. She had been hoping to run into him somewhere on her way, but instead, just as the elevator doors were closing, an elegant, strong, masculine hand grasped the edge, and they shifted open again to allow Luc Leroi to step inside.

  Sarah tried not to literally shrink into the corner. A discreet step to compact herself into the least amount of space she could didn’t count as shrinking, did it?

  Fire-forged, merciless Chef Leroi looked tired. Bleak, with a heavy, sensitive turn at the corners of that fine-controlled mouth. The word in the kitchens was that Summer Corey had dumped him and waltzed off to Tahiti or something, which was about the kind of thing you could expect from a beautiful spoiled society brat, but apparently Luc Leroi had tricked himself into expecting something different. Sarah snuck a peek at his eyes and started when she found them fixed on her.

  “Sarah,” he said suddenly.

  She jumped. “Oui, chef?”

  “If you steal my second away from me, you had damned well better keep on deserving him.”

  She gaped at the cool, hard challenge of black eyes and relentless standards. Oh, good God, I am not ready for this level of competition. A one-on-one confrontation with Luc Leroi himself, and over Patrick. The peasant girl dueling the master swordsman. For the heart of the prince. “I’m not–” She stopped and frowned. Well, I’m not backing down, before swords are even crossed, just because I can’t handle that black look. I could handle my mom’s look. I could handle my stepdad’s look. I can even handle Patrick’s. I can handle his. “He’s never fallen for an intern before?” she asked instead.

  “No, Sarah. He’s never fallen for anyone before. He fell for you.”

  Really? All those gallant, romantic things, kneeling at her feet above Paris, taking her to the theater, stroking her cheeks, kissing her palms – he had only ever done them for her?

  Her eyes filled. Her nostrils stung.

  Good God, she was not going to cry for the first time in years in front of Chef Leroi.

  “Did he really?” she whispered.

  “He hasn’t told you?” Luc’s eyes narrowed a tiny bit, and he shot a glance in the general direction of the kitchens as if he could slice right through the metal elevator doors and still slice off Patrick’s head with a look. Trust something Patrick did to be what brought a touch of energy back to Luc Leroi at his bleakest. “That you matter?”

  “I kind of think he has,” Sarah admitted almost inaudibly. Standing in the middle of the Champs-Elysées, surrounded by rushing cars, where no one else could hear him, he had said it, once. He had shown it. And she still tended to forget it under her own insecurities.

  And she so should not be having this conversation with her chef. With his chef. His foster brother. Wait, that made her both Chef Leroi’s lowly intern and his brother’s girlfriend. This was just too surreal. “You’re really foster brothers?” she murmured, and then her face flamed. She couldn’t believe she had just asked Chef Leroi a personal question. She couldn’t even ask him professional questions.

  “Is that what he told you?” Luc Leroi asked blankly. “Is that how he thinks about himself?” The idea clearly dumbfounded the chef, and Sarah quelled a strong urge to hit him. Chef Leroi gave his head a slight shake, supple, arrogant eyebrows meeting. “I’ve got fifty foster brothers. He’s my second.” His right-hand man. He actually flexed his right hand and looked at it, when he said it. “He’s – Patrick.”

  Patrick. That about summed him up, all right. Sarah’s mouth softened, the corners teasing up. Maybe she might like Chef Leroi after all. It was a disconcerting feeling.

  “Has he ever told you why he didn’t pursue engineering?” Luc asked unexpectedly.

  Her eyebrows pinched, smile forgotten. She shook her head slowly.

  Cool, dark eyes held hers. “Have you asked him?”

  Her second shake was even slower.

  “Not that interested?” Chef Leroi asked, as the elevator doors slid open back on their floor. He didn’t move.

  Her eyebrows knitted still harder. She was, she just–

  “You know, Sarah, since you’re surrounded by men trying so hard to put themselves out there, you might think about doing it, too.”

  She stared at him.

  And suddenly, she saw herself just for a moment from another point of view: in her need to get things right, she had really only ever taken one risk in her life – to change her careers and come here. And she had thought she had done something extraordinary, that she need never take another risk on a wild, crazy dream again.

  That she could tuck herself up inside her little bubble of space and just be herself, safe and secure from other people’s hopes of her or hers of them, forever after.

  “Just a thought,” Luc Leroi said as the elevator doors started to close again.

