“I was trying to be good,” he said apologetically. He hated to bring it up again, given how badly she had reacted so far to the fact that he had protected her from him until he grew big enough to deserve her.
She sighed despairingly. “Joss. What am I going to do with you?”
It sounded like a sincere question. As if she genuinely believed she needed to figure out how to pick up his twice bigger body and fit it onto the proper shelf or make him behave the right way.
He bit the inside of his lip to prevent a doubtless infuriating male grin and bent to whisper in her ear. “Maybe you should be wondering what I’m going to do with you.” Sliding a firm hand against the small of her back, he pulled her hips in snug against his, so that he could let his glad-to-be-alive dick just glory in that sensation.
She flushed crimson.
He laughed as the heat of her blush ran through him and twirled them around in complete inconsistency with the music, enjoying the power his size and fitness gave him over her body, enjoying the press of her hips to his and the way she allowed it and seemed to enjoy it, too.
Even if she was pretending to narrow her eyes at him.
They didn’t stay narrowed, though. As he set her on her feet and made an exaggerated attempt to rock his hips side to side like the nearest other couple, she started to laugh, too. She gave him a part of her happiness, with that laugh. He still wanted to take her happiness away from all this crowd of people where he could keep it safe, but at least it felt like something his.
“Like this.” She resisted the pressure of his hand in order to wiggle her own hips in a different rhythm than his, which slid their hips in opposite ways across each other deliciously.
So deliciously that he let himself be utterly incompetent at mastering this physical task for a little while, his hips shifting again and again just off rhythm of hers. The sliding grind was probably going to kill him, but it would be such a better way to go than all the other possibilities he was used to having to consider.
She couldn’t quite figure out whether he was doing it on purpose or not, checking his face. He tried to look helpless and clueless, not an expression he got to try out very often around anyone but her.
Her eyes narrowed. It made him laugh out loud, a reckless happiness bubbling up inside him. In the moment of laughter, his hips fell into the rhythm of the music, and he realized how much he’d been missing. Moving in sync was far better than moving out of it.
Oh, yeah. Just let him replace that side-to-side sync of their hips with a backward and forward motion and he would die happy.
“So you’re having a good time?” Célie’s eyes searched his. He turned their bodies yet again, so he could keep checking their surroundings.
“Mostly.” He let his hand slide down from the small of her back to the curve of her butt. Oh, yeah, that butt. Round and perky in his hand and begging to be squeezed. “It’s nice to meet your friends. And it’s a beautiful evening.”
“And … ?”
He grinned down at her. “And I’m really enjoying this merengue.”
“But … ?” Célie pushed. “You said ‘mostly.’ What are you not enjoying?”
Careless slip of the tongue, that “mostly.” He should have known better, after watching his tongue so long in the Legion. “Nothing.” He made his voice surprised. “What’s not to enjoy?”
“You tell me,” Célie said, exasperated.
He looked down at her. She was getting frustrated with him again, and he probably should never tell her how much he enjoyed that. At least half of him, whenever she started simmering, got all excited that she might actually put her hands on him and try to work her frustrations out.
But another part of him worried about it quite a bit. She’d asked him what was wrong. He’d said nothing. Why was she frustrated about that?
She never used to get so annoyed with him. She’d … hero-worshiped him too much, maybe.
Which was all backward, because now she was supposed to be able to properly hero-worship him. He should be able to relax into it. Feel as if he finally deserved it.
And instead he didn’t seem to be getting much of that hero-worship at all.
“I’m enjoying everything,” he repeated. “Except maybe that you’re frustrated with me, but, to tell the truth, I’m even half enjoying that.”
There. He’d been honest with her.
She gave him a look that was apparently supposed to make him quiver in fear. He’d probably better not tell her the parts it really made quiver. She might be able to feel them herself, with this damn merengue. “Joss Castel.”
He smiled, on a kick of pleasure at his name in that minatory tone.
“Joss.” She sighed in exasperation. “I can tell something’s wrong.”
Seriously? How the hell had he let it slip?
“Will you just tell me!” she snapped.
He sighed, looking down at her as their hips rocked together.
He’d gone through the Foreign Legion so he’d never have to disappoint that hero-worship in her eyes. But he missed talking to her. Missed the way she bounced her laughing and teasing off him, but also missed just those quiet, easy conversations about anything and everything except, of course, the most dangerous anything and everything back then—that he didn’t have a platonic bone in his body, when it came to her.
“I can’t relax,” he admitted.
Her hand pressed over his chest, where his heart beat too rapidly, keeping him primed for anything. She searched his face.
“It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that I don’t need to keep an eye on everyone in the crowd, I can’t turn off the instinct, and I keep doing it. Checking every movement, every person carrying a backpack or wearing loose enough clothes to conceal a gun or explosives. This is about ten times worse than any market I ever had to patrol. It’s okay, it’s not a big deal. It’s good practice for me to get used to being back in civilian life, and it’s a beautiful evening. It’s just … tense.”
