The Chocolate Touch

by Laura Florand

  “I have another option.” Jaime took a bite of the ice hidden under the lava flow of raspberry and caramel coulis. “I’m supposed to be organizing a Round Table in Abidjan. When I . . . get out of physical therapy.”

  Fortunately, Jaime paid her PT quite a lot. Too much for the woman to be in any hurry to say Jaime didn’t need her anymore.

  “I recommend you organize that Round Table in Paris.”

  Oh, for God’s sake, Cade had talked to him about that, too.

  “Pretty sure we can make it really hard for you to get a visa to Côte d’Ivoire. Something about being responsible for thirty percent of their GNP.”

  “I doubt it.” Please, Grandpa. Close the borders to me. Let me stay here . . . nice and safe, with that hot, hot mouth taking hers, arms holding her like he would never let her go . . . She shivered with longing every time she thought about being caught by him. “You’d be surprised how much political capital I have down there. An amazing number of people think my work stopping exploitation and improving cacao farm sustainability is quite valuable to them.”

  Grandpa Jack grunted, clearly contemplating the battle of influences, which government officials each could pull into play.

  “Cade has been gossiping, hasn’t she? Is that why you flew back over here?”

  Her grandfather looked indignant. “Because you think I can’t afford my own spies?”

  Jaime narrowed her eyes. “Do you really have spies on me, or are you just trying not to incriminate Cade?”

  Grandpa Jack just sniffed. “You keep yourself out of trouble for, let’s say, a good ten years, and I’ll consider taking my eye back off you.”

  Jaime gritted her teeth on a flash of rage. Grandpa Jack, Cade, her father, they all acted as if that one incident had reduced her to a five-year-old: too small to walk down the street by herself. And the worst of it was, they had almost been right. She could barely convince herself to walk down the street, those first few days. She was doing better now. Paris was a good place to fight your demons. The streets were so tempting to explore, the gritty realism of their dirt and crowds tempered by that element of fairytale inherent to the city.

  “Hate to see you get involved with a guy who is even more trouble. But I wouldn’t mind seeing you with someone who would beat the crap out of trouble and make you happy. ’Course, if you’re going to settle down with someone, you wouldn’t want to be running around to the ends of the earth all the time. Might have to learn how to delegate.”

  Jaime gazed down at her arms, resting on the little table in the pillared hall. In her grandfather’s company, she had her sleeves pushed up: no point in hiding her scars from him. Goose bumps had risen all up and down her skin. She tried to pretend it was from the snow-melt dessert and not that shiver of longing to never regain her backbone so she could more easily tuck her life into someone else’s. “Grandpa. Did I ever mention to you that my sex life is my own business?”

  Grandpa Jack scowled. “That’s just indecent. Your sex life. You can’t date like a normal person?”

  “I think you’re picturing a normal person in the fifties.”

  Her grandfather glared at her a long moment, with bright blue eyes and a steady, penetrating gaze she and Cade had both inherited from him. “Just tell me one thing, snippy: do you have a boyfriend here in Paris or not?”

  Jaime stared at her arms while the hair on them rose straight up. She swallowed, rubbing it down, missing the stroke of a hard, big hand that could make all her shivers disappear instantly. He had said something about them dating, but from there to claiming he was her boyfriend was one hell of a jump. Presumptuous as anything on the part of a woman who kept living out of her suitcase on the off chance she would get up the courage to zip it closed and go back to being someone she could respect again. Presumptuous about a man she had known three nights and who had never once stayed through till morning.

  “Not,” she said low, but her fingertips rubbed up and down her forearm, and her stomach rose up in protest at the denial. She felt like Judas.

  Settle down. Stay in Paris. Have a boyfriend. Have a boyfriend who held her in his big, hard hands as if she were precious. When he was the one who was precious. Was it really because she was broken, that that sounded so beautifully enticing, like a whirlpool she wanted to be sucked down into so she could never drag herself back out to her old life? Or was it just because—he was the most enticing man she had ever met?

  Her grandfather sat back, his gaze very sharp. “Interesting. You know, I was just talking to someone earlier today about one person’s treasure being another person’s trash. Any way you look at it, it’s a real sad thing to see.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Dom was waiting for the dawn.

  Jaime had forgotten it was his day off, or maybe she didn’t know. He hadn’t warned her, last night. So she curled up against him naked, trusting him to slip off in the darkness.

  But today, he could stay in bed as long as he liked. Long enough to see the light fill this room and to count her freckles.

  Long enough to see where she blushed to.

  He still felt sulky about her refusal to leave the light on the first times they had made love, when her blush must have covered every millimeter of her body. Now he would probably have to do something extra special to bring out the full blush.

  His gaze slid down her body, which was slowly growing clearer in the light, and he grinned a slow, wicked grin.

  His fingers stroked her head absently. He hated that short, feathered haircut of hers. He didn’t think it suited her, and she used so much hairspray to hold it in place, it fought his hands off like a scratchy hedgehog. But the night had worn some of that scratchiness off, and he slipped his fingertips under the remaining mat of it, rubbing them gently back and forth against her skull, watching the colors of her body grow clearer.

