The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat)

by Florand, Laura

  He was probably regretting the offer now, wasn’t he? The whole kitchen probably was. Damn him.

  “Are you all right, Sarah?” A shift of movement in the corridor, and Patrick rested a hand on the wall above her, leaning in. She wanted to bury herself in that shelter. He wouldn’t mind. He’d probably handled teary interns with calm patience a hundred times before. Joked them out of it. Nudged a chin or squeezed a shoulder, with a little buck up you’ll be all right now wink.

  “Yes.” She turned her face away. Thirty-six more days. I can’t give up on it because it’s hard. It was what I wanted. What I thought would make me feel right.

  Patrick’s sigh ran over her hair, and she opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her. “Sarah. I made such a terrible mistake when I recommended you for this job.”

  He might as well have dashed a whole bucket of liquid nitrogen straight into her face. She twisted away from him and into the door of the women’s bathroom faster than even he could react, frozen right down to the crackling, rigid roots of her hair. If she brushed herself wrong, they would all break.

  She went into a stall and sat on the toilet as the only place in this whole damn hotel where she could sit. Just sit. Alone. Forearms braced on her knees, staring at her hands.

  They were such slim, pretty hands, or they had been. Burns here and there would now leave scars forever. The palms had grown callused as a farmer’s. Her eyes closed, but she couldn’t shut out the sight of broken, jagged hands, closing so gently over hers. Her mother’s hands. That’s not right, Sarah. Like this. At three, as Sarah tried to copy the letters of the alphabet exactly the way they were printed in her books. Her Korean mother, struggling to correct her own illiteracy, had had such faith that with enough discipline and effort, her daughters could get those American letters perfect. Be perfect.

  However hungry Sarah grew now, as she worked so hard in these kitchens and failed to eat, however exhausted she grew, months of exhaustion, however much it hurt when she burned herself or cut herself, her mother had fought through far worse.

  She stretched her slender, pretty, never-broken hands. I’ll get this right for you, Mama. I’ll make everything so pretty. Turn even hunger into this gossamer breath of beauty, an excuse to sink into a fairytale.

  You’ll see.

  Her mother’s broken hands covering her mouth in panic as Sarah told her she had quit engineering to go back to Paris and become a pastry chef. She could still hear Ji-Na Lin’s whisper of a wail: But you had turned out right!

  Mama, don’t worry. It will be so pretty. You’ll see.

  I promise you I’m not going to fail.

  She couldn’t even look herself in the mirror when she made that promise anymore. She was so tired of breaking that promise every damn day.

  How had Patrick Chevalier managed to waltz into her life and catch her, just with a wink and a glint of light on his hair, in a dream that was so much too big for her?

  Chapter 5

  Tucked just far enough off the Champs that the kitchen team could afford to buy more than one beer there, the Australian-themed bar featured heavy, dark wood and pseudo-Aboriginal art. Sarah always felt as if she could get lost in it – slight and dark and quiet, so that if she made the mistake of passing out in exhaustion on the table, her colleagues would stroll out and never even realize they had left her behind. Sometimes she wanted that – just to curl up in a booth, let a beer relax her tension and let the day slide off her and never wake until morning.

  Stepping into the Leucé kitchens that first day of her internship and realizing she was the only woman there had been a shock to her. Her engineering studies had certainly gotten her used to being surrounded by a majority of men, but – to this extent? What had happened to all the starry-eyed women in her Culinaire program, women who came from all over the world, just like her, because they dreamed of Paris and pastry and being the best? Where had the women from the previous years in those programs gone? Nowhere? Back home?

  So she’d started joining the team in the bar at one in the morning because she wasn’t an idiot: no way did she want these rough, intense, adrenaline-charged guys with their tastes for crude sex jokes hanging out drinking beer and talking about her behind her back.

  At first it had been ghastly to force herself to go with them instead of collapse in exhaustion on the Métro and let it carry her home. But then she had gotten used to it, to the way they all unwound, the way the tension slid off all of them and the day got processed. Insults got traded over something that had gone wrong, dissolving it into a joke, another kitchen disaster survived, that bound them together instead of drove them apart.

