The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat)

by Florand, Laura

  “There.” He gave her that quirky smile that made her feel as if she was standing at the very edge of a cliff above a turquoise sea, ready to drop into his arms naked, roll over and over with him on a sun-washed beach. “Got it?” With a wink, he was gone.

  She tried to catch herself back, but her toe caught on the edge of that imagined cliff just as the waves pulled back, and she fell splat on the jagged rocks below.

  Her toes curled so tightly in her shoes they hurt. She couldn’t tell the difference between his plate and hers. Not at all. Six months of brutal, expensive courses at Culinaire, nearly five months as an intern, huge debts she was trying to juggle on her stagiaire stipend of four hundred euros a month, and she couldn’t see it. Almost, almost, but not really, she could almost feel the difference, tickling in her palm where his breath had been.

  She curled her fingers over that palm, trying to hold that brush of breath to it. And she hated him for that breath. She hated him as hard as she could.

  Chapter 3

  “She’s good.”

  Patrick folded molten sugar – a mix of sugar and Isomalt, really – as Luc spoke, not looking around to follow the other man’s gaze. There was only one she in the pastry kitchen, their little black-haired intern, eyebrows almost certainly pleated right now in stubborn concentration as she struggled to get something right.

  “It’s lucky you spotted her at that workshop,” Luc said. “I wouldn’t have thought someone her age, with her background, could step up to this kind of work.”

  American Sarah Lin had gotten a degree in engineering from Caltech according to her CV, and at twenty-four was nine years older than the typical French apprentice starting out. Luc wouldn’t have been the only chef to dismiss her as a pastry student tourist.

  Patrick focused on folding his colors into the sugar – bleu, blanc, rouge – concentrating on the resistance of the material so that he wouldn’t look around and see her carrying the full industrial-size mixing bowl whose contents probably weighed over twenty kilos. She could handle the mixing bowl. It was Patrick’s job to make her stronger, not weaker.

  Thirty-six days of her internship left to go. He stretched the sugar out thin, thin, thin. Not breaking it. Playing it constantly between hot and cold, heat lamp on one side, cool-blowing hair dryer on the other, so that it wouldn’t break.

  “You could mention that to her once in a while,” he told his foster brother and chef. “That she’s doing well.”

  Black eyebrows went up, Luc as always cool, controlled, despite the bruises still visible from their fight, proof that at least once Patrick had cracked him. Damn hypocrite. As if Patrick didn’t know that inside the man was exploding with a passion he compressed the hell out of.

  “I haven’t fired her,” Luc said. “What else does she need to show her she’s doing well?”

  Patrick rolled his eyes to heaven. The man was a trial to him. “Let’s see – Good job.” He trimmed and curled the bleu, blanc, rouge ribbon of sugar, creating a burst of fireworks that would play behind the two-meter chocolate Eiffel Tower he had made, complete with flecks of gold leaf for the sparkles. The Eiffel Tower rested on a base covered with an edible layer that was almost perfectly reflective and one of Patrick’s personal triumphs in the field. He’d come up with a method for it after seeing research several MIT engineers in materials science had been doing on dielectric mirrors. The other chefs in Paris were jealous as hell of those reflective surfaces, but none of them had figured out the secret yet. “Two words. Or Well done. You’d barely have to move your mouth.”

  Luc gave him that cool I beg your pardon look that had tempted Patrick to commit homicide some five million times in the past twelve years. “She needs to learn to judge whether her job is well done on her own. If she’s dependent on an outside critic for approval, she won’t get far.”

  Said the man who lived for his three-star reviews. Who was the reason Patrick lived for three-star reviews, when he thought reviewers could go stuff it up their asses. “She’s too hard on herself, Luc.”

  Luc shrugged. “Good.”

  Sometimes it was a challenge not to just grab Luc’s head and bang his own against it. But since he didn’t like to show when Luc got to him, he plotted instead to let Luc catch him flirting with Summer Corey again. That last fistfight had been such a nice distraction.

