The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat)

by Florand, Laura

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You just want to avoid making all those heart things yourself, don’t you?”

  He gave her a lazy, got-me smile and waved for a taxi, pushing her into it. “Meet you at your place in an hour?”

  She poked her head back out. “It’s really too bad your apartment isn’t in the Ninth,” she said sweetly. “We could share a ride.”

  He looked much struck. “Come to think of it, I know this really hot chick who lives in your neighborhood. Definitely worth a man going far out of his way.” He bent down and kissed her, warm and quick. “Unfortunately her closet doesn’t have much of a selection of my clothes. Something I’d be happy to remedy any time you want, but I feel as if we’d have more space if we did the clothes shifting the other direction. See you in an hour, Sarabelle.”

  And in an hour, he was there, in that black tux, his eyes lighting as soon as he saw her, and his fingers stretching out to stroke gently down her soft sleeve.

  She pulled back into the room, turning slowly and peeking back at him over her shoulder.

  He drew a soft breath. “And you’ve got your hair up. Sarah, you know what that nape does to me.”

  Her nape sent a shiver all through her body just at the knowledge.

  “This is hopeless,” Patrick said. “I’ve got, what, ten thousand sexual fantasies to work out on your body, and I only get a chance to do one every two days or so anymore? How long is that going to take?” He sounded utterly despondent. “You’re the one who’s good at math.”

  “Over fifty years,” she said, a little amused. Ten thousand fantasies, three hundred sixty-five days a year, one every two days, equaled...54.79 years, in fact. The rest of their lives. Her breath hitched. Had he used that number carelessly? Or only pseudo-carelessly?

  “I’m not going to get to do them all until I’m eighty?” he said despairingly. “Sarabelle, we’ve got to find more time for this stuff.”

  She bent her head and bit her lip, on a wave of mischief and shyness, and eased up her skirt just enough to show one garter.

  Patrick caught her in a body dive that carried her all the way to the bed, landing with him braced on top of her. “It’s such a good thing I made our reservations for eight thirty,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “I knew this would happen.”

  “You knew I’d wear a garter belt?” Sarah asked, a little offended. Because that was a special favor she was doing him, that garter belt. He’d better not get used to it.

  Also, how in the world had he found a restaurant that still had a table left at eight thirty, the peak dinner hour, on Valentine’s Day, as recently as they had started dating? Some special, secret little hole in the wall that only he knew about?

  “I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. God, I’ve missed you. Do engineers have to work twenty-four-seven or do they get to have a few hours off once in a while?”

  “It probably depends on whether the Mars rover is up there stuck in the sand.”

  He made a face. “Merde, that would be frustrating. Not to be able to just reach out and fix it.” His fingers stroked over her shoulder, as if even the thought of not being able to touch something made them restless. “Sarabelle, you’re so soft. I could pet you all over.” He lowered his head to rub his face between her angora-veiled breasts. “And I’m going to get so much fuzz in my mouth,” he murmured, and she could swear she felt that wicked grin of his right through the dress.

  He rolled them suddenly, settling her astride him. “And you’re wearing my earrings.” He reached up to pet the tiny dangling sapphires.

  She smiled shyly. “I thought maybe I should take them in the spirit in which they were given. As something to make me happy.”

  “As a mark of possession,” he corrected. “Sometimes you give me too much credit.”

  “I don’t think I ever give you enough credit, Patrick. I’m not sure I ever could.”

  That flush rose to his cheeks, that one she had thought so rare only days before. He took her hand to his lips and kissed the inner side of her fingers.

  “And I kind of like you wanting to mark me,” she admitted. She shrugged funnily, a gesture so close to one of his he might be wearing off on her. “Would you ever let me? Put a stamp of possession on you?”

  His breath caught for no reason she could quite explain. He stared up at her.

  She drew her hand down his arm. That indefatigable, muscled arm, so cleverly veiled by a fancy tux. “I don’t know – a bracelet maybe?” She closed her fingers around that strong wrist, but of course her fingers couldn’t meet. “Would you wear it, if it was masculine enough? Leather or something?”

