Even though she was in that swimmy, queasy space between a night full of dancing and good wine and the hangover that was going to set in soon, she still had to smile.
Chase had fun at New Year’s. He danced all night. He carried the kids on his shoulders while he danced and let them put funny hats on him and crouched in a corner coaxing smiles out of a tearful three-year-old who, overstimulated but determined to make it until midnight, was having a harder and harder time handling it when her older cousins ran faster than she did.
He had fun at Christmas, too. He washed dishes and decorated trees and helped cut out cookies—although he mostly ate the dough—and split wood, making sure Vi came to watch him flex while he did it, and kept a fire going. Christmas morning, he got down and built train tracks and robots and even, calmly and with a secret glint of humor in his eyes, played with dolls in princess outfits when his littlest niece begged him, although he tended to have the princesses get in catastrophic situations and then explode into action with flips and derring-do as they surmounted it. His niece loved it.
From what he said, missing Christmas with his family was one of his hardest times downrange, and he was thrilled when, like this year, his tour ended in time for him to enjoy it.
“Pay up what?” she demanded, just to see what he said.
“Your entire life, of course,” he said grandly. “Now mine. As promised.” He held out a small box. “Plus, Grandma says can we quit messing around and pick a date. She’s decided she wants to complete a triathlon, and she’s worried we’ll mess up her training schedule.”
Vi had to pause at that. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Won’t get on a plane but is considering swimming four kilometers in open ocean? At the age of eighty-six?”
“You met her, right?”
“Yeah, and I think you were exaggerating about the ailing part. If she and my grandmother ever meet, they are going to hit it off so well.”
“Maybe they can get married.” Chase paused as he heard what he’d said, and a grin crossed his face. “Love to see the look on my parents’ faces if that happened. Vi!” He nudged the ring box against her hand.
Scarred but healed, that hand.
Resilient. Like them.
“Damn, I love you,” she sighed.
A huge smile split his face. He opened the ring box.
And she was a little afraid. Because he hadn’t consulted her about the ring choice—she hadn’t even known he had bought one already—and when a man chose the engagement ring on his own, it seemed as if he made a statement. Of who he thought the woman he was marrying was, and of who he wanted her to be.
One of those moments when the difference between who a man wanted to have hot sex with and who he wanted to have in his life as his partner and mother of his children really shone through.
What if the ring was fragile and sweet and fancy? What if it had a huge, protruding diamond, to show him off—what a good, generous guy he was who could take care of his little woman—rather than a ring that suited her work and how much she must use her hands?
Chase had such a hopeful look on his face, excited, pushy…exactly like his nieces and nephews on Christmas morning.
Nieces and nephews who had given Chase quite a few handmade presents he didn’t quite know what to do with, but which he had exclaimed over enthusiastically anyway, as if they were the greatest treasures he had ever received. He had a bracelet made out of pink yarn and bits of crayon-colored paper stashed carefully in a small treasure box right now, a bracelet he’d worn every day of the rest of the visit and right onto the plane back to France so his niece could see it on his wrist.
She looked down at the ring.
A gorgeous Damascus steel, with the classic ripple pattern, and a tension set diamond held in the wide band like a star caught in strength. Exquisitely simple, the diamond winking in that smooth band.
Her breath caught, and she looked up at him quickly, her eyes stinging.
“I wanted it to be something that showed off your hand,” he said cautiously, checking her face, just like his niece had his about that yarn bracelet, to make sure she liked it. “Rather than the other way around.”
Her scarred, tough hand. The stinging grew worse.
“I know you’ll still have to take it off a lot when you’re working, because of hygiene and all that, but I wanted it to be at least possible to work in it. Like it…honored what you do, wasn’t the opposite of it.”
It was very embarrassing, but she was starting to cry.
“A lot of the rings I saw looked like they were really designed for women who liked to imagine themselves as somebody’s arm candy, as if the ring was what gave them value, you know? And I wanted the ring to honor the value you already had.”
A little tear rolled down her cheek. And she couldn’t even remember to fight it. “Chase,” she whispered. She stroked the ring.
“When I was in BUD/S, at the start of Hell Week, one of the instructors said they were going to break us open. That we were just pretty clay pots our parents had made, but they would smash us and find out what was inside. And some of us would have nothing inside, and some of us would just have shit. But some of us would have Damascus steel. Like you do, Vi.”
And like him. She put her hand on that beautiful pure steel of him, that he cushioned with human muscle and with humor and warmth.
“Will you get me one?” he asked, quiet and deep, almost shy. “Because I saw one. A similar style with a broader band and a smaller diamond, as if it was this unbreakable strength that had caught something absolutely brilliant and glowing and precious. I…really liked it.” He dipped his head a little. Definitely shy.
She caught his hand, curling her fingertips into his, linking them tight.