She was silent for a moment, and he braced, feeling bad. See, this was what he hadn’t wanted to do—ruin her evening. Her forehead stayed crinkled, but the exasperation faded. He missed the exasperation. And he definitely didn’t want that crinkle to be in concern or pity instead.
“I have an idea,” Célie said. “Why don’t we say good night to my friends and take a walk on the Seine? Just you and me.”
He gazed down the dark river toward Notre-Dame. Somewhere past the crowds in that direction, quiet and peace lay. A beautiful evening where he could walk hand in hand with her and maybe find a spot to kiss her again.
But he was copping out if he did that, wasn’t he? Giving in to a weakness and robbing her of her fun evening with her friends? It was something else she could later blame him for, right?
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Célie said wistfully. “Walk on the Seine at night with someone I wanted to hold hands with.”
And she never had? A hot, painful joy surged through him to know that. She’d been lonely … but she’d stayed all his.
“Then let’s do that.” And for good measure, since she seemed to have a taste for romance, he lifted her hand off his chest and kissed the palm.
Wow, the look in her eyes at that. You’d have thought he had slain a dragon for her.
Interesting, since he had slain metaphorical dragons for her, over and over, and the thing that had made her eyes go starry was one easy kiss of her hand.
Women made no sense sometimes, especially not Célie, but he kissed the tips of her fingers next since she liked it so much, and held her hand snug and warm as they took leave of her friends and headed off for a walk.
***
The farther they got from her friends and that bright center of happiness and dancing on the quay, the tenser Célie got.
The security and confidence drawn from the friend-filled evening drained away from her as they kept walking, leaving her support network behind. All the bright, vivid life she had
made sure to build for herself, in defiance of anyone who might have left her with nothing. Each step took her further outside her comfort zone, to this isolated place where her happiness depended on one person.
On the way he held her hand.
On that neutral, quiet expression of his as he gazed at the luminous bridges and old palaces and glanced regularly down at her. On the size of his body, an impenetrable barrier against the world. Not a single group of guys called out for her attention as they walked past. She would have shot them a bird and kept on walking if they did, and it felt weird and weak not to do that, not to be depending on herself or the strength of a group of friends.
She couldn’t relax. Her stomach tightened, and her heart started to beat too hard. It was too romantic. It was too dependent on him. Bad enough taking him to the Île de la Cité just toward sunset, bad enough taking him to her favorite park, but the Seine at night …
It just slapped its romance down and slayed you with it.
Utter obliteration of a woman’s heart and strength and sense.
As they passed the islands and continued toward the Louvre, the groups hanging out drumming or drinking beers or playing some card game thinned out and quieted. Joss didn’t really lose his alertness, but some of the tension in him seemed to quiet. His breathing slowed and deepened.
Her hand tightened on his. “Joss. Why didn’t you tell me?”
His eyebrows knit, and he gazed down the length of the Seine as if trying to interpret a particularly cryptic crystal ball. “I … couldn’t. I had to do it first, before I could brag about it. If I told you I was going to do it, and then failed and didn’t … what would that make me? To you?”
She was silent a second, adjusting to his subject of conversation. “A … young man who had lots of dreams and realized some of them were crazy? After talking them over with the girl he claims he liked?”
He frowned. “I need to teach you to have higher standards for men.”
That annoyed her so much. She scowled, and her hand flexed for freedom, but he firmed his hold, not wanting to let go. “I meant why didn’t you tell me just now? That it was hard on you, being in a crowd like that?”
“I did,” Joss said, confused.
“I had to drag it out of you! After we’d already been there an hour! Why didn’t you just tell me, when you saw what it was like?”
His jaw hardened in that obdurate way. “First of all, I didn’t realize immediately. And then I thought I’d manage to get over it. There was no sense ruining your evening from my…” He paused, his lips curling as he tried to force a word out: “Failure.” From his expression, he was trying to swallow something disgusting and shameful, even to say it.
Célie was silent a moment. “You know what I do with my failures?”
He looked at her, his expression gone very neutral again.
“The chocolates that don’t come out perfect enough, because we get a batch a tad wrong? I send them home with any of the team who wants to share them with their family. Sometimes, we make little packets of two each that we keep under the counter, and whenever any kid looks wistful because his mom tells him the chocolates are too expensive, we slip one to him. Or if there’s a big batch, we give them to schools in some of the poorer areas. We share them with the soup kitchens or with homeless people on the street. And they make everyone happy. Everyone appreciates it very much. Because we still gave them something that was a hundred times better than anything else they could have had.”
Joss’s lips tightened. God, his jaw was stubborn. “Merci. If I ever want to treat you like a homeless person who should be grateful for whatever you can get, I’ll let you know.”
“Sometimes,” Célie muttered, “I would like to beat my head against your chest as if it was a damn brick wall.”
He shrugged, not letting go of her hand. “Okay.”
Which just made the urge more intense somehow. “You don’t listen to me, Joss.”
He gave her a puzzled glance. “I’m listening to you right now, Célie.”
“You don’t let me affect you. You just dismiss what I say and do your own thing.”
