“I liked you. And I was trying to be a nice guy. And your friendship was the most valuable thing I had in that damn place.”
Her smile softened in a trembling way. “Yours was my most valuable thing, too,” she said, and just managed not to add the thought that immediately sprang to mind: Which was why it hurt so much when you took it away from me and left me with nothing but myself.
But then, of course, she had had to learn how to value herself much more than she might ever have done, had he stayed. Possibly the same way he had had to learn his own value, through and through, to handle the Foreign Legion.
A long, slow sigh moved through his body. “I should have written.” He touched her face. “Found a pay phone and called. Gone to the cybercafé and sent an email.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry, Célie. I did do it all for you, but I may have done it in a very self-absorbed way.”
“Well …” Célie hesitated. “You were only twenty-one. And clearly clueless.”
“I’m very, very proud of you.” He ran his hand down her back to rest on her butt, in possessive approval. “Of who you became.”
She beamed, her eyes stinging. “Me, too. I’m so proud of you, too.” God, she was proud. Every passerby whose gaze lingered on him made more pride swell inside her. But that was a superficial pride, smugness because he was so hot. Deep down, this hot, powerful, passionate pride burned in her center, at the man he had always been and the man he had become.
“When I look at you, bouncing out of that shop, I think, ‘That’s my Célie.’”
Really? She hugged herself, even though it bumped her arms against his chest and even though she wasn’t supposed to want to belong to anyone else. She was too independent. She whispered, “Can I think, ‘That’s my Joss’?”
His smile lit his face for just a moment, this brilliant flash of light. And then it was gone, disappearing under some serious, intense emotion. His hands closed over her shoulders, thumbs rubbing her collarbone, eyes fixed on hers. “Yes.”
Too much emotion swelled up in her, too many things that were too complicated: so much joy it was terrifying. You left me, and I don’t even know you anymore. And I would still, if I saw you watching me with that steady gaze from the other side of a street full of hot coals, walk barefoot across them just for the chance that you would hold me.
Hell, I’d do it just for the chance that you might smile at me and say, “That’s my Célie.”
“I brought you something.” She reached into her messenger bag for the box of chocolates.
Because when he saw her bouncing out of the shop, when he thought, That’s my Célie, she wanted his mouth to automatically start softening in anticipation, his lips to part, his tongue to …
She swallowed.
He smiled, opening the box. “Just three bitter dark this time?” he asked softly, at the array of patterns in the rows to either side of that center dark row.
“The others are just different ones I thought you might like.” She pointed. “This basil one, that was Dom’s idea. I thought he was crazy. Especially when our first test batches came out tasting terrible. But he insisted, and we kept trying it, making the flavor more elusive, until we got … well, try it.”
Joss tried it, but his expression stayed disappointingly closed, unmelted. “I like your flavors better.”
“He’s Dominique Richard, Joss.”
“I like your flavors better.”
“I made that ganache that’s melting in your mouth right this second! Just because it was his idea doesn’t mean I didn’t do any of the work involved!”
“Fine.” His jaw set a little as he forced himself to concede. “Then I guess I like it very much.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Men are idiots.”
His lips quirked up. “I see your sexism hasn’t improved.”
And she laughed. It was funny how much she had always loved teasing and being teased by Joss. It just charged her up. Made her tickle everywhere inside. “This one, we came up with this little hint of spices the first year we opened, for Christmas, and the demand for it and our other flavors caught us all only halfway prepared for it. We’d work through the night—I remember us taking turns catching an hour’s sleep on that divan in the salon—and Dom would go grab everyone breakfast and—”
Joss tried it as she talked, his face relaxing as he gazed down at her. And then he did something he had never done, when he picked her up from her work back in the old days. He took her hand as he turned them down the sidewalk, strolling together as she told all the chocolates’ stories.
Célie stared at her hand in his. Her breath got too short, and she had to fight to calm it. His hand was so solid and large around hers. Calluses rubbed against her skin, which was kept soft by all that cocoa butter.
It was what a boyfriend and girlfriend did, hold hands. It was what a man did when he wanted to tell the woman with him, Our hands belong together. I like to touch you. I like to make sure you’re in reach. I like for everyone who sees us to know you’re with me.
It made her happy.
As if a dream had come true.
Which was disorienting because that dream was supposed to, long ago, have declared itself an impossible fantasy.
Chapter 15
“Who. Is. That?”
Propped on one elbow on the edge of a picnic blanket spread across stone, Joss kept his expression neutral, not glancing toward Célie’s friend, a long-legged blonde who favored form-fitting leather and who apparently didn’t realize how well her voice carried. She and Célie were standing a little apart from the group of friends on the blankets, Célie having just finished dancing salsa with one of the many friends Joss was meeting tonight. She had a lot. Far more than she had had as a teenager. What, was she trying to give herself spares?
In case one of them up and left her? he realized soberly.
“Where did you find him?”
“Umm … an old friend,” Célie said. “From high school.”
Joss snuck a fast glance at her. She was blushing.
