“Léa. I’ve been losing you for years. I do want more of you. I’m sorry. But it can be a more where you set up your paint things in the garden and utterly ignore me while I lie on a lounger nearby and dream up menu ideas for someone in Las Vegas, if you want. I just—I want to be around you. When we can relax. When I can be something other than a chef. And you can be whatever you want to be.”
“Something other than a chef while you sketch out menu ideas?” she said wryly, her hand drifting up to run through his hair.
“You might have to help me with the concept of hobbies.” His hands settled at her hips, pulling her in closer to him. That odd little curve to his mouth, the one that hid a profound reserve. “I wouldn’t mind learning some other facets to myself.” The tips of his fingers stroked up and down her bottom, very gently. “Maybe we could even find some hobbies we do together.”
“I love you,” she said softly.
His eyes brightened. “I’ve always loved hearing that twenty or thirty times a day. I might be a little greedy.”
Or astonishingly insecure. He was so incredible, so much larger than life. Was his whole sense of himself really so dependent on her?
Maybe they did both need to switch gears in life, to take a deep breath, to let themselves expand outward instead of that spear-like drive forward all the time. It was so odd to think this about Daniel, who took the world on like he was its spear, but maybe they both needed to develop—a stronger sense of self.
He lowered his forehead to hers. “Let me stay here with you another week or so, Léa. Let me take this vacation with you. I can go help Moea turn his restaurant into something that will solve their guest problem, and you can learn how to paint again, and we can go scuba-diving. Sailing. Windsurfing. Lazing on a beach. All those things we’ve never done. And share the same bungalow. And maybe learn some other new things about what we want.” His mouth curved, and his eyes held hers for a tiny, hot second.
She smiled, with a little flush. His fingers lifted to trace the color on her cheekbones.
“And then after that,” he said more slowly, “if you want to stay on a little longer without me...I guess I’ll handle that. Reasonably sanely. If you don’t stay too long. And when we get back home...” He looked at her a moment, then drew a long, hard breath, bringing himself to some sticking point: “I want to hand over the day-to-day running of the kitchens to Marc,” he said, referring to his second.
Léa’s jaw dropped. Okay, so...wow. They really didn’t know each other’s wants at all. She could never, in a million years, have imagined Daniel accepting less than absolute, shining-star control over those kitchens. He had fought like a feral dog for it.
“He will be excellent at it—he already does handle it half the time, when I’m consulting or on shows. And if I don’t let him have the official status, he’ll leave me for a kitchen where he can be king soon anyway. There’s only so long a chef with his talent can stand to be someone else’s second.”
“But—but what if he doesn’t do it the way you like it?”
“If I can handle consulting with chefs in their own kitchens and getting them to listen to me, I can handle that, Léa. It’s still our restaurant. It still has the Laurier name on it. But Marc wants executive chef status enough to give up his evenings and weekends, and I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Léa stared at her husband. “Do you want to quit being a chef altogether?” she asked wonderingly.
“No, it’s still m—our restaurant. But what I enjoy the most these days is consulting. I always like seeing the new restaurants; I like helping a younger chef build his dream, or an older one refresh his style; I like all the ideas I get from them in return.” He hesitated again. “As long as you want to come. That was always my favorite part of consulting, you know, showing you all those new countries. I still remember how excited I was the first time I got invited out of country—I was going to be able to show my wife Singapore.”
She laughed at the memory. They had been in their mid-twenties before the consulting thing started to hit. But they had been as excited as kids again at those first overseas invitations.
He rocked her hips against his, gently, coaxingly. “If we ever do decide to have kids, we might have to re-consider the travel. But in the meanwhile...it seems as if someone who needs to re-explore that old dream of being an artist might get a lot out of traveling. I do like it when you come into the kitchens with me and share your ideas, but you don’t have to. You could learn to insist on time for yourself to paint and sketch while I’m in the kitchens.”
