The Chocolate Kiss

by Laura Florand

  “That’s the idea, Magalie. I just made it safer.”

  “I can’t even get in!” Her voice rose. Even to herself, she was starting to sound a little hysterical. She hated that.

  “Putain.” Philippe picked up a cell phone off his desk, scrolled through the numbers, and made a call. By the way his jaw clenched, she could tell he was getting voicemail. “Franck, this is Philippe Lyonnais. I need you to get back to me right away. It’s an emergency.”

  He shut his phone, frustrated. “This is really traumatizing you, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t!” she shouted at him. She did not get traumatized. She handled everything with aplomb. She wrapped her arms around her middle abruptly, trying to force herself to sound as if she was handling this with more aplomb. “You had no right to do this. It’s my place. It’s mine.”

  “Magalie, this was just a safety issue, and Franck—I didn’t even know he was coming today. I’ve been after him for two weeks. He was supposed to tell you what he was doing, and at no point were you supposed to be locked out of your place. Here, take my keys, if you want, and go to my place until I can get hold of him. Or hang out here and eat macarons and walk home with me when I go. It’s not the end of the world, Magalie.”

  “What do you know about the end of the world?” she asked him furiously. “M.Sixth-Generation Paris. Have you ever had your world end?”

  He stared at her with utter absorption, as if a harsh light was glaring through all her shields, turning them into transparent, gauzy curtains to her soul. “No. I’m sorry, Magalie. I just did it because I knew you weren’t ever going to do it, and it was driving me crazy. I would have fired Franck already for taking so long, but I was there most nights or else you were at my place, so it didn’t seem quite as urgent. But anyone could slip up there during the day!”

  Her jaw set. She tried her best to be calm and strong. “It’s my place.” Her voice was too low. She couldn’t get the tone nice and level. “You don’t have the right to steal it from me. Nobody does.”

  “I didn’t steal i—” His phone vibrated. He pulled it out. “Yes, Franck. The key.”

  He listened for a second and cut the connection. “He says he gave two copies to your Aunt Geneviève, who put them under a pot in the kitchen, where she said they would be the first thing you saw.”

  She turned fast, before she could say anything else she would regret, and headed toward the door.

  “Magalie.” His voice caught her. He had the drawer to his desk pulled open and was holding out a key. “This is to my place. If ever you get shut out of your place again, for any reason, this is yours. You can have my place, too.”

  She shook her head, fisting her hands as if he would try to force it into them. “I don’t want two places. I only want one.”

  “This one isn’t in another country, Magalie. It’s five minutes away, in the same city. Consider it a backup. Take the key.”

  She curled her fingers more tightly. “You can change the locks on that door just as easily as you did on mine,” she said bitterly.

  His head went back. His eyebrows flexed, and he gave her that confounded look he had given her once before. When she had asked him who he was in love with. “Do you really think I would do that?”

  She turned her head away. She just didn’t know. “If you were mad, or an ex-girlfriend was stalking you, or—you can’t ever really have enough worth that when you’re gone, the spot you left won’t close over.”

  Philippe looked at her disbelievingly. “Yes,” he said. “I can.”

  That was probably true for him, for the man who had made his mark on the whole world. Her heart clenched, stubborn and hostile. If he could make a place so well, why couldn’t she? “I meant on a more personal level.”

  He looked wary, studying her as if he both wanted and didn’t want to know the answer. “Would the place that I’ve made for myself with you—let’s call it a tiny toehold, to be realistic—close over that easily, Magalie?”

  Again her heart clenched, but in a frantic way, flinching from hurt. Goosebumps rose, as if he had walked on her grave. “No,” she said curtly, looking away. More fool she.

  “Your parents haven’t found it easy to let the spot the other made close over.”

  “It might have been better if they could. They’ve spent twenty-five years torn between who they are and who they want to be with.”

  “They’ve got an unfortunate dilemma. I’m sorry for them, but I think they must somehow thrive on it, or they wouldn’t persist in it.”

  “You’ve never even met them!”

  “That’s true. Perhaps I’m overestimating their willpower based on their daughter’s.”

  Her willpower? What willpower? She was putty for him. “Based on your own, you mean.”

  He hesitated, then gave a slight, rueful smile. “Perhaps. In any case, I don’t see any conflict between who you are and who you want to be with, Magalie.” His smile faded, his face turning very serious. “Or maybe you could explain to me the conflict you see.”

  There wasn’t one. There was just this hard knot in the center of her chest, this thing that she did not dare free.

  He gave a sharp sigh and shook his head. “Magalie. Do you know what I was really going to say, when I asked you about vacationing in the lavender fields? I was going to ask if we could take our family there, because I saw you, a little black-haired and brown-eyed girl, and I wondered if we would have a little girl who would look like you. That was a bit of a leap into the future, but those are the kinds of leaps my mind makes when I think about you.”

  She stood still. Like some molten chocolate dessert, the outside still hard but the inside melting into a gooey mess.

  He walked across the little office to her, looked down at her stubborn fists for a moment, then slipped his hand in through her neckline and tucked the key into her bra. “I want you to have it. What the hell you want from me besides sex and barricades, I do not know.”