  A tension sagged out of his body. “A bracelet,” he said oddly. He gave his head a slight shake, as if to clear it. “Yes. Definitely I would.” A half-smile up at her, not his playful, hide-everything smile but that one that was almost shy. “I would like it very much.”

  Her own smile relaxed, happiness filling her. Oh, she liked the idea of having her mark of possession on that strong wrist. Mine. All mine.

  “Now let me see that garter belt.” He stroked the dress up her thighs to her waist and just looked for a minute before he had to shut his eyes. “Shit.”

  “Is that a compliment?” Sarah murmured, amusement tangling with arousal and a kind of relief. Because it would have been deeply embarrassing if he hadn’t responded to the garter belt this way.

  That wry grin, his eyes staying firmly shut while his hips bucked up against hers, his hands tightening to pull her down to him and enhance the grind. “Sarah,” he managed, opening his eyes and concentrating diligently on her face. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, because you know how I usually prefer to focus on deeper, more important things. Wouldn’t want you to think I was shallow. But you are so pretty.”

  She laughed from pure happiness. Sometimes he just made her whole being light up. Like she really was that pretty. “You’re kind of hot yourself.”

  “Yeah, but you love me for my mind, really,” he said cheerfully, while his fingers started to follow all the logical paths that a garter belt made for them. “You know – my highly creative mind.”

  She laughed again, even as arousal started to eagerly awake, and leaned down over him, bracing her hands on either side of his face. Was it that recently that she had thought she would never be confident enough for this position? It seemed a whirlwind of time and emotions ago. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was shallow,” she teased. “But maybe just a little bit.”

  I love you, he mouthed, and pulled her head down suddenly to kiss her, as if the kiss had to hide the words.

  “It’s kind of a secret,” she said, and slipped her mouth close to his ear to whisper barely as loud as a breath, “but I love you, too.”

  Chapter 34

  Patrick had pulled strings for a hotel car, which dropped them off at the Trocadéro, so that they could gaze at the Eiffel Tower in all her splendor for a moment. Then they headed down the slope from the Esplanade past the fountains, quiet in the winter, to the base of the Tower, by which point Sarah’s shoes were already killing her.

  Did that not figure? Never, ever dismiss that twinge in the store in the hopes the sparkly shoes will turn out comfortable with wear.

  That wasn’t a metaphor, was it?

  She looked at Patrick. No. No twinges. Everything easy, perfect, right.

  She craned her neck back to gaze up at the dizzying, powerful swoop of the Eiffel above her. She had been under it before – of course she had, her first night in Paris – but not with him. His arm braced her, so that when she looked up into the great, glowing height of metal and one man’s crazy, determined dreaming, part of what she saw was Patrick’s head, glowing gold, and his smile.

  “Don’t fall over.” His eyes laughed, but he held her in case she did.

  It was only when he directed them to the south pillar of the tower, with its private elevator for restaurant guests, that she realized they weren’t just passing by
the Eiffel on a romantic route to somewhere else. Oh. Dining at the Eiffel Tower on Valentine’s Day. What favors had he swapped for this one?

  They took the private elevator to the second floor, and then a second elevator for the long ride to the top. Sarah pressed against him as they rose up, up, up, girders of metal flashing past, city sparkling. Her stomach rose into her throat as they slid higher and higher, his arm firm around her. Terrifyingly beautiful, it made the funicular car to Montmartre seem like just a warm-up.

  “You can see everything,” she whispered as they looked out over the City of Lights from the top. “You can see all of Paris.” Notre-Dame, the Louvre, Sacré-Coeur, and the twisting promise of the Seine, little lights traveling down its gleaming darkness toward the sea. The Sacré-Coeur looked so small from here, that spot where they had sat on the steps high above the world now so far below them. Had they risen that far? The Eiffel Tower hung them up here in this vertigo of height and space that felt so precarious, and yet those iron girders were never going to fail.