“I really do want kids,” she said suddenly. “I always did. Before.” It felt incredibly less like drowning the last of herself, if he would be in the garden with her, playing with those children, too. Everything felt lighter.
“Let’s talk about it more in a year or so. Once we get ourselves figured out.” His mouth curved ruefully, and he rested a possessive hand on her belly. “Or sooner, if we’re not more careful.”
She leaned into his hand and him, her face relaxing, because all at once, an accidental pregnancy felt as if it would work out just fine, too.
Everything would work out. She felt as if she could breathe—truly breathe—for the first time in years. She took his other hand and curved it around her face to kiss his wrist. “We need to take more vacations. Can we make a pact? Twice a year. Tropical island, hiking in Nepal, biking along the coast, I don’t care. But something where we stop. And just are.”
“Together,” he said, rubbing her hair. “Give me a little more warning if you need a week to yourself.”
She shook her head, a gesture that brushed her lips back and forth against his wrist, so she kissed it again. “I can’t believe you got so worried about that. Honestly, Daniel.”
His fingers threaded through her hair, and he pulled her head back. “Can’t you? If you came back from...” He paused. Léa didn’t do things that took her away from him for more than a few hours. He was always the one away. “...helping your sister shop for her apartment,” he finally said, lamely, “to find a message from me saying I was taking a break in Tahiti for I wasn’t sure how long, and I didn’t even take my phone so you could call me, are you sure you wouldn’t worry?”
She might as well have swallowed a giant rock. That burst, in her stomach, into a thousand crawling ants of panic. Daniel—gone. Without explanation. Without her. She would have been huddled into a knot of fear on their bed, her stomach trying to gnaw its way out of her: Why? What’s going on? Why didn’t he want me with him? Is he having some kind of breakdown? Is there, is there—is there someone else? Is he leaving me?
“I’m sorry.” Imagined fear strangled her voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t thin—Daniel, don’t do that to me. I’m sorry.”
“Chérie. You have never in your life hurt me on purpose. I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose either. I won’t do that to you. I know what it feels like.”
Tears filled her eyes again. “I didn’t mean to”—
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, Léa. You don’t have to tell me that.” His voice turned darkly wry. “After all, it was nothing to do with me.” The tears trembled. His thumb came up to rub one off her lashes before it could fall. “And don’t cry. I’m glad you did it. If you hadn’t, God knows how long we might have kept on this way. Until we were both entirely extinguished, maybe. And then it might have been too late.”
“Two vacations a year,” she said firmly, rubbing her tears away against his fingers. “No matter what. From now on. Even if it’s only spending four days skiing.”
“You’re the scheduler, chérie. Put it in as one of those cannot-be-changed items, along with my time with my wife.”
“I’m never putting another thing in your schedule before I talk to you about it. Ever.”
“All right.” He had the most beautiful smile, such a fine, chiseled, sensual mouth. “It will slow down everyone who wants to book me, and it means we’ll always have to talk.”
&
nbsp; She smiled, leaning against him, feeling—rested, for the first time in months. Maybe years. Feeling blissfully happy. Just a little time together, to truly talk, was that all it had taken? And two hearts held out to each other, without reservation. Just as they always had been.
She rubbed her fingers over the hand she kept curled around her face, tracing down his fingers. Her thumb stroked back and forth over the bare base of his fourth finger. “Can I get you another wedding ring? If you’re not in the kitchens as much—would you wear it?”
His face just lit. “Putain, really?” He cupped her face with both hands, searching her eyes, and then kissed her, hard. “To replace the one I outgrew when I was twenty? I thought you would never ask.”
FIN
* * *
THANK YOU!
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this trip to Tahiti and the little peek into the world of La Vie en Roses, my series set in Provence. Click here if you would like to leave a review.
If you would like to meet more of the extended Rosier clan and even see a bit more of Daniel and Léa, check out The Chocolate Rose, the story of Gabriel Delange and Jolie Manon, set in the world of Provence. (Keep reading for a peek.)