  “I’m right about this.” Luc’s voice was mild, but since Luc had essentially been self-forged in the fires of the universe for the sole purpose of bringing perfection to chaos, even his mildest voice cut through the daydream. “No one gets any good by being pampered.” His voice took on an extra layer of firmness, of meaning. “You know that, Patrick.”

  Damn it, did Luc see right through him? Because there was something about that tone. Did he know? Was Patrick’s façade starting to crack that damn obviously, that even through Luc’s blur of Summer obsession the other man still noticed it? More and more, Patrick went through the day feeling as if all his gleaming, perfect surface was just riddled with hairline cracks, like a failed sugar sculpture about to make an ugly mess.

  And if Luc did realize what was happening, how long before he started making sure Patrick was kept separate from their intern? Rage leaped inside Patrick at the thought of Luc – Luc – trying to hold what Patrick wanted out of his reach. His fingertips dug too hard into hot sugar, his hands burning. Don’t show you want it. Never show how much you want it. If Luc can turn on you, anybody can.

  And mixed in with that, his frustrated voice of reason: Damn it, grow up.

  “Making sure a poor intern doesn’t spend every night crying into her pillow isn’t pampering her, Luc.”

  Luc gave Sarah a thoughtful look past Patrick’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen any sign of tears.”

  Well, neither had Patrick, but – damn, she was strong, wasn’t she? He folded and pulled, folded and pulled his hot mass of sugar, to keep from turning around and looking at that strength. Supple as sugar, stubborn as sugar, so small and wannabe perfect and determined to get there. He knew all the sides of her concentration – the little crease between her eyebrows if a man saw her from the front, the tilted dark brown eyes focused so intently they shut him out, the stretch of her nape if a man was behind her, with her hair twisted up on the back of her head and only the vulnerable V of dark, fine hairs showing, the strain on her shoulders and hands and spirit that she felt on the inside, and the exhaustion at the end of the day.

  He adopted a woeful look. “You never see me cry either. Not even when you try to make me add a heart to the Eiffel Tower in what would otherwise be a beautiful sculpture. But every night–”

  Luc didn’t allow himself to openly laugh, of course, but Patrick caught the glimmer of amusement in his eyes. He grinned in self-satisfaction. Luc had saved him from their foster home, and Patrick liked to keep returning the favor. Every single laugh he got out of his repressed chef was like scoring a point against – well, the world, really. Definitely against their pasts. “It’s the president’s daughter’s wedding,” Luc said. “And the guy proposed on top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  Merde, what a cliché. Patrick rolled his eyes.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Luc asked, amused. “Say no?”

  “I didn’t vote for him.” Patrick eyed the mass of pink Isomalt-sugar on the food warmer next to him. He supposed he couldn’t put off doing the heart forever. He sighed extra heavily to make sure Luc didn’t miss it, and pulled a chunk free, attaching it to the tube of an air pump. “You could throw Sarah a bone, Luc.”

  A fine, compressed curve to Luc’s mouth – maybe another glimpse of amusement, maybe something else. Twelve years of working together in impossibly intimate conditions, and Patrick still rarely knew entirely what Luc was thinking. Of course, Luc rarely knew what Patrick was thinking either, but it was aggravating to have that be mutual. “She’s got you in charge of her, Patrick. I think I gave her a little bit better than a bone.”

  Damn. Patrick’s heart started s
welling with pleasure and pride before he even quite digested the hugeness of the compliment. He hated it when Luc did this to him. It was so rare and it left him so mushy inside, all shit-happy to have Luc think well of him, like he was fifteen years old still. “You didn’t give her me,” he pointed out. In his hands, as he squeezed the pump, the little pink mass of molten sugar swelled and swelled, which irritated the hell out of him somehow. “I gave her me.”

  “Ah,” Luc said, and just held Patrick’s gaze with that straight, steady black one of his that made Patrick think back over what he had just revealed.

  Bordel de merde, he was going to kill Luc one day.

  “Have you grasped that she’s shy yet?” he asked between his teeth, pressing with a dull blade against the swelling pink sugar to form the heart shape.