  Strong, fast fingers slipped from the other side and caught the doors, pulling them back open. Patrick filled the door. “Sarabelle,” he said happily. Nothing in his face or manner suggested a very recent explosive encounter with the other occupant of the elevator. “Just the person I most wanted to trap in an elevator. Luc, go run away to a tropical island or something. Somebody might put up with you there.”

  Luc shoved past him without a word, his hands still in his pockets.

  Patrick frowned after him as the elevator doors slid closed. “You know, I really thought better of Summer than this. That girl has no sense of her responsibility to others. Either Luc goes after her on his own or I’m going to drug him and put him in a crate to the South Pacific, but either way, I’m going to end up doing all of Valentine’s by myself, damn it. Couldn’t she have waited until February 15? I hate all that heart shit. Did you get anything out of him?”

  Sarah studied Patrick, silent.

  “What am I talking about, the man is locked up in a suit of iron armor.” Patrick gave a shake of his head and focused down on Sarah properly, his gaze softening involuntarily. He reached up a hand to touch her face, all flushed, her hair already frazzled from the morning’s work, her body completely covered in the hot protective gear that turned her into a marshmallow on the outside and something gooey and sticky underneath. “You’re so pretty.”

  She took a very deep breath as the doors slid back open again, right back on the bistrot floor. “I love you, too,” she said quietly.

  And ducked out of the elevator, blushing crimson, leaving Patrick standing struck dumb there as the doors slid closed on him.

  It might very well have been the bravest thing she had ever done. Braver than quitting her engineering job to pursue this fantasy dream, which at least she had truly believed in.

  Chapter 30

  Patrick was so quiet as they walked down the lower quay of the Seine in the glacial gray afternoon after they got off work that Sarah wanted to crawl into herself like a tortoise in a shell and never come out. He had barely spoken to her or come near her the whole rest of the day. He’d looked at her, though. Every time she glanced up, he was standing stock still, looking at her.

  Had she made a fool out of herself?

  He was so quiet. Not smiling, not winking, not shrugging.

  The ivory and brown of the bridges over the water under that gray sky turned the Seine into something ancient and stubborn, persistently romantic through whatever any century threw at it, but a little tired now, ready for spring. Patrick sat at last on a bench, and she sat beside him, tucking her arms in tight against the weather. Leaning his forearms on his knees, Patrick stared at his interlocked hands, thumbs worrying at his own knuckles. Once in a while he glanced at a passing barge or sideways at her.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked him finally, after about fifteen minutes of this.

  “Yes.” Hi
s rough voice was self-deprecating, his mouth wry. “But I don’t think I can handle pulling you onto my lap to warm me up just this minute, Sarah.”

  She couldn’t quite figure out how she felt about being his go-to hot-water bottle. Charmed or indignant? It would be a heck of a lot warmer than her current position on the cold stone bench. “You could at least zip up your jacket.”

  He looked back at his worrying thumbs. “Then you wouldn’t be able to slip inside it,” he muttered.

  She stared at him. Was that a flush on his cheeks? Twice in twenty-four hours? She slipped a hand under his collar to curve over the nape of his neck, and he jumped. The warmth of his skin made her realize how icy her fingers must feel against it.

  His head turned as he relaxed his body into the touch, and his gaze ran over her face. His mouth softened. “Kiss me?”

  She leaned into him, and he yielded hungrily to the kiss, letting her take control, inviting her in. By the time she came up for air, he had pulled her to stand between his legs. He laid his head against her breasts, through her heavy coat, and the tension sighed out of him heavily. “Sarah. Thank you.”

  She stroked his head, the pleasure of being able to touch it and learn its texture still an unfamiliar delight. Would she ever get used to it? “Why ‘thank you’?” she asked.

  He kept one side of his wry smile buried in her chest, not saying anything for a moment. And then, softly, “For being so pretty.”

  She sat down on his thigh so she could get a better look at his face. Just the position that she had been unsure about a second before.

  He took one of her hands in his, gazed at it a moment, his face sober, then slowly ran his thumb down each finger before closing his hand firmly over hers, shutting the rest of the world away from it. Guilt pricked her, that her hands were the ones so protected, so consoled, and yet even with the guilt, there was something extraordinarily beautiful about having him think they were worth sacrificing his own to protect them. “Sarah,” he said finally, and the strain in his voice wrenched her heart. “It’s like I can’t breathe. When I try to say it. I’m trying. I just–”