And you’ll be able to meet more of Léa’s Rosier relatives in the novella A Rose in Winter, coming later this year. Make sure to sign up for Laura’s newsletter to be notified when it’s released!
Meanwhile, you can always find Laura and other readers on Facebook for regular temptations of fantastic French chocolate and other kinds of fun.
Thanks for reading!
* * *
OTHER BOOKS BY LAURA FLORAND
Amour et Chocolat Series
All’s Fair in Love and Chocolate, a novella in Kiss the Bride
The Chocolate Thief
The Chocolate Kiss
The Chocolate Rose (also part of La Vie en Roses series)
The Chocolate Touch
The Chocolate Heart
La Vie en Roses Series
Turning Up the Heat (a novella)
The Chocolate Rose (also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
A Rose in Winter, a novella in No Place Like Home
Memoir
Blame It on Paris
* * *
THE CHOCOLATE ROSE - EXCERPT
The scent of jasmine wafted over Jolie as she stepped into the place, delicate and elusive, as the breeze stirred vines massed over sun-pale walls. A surprisingly quixotic and modern fountain rippled water softly in the center of a tranquil, shaded area of cobblestones. She stopped beneath the fountain’s stylized, edgy angel, dipping her hand into the water streaming from the golden rose it held. Fontaine Delange, said a little plaque.
Gabriel had a city fountain named after him already? Well, why not? There were only twenty-six three-star restaurants in France, eighty in the world. He had put this little town on the map.
His restaurant, Aux Anges, climbed up above the place in jumbled levels of ancient stone, a restored olive mill. She would have loved to sit under one of those little white parasols on its packed terrace high above, soaking up the view and exquisite food, biding her time until the kitchens calmed down after lunch. But, of course, his tables would be booked months in advance. In another restaurant, she might have been able to trade on her father’s name and her own nascent credentials as a food writer, but the name Manon was not going to do her any favors here.
The scents, the heat, the sound of the fountain, the ancient worn stone all around her, all seemed to reach straight inside her and flick her tight-wound soul, loosing it in a rush. Stop. It will be all right. Your father is out of immediate danger, has two other daughters, and will survive a day without you. Take your time, take a breath of that hot-sweet-crisp air. Relief filled her at the same time as the air in her lungs. That breath smelled nothing like hospitals, or therapists’ offices, or the stubborn, heavy despair in her father’s apartment that seemed as unshakeable as the grime in the Paris air.
She walked past an art gallery and another restaurant that delighted in welcoming all the naive tourists who had tried showing up at Aux Anges without reservations. A little auberge, or inn, gave onto the place, jasmine vines crawling all over its stone walls, red geraniums brightening its balconies.
She turned down another street, then another, weaving her way to a secret, narrow alley, shaded by buildings that leaned close enough for a kiss, laundry stretching between balconies. Jasmine grew everywhere, tiny white flowers brushing their rich scent across her face.
Kitchen noises would always evoke summer for her, summer and her visits to France and her father. The open windows and back door of Aux Anges let out heat, and the noises of knives and pots and people yelling, and a cacophony of scents: olive oil, lavender, nuts, meat, caramel. . . .
As she approached the open door, the yelling grew louder, the same words overheard a million times in her father’s kitchens: “Service! J’ai dit service, merde, it’s going to be ruined. SERVICE, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!”
“—Fast as we can, merde – putain, watch out!”
A cascade of dishes. Outraged yells. Insults echoed against the stone.
She peeked through the door, unable to resist. As a child and teenager, she had been the kid outside a candy shop, confined to her father’s office, gazing at all that action, all that life: the insane speed and control and volcanic explosions as great culinary wonders were birthed and sent forth to be eaten.