  “Fuck, Sarah, can’t you grow taller?” Hervé said now. “Way to get me fired.”

  “You know, I did want to work in ten-centimeter heels all day, but Chef Leroi wouldn’t let me,” Sarah retorted. “So blame him.”

  Hervé snorted. “What would ten centimeters bring you up to? My ribcage?”

  She wasn’t that short, damn it. She took a swallow of beer and gave him a minatory look. She’d grown to appreciate beer while in engineering school, in very similar circumstances – nursing one or two while she hung out with the guys. Back then she hadn’t needed it the way she did now, to ease the tension of constant near-failure.

  “I told you chaud derrière. What, were you too busy mooning over Chef Leroi?”

  The little stutter in her heart at “mooning over” calmed with the word “Leroi.” She gave Hervé a patient look.

  “Probably just wanted to be smashed up against Patrick’s chest,” Martin said, and Sarah’s stomach flipped. His brown hair sticking out around his head like a handful of forgotten pine straw, nineteen-year-old Martin tried a falsetto: “‘Ooh, Patrick! Save me!’ Admit it, you’re jealous,” he told Hervé.

  “Yeah, when he has to save Hervé, he just shoves him.” Grégory shook his head. “Doesn’t that hurt your feelings, Hervé?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Hervé said easily. And after a second, ruefully: “He is cute, though.”

  Sarah blinked. It hadn’t percolated into her consciousness before this that there might be other issues of sexual tension and indifference on a team of sixteen people working in close physical contact all day, issues that didn’t revolve around her.

  “And he got to punch the chef,” Hervé said wistfully. “Which makes him kind of my hero. The amount of times I’ve wanted to do that.”

  “Kiss Summer Corey, and maybe you’ll get an excuse,” Noë said dryly.

  Sarah traced the hop branch on the label of her beer. Patrick’s sun-streaked head bent in her mind, and that aristocratic mouth closed over the gorgeous blonde beachcomber’s like a king of the surf finding his natural home. Summer Corey’s face glowed with radiance just before Patrick’s head shut it out as he kissed her. Sarah’s hand tightened on her beer, and she drank half of it in a surge of thirst. I hate you.

  “That’s probably why he did it, you know,” Noë added.

  “Why Luc hit him?” Grégory asked.

  “No, why Patrick walked up to her and kissed her while Luc was watching. To crack him.”

  A moment of silence, while everyone contemplated the idea of Luc Leroi cracking, in the kind of awed, wistful bliss they might otherwise have given to a legendary goal in the World Cup that they had missed while working and only caught on replay.

  “Yeah, but if I did that,” Hervé protested, “I’d get fired.”

  Noë rubbed his thumb between the knuckles of his opposite hand, proof Sarah wasn’t the only person who accumulated tension during their brutal days. “Patrick will never get fired. Those two are inseparable.”

  A tiny silence at the table, out of respect for the frustration of Noë’s position. He could not rise to the position of second himself unless Patrick left.

  “You ever think about going to another starred kitchen as sous?” Martin asked, young enough to get away with being tactless. Grégory, for example, couldn’t ask about Noë’s career
plans since he was the one who would move up to Noë’s position if the senior chef left. “Or maybe heading up the pastry kitchen of some place with ambitions?”

  Noë studied his hands, rubbing some more. Sarah remembered now that Noë had an ex-wife and kid he helped support, and that he probably made a lot more, with a lot greater job security, as second sous in a top luxury hotel under Luc Leroi than he would almost anywhere else – certainly in the first few years working for a restaurant with ambitions for a star it hadn’t gotten yet. Chef Leroi got whatever he wanted from the hotel direction, including top salaries for his people. That was how famous he was. In fact, only a week or so ago, Summer Corey had tried to fire the head pastry chef in a fit of spoiled brat fury, and the hotel director and the head chef de cuisine, the legendary Hugo Faure, had dragged her out by the arms, more willing to risk their own jobs to the whim of a clueless socialite than risk having Luc Leroi leave.