Hey. That blush spread through his belly and out through his body in a warm and tender pleasure. It was amazing how much he liked her blushing over him.
The blonde stared. “That’s one of your old friends? Why don’t my old friends ever grow up like that?”
Célie tried so hard not to look smug that Joss had to press his lips down against the upsurge of his own pride, swelling from deep inside him at her expression. Maybe he could handle this evening, after all.
It wouldn’t have been his choice, to hang out in a crowd of careless people among whom he couldn’t relax, but her evening out with friends had been planned before his return to her life, and she’d seemed eager to include him in it.
It was good to know Célie had friends, that they were friends with whom she had fun, that she’d been thriving without him. He’d told her the truth when he said he was glad to know that.
But it made him feel a little precarious. Like—if she could do so well for herself without him there, what exactly was his role in her happiness?
Did he get to have one?
He thought of the apartment and smiled at the image of her face lighting up as she looked at that view of her park. That would make her happier. She’d love it so much.
“So is there anything—?” The blonde let her question trail off into a wiggle of her finger between Célie and Joss. “Or—?” Another wiggle, this time toward herself, with a teasing lift of her eyebrows. The blonde woman looked as if she could have been a Bond girl, with those high cheekbones and that tough leather, looks that apparently made her pretty confident about flirting with men.
Célie stiffened, glaring at her friend. “He’s with me.”
A grin escaped Joss, and he quickly suppressed it, rubbing his fist against the picnic blanket. You tell her, Célie. Fight for me. I’m with you.
With Célie. He took a deep breath, trying to get used to being with her. Her wo
rld was so alien to him now.
Happiness spilled across the quay around them in careless abandon. People laughed and talked and danced as if happiness was some basic human right and not some miracle conjunction of space and time. Lights from the opposite bank of the Seine stretched across the darkening water toward them, as if those lights desperately wanted to reach the dancers and shake some sense into them. On the tip of the Île Saint-Louis halfway across the trembling water, a smaller, saner group of people gathered, the kind of people who said: That looks fun, but let’s keep a safe distance. If trouble starts, I’d rather be on the other side of the water from it.
Masses of people were tempting targets.
Happy people, on the Seine, Notre-Dame glowing just down the river. You’d think a terrorist attack had never occurred on French soil, the way these people acted. That their government didn’t have men like him fighting extremist armies right this second, factions that had more than proven their willingness to strike wherever it hurt the most, as well as their belief that no one in Western Europe was innocent, not civilians, not women, not children, and certainly not smugly happy people dancing on the edge of the Seine just beside one of the great symbols of European culture and achievement and in the heart of one of the most powerfully emblematic cities in the world.
Nobody was even controlling the damn perimeter, checking the bags of those who joined the laughing, happy crowd of dancers and observers.
It was all Joss could do not to jump to his feet and start patrolling the area, and he missed the feel of a FAMAS under his hand like an itch of panic.
Anyone could be carrying a bomb, or a gun. That man in his young twenties approaching them right now, for example, with a backpack on his shoulder and a leather jacket still zipped despite the warm summer evening. Joss surged to his feet as the younger man reached toward his backpack—and caught himself as the greetings from Célie’s friends rang out.
Ah. Yes. The young man was pulling out baguettes and wine, kneeling on the edge of the picnic blanket now, unzipping his leather jacket which he’d almost certainly been wearing because he’d gotten here on a motorcycle or moped like Célie.
Joss took a deep breath.
“Who is he?” he heard someone else ask Célie. A girl with loose black curls and a bronze tone to her skin. “He looks like he’s CRS or something.”
Ouch, really? The national police force was less than popular among those of them who had grown up en banlieue. Also, these days, he liked the Gendarmes much better, after being in a couple of training courses at their facilities, and they and the Legion cooperated well together, but … well, no offense, but one Legionnaire could eat five CRS for breakfast and still be hungry.
“Umm …” Célie’s blush deepened. “Foreign Legion.”
Her two friends turned as one to stare at her. The blonde’s jaw had dropped. “Foreign Legion? Are you kidding me?”
The black-haired friend’s eyes narrowed. If her golden skin came from any of France’s former colonies, then her parents and grandparents might have adamant opinions about the Foreign Legion.
“He just got out,” Célie said.
“Are you sure it was the Foreign Legion he just got out of?” the black-haired young woman asked dryly. “It would be easy for a man to claim that instead of prison, say. Or just running off for five years.”
Joss sighed.
“He wouldn’t lie to me,” Célie said firmly, and some tension in his chest relaxed. He wouldn’t, actually. He was glad she still knew that. Glad she still believed in him.
Her friends both gave her pitying looks.
“He got my cards there! The Legion couldn’t have passed them on to him if he wasn’t a Legionnaire.”
Her friends looked disappointed at having their cynicism dashed. Then the black-haired one brightened. “Aren’t they psychopaths in the Foreign Legion?”
“Lina!”
Psychopaths now. Great. He went over to Célie before this conversation could get any worse, and also just because he couldn’t stand lounging on the blanket anymore and needed to move.