Blue eyes met hers, so bright. So full of life and wanting and hope. And full of this certainty, with that strange brush of shyness to it, as if they had reached a point so vulnerable and so trusting that even Chase could not barrel his way brashly through it.
He had to just wait, all open.
Trusting for her to open just as much.
“I never thought I would say this about that enfoiré Abed, but he brought me so much luck,” Vi whispered, squeezing his fingers. Brought me you. All the way from Texas.
“You make your own luck, Vi. Luck’s just the world’s response to all the energy you put into it.”
“Then you, too.” She squeezed his hand hard. “You make luck, too.”
“Trust me, I know.” He looked down at their hands, his expression vulnerable and steady and wondering, and then took the ring out of the box. “I know exactly how lucky I am.” He slid the ring onto her finger. “And I’m willing to do everything I can to keep that luck.”
And they did.
***
THE END
BUT IT’S REALLY THE BEGINNING
***
Author’s Note
This started as an ode to Hollywood kind of story—a vision of leather and knives and banter and how much fun it would be to write a knife-wielding heroine like Vi. The counterterrorism plot was essentially a device for what was intended as a lighthearted caper. And then, about three fourths of the way through the writing of it, the November 2015 attacks occurred in Paris. This was a very dark time and, because of the similarities between what the hero in the “lighthearted” plot was working to prevent and the real world devastation, it made it very difficult to return to this book for some time. I think, no matter what, there are elements of darkness in it now that weren’t part of my original intention. But I hope that, just like in Paris itself, the life and energy win out. And I like to think Vi makes a good heroine for Paris…no one can keep her down.
***
Thank you!
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed Chase and Vi’s story as much as I had fun writing them. Click here to leave a review. And don’t miss Lina’s story and those of some of Chase’s “buddies”! Sign up here to
be emailed the moment they’re released.
Chase Me is the second book in the Paris Nights series. If you enjoyed the Paris setting, you can find Célie and Joss’s story in All For You. Or head south to a world of sun and flowers with the Vie en Roses series. (Keep reading for glimpses.)
Thank you so much for sharing this world with me! For some behind-the-scenes glimpses of the research with top chefs and chocolatiers, check out my website and Facebook. I hope to meet up with you there!
And this book is lendable, so if you enjoyed it, feel free to loan it to a friend. Anything that encourages discussions around books makes the world a richer place. Kind of like love and chocolate!
Thank you and all the best,
Laura Florand
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***
Other Books by Laura Florand
Paris Nights Series
All for You
Chase Me
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 a prequel to La Vie en Roses series)
The Chocolate Touch
The Chocolate Heart
The Chocolate Temptation
Sun-Kissed (also a sequel to Snow-Kissed)
Shadowed Heart (a sequel to The Chocolate Heart)
La Vie en Roses Series
Turning Up the Heat (a novella prequel)
The Chocolate Rose (also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
A Rose in Winter, a novella in No Place Like Home
Once Upon a Rose
Snow Queen Duology
Snow-Kissed (a novella)
Sun-Kissed (also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
Memoir
Blame It on Paris
All For You, Excerpt
Paris, near République
Célie worked in heaven. Every day she ran up the stairs to it, into the light that reached down to her, shining through the great casement windows as she came into the laboratoire, gleaming in soft dark tones off the marble counters. She hung up her helmet and black leather jacket and pulled on her black chef’s jacket instead and ran her fingers through her hair to perk it back out into its current wild pixie cut. She washed her hands and stroked one palm all down the length of one long marble counter as she headed to check on her chocolates from the day before.
Oh, the beauties. There they were, the flat, perfect squares with their little prints, subtle but adamant, the way her boss liked them. Perfect. There were the ganaches and the pralinés setting up in their metal frames. Day three on the mint ganache. Time to slice it into squares with the guitare and send them to the enrober.
She called teasing hellos to everyone. “What, you here already, Amand? I didn’t expect you until noon.” Totally unfair to the hardworking caramellier, but he had slept in once, after a birthday bash, arriving to work so late and so horrified at himself that no one had ever let him forget it.
“Dom, when’s the wedding again?” Dominique Richard, their boss, was diligently trying to resist marrying his girlfriend until he had given her enough time to figure out what a bad bet he was, and the only way to handle that was tease him. Otherwise Célie’s heart might squeeze too much in this warm, fuzzy, mushy urge to give the man a big hug—and then a very hard shove into the arms of his happiness.
Guys who screwed over a woman’s chance at happiness because they were so convinced they weren’t good enough did not earn any points in her book.
“Can somebody work around here besides me?” Dom asked in complete exasperation, totally unmerited, just because the guy had no idea how to deal with all the teasing that came his way. It was why they couldn’t resist. He was so big, and he got all ruffled and grouchy and adorable.
“I want to have time to pick out my dress!” Célie protested, hauling down the guitare. “I know exactly what you two are going to do. You’ll put it off until all of a sudden you wander in some Monday with a stunned, scared look on your face, and we’ll find out you eloped over the weekend to some village in Papua New Guinea. And we’ll have missed the whole thing!”