  “Sarah Lin?” Luc asked blankly. As in: What business are an intern’s emotions to me?

  “No.” You idiot. Although Sarah was shy, too. So deliciously, thoughtfully shy. Patrick cut the heart from the tube and gently massaged away the hole left, coaxing the little heart into just the right shape. “Our hotel owner. You know, that gorgeous blonde who keeps coming down here to moon over you while you ignore her?”

  “Summer Corey is just bored,” Luc said. But restless tension coiled under his control at even opening the topic of discussion. “And she’s hardly shy. She’s dated half the billionaires in the world.”

  “They probably went after her,” Patrick said very, very dryly. “Given that she’s, you know, gorgeous and filthy rich, and by an astonishing coincidence, most self-made billionaires seem to be capable of going after what they want. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Luc’s black eyes locked with his. Ooh, impressive amount of fury bottled up there.

  But Luc refused to respond, until finally Patrick shook his head in disgust. “You know, I’ve never seen a man so fascinated by a woman and so afraid to go after her in my life.” He tucked the heart onto the top floor of the Eiffel Tower, and the mirror base chose that moment to reflect his own face back to him.

  Damn mirror.

  “Here.” He thrust the pump and tubing into Luc’s hands. “Your turn to work on hearts for a while. I like mine the way it is.”

  Chapter 4

  “Service!” Noë, the second sous, called. Lean, serious, and cerebral, Noë made a steady counterpoint to some of the other outsized personalities in the kitchen, but his edge was starting to show as the pastry kitchen’s peak hit. “Service, service, service!”

  Covered in ashes of gold again, Sarah focused on her plates with everything in her, the cries raking across her nerves even after nearly five months of this. The crowded kitchens never offered an instant’s space or peace, unless you came in extra early or were lucky enough to be working sugar, surrounded by heat lamps and hair dryers to keep everyone at bay.

  On top of the dinner dessert hour, the hotel was hosting a major gala. Hands flew, bodies flew, plates flew, and tempers soared, as mortal humans raged against the unrelenting demand for divine perfection even as they lived only to fulfill it.

  “Service!” bristle-headed Hervé shouted at the pass. Their plates, where something molten often nestled inside something frozen or vice versa, depended on seconds in timing.

  “We’re doing it as fast as we can, merde!” Thomas, the newest and youngest of the waiters, yelled, grabbing plates.

  Hervé shifted as if he was about to lunge across the pass. Only twenty-one, but with six years more experience than Sarah, chef de partie Hervé shaved his head to make himself look tough, but then forgot to keep it shaved, so that he looked more like a hedgehog in a white jacket.

  “Is that what you guys told your girlfriend last night, too, Thomas?” Patrick asked as he dipped passionfruit mousse into liquid nitrogen, the vapor haloing him as if he was some golden, firstborn hero reaching into the heart of creation. Hervé’s urge to strangle the waiter evaporated in a crack of laughter. Even Thomas had to roll his eyes and laugh, since he had no girlfriend in the picture about whom to get protective, the kind of thing Patrick always knew.

  Sarah sighed. Kitchen teams liked their crude humor. And all they ever seemed to think about was sex.

  None of them faltered in their miraculous pace, so many beautiful desserts flying from their fingers that it was as if those fingers were fairy wands on speed. Patrick had placed himself at the pass, where he could both assemble dishes himself and verify the perfection of every dessert that passed through. He had tucked Sarah to his left, from where she fed him his prepped plates.

  His body brushed hers with almost every move, something he remained oblivious to, having grown up in top kitchens where people worked at insane speeds in a tight space. But she noticed. Every single faint brush of his arm reaching across her, his body passing behind hers, his biceps grazing her shoulder as he shifted.

  She tried to sink into her task: marking plate after plate with the golden ashes from which the hotel’s famous Phénix would be reborn when Patrick plated the rest. He did all the other components of this insanely beautiful and complex dessert in less than half the time that it took her just to get the ashes right.

  And every time she bent just as he had shown her, every time she blew over her finger, she felt his body again, felt his breath tickling in her palm, impossible to capture.