Damn it all.
They passed a couple sitting on a bench together, the young man’s arm around the young woman, his hand on her chin, coaxing her face up to his, and Célie wanted to yell at the other woman: Are you out of your mind to be out here on a night like this? Run! Run the other way! A man could do anything to your heart, if you hand it to him on the Seine at night.
Women were so reckless. They didn’t stand up for their own hearts at all. It made Célie want to grab them and thump her head against theirs to try to knock some sense from her brain to theirs. Just woman up, darn it. Quit expecting everyone else to take care of you instead of doing it yourself.
But here Célie’s own hand was, held by the very man who had hurt her heart the most in her life. Danger was everywhere—in the glow of the bridges against the dark water, in the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower there in the distance, in the locks of lovers weighing down the Pont des Arts and in their keys lurking below the gold-gilded black surface of the water, clogging the river. Stubborn, self-entitled lovers, convinced it was more important to declare their love to the world through a lock on a bridge than to protect a world heritage.
Also oblivious lovers—blind to the fact that regularly, the city removed the grids on the bridge and replaced them with new ones, tossing all those old locks for scrap.
Every brain cell Célie had kept noting the danger to her, the irony of reality.
And yet she couldn’t quite get herself to flex her hand free.
Because his strong, callused hand felt as if hers had found the safe place it had always longed for.
As if she could lower her guard and let him take that guard duty up.
She set her jaw, turning her head away a little. So much bullshit, her heart could come up with. It had done it before, where he was concerned.
“You don’t affect me?” Joss said incredulously.
“I’m not talking about sex!” Célie shouted, and the romantic couple looked up, startled. Then both of them grinned.
Célie flushed hot.
“Neither was I,” Joss said, and her flush got even hotter. “Célie … I joined the Foreign Legion for you. That’s an effect.”
Célie gritted her teeth. “I swear to God, I will push you into the Seine.”
Joss was silent for a moment, and then he lifted her hand so that he could gaze at it in his hold. His thumb rubbed over her knuckles, and he sighed. “You can’t really do that, you know. I’m not that pushable.”
“Yeah,” Célie said darkly. “I noticed.”
“So we have to figure out some other way to communicate.”
“I’m talking to you!”
He nodded, his expression as unreadable as ever. Except for maybe the very slight frown between his eyebrows as he gazed ahead, the length of the Seine.
And a wave of forgiveness came back at her, rocked toward her by the Seine and the stupid Bâteau-Mouche that passed playing “La Vie en Rose.” The forgiveness washed over the bitterness, which struggled to hold on. He’d barely been out of his teens. She’d still been in her teens. It was fair for him to make something larger of his life before being saddled with her.
Saddled. See how her bitterness tried to trick its way up through her brain again? A resilient thing, hurt. Hard to kill. It didn’t melt away like a sandcastle under a wave of forgiveness, just maybe got a little less sharp at the edges.
“You gave me this,” she said suddenly.
He glanced down at her and followed her gesture to indicate the whole glorious Seine, all its glow and darkness. “No, I didn’t. You got it for yourself.”
Well … that was true. It warmed her that he honored that and understood it. But … “I guess what I mean is … you were right. If I’d still been hanging all my hopes and dreams on you, I never would have come here and taken Paris.”
He smiled a little. �
��You shouldn’t underestimate yourself, Célie. You always shone as bright as a star.”
Oh. What an incredible sweetness came from that. But didn’t he understand that the truth of him, the strength of him had helped her shine that bright? That he … he kept the grime off her, back then. Just by existing.
It was as if, underneath the pride that drove him away from her, into the Legion, he hadn’t valued himself at all.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I could even imagine being better than you, back then. But when you didn’t think that was good enough, when you left to become the best that you could be … I guess I decided I’d darn well be the best I could be, too.”
She certainly had been determined not to stay there, without him, and fade and fail under the weight of that place. Become “not good enough” herself.
And now Paris was hers. She was part of this city, part of its vitality and strength, absorbing its heart and energy and pouring her share of it into making the best chocolates in the world. She was part of what people flew here from all around the world to enjoy, part of what made people glad they lived here—her, her contributions to this city.
So the Seine was hers. The luminous bridges were hers, arching over the water one after the other, as far as they could see. The Louvre was hers, that long, glorious palace, lit with its soft, warm light. The Eiffel Tower was hers, sparkling at her as they crossed the Pont des Arts. She tightened her hand on Joss’s and pointed at it.
My world. Look! I’ll share it with you. You can have it, too.
He stood still to watch it. The nearest lamp cast those cheekbones into stubborn relief and shadowed his eyes with his own lashes. She could not read his expression, as he watched the sparkling Eiffel Tower.
Then he looked down at her. “I think you underestimate yourself, Célie. You were only eighteen, and you had so much energy and hope in you. I had to do something so that I could keep up with you.”
“Meaning we could have talked about it,” Célie said before she could stop herself. “If we both wanted to make something more out of ourselves. Maybe we could have encouraged each other. Become better together.”
All for You Page 13
