The Chocolate Kiss

by Laura Florand

  So did Philippe, though. He put mouthwatering treasures confected of sugar and heaven in his windows. And princesses walked right out of her shop and into his. Philippe attracted princesses in search of a prince for the ball.

  “Perhaps you’re one yourself?” Magalie asked the little girl.

  “I haven’t decided yet. I think I want to be a fairy. Or maybe an elephant tamer.”

  Fair enough. Philippe could have loomed there until he turned into a statue before Magalie seated him, but for the budding fairy’s sake, Magalie showed them to one of the tiny corner tables.

  “Bonjour,” Philippe said to her pointedly as he sat across from his niece, his voice a low, rich, tawny thing.

  Oh, no, he had not just corrected her manners. In her own territory. Which he wouldn’t have even gotten back inside if it hadn’t been for his four-year-old lockpick there with her curly hair. Magalie tapped her fingers hard into the palm of her hand, held low by her thigh, entirely unable to bring herself to say bonjour back.

  Instead, she handed each of them a menu, rich off-white with its cramped and esoteric list of teas on one side and children’s drawings on the back. Sometimes, when things were slow, Magalie would study whichever drawing was uppermost, trying to interpret the child’s visions. Other than the frequent appearance of witches, most of them were not that obvious.

  The little girl studied the crayon drawings on her menu a long time. “I want some of the violets and mint,” she whispered carefully, looking around in case she was telling a secret.

  Magalie gave her an approving smile. She liked people who thought outside the menu. “Certainly. Three petals, three leaves, and a chocolate witch. How does that sound?”

  The little girl beamed.

  “And for monsieur?” she asked with a little, challenging smile.

  He held her eyes and smiled right back. “I’ll have a Perrier.”

  Magalie bit hard on the inside of her lip in a reminder that there was a four-year-old child present. “I believe we’re out.”

  His big hand lay flat over the cryptic, enticing list of items on the menu. Completely blocking it from consideration. “Evian, then.”

  She drew a breath.

  “Or if you’re out of that,” he added urbanely, before she could speak, “just tapwater is fine. I’m not fussy.”

  He was a bastard was what he was.

  “Can I draw a picture for you?” the little girl asked wistfully. “I’m a good drawer.”

  “Of course.” Her aunts would be thrilled. “We would be honored.”

  “That’s a nice new display Sylvain’s got up in his windows.” Philippe’s smile was thin, murderous. “The one with the witch looking for where she buried her heart. And her heart turns out to be one of Sylvain’s chocolates. Very sweet for Valentine’s Day.”

  He didn’t sound as if it was sweet. He sounded as if he wanted to spit the taste of it out of his mouth.

  “Did you spend a lot of time crouched with him in the window working on it?” he continued. “Cade didn’t object?”

  Object to what? “I think it was her idea.” Besides, Cade hadn’t been present much; her sister had recently been hospitalized, and she was spending a lot of time there, joined by Sylvain in the evenings. Magalie had figured out who Cade Corey was. The billionaire chocolate heiress and chocolate thief—the Web and print media had been abuzz with her over the past months, but Magalie had never paid attention before she met her. Cade’s escapades in Paris had made for fascinating reading once she had searched for the articles, though. Quixotically enough, the heiress to one of the world’s largest mass producers of candy bars seemed to have a thing about defending and supporting small artisan producers, and while it was annoying that she seemed to think La Maison des Sorcières needed a champion, at least Sylvain wasn’t acting out of charity. He just liked the tea shop’s style. He had openly credited their role in his window display and had a stack of their business cards by his cash registers. “Aunt Geneviève did most of it.”

  Philippe shifted restlessly in his chair, looking as if he wanted something to kick.

  Magalie shrugged. “It’s not the witch’s real heart, anyway.” That had been her contribution. Sure, Sylvain’s customers could think it was and find it si romantique, but no witch worth her chocolate left her heart in some sorcerer’s hand.

  “It’s in your own window, isn’t it?” the little girl said suddenly. “Her heart. I saw it. It was hidden in the witch’s basket.”