  Just when he was able to confirm that her nipples were, indeed, a dusky pink like her blush and not a golden-brown like her freckles, his fingertips slid over something.

  A little irregularity. He had probably dragged his hands over it many times in the heat of passion and never noticed before. But now, it caught his attention. He followed the crooked line of it, short, just a few centimeters, under the feathering of her hair. That was a scar.

  As if he had touched off some alert in her security system, she came awake, her body stiffening against his. “What happened here?” he asked softly. His mind flashed over different possibilities, from a childhood fall to a brain tumor operation.

  Her body flinched, but she said easily, “Nothing. A bump on my head not too long ago. It didn’t do much damage, but they had to stitch it up and shave the hair around it. That’s why my hair is so short right now.”

  His whole being froze. The lie of it. So exactly like his mother’s voice. God, he himself had probably sounded like that, too, when he was younger, when he still defended his father—or himself? See, I don’t really deserve to be beaten!—to teachers with a lie.

  “Who gave you the bump?” He twisted to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to her, feeling sick. Feeling revulsion. He could not, he would not, get involved with a woman who defended the man who beat her. Strong women, only strong women, only the absolute strongest women ever. Strong enough to kick him out, if he turned into his father.

  And at the same time it was breaking his heart to think she had been abused. To imagine it . . . he could imagine it all too well. He curled deeper over himself, stomach churning.

  She didn’t say anything.

  All at once, she sprang out of the bed. He watched her, from the corners of his eyes, fists clenched together between his knees. She pulled on a heavy bathrobe, cinching the belt in mad, hard yanks.

  He lunged suddenly, yanking the bathrobe apart. She fought him with all the tightness she could put into her folded arms, but he forced the sleeve down. So easy to override her strength. And expose the jagged fresh scar. “Did you break your arm when you fell down, too? Maybe some ribs?
” He hated the sound of his own voice, harsh, accusing.

  Her eyes narrowed. She jerked the bathrobe out of his hands and tied it again, in hard yanks. “What business is it of yours?”

  His head jerked to the side as if the words were a blow across his cheek. He took a step back.

  “God damn it,” she said in English, and strode into the other room. He heard her banging a glass on the counter in the kitchen area.

  He followed her as far as the living room but couldn’t bring himself to follow her farther.

  After a moment, she came back into the room, so small and anodyne in its rented ideal-Paris coziness, with its red curtains and scuffed hardwood floors and tall windows with their wrought iron railing.

  “I got the crap beaten out of me, all right? Are you happy?”

  “Oh, fuck.” He folded in on himself. His butt glanced against the edge of the couch, and he slid on down to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees. Like he used to sit when his parents fought, after he had given up on trying to stop it.

  “Is that why you’re in Paris?” he asked harshly. “To get away from him?”

  “They’ve been arrested,” she said flatly. “It was stupid for them to go after me, but then, people are stupid. I’m here because I was airlifted here, and my sister is here, and . . . I like your salon.”

  “My God.” He didn’t know if he could take this. He was about to vomit. “They’ve been arrested? You had to be airlifted here? Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  Was there nothing precious in his life that could be kept safe? Not himself, not his family, and not even her.

  “Just tell me,” he said to his knees. “Tell me what the hell happened.”

  Jaime looked down at his masochistic grip on his black hair, knowing she sounded cruel, but furious with him for forcing this out of her, for dragging it into their relationship, which was supposed to be all gold and sunlight. That nothing else could touch.

  She didn’t know what she was to him, but she didn’t want to be someone even smaller, a victim to be pitied or taken care of.

  “Just a trafficker in Côte d’Ivoire who hired some thugs to pay me back for my interference.” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter at all. It was what she wanted, for it not to matter at all to her life. Not at all. “There were four of them. They seemed to—like teaching women lessons.” The pleasure they had taken in beating her, in the way her body wrapped around itself, her hands clasping over her nape and head . . . It had hurt something in her even worse than the two months in the hospital, that thrill in her suffering. She was such a wimp. She wanted to save those who suffered, but she folded like a wuss when she suffered herself.

  “Were you raped, too?” Dominique asked harshly.

  She flinched and shook her head. She wrote checks to charitable organizations in places like Darfur every day, to appease her guilt over the women who suffered so much worse and had no choice but to survive it.

  Jesus, Dominique was intrusive. What kind of question was that to ask, anyway?

  “What happened?” Dominique’s voice was so harsh. It was rubbing her raw with its harshness. She wanted him to go away.

  “I was found. I’m vague on the details, but my sister must have had me airlifted here as one of the nearest top medical facilities.”

  Blurred memories of her sister’s strained face whenever she opened her eyes, of the tears streaming down it at least once. Maybe she should go a little easier on Cade about that anxious hovering.

  “That’s why you were so thin when you first started coming,” Dominique breathed. “When was this?”

  “A little over three months ago.”

  Dominique scrubbed his face in his hands.

  “I got out of the hospital over a month ago,” Jaime said impatiently. “I only go see a physical therapist once a week now. I’m perfectly fine.”

  “You had to spend nearly two months in the hospital.” His tone had gone flat, as if it couldn’t sustain anymore.