  To be honest, Sarah didn’t know if Noë would be good as head pastry chef somewhere else. He was disciplined and perfectionist and indefatigable, patient and intense, but he never showed that brilliance that flared, so darkly, passionately gorgeous, from Luc Leroi’s hands and brain, or so richly golden from Patrick’s. But then again, had he gotten the opportunity? In the shadow of those two men, what other, lower chef ever really got a chance to shine?

  “I don’t get it,” Martin said. “Patrick’s got to leave. It doesn’t make any sense for him to stay. He’s got his collar, merde.” That last was said with a hush of awe. His collar. The bleu, blanc, rouge awarded to that elite, rare breed of Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, a competition of such Olympic intensity chefs trained for it their whole lives – and Patrick made it seem as if he had won it with a shrug of his shoulders, to get Luc Leroi off his back about it. He made it seem as if he didn’t care.

  And he stayed right where he was, the second. When someone with the collar could do anything. Run any pastry kitchen, demand an outrageous salary.

  Granted, he probably already got the outrageous salary here, but…why didn’t he want his own place?

  “Maybe that’s why he’s starting fights with Luc,” Grégory suggested.

  Everyone looked at him. The lean, dark-haired young man, barely out of his own adolescence but honed by the intensity of their career into an adult, shrugged. “Well, I know he flirts with everyone with a pulse, but…to kiss the woman Luc Leroi is going crazy over? In front of him? Maybe forcing the man to fire him is the only way he knows to break free.”

  Sarah wondered if, just for a second, when Patrick kissed her, Summer Corey had thought that she was special. Or maybe, being a filthy rich, gorgeous international socialite, Summer really was special.

  Even to Patrick.

  I hate you.

  She pushed away her empty beer.

  “What do you want to bet he’s gone before the year is out?” Hervé asked suddenly, just as a wash of heat ran over Sarah’s body, and another beer slid in front of her, in a strong, square hand with dark gold hair scattered across the back.

  “How much are we betting?” Patrick asked, slumping into the chair beside Sarah as if he had no bones left in his body. Covering a lazy yawn with one hand, he gestured with the other, and a waitress started distributing beers to everyone else around the table. Patrick always bought a round. Usually two. While the men accepted their beers with careless thanks, he absently poured Sarah’s into a cold glass for her, the kind of little gesture she associated with being so French. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.

  And he probably had no idea how wistful it made her. How angry.

  I hate you. Go convince someone else you care about her with all your stupid, meaningless gestures, and leave me alone.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” Hervé protested. “Fuck, Patrick, how are we supposed to talk about you behind your back now?”

  “Don’t mind me. I’ll just drink my beer and dream of hot women.” Patrick waved an indolent hand. She had so strong an impression that, if she picked up his wrist, his arm would flop from it like limp spaghetti, that she wanted to try it, close her fingers around that sinewed forearm, feel how strong the bone and muscle would be instead, the way her fingers wouldn’t even be able to close around it.

  How would it feel to lay her whole body against that relaxation, sink into it, meet all the muscle and strength…

  “Women like Summer Corey?” Hervé asked, amused. “Was that kiss worth it?”

  Patrick gave his glinting smile and felt his lips tenderly, with an extravagant sigh of bliss. His face still had lingering bruises from the fight, harder to see in the bar dimness than in the mercilessly bright kitchens.

  Sarah stared down at her beer. Then her left hand shoved down to grab the little backpack-purse by her chair.

  “The thing is, I’m not really sure blondes are my best foil,” Patrick said on her right, while she tried so hard to shut him out her ears buzzed. One strong, long finger brushed against her skull, and suddenly he had a lock of her black hair loose, holding it next to his sun-drenched hair as he brought his head in so close to hers that a shimmer ran down her from the roots of her hair all the way to her toes. “I don’t know. What do you think? You don’t think black sets me off better?”

  I hate you. You bastard. Pulling her hair free with a turn of her head, she hauled her backpack onto her lap.