Her gossiping friends grew quiet, their eyes widening as he approached, checking him out. “Damn, Célie,” he heard the blonde mutter, with a nudge into Célie’s ribs, just before he reached them, and he worked valiantly not to let himself smile, as he took Célie’s hand.
Certain looks from women just did a man good.
Célie was bursting at the seams with smugness, too, and that did his heart even better. He smiled down at her, tugging her into him, enjoying immeasurably that he could do that now, flirt with her with these little invitations of his body to come in closer, rather than always, always, be the good guy maintaining barriers between them.
“Joss, this is Vi. Violette.” She indicated the blonde. “And Lina.” The black-haired woman. “We met when we were the junior team for France, in the International Chocolate and Pastry Competition.”
“Nice to mee—hell, Célie.” Joss stared at her. “You represented France?”
She nodded, her pride radiating out through all the cracks in the shell of her effort to contain it.
Damn, and he’d missed it. He hadn’t even known. “Sweetheart.” He grabbed her before he even thought about it, squeezing her so hard he lifted her off her feet. “Good for you.”
“We won,” Célie said, that shell of attempted modesty bursting wide open, her pride in herself like a sunburst. She reached past his shoulder to give a fist-bump to Vi and Lina. “We won, Joss. First place. First all-female team ever. For France.”
His arms tightened on her, and he lifted her up, spinning her around once to try to express all his frustration at missing it and all his pride. “Damn, I wish I’d been there.”
“Yeah.” A shadow across Célie’s bragging.
“Good for you.” Joss lowered her down his body. “Good for you.” He nodded to the other two women, who were trying not to look smug but who had angled their chins at a proud, of-course-we-take-this-level-of-success-for-granted angle. “And good for you. Congratulations.”
“It was three years ago,” Vi said.
Ah.
Three years.
And he hadn’t even known.
She hadn’t sent him a little card to tell him, for example. But then, why would she?
“Vi’s about to take over her first starred kitchen now,” Célie said. “We’ll never see her again.”
“Yeah, after I’m jailed for murder over all the male chauvinist crap I’m going to have to squash, it’s going to really cut down on my social life,” Vi said darkly.
She and Lina both gave him dark looks, too. Possibly having spent the last five years as part of a military service that was so notoriously macho it didn’t even allow women to join might put him on bad ground here. “Do you need help?” he asked Vi.
“No,” Vi said calmly. “I need to do it myself.”
Yeah, and she probably did at that. Women had it crappy. They had to handle men his size, and they had to do it with half his physical strength. “Still,” he said, “if you need backup …”
Vi gave a sweet smile. “I’m really good with knives.”
Nice to know he wasn’t the only pseudo-psychopath on Célie’s side. “I like your friends,” he told Célie.
“You relieve our minds,” said Vi dryly.
“Infinitely,” Lina ageed, in a tone that clearly communicated: You can kiss up all you want, but we’re still reserving judgment about you.
He smiled. Yes, Célie definitely picked out better friends for herself these days. He looked down at her, his fingers flexing into the curve of her hip, enjoying that possession. Enjoying his arm around her, and the fact that she hadn’t pulled away.
“Want to dance?” He bent to whisper in her ear. “I’ll try not to act too psychopathic.”
Célie put her free hand on her hip, turning to face him and raising her eyebrows in laughing challenge. “You can dance the merengue now? Boy, they really do teach you guys ev
erything in the Foreign Legion.”
She might be surprised by all the talents Legionnaires could produce in their down moments—art, dancing, guitar, piano. Hell, Captain Fontaine actually knew how to waltz, and Adjudant Valdez—Delesvaux—one Christmas had cooked them a dinner that would make a tough man cry.
But Célie, of course, thought he didn’t like to dance, because he’d refused all her sassy attempts to get him to as a teenager. He’d known better than to let his body get pressed up close to hers while she teased him. His attempts to stay her big brother substitute would have shattered like car windows when riots broke out in their old banlieue.
So he just smiled, which eased his tension. He could handle this crowd for her sake. It wasn’t a restful evening, but he’d had plenty of non-restful evenings, and she’d brought him here to share in her fun. “No, but I figure if I can do some of the things we did, I can manage to figure out how to wiggle my hips.”
She laughed, a rainbow shimmering of all that old saucy happiness of hers, and grabbed his hips, pulling him toward the dance space. “I’ll teach you.”
He smiled down at her, letting her position their hips close together. Sure, sweetheart. You want my hips to do something with yours? Feel free to grab them and pull them as hard as you want. “You teaching me how to wiggle my hips the way you like it sounds like a fun evening to me.”
She stilled just a second, gazing up at him. “I can’t get used to you flirting with me.”
“Well, that’s why we’re dating, isn’t it? So you can get used to it?” So he could get used to it? She’s not eighteen anymore. I’m not her substitute big brother. No holding back. Unless she says stop, I can go all out for her.
She flushed a little with vulnerable pleasure, and then caught herself and tried to cover it with that sauciness of hers. “All the times I tried to flirt with you and you acted as if flirting wasn’t even something that ever crossed your mind.” Her eyes narrowed.
All for You Page 12