  “Yes, but hospitals always keep people twice as long here as they do in the U.S. I’m perfectly—”

  “Shut up. Just—don’t say that again. Give me a second.”

  What a crappy way to start the morning. Jaime strode into her bathroom, slamming the door. In the mirror over the sink, her freckles stood out more than usual, that grim determined look not at all an expression that favored her. It seemed sullen and defiant in the beveled elegant frame of the mirror, her hair a spiky mess. The blow hadn’t been too bad, a glancing cut and a mild concussion rather than real brain damage, but they had shaved around the area so they could stitch it up, and of course that had left few options for a haircut afterward. The scar would fade, and as her hair grew longer, it would make it easier to conceal without so much stupid hairspray. Thus the array of hair vitamins hiding behind the beveled mirror.

  She stepped under the shower, rubbing soap over and over the scar on her forearm, where the broken bone had pushed through the skin, as if she could wash away the whole incident.

  She tilted her head back, letting the water stream down over her face.

  A current of air brought goose bumps to her skin. Dominique stepped in naked under the shower and just picked her up.

  Before she could even brace herself in stubborn refusal to be pitied. Just picked her up and wrapped her tight against his body, like a child might clutch a teddy bear, leaning back against the wall and letting the water stream over her back, his face.

  He didn’t say anything at all. She couldn’t see his face, his hold was so tight. Her pride demanded she wriggle free. It was not very comfortable to be clutched like a teddy bear during a child’s nightmare. But it was oddly comforting.

  She subsided into him, tension slowly draining out of her until she was as boneless as that same teddy bear, her focus filled with him. The strength of the arms that seemed not to tire of her weight. His heartbeat, too hard and fast under her ear. The way his head arched back from her, pressed into the wall, face into the spray. How complete she felt, as if he would never let her go.

  He never said anything at all. He didn’t try to make love to her. He didn’t let her go until the hot water ran out and she started shivering from the cold spray on her back. Then he dried her off and took her over to his empty kitchens, where he made her chocolat chaud and a totally extravagant millefeuille au chocolat noir for breakfast and watched intently until she ate every bite.

  It might not be what the doctor had ordered for her, mille-feuilles for breakfast. But the golden flakiness sandwiching intense chocolate cream, fed to her by a rough, wild man who watched her every bite with absorption . . . it filled her with his caring, as if he could stuff her so full of golden warmth and rich, sweet reassurance that she could be healed down to the marrow of her bones.

  CHAPTER 21

  “You’re dating someone who survived a traumatic beating recently?” Pierre asked, disturbed. “It makes sense that you would end up with someone like that, but . . .”

  Dominique pressed his heels against the floor, driving himself harder against the back of his seat. “I’m not repeating any putain de cycle.”

  “It would only be natural if you were attracted to someone like your mother,” Pierre said gently.

  “I’m not.”

  Pierre hesitated.

  “She was attacked while doing development work by people who were hired to do it, which is hardly the same thing as someone who remains in an abusive relationship,” he said between his teeth. What kind of development work? Putain, what was her last name? Was he some kind of animal, that he didn’t know those things about her already?

  Pierre maintained a neutral expression. “How do you feel about it?”

  “She’s strong.” Dom met the psychologist’s eyes for a moment. “She’s strong enough to kick me out.” To zip that suitcase up and leave him. The day before, his day off, which should have been a day of pure bliss, strolling through Paris with her, had been awkward, delicate, and rather horrible. He h
ad felt as if everything he did, from taking her hand too carefully to letting it go when her jaw set and she snapped something about not being fragile, was breaking something between them.

  He glanced uneasily at his phone. Jaime hadn’t shown up today. She knew he left around four, didn’t she? And Guillemette was smart enough to text him if she did show up?

  Pierre looked thoughtful, which was one of his tricks of the trade, and glanced down at his notes. “Is eighteen still the last time you hit someone?”

  “Yes,” Dom said wistfully. There had been three of them and one of him, and all four of them had wound up bloody and bruised. There had been something gloriously satisfying about it, and if one of his opponents hadn’t pulled a knife and gotten Dom a night’s stay in the emergency room and all four of them arrested—he might right this minute be his own father, instead of the man he had decided to become.

  Pierre glanced at his birth date and did the math. “Ten years. That’s a pretty long run, Dominique.”

  He had always respected this about Pierre: the man didn’t try to make you sit on a couch. He let you have a nice, hard chair to push yourself back into. “I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone who was vulnerable to me. And you have no idea how much I would like to beat the fuck out of someone right now.”

  “But you’re not,” Pierre said approvingly. “That’s the important part.”

  “They’re in prison on another continent, Pierre. And I hope their prison is one of those horrendous hellholes you hear about, too. What, did you think it was my self-control that was stopping me?”

  “Ah.” Pierre, the intellectual who believed in using his words to resolve things, let one corner of his mouth kick up wryly. “Well. We’re going to hold you excused on that one. But when you say you’ve never been in a relationship with anyone vulnerable to you, I’m not sure I agree. When you first came to see me, it was for your employees . . . ? Who, I believe, have in several cases come from very problematic backgrounds and would therefore be considered a vulnerable and dependent group . . .”