At least fifteen people in white and black blurred through a futuristic forest of steel and marble. Four people seemed to be doing the yelling, two chefs in white, two waiters in black tuxedos, separated by a wide counter and second higher shelf of steel: the pass, through which elegant plates slipped into the hands of waiters, who carried them into the dining rooms with—ideally—barely a second’s pause between when the plate was finished and when it headed toward the customer who was its destination. A wave of profound nostalgia swept Jolie.
“Connard!” somebody yelled.
“C’est toi, le connard, putain!”
A big body straightened from the counter closest to the door and turned toward the scene, blocking her view of anything but those broad shoulders. Thick, overlong hair in a rich, dark brown, threaded with gold like a molten dark caramel, fell over the collar of the big man’s chef’s jacket, a collar marked with the bleu, blanc, rouge of a Meilleur Ouvrier de France. That bleu, blanc, rouge meant the chef could only be one person, but he certainly wasn’t skinny anymore. He had filled into that space she had used to only imagine him taking up, all muscled now and absolutely sure.
His growl started low and built, built, until it filled the kitchen and spilled out into the street as a full-bodied beast’s roar, until she clapped her hands to her head to hold her hair on. Her ears buzzed until she wanted to reach inside them and somehow scratch the itch of it off.
When it died down, there was dead silence. She gripped the edge of the stone wall by the door, her body tingling everywhere. Her nipples felt tight against her bra. Her skin hungered to be rubbed very hard.
Gabriel Delange turned like a lion who had just finished chastising his cubs and spotted her.
Her heart thumped as if she had been caught out on the savannah without a rifle. Her fight instinct urged her to stalk across the small space between them, sink her hands into that thick hair, jerk her body up him, and kiss that mouth of his until he stopped roaring with it.
That would teach him.
And her flight option wanted to stretch her arm a little higher on that door, exposing her vulnerable body to be savaged.
She gripped that stone so hard it scraped her palm, fighting both urges.
Gabriel stood still, gazing at her. Behind him, the frozen tableau melted: petits commis, waiters, sous-chefs, all returning to their tasks with high-speed efficiency, the dispute evaporated. Someone started cleaning up the fallen dishes. Someone else whipped a prepped plate off the wall, where little prongs allowed them to be stack
ed without touching each other, and began to form another magical creation on top of it.
Jo tried to remember the professional motivation of her visit. She was wearing her let’s-talk-about-this-professionally pants. She was wearing her but-this-is-a-friendly-visit little sandals. Given the way her nipples were tingling, she would have preferred that her casually formal blouse have survived her one attempt to eat chocolate in the car while she was wandering around lost for hours, but no . . . her silky pale camisole was all she had left.
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose just a little as his gaze flicked over her. Curious. Perhaps intrigued. Cautiously so.
“You’re late,” he said flatly.
“I had a lot of car trouble,” she apologized. It sounded better than saying she had spent hours circling Sainte-Mère and Sainte-Mère-Centre and Sainte-Mère-Vieux-Village, utterly lost. Wait, how did he know she was late? This was a surprise visit. “I’m sorry. I know this is a bad time.”
“Bon, allez.” He thrust a folded bundle of white cloth at her. She recognized the sturdy texture of it instantly: a chef’s jacket. A heavy professional apron followed. His gaze flicked over her again. “Where are your shoes?”
“I—”
“If you drop hot caramel on those painted toenails, I don’t want to hear about it. Coming to work without your shoes. I thought Aurélie told me you had interned with Daniel Laurier.”
“Uh—”
Eyes blue as the azure coast tightened at the corners. “You made it up to get a chance. Parfait. And you’re late. That’s all I need. Get dressed and go help Thomas with the grapefruit.”
Probably she should have told him right then.
But . . . she had been having a hellish two months, and . . . a sneak peek into Gabriel Delange’s kitchens. . . .
A chance to work there through a lunch hour, to pretend she was part of it all. Not in an office. Not observing a chef’s careful, dumbed-down demonstration. Part of it.
Turning Up the Heat (A Novella in the Vie en Roses Series) Page 10