  A tiny sliver of a candied rose petal, just barely peeking out. What a very perceptive child. It was a pity she had to show off that perception in front of her uncle. Magalie forced herself to give the girl a self-confidence-boosting smile, as if Philippe Lyonnais hadn’t just been handed a dangerous secret. “That’s right. She’s taking it back in under her protection, now that she’s realized someone is after it.”

  She felt rather than saw Philippe’s stillness, because she was not looking at him. Even if he was quite rudely letting his long legs extend into her pathway, so that she had to weave around them every time she moved.

  The tiny silver bell over the door rang, and two women came in, layered in coats and scarves, looking around with wondering eyes. “We were looking for the new Lyonnais shop,” one said, “but this is so marvelous.”

  Philippe tapped his fingers once over the menu but said nothing.

  Magalie smiled at them. “We’re known for our chocolat chaud, if you want to try it.” She seated the women neatly within Philippe’s line of sight and took herself and her heart back into her lair.

  In the tiny kitchen, Magalie brought out two old enamel trays from their mishmash collection. Her aunts had never bought a single thing new, unused, lacking history. First she set out Philippe’s tray. She ran the water from the tap, adjusting the temperature until it was unpleasantly tepid, and filled a carafe for him with it. She set a thimble-size shot glass down beside it, one of a pair of old shot glasses picked up at a marché des puces long ago and which Aunt Geneviève said felt as if they had been drunk from in great joie de vivre for generations. For the little girl, she chose an exquisite china plate rimmed in golden curlicues and placed, carefully, three purple violet petals, three green mint leaves, and in their center, one dark-chocolate witch. Geneviève’s witches looked like the real thing, not someone you would necessarily want to meet up with in the dark.

  For the second tray, she brought out a little blue Art Déco pitcher. She stirred her pot of chocolate on the stove with her ladle three times before she dipped, the scent of it rising off the pot like an embrace. She always loved this moment, preparing to offer her chocolat chaud, pretending it would change someone’s whole day, whole week, maybe whole year. A pleasant dreaming day, she thought for these women in her last three stirs. And may they end the evening the happier for it.

  She scooped the chocolate up, so thick she could feel it yielding to the ladle, and poured it carefully into the pot, filling it to two fingers below its brim. She accompanied it with two blue, handle-less china cups, not from a matching set. Next to each, she set a little white tissue.

  The aunts liked to set this little challenge to those who came here: to serve them impossibly thick, sinfully luscious chocolate and give them only the finest wisp of a Kleenex to keep their mouths clean. It was always fun to see who left the premises with their lips neat and who smudged with chocolate.

  She brought Philippe’s tray out first, sliding it onto the tiny table without comment, careful not to disturb the little girl’s drawing. She was coloring enthusiastically on the cream sheet of paper Magalie had given her; she seemed to be drawing lots and lots of triangles. The hats, Magalie guessed.

  She waited long enough for Philippe to get a taste of that tepid water before she brought out the second tray. The aroma from it wafted over everyone as she passed, and the size of the tiny shop made it impossible for that same aroma not to waft very thoroughly under Philippe Lyonnais’s nose.

  She set i
t on the tiny table between the two women and moved over behind the cash register. The two arched alcoves in the walls meant she was still as close to the tables as if she were in the same room and able to see all that went on while seeming to have much better things to do with her time.

  Philippe eyed the tray of hot chocolate right there in his line of sight with long-lashed, dark eyes. Sleepy, predatory, one hand flexing like that of a great cat kneading a worry. His niece picked up one candied violet with great precision and ate it, her eyes crinkling in delight.

  The two women poured and then sipped the chocolate with many exclamations between them. Philippe’s eyes tracked their movements. “Si, si bon,” one of them breathed to another. “C’est délicieux.”

  “It’s like heaven,” said the other. “I’m so glad we stumbled onto this place.”

  “I wonder what Lyonnais has that could be better,” the second woman said incredulously. “It makes me happy just to drink this.”