  She was getting more and more dans le jus, or into the weeds, as chefs called falling behind in the States, and more and more frantic with it. Every once in a while, amid all the other things he had to do, Patrick’s arms stretched over hers, catching her up, quick and easy and without comment, as if it was nothing.

  “Chaud!” someone called, passing down the line with a big pot, the scent of caramel wafting around them. “Hot! Chaud derrière! Hot behind!”

  Patrick pressed her against the counter with a hand against the small of her back, squeezing himself out of the way, too. A wave of helpless longing ran through her at that touch, but she kept her face serious and unaffected while he grinned down at her. “They always say that about me. Do you think I’m hot behind, Sarabelle?”

  Even the world’s worst geek should have been able to manage a flip I always thought they were talking about me. Even in a second language. Even in the pressure of the moment. Instead she thought, inevitably, of what a tight, beautiful behind he had under that white chef’s jacket. Of the way it looked in jeans when he left the hotel late at night, heading home, away from her. And of how good it felt to have that firm hand just take her over and press her against the counter.

  A hand that was already gone again, handling all the other tasks he had in the kitchen. He didn’t need any recovery time from his contact with her.

  Sarah turned, brooding, to get more gold dust from a cupboard and pivoted straight into the pot Patrick had just moved her away from, hot metal right at the level of her face, the scent of passionfruit and caramel filling her nose–

  An arm swept her into a hard body. The pot passed. Instead of the excruciating singe of metal or a destructive wave of molten caramel, her face met a tough chef’s jacket and a firm chest.

  The whole incident and its avoidance took less than a second. Patrick released her and caught her chin in strong, callused fingers. “Sarah.” He bent to look her firmly in the eye. “Pay the fuck attention to other people, too. How many times do I have to tell you? Fuck.” He grabbed the gold dust and set it in her station, pushing her back to it without giving her time to react.

  There was never time to react in the kitchens at this hour, with a banquet of five hundred and the full restaurant service. The intern wasn’t even supposed to be here at this hour, but Sarah had no other way to prove her worth than working doubles just like the real chefs.

  Patrick’s voice rose, dominating the seeming chaos. “And if I catch anyone, ever again, carrying hot caramel at someone else’s face level, you are fucking fired.”

  All the white-clad men in the kitchen glanced from him to Sarah, without ever breaking the rhythm o
f their work.

  “Sarah hits here.” Patrick chopped his hand into his own chest, and Sarah’s face flamed. Yes, her presence and her presence alone required them to change the habits acquired in years of intense work. She was the only woman on the team, the small, incompetent intern who didn’t know how to keep out of the way of a hot pot of caramel, even after being warned, even after being physically moved out of its way. “Your pots need to go no higher than here.” Patrick’s hand at his waist. Damn you, Patrick, I’m not that small. “Is that clear?”

  He touched her shoulder briefly – quick, automatic reassurance, so the intern wouldn’t have hysterics. And then he was back at work.

  Well, he had never stopped working, had he? Making sure the puppy survived was part of his job. Sarah focused as hard as she could on her gold dust ashes, struggling between humiliation and a crawling bone-deep awareness of her own skin. Because that was how deep it would have burned, that caramel pouring over her face. Oh, God.

  He just saved me. Again.

  Night after night, day after day, hour after hour, he saves me.

  From myself.

  He could pick up her whole self, pat it absently on the shoulder, tuck it up in his pocket warm and safe, and never even notice.

  I hate you. I hate you.

  I hate you.

  It was hours before Sarah could escape into the corridor that connected the kitchens to other parts of the hotel’s innards. The instant service ended, she sank against the wall outside the kitchens, breathing in and out, grateful to still have a face. Such a stupid second of inattention. And there were seconds like that all the time in the kitchens: three thousand six hundred an hour.

  Jesus. What had she been thinking to leave her engineering career for this? What kind of fairytale had she imagined herself in? Not this one. How could she have been so stupid as to follow Patrick here, sun-dazed, instead of finding an internship in some small, mid-level shop, the kind of thing she might be able to actually handle?