  When she looked up at Patrick, he was gazing down at her, tender and intent, as if she was his own personal miracle. As soon as their eyes met, the tenderness hid under lazy charm again. “The salauds,” Patrick said cheerfully, while his hand rubbed her hip over and over. “I bet with a view like this, they don’t even have to make their food good. They’re probably going to serve us frozen pizza and it’s still enough to get a damn star.”

  She smiled and took his hand, and his tenderness escaped back out of hiding. “Tu es si jolie.” His hand touched her hair, just gently, so he wouldn’t mess it up. “Look at you with all the city sparkling behind you. You’re gorgeous.”

  She was so entirely ordinary looking. But he made her feel gorgeous. Perfect. She drew a little heart over his chest and smiled up at him. Me, too. I love you, too.

  His breath caught, and he bent and kissed her. There, in the most magical place in the world to be held in the arms of an utterly charming prince and kissed.

  He grinned at her when he lifted his head, and then slid slowly down her body, his arms still wrapped around her, until he was kneeling, his eyes laughing. “Now let’s see your feet, Sarah.” He slipped one sparkly shoe off and examined her heel, gently stroking the little blister already forming. “Sarabelle, you know how much we like to walk. What was wrong with your little boots?”

  In his big, square palm, the shoe shimmered like a woman’s tears of joy. “These were sparkly,” she said wistfully.

  He gave her an indulgent look and slid – okay, squooshed – it back on her foot, his eyes dancing, fully aware of the fairytale gesture. “But the shoe doesn’t fit,” he teased, caressing that blister one last time before he let the heel slide back where it would continue to rub.

  “I know,” Sarah said glumly.

  His eyebrows raised, and he slid back up her body to his feet, holding her dress to keep it from riding up her body with him. Several people around them clapped, assuming the obvious. A man shouldn’t kneel at a woman’s feet at the top of the Eiffel Tower unless he had a proposal in mind, damn it. Trust Patrick to be so perfectly romantic so easily, so carelessly, and not realize how it could break a woman’s heart.

  “I always thought that was such a pessimistic fairytale.” He slipped one arm around her now so that they stood facing the same view. “I suppose you like it?”

  Well – no, not really, but she was pretty sure she was living it. “Pessimistic?” Cinderella?

  “The guy thinks he’s found his beautiful princess, and she’s only lying to him, tricking him into believing all those ashes and rags are his dream come true. He has to bring everything to their lives. À la base, the whole romance is due to his inability to give up on a dream, however false it proves.”

  Sarah found it suddenly difficult to swallow, her insides congealing.

  “I mean, he’s a prince. He gives her his whole kingdom. And all she gives him back is the right to put her shoes on.” A slanting, wicked grin. “Granted, I love your feet, Sarah, but–”

  But. She was starting to feel sick. Oh, this wasn’t what she had imagined this Eiffel Tower conversation would be about at all.

  “There are a lot of fairytales like that. Enfin, if the girl kisses a frog or a beast, the frog always turns out to be a prince in the end. But if the guy falls for a beautiful princess, or the woman who spins gold, it’s always some trick to get him to give her his dreams, so she can social climb. It’s not like she’s even in love with him, right? He doesn’t even ever have a name, just le prince charmant. Poor bastard. Nobody ever cares about his dreams, as long as he satisfies hers.”

  Sarah stared out over the city, no idea what to say. Was everything about this moment beautiful – except for her? She’d thought – oh, for a while there, she had started to really believe – that everything wonderful in their relationship wasn’t coming from him, that she gave him something he needed, too. All that strength and beauty she felt in herself around him…was it really only due to him? Not a self-confidence nurtured by his belief in her but only a testament to his ability to fantasize?

  “I’m so lucky.” Patrick rubbed her nape absently. “You’ve always been exactly who you are. To the very best of your ability. No illusions, no tricks. If a man can get you…he’s got you.”