  She almost made it to the door. But he had forced her so wide open. He had forced a need on her. The gooey mess of her insides was terrifying her. He could insert himself into her life and reshape her in any way that suited him. And she kept seeing that little girl in a lavender field. A proud little girl. A strong little girl. A little girl only her mother truly needed. A little girl who just could not stand to let herself change, ever again, for people who would forget her.

  The key felt so warm, tucked into her bra. It shouldn’t have slipped in there so easily. It should have warned her, all cold and metal, of what it was trying to do.

  She turned suddenly, like a whip. “No,” she said, low and fierce. “No kids. No little girls in lavender fields.” Her voice was so ugly, compressing the tears so tightly, they came out like a junked car. “Don’t you tear me apart. You don’t fit in my life, Philippe. Stay the hell out.”

  Chapter 35

  She fumbled under the pot for the keys without looking at her Aunt Aja, she got the deadbolt open, and she slammed the door shut behind her and turned the lock until it wouldn’t turn anymore. And then she crumpled down onto the floor, her arms wrapped around her head, and she sobbed.

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this.. He’ll take this hole out of me I’ll never be able to fill.

  She rocked herself on the hard floor, her sobs coming in a low keen because her chest hurt too much for real sound.

  I can’t be that little girl in the lavender field again. I can’t. Trying to play. Trying to be okay.

  I can barely be the person I am here. Pretending with her stupid chocolate, pretending people needed her, that she was someone another person’s world would bend for. No one even needed the shop, let alone her little role in it. Everyone had flocked to Philippe’s as soon as it opened without a second thought for her. Her aunts didn’t even need the shop. It was just some toy for them; it didn’t even matter if it earned money.

  And chocolate. God, anyone could make hot chocolate. They could teach the first teenage
r off the street to make chocolate, if they even really needed an extra person. It wasn’t as if she was Sylvain Marquis or Philippe himself, the people no one could emulate. Someone no one could do without.

  Except her. She could do without anyone. She could do without Philippe. That was how she had made her life.

  Or had she made her life so that she kept trying to suck passing strangers into her orbit with her stupid chocolate, because she didn’t really have anyone?

  She scrambled up suddenly, her hand closing over the new lock, a lock that could keep everyone out. How ironic. Philippe had made her door into something even he couldn’t get through.

  Unless she let him in.

  She backed away from it to huddle on her bed, but she could see his shop from there if she lifted her head, and so she sank back onto the floor again.

  I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. He’s just too big. What will be left of me, when he—we—move on?

  There was a careful knock on the door. “Magalie?” Aunt Aja called.

  “I just want to be alone, all right?” Magalie yelled. “Is that so terrible? I just want to be alone!”

  And then she buried her face in her knees and sobbed again.

  Outside, a murmur from Aunt Aja, and then Geneviève’s voice that, like Philippe, penetrated anything. “Leave her alone. A woman should be left alone if she wants to be left alone.”

  Footsteps on the stairs, and then they were gone.

  And Magalie sobbed. And raged. She had no idea she had so much rage in her, she who had always handled everything. Rage for the little girl staring over her mother’s shoulder in panic to see her daddy get so far away. Rage for the eight-year-old, hovering tentatively on the edge of a group of people who had once been her friends but who now barely remembered her. Rage for the fifteen-year-old and the clumsy, painful use she had allowed of her body just so she might have a chance at a place. Ready to give up her entire youth so that, like her mother, she would have one person who always was with her, one person who always needed her . . . until that child in her turn grew up and walked away and never needed anyone again.

  Tried not to need anyone again.

  Failed. Utterly. Miserably.

  That was Philippe’s fault, too, that rage. She had been doing just fine until his jaw had tightened so hard with anger when she told him about that fifteen-year-old, until his thirty-year-old’s perspective on her painful first affair had made her realize that she, too, had an older perspective on it these days and writhed in horror and compassion and . . . rage. When she hadn’t even thought about it, in years. Well, not really. She had been doing just fine. And that bad first affair had kept her out of all kinds of trouble ever since, when a man would hit on her, and a memory would flash, and she would wrinkle her nose and banish him from the beautiful integrity of the life she had constructed for herself, the life that finally did not reshape itself for anyone.

  She buried her face and cried again, at the thought of her perfect, beautiful life in this perfect, beautiful, one-person-size apartment, on this perfect little island. Only when feathers stuck to her wet face and hands did she realize that she was clutching her pillow to her, and that she had battered it beyond recognition.

  Which made her cry again, because . . . it was a strong, sturdy, expensive pillow, and she wondered what other strengths she might have just battered beyond recognition. She wondered what else she might have just broken.

  She wiped her face slowly, which rubbed bits of down into her eyelashes, so that she finally had to step into the shower to get all the feathers off.

  When she got out, she came face-to-face with herself in the mirror and stopped, studying the stranger who was trying to force her way into her life.

  She drew a deep breath, lifted her chin, and settled her shoulders back, trying for Philippe’s arrogance. I’m Philippe Lyonnais, she mouthed in that tone, as if all the world should bow.