  Philippe lifted gold-tipped lashes to look straight at Magalie, through the fertility figures and masks and the tattered remains of fabric that some chocolate-lover had once brought Aunt Geneviève back from Papua, New Guinea. She gave him a malicious look back.

  Just as long as he knew what he was refusing. She wanted him to suffer for it.

  “You’re welcome,” he breathed for her ears alone as she passed again, so softly that she could barely hear and had to pay far too much attention to the way his mouth shaped the words. Precise and controlled in a way that made heat roil through her body. “For the clients.”

  She couldn’t believe the gall of this man. He had waltzed into their perfectly blissful, sheltered heart of Paris and stolen all their customers, and now he thought she should be grateful for a stray or two who wandered in while searching for his shop? Well, all their customers were strays who wandered in. Their refusal to advertise the tea shop was part of their policy. But still. What did he think, that she was a dog to whom he had tossed a bone?

  “Océane, now might be a good time to give Mademoiselle Chaudron her present.”

  Magalie stiffened.

  The little girl dove into the backpack she had been carrying, while Magalie raged internally at the false pretences under which the Beast had entered her shop. The backpack was a very innocent red, with butterflies stitched all over it and a flower that had lost one of its petals. But now it proved to be a Trojan Horse for the box Océane brought out of it: gold on pale pink this month, in honor of the fast-approaching Valentine’s Day.

  She set her mouth hard. Chocolat, she swore to herself. Her mouth was watering over the scent of her own chocolate, not whatever delicacy Philippe had brought to tempt her with.

  “How . . . thoughtful.” Unfortunately, it was almost certainly true that Phillipe had thought a very great deal about every single grain that went into the thing, with her as its intended victim. She tried to take the box so she could tuck it out of sight in the kitchen.

  Too late for the two women, who were starting to glance from it to Philippe, brows knit. They had seen photos of him somewhere, sometime, out of the five million magazine articles and television shoots in which he had been featured. They were starting vaguely to wonder if he might be . . . if he might be . . .

  “Non, non, you have to open it!” Océane said, clinging to the other side of the box. Philippe, who certainly should be the one minding the girl’s manners, said nothing at all to this. The faintest curve touched his mouth, entirely sadistic.

  Magalie looked down at the little girl’s excited face. “Very well,” she said. It wasn’t Océane’s fault her uncle was willing to use a four-year-old to deliver bombs.

  But she made no move to open it.

  Océane couldn’t wait. “Regarde,” she insisted. Like most children her age, she hadn’t mastered vous, making her standing with Magalie sound strangely intimate in contrast with the cool vous reestablished between Magalie and the child’s uncle ever since the falling-hats episode. Océane fumbled with the creamy pink lid.

  A large hand closed over it, steadying the box before something happened to its undoubtedly fragile contents. Magalie felt her heart beating in her throat. Why did he keep doing this to her?

  Well, she knew why he kept doing this to her. Because he wanted to beat her at their game. Because he wanted the satisfaction of proving himself irresistible, after all.

  He lifted the lid of the box like a lover might reveal a ring and waited. From the table in the other corner came a murmur of delight.

  A rippling wall of thin white chocolate rose impossibly high inside the box, like a tower, around its protected center. How could he get his white chocolate to stand that high? Peering down into the narrow well of it, she saw a dome of delicate, creamy gold, made from what, she had no idea. Would never have any idea, unless she tasted it. Two curls of chocolate, one dark, one white, crossed over the gold, and it was hard to tell if they were crossed in combat or curled lovingly together. Almost hidden under them was a little glimpse of gold, tiny bits of candied . . . grapefruit, she thought, cradled in a little dip in the gold-white cream. As if the creamy insides held treasure.

  Had he done this before or after he had seen the tower theme in their new display window? Was he reading her mind or responding to it that quickly?

  And framing that creamy white-chocolate offering were those big, square hands, holding the box open, their calluses visible on the skin and their delicate skill there for all to see.

  “It looks like a tower!” one of the women behind her exclaimed in delight. “How beautiful!”