  Her heart hiccuped at that word you, pronounced as if it was some glorious prize. As if no more wondrous prize could even exist. “I’m not…I’m not Cinderella?”

  “No, you’re the fairy godmother in training, remember? The woman who wants to learn how to make her own magic for everyone else, not the woman who waits around for someone else to make magic for her.” His eyes held hers, the slightest curve to his mouth but nothing laughing in those eyes at all as he repeated: “And I got lucky.”

  Her stomach felt the way it had on that ride up in the glass elevator – going up and up and up, this giddy, beautiful terror. “I don’t see how luck had anything to do with it,” she murmured. He had gotten her the internship, he had seduced her while pretending to mentor her, he had tricked his way into her apartment…and, above all, through it all, he had made himself, all his life, into a man with whom a woman couldn’t help but fall in love. Un prince charmant.

  Patrick considered a moment, clearly searching for any situation in which he had left room for luck to have a role in whether he got what he wanted. “You existed,” he said finally, simply.

  The effort not to cry was almost strangling her. He squeezed her nape gently. “Allez, Sarah, let’s go eat.”

  Her mouth dropped open as he led her back to the elevator. Wait – that was it? That was – well, it was a lot, but – damn it, he was always doing that to her, it was just like the very first days of her internship, when he would wink at her or smile at her and make her feel so damn special, and then – move on, casually, as if nothing had happened. No impact on his world, just being himself. That should be illegal, to take a woman to the top of the Eiffel Tower and start a conversation like that, and tell her he was lucky she existed, and then…go eat.

  Damn it, sometimes it was a good thing she didn’t hate him anymore, or she would hit him over the head.

  ***

  Great iron girders framed the incredible view from the restaurant, the waiters acting as if Sarah and Patrick were famous movie stars, circumspect and even more perfect than usual. Sarah eyed Patrick as they were shown to the table with the best view in the restaurant.

  “What? Too cramped? Would you rather have gone somewhere else?”

  “You take this kind of treatment for granted, don’t you?”

  He looked around blankly before he caught on and laughed. “They just want me to work for them. The starred restaurants always act like this. Besides, no matter how happy a restaurant is in its chef pâtissier, never underestimate the kitchen team’s desire to prove that what they can do will outshine anything we can.” He shrugged. “We do the same thing, if we have a chef in the house.”

  Sometimes he was a lo
t to process. “You could work here? They’ve asked you?”

  He blinked, and his eyebrows went up a little. “Merde, Sarah, they’ve only got one star. Of course I could work here. They would love to get another one.”

  “Only” one Michelin star. The stratospheric world she had found herself in, when she had only ever imagined one dance at the ball. Only dreamed of learning some pastry skills in Paris, à la Hepburn, and going home to her own little world again. When Patrick interfered in someone else’s dream to suit him, he sure didn’t make it smaller. “You haven’t been tempted? To work with all Paris spread out at your feet?”

  He made sure no waiters were in earshot. “Not even remotely. But that doesn’t stop us from doing each other favors. No, if I decide to head my own pastry kitchen, the people will be coming there for me, not for the damned building.”

  She smiled a little and ran one finger over the tips of his, resting on the table. All those calluses from so much work, all his life. Funny how he kept that arrogance in him in such a low key, so that no one realized how strong it was – and how merited – except in rare, occasional flashes. Like when he thought his name should be worth more than the Eiffel Tower’s.

  “Do you ever want to take on a restaurant of your own? Would you rather do that than engineering? You were just a kid when you dreamed about Mars.” Have you let yourself notice how much you love what you do, yet, Patrick? How much you’re in your element? How much you would hate working on things that are cold and far away across a solar system, things you can’t reach out and touch? Or are you still afraid what you really love will be wrenched from you if you ever admit it?

  He shrugged. As if it didn’t matter. Of course. “I’d probably go to a two-star restaurant, if I went. It’s more fun to be the person who catches its next star, rather than just keeping the three stars it already has. You can’t go higher than three, so you’re just stuck there afterward.”