  No, wrong words. I’m Magalie Chaudron. There. No, that sounded ludicrous. No one was going to bow to her. Even Philippe, who had done one heck of a lot of things to her at this point, had yet to kneel at her feet.

  She frowned at herself. And then her shoulders slowly shifted back and down again, and her chin came up. A natural gesture, this time. Settling back into herself. She didn’t need Philippe’s arrogance; she had her own. She didn’t need to make the same mark on the world that he did. Or even to make the same mark on him that he did on her. She needed to make her own mark.

  No. She said that as if she hadn’t yet made one. But she had made her mark on him. The man was clearly crazy about her. I mean, come on, Magalie. Even you can see that.

  The thought filled her the way she had always imagined her chocolate filling other people, warmth from the inside, swelling up until it heated all of her.

  You can see it, if you want to see it. If you take off those cowardice glasses.

  The same way she could see just how the aunts smiled at her, or tried to nudge her onto the roads they thought would do her good, the way they always made enough dinner for her, too, and checked on her when she disappeared into her room. The same way she could see that their old customers had drifted back to them so soon. Philippe had jostled this street when he had forced his way into it, but although routines had widened to include him, people still found themselves nestling into La Maison des Sorcières, needing her. Liking her.

  There was nothing wrong with the way she was right now. She just needed to be herself, that was all. The person she had always wanted to be. The person she had been since she packed her bags and moved here to Paris with her aunts and decided her place was here.

  Well, there was nothing wrong with the way she was, except one thing.

  She needed to be herself. But that didn’t mean she needed to be tiny.

  Clenching the key she’d used to gain access to the apartment, Magalie tiptoed triumphantly and with a great deal of trepidation across Philippe’s big living area, gently illuminated by lights outside. She paused near the couch long enough to strip down to her very sexy underwear, because she understood the value of being dressed just right for the occasion—and this occasion might require she make up for a few things. Like telling him to stay the hell out of her life. She tried for the first time to imagine what that would have felt like if he had said it to her, and she almost got physically sick. It was like being battered in the midsection.

  So yes, she might have to make up for some things. She took a deep breath and slipped into the gorgeous cave of his bedroom, right up to his bed, and then stopped. The covers were flat. Which made her heart, already beating too fast with a sense of its own daring, pound into overdrive. Because if he wasn’t in his bed, there was a very big predator loose somewhere in the dark, and she had just invaded his territory. Nearly naked.

  Then she heard the shower. Damn. She looked at the sash in her hand with a great deal of regret. She was never going to manage to tie him up to make sure he listened to her if he was awake.

  She slipped in through the bathroom door. Oh, now, what a beautiful view that was. Philippe stood naked, all that long, powerful body gleaming with water, one arm braced high against the shower stall, his weight slumped onto it, the shower beating down on his curved back and head.

  He looked . . . tired. He looked as if he had been standing under that shower for a long time.

  He looked almost . . . defeated.

  Magalie’s heart began to beat even faster, hurting her. She didn’t want him to admit defeat. It didn’t suit him. And there was only one subject on which he could be ready to admit defeat right now.

  She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes, trying to will herself into him, trying to make him feel her. Philippe did this kind of thing all the time. Just let his presence fill the room, and—

  His head came up and turned.

  She held up her key. “Surprise.”

  Defeat vanished from his posture in an instant. Replaced by . . . anger. Hard and tight.

  He s
hut off the shower and jerked a towel off the heated rack, burying his face in it as the first thing he dried. Apparently it was a lot more important to him to cover his face than the rest of his naked body, gleaming big and hard, the water curling over him in all kinds of places a woman would want to touch.

  She reached out, to follow a drop curling over the tight abs.

  He caught her hand and pulled it away from him. The towel lowered, and blue eyes locked with hers. “You know what, Magalie? For once, I’m really not in the mood.”

  That hurt. Her chest tightened with anxiety, and her fingers clutched the key. “You said I . . . you said you wouldn’t take this away.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t promise to never get mad in my whole, entire life. I’ll sleep on the fucking couch.”

  He strode out, still drying himself with hard jerks of the towel.

  Magalie followed him into the living room, oddly melted by the combination of big, angry body and what he had just said. His whole, entire life. “I just snuck into your apartment without your permission, but I get the bed?”

  That seemed to make him even madder. His fist tightened on the towel, and he turned on her suddenly. “It’s not without my permission, Magalie, or haven’t you noticed that you’re holding a key? What, do you think I pass those out to every woman I cross in the street? But right this second, I do not want you in my space.” She flinched—all through her. “So go get into my bed and leave me alone.”

  Something warm flickered after the flinch, caressing the wound. She tilted her head. “You don’t want me in your space, so go get into your bed?”

  “Damn it, Magalie.” Philippe clenched the towel and then threw it hard to the floor, turning his back to her. Which left him standing there completely naked and utterly gorgeous. The city lights falling through his broad windows turned his whole muscled body silver-gold. “I’m sorry,” she said low.

  His head came up a little at that, but then bent again, under too much hurt or too much anger, all those muscles too taut. “I don’t want to talk right now, Magalie.”