  “I was just messing with Luc,” Patrick said suddenly, inexplicably. Patrick never defended himself. If the guys accused him of sleeping with a nun, he’d claim to have slept with the whole convent and its priest, too, while he was at it. That strong, absurdly supple wrist flexed as he twisted his beer, and she followed his arm up to his face, but he wasn’t looking at her. “I know you’ll have a hard time absorbing this, but Summer Corey’s really not my type.”

  All the men stared at him with their mouths half open. Hervé broke the dumbfounded moment with a guffaw. “That’s a good one. Because you’re just looking for a serious, committed relationship, is that it?”

  Everybody burst out laughing. Even Noë grinned.

  Sarah unzipped her backpack.

  Patrick looked at the table of amused faces and relaxed even further into his chair, one leg bumping Sarah’s as he sprawled into her space. “No, mostly because I’m looking for twins.”

  All the men laughed again. Noë shook his head a little, but still laughed.

  Sarah found her wallet down at the bottom of her pack, and Patrick’s hand dropped from the table to close around her wrist. Blue eyes looked her way just long enough for a friendly, intimate wink, as if she was his secret best friend in the world, the only one who understood him and he her. “It’s on me,” he mouthed.

  He was always doing that. Showing up after they’d had enough time to start to unwind and get anything serious about him or Luc Leroi off their chests, picking up the tab for the whole table, letting everyone tease him. Turning the whole tough day into this golden, easy finish, held in his hand.

  Sarah jerked her wrist out of his hand, which surprised him enough that he let her, his eyebrows going up a little. “I’ll get my own.”

  The problem was, damn it, she couldn’t afford to cover the whole table, not on four hundred euros a month, which didn’t even cover her rent on her tiny apartment in the Ninth. There was only so far she could stretch the savings off two years at her first job out of college.

  So she couldn’t just buy a round instead, the graceful thing to do in this country. No, the only way to resist his buying her drinks was to stand out like the greedy, money-obsessed American who didn’t have enough savoir-vivre to accept being paid for easily and pay easily when it was her turn.

  And the only reason to resist his buying her drinks was – well, there wasn’t a good reason. He was the second of the pastry kitchen, meaning he was their boss. When the vice president of a company took some of his team out and bought them a round, the only thing the lowly mail clerk could prove by trying to pay for her own was that she w
as ridiculous.

  That she thought they were equals of something. Or that it was some kind of dating issue.

  They weren’t equals. All the men at the table accepted that it was normal he buy them drinks as an act of noblesse oblige. And they all stood several ranks above her in the kitchens.

  And she and Patrick sure as hell weren’t dating.

  He’d roll right over her if they were dating. A couple of easy lays for him, a comfortable alternative to giving himself a handjob, and then on to some pretty set of twins.

  “So what are your plans, Sarah?” Noë asked. “You’ve got only a little over a month left on your internship now, don’t you? You planning to stay with us after you finish?”

  It was nice of him to assume that the opportunity to stay on, in a real job, would be offered. Sarah glanced involuntarily at Patrick, who could easily make that declaration right now – that they would be glad to hire her.

  Patrick said nothing, his expression tightening momentarily. Noë had put him on the spot.

  Meaning he didn’t want to offer her a job after her internship was up. She wasn’t good enough. God, he was probably counting the days until he could get this damn puppy off his hands.

  Her hands hurt so badly as she zipped her backpack up and stood. “I’m going back to California,” she said, and Patrick’s head whipped up.

  All around the table, men stared at her in pure shock. “Why the hell would you do that?” Hervé finally asked. “I mean, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to work with this guy” – he jerked his thumb at Patrick – “but we can find you a place. Let me ask around.”

  Her toes curled painfully in her shoes. Her feet always hurt so much, after the brutal days. Her stomach knotted, and her hands cramped. I can’t handle the top restaurants. I want something quieter. I can’t do this. But she couldn’t tell these men that. She had more than a month still to work with them. She refused to give them any reason to look down on her for the remainder of her internship more than they probably already did.