Dom growled desperately, like a persecuted bear, and bent his head over his éclairs.
Célie grinned and started slicing her mint ganache into squares, the guitar wires cutting through it effortlessly. There you go. She tasted one. Soft, dissolving in her mouth, delicately infused with fresh mint. Mmm. Perfect. Time to get it all dressed up. Enrobing time.
She got to spend her days like this. In one of the top chocolate laboratoires in Paris. Okay, the top, but some people over in the Sixth like a certain Sylvain Marquis persisted in disputing that point. Whatever. He was such a classicist. Boring. And everyone knew that cinnamon did not marry well with dark chocolate, so that latest Cade Marquis bar of his was just ridiculous.
And she didn’t even want to think about Simon Casset with his stupid sculptures. So he could do fancy sculptures. Was that real chocolate? Did people eat that stuff? No. So. She did important chocolate. Chocolate that adventured. Chocolate people wanted to sink their teeth into. Chocolate that opened a whole world up in front of a person, right there in her mouth.
Chocolate that was so much beyond anything she had ever dreamed her life would be as a teenager. God, she loved her day. She stretched out her arms, nearly bopped their apprentice Zoe, who was carrying a bowl of chocolate to the scale, grinned at her in apology, and carried her mint ganaches over to the enrober.
She’d been loving her day for a little over three hours and was getting kind of ready to take a little break from doing so and let her back muscles relax for fifteen minutes when Guillemette showed up at the top of the stairs. Célie cocked her eyebrows at the other woman hopefully. Time for a little not-smoke break, perhaps? Were things quiet enough downstairs? Célie didn’t smoke anymore, not since some stupid guy she once knew made her quit and she found out how many flavors there were out there when they weren’t being hidden by tobacco. But sometimes she’d give just about anything to be able to hold a cigarette between her fingers and blow smoke out with a sexy purse of her lips and truly believe that was all it took to make her cool.
Because the double ear piercings and the spiky pixie hair were a lot less expensive over the long-term, but they could be misinterpreted as bravado, whereas—
A teenager slouching against a wall and blowing smoke from her mouth was always clearly genuine coolness, no bravado about it, of course. Célie rolled her eyes at herself, and Guillemette, instead of gesturing for her to come join her for the not-smoke break, instead came up to her counter where she was working and stole a little chocolate. “There’s a guy here to see you,” Guillemette said a little doubtfully. “And we’re getting low on the Arabica.”
Célie glanced at the trolley full of trays where the Arabica chocolates had finished and were ready to be transferred to metal flats. “I’ll bring some down with me. Who’s the guy?” Maybe that guy she had met Saturday, Danny and Tiare’s friend? She tried to figure out if she felt any excitement about that, but adrenaline ran pretty high in her on a normal day in the laboratoire, so it was hard to tell.
“He didn’t say.”
And Guillemette hadn’t asked? Maybe there had been several customers at once or something.
“I’ll be down in a second,” Célie said, and Guillemette headed back while Célie loaded up a couple of the metal flats they used in the display cases with the Arabica, with its subtle texture, no prints on this one. Dark and exotic and touched with coffee.
She ran down the spiral metal stairs with her usual happy energy, and halfway down, the face of the big man waiting with his hands in his pockets by the pastry display counter came into view, and she—
Tripped.
The trays flew out of her hands as her foot caught on one of the metal steps, and she grabbed after them even as they sailed away. Her knuckles knocked ag
ainst one tray, and chocolates shot off it, raining down everywhere just as she started to realize she was falling, too.
Oh, fuck, that instant flashing realization of how much this was going to hurt and how much too late it was to save herself, even as she tried to grab the banister, and—
Hard hands caught her, and she oofed into them and right up against a big body, caught like a rugby ball, except it was raining chocolates during this game, and—
She gasped for breath, post impact, and pulled herself upright, staring up at the person who still held her in steadying hands.
Wary, hard, intense hazel green eyes stared back down at her. He looked caught, instead of her, his lips parted, as if maybe he had meant to say something. But, looking down at her, he didn’t say anything at all.
Strong eyebrows, strong stubborn forehead and cheekbones and chin—every single damn bone in his body stubborn—and skin so much more tanned and weathered than when she had last seen it. Brown hair cropped military-close to his head and sanded by sun.
Célie wrenched back out of his hands, her own flying to her face as she burst into tears.
Just—burst. Right there in public, with all her colleagues and their customers around her. She backed up a step and then another, tears flooding down her cheeks, chocolate crushing under her feet.
“Célie,” he said, and even his voice sounded rougher and tougher. And wary.
She turned and ran back up the staircase, dashing at her eyes to try to see the steps through the tears, and burst back up through the glass doors into the laboratoire. Dom looked up immediately, and then straightened. “Célie? What’s wrong?”
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