  And then the other woman whispered to her questioningly, “C’est Philippe Lyonnais?” She breathed the name the way she might if she thought she had glimpsed the Prince of England at the next table. “Oh, qu’est-ce que c’est romantique!”

  Why, he had just stolen back the two customers, Magalie realized. Bringing that exquisite weapon into their shop, he had as good as piped his flute to every breathing person there and lured them down the street to his glossy windows.

  “Do you like it? Do you like it?” The little girl’s excited voice penetrated Magalie’s fog.

  Magalie dragged her eyes away from the offering to Oceane’s face. “It’s beautiful,” she said with an effort.

  It was so beautiful, it made her heart hurt, as it had no doubt been intended to do.

  The silver bell rang, and three more customers drifted in, an older couple with their adult child, tracking down this shop that Sylvain Marquis claimed to love. Initially distracted by the shop itself, they, too, exclaimed as soon as their eyes touched the Lyonnais tower.

  “Oh . . .” said the older woman on one long, drawn-out murmur. “Could we have that?”

  “No, it’s for the witch!” Océane exclaimed aloud, confidingly. “Only”—she caught herself and whispered—“I’m not supposed to call her that.” And loudly and proudly again, she announced, “My uncle made it!”

  “Oh, c’est si, si romantique!” one of the first two women whispered achingly from their table. “Philippe Lyonnais,” she shared in the same whisper to the new arrivals, unable to resist the power of being the deliverer of that news.

  Philippe’s eyes remained fixed on Magalie’s face. His big hands never shifted from framing his poisoned gift, offering it to her. He looked ravenous, as if the box was a trap and he was primed to spring it onto her fingers as soon as she reached inside for that work of art.

  Magalie reached out, very deliberately not inside, and took the box from him. Her hands grazed his, soft skin against warm calluses, as she closed the box. She felt more than saw Philippe’s hard breath. He didn’t make a sound. But when she glanced back up, his eyes glittered with fury.

  “Thank you,” she told the little girl.

  “It’s really from Tonton,” Océane said. “He wouldn’t even let me help.”

  “Are you, are you—Philippe Lyonnais?” one of the women said from the table behind Magalie. She pulled a folded card in heavy sto
ck out of her purse, opening it to reveal the Lyonnais “winter collection” of macarons, every single damn flavor. Her voice was hushed, embarrassed. “Would you— would you mind signing this? We were really coming to your shop,” she added in a rush, as if to assure him they weren’t betraying him with Magalie. “But we got distracted.”

  Apparently, they weren’t too worried about betraying Magalie with him.

  “Oui, bien sûr,” Philippe said with great control, managing to transform that fury into a warm, dishonestly self-deprecating smile for the two women.

  Not able to bear watching him autograph his damn macaron list in her lair, as if he was king of it, Magalie swept the box into the tiny kitchen. Her palms burned from the contact. On the tiny blue tiles of the counter, so hard to keep clean but so loved by her aunts, the pink box sat completely alien. As if a damned fairy godmother had snuck in while her back was turned.

  She contemplated her pot of chocolate, a muscle ticking in her jaw.

  A current of air shifted, the door to the shop opening, and she could feel the giant presence of her Aunt Geneviève instantly. It filled the kitchen to bursting. There was a murmur of voices as Tante Geneviève squeezed past the jackets to get into the kitchen. Immediately, her turquoise caftan and long cape swept out to take up any space her body didn’t. Capes were in fashion that year, which was convenient for Aunt Geneviève, since her last one had been getting threadbare.

  “He had to use a child to get in, did he?” Geneviève murmured. Of course, their customers could probably see the murmur ripple in their cups in the next room.

  If they had water. Damn it! Magalie cursed under her breath.

  “The main problem with curses,” Geneviève chided, “is that most of them will melt in the chocolate, so you never know what will happen with the bits and pieces that survive. And you would have to throw out the whole rest of the batch so as not to serve it to anyone else. Think of the waste.”

  “No, I forgot to put the water on their tray.” They never left anyone helpless before Magalie’s chocolate without at least a glass of water. Her chocolate took rich to a whole new level.