The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  “Do you have an island lover, Summer?”

  Not in three years. “Is that any business of yours?” she asked him hostilely.

  A tiny flexing of his jaw. “Apparently I think so. Or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want?” If he said you again ...

  But he had stopped, his attention caught by the photos sliding across her giant television screen.

  Lush green mountains plummeted into an azure bay, a photo that unknotted every muscle in her shoulders whenever she saw it, tension flowing out of the nape of her neck as the beauty of it sighed through her. It slid away, replaced by one of Summer sitting on the sand, legs folded, a tanned, raggedy mess of badly cut hair and uncared-for skin, and the Capri-length cut-offs that didn’t even show off her legs properly but were as short as island mores allowed. She had black-haired kids piled all over her, one climbing up her back like a monkey, face peeking just by her ear, one toppled in her lap even though he was too big to fit in it, a couple of the older ones pressed on either side, grinning faces against her shoulders. Shy, serious Vanina was making bunny ears above her head, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

  Luc made a soft sound. She glanced at him, her own grin at the photo fading. He looked dazed, a little blank, as if someone had hit him over the head.

  A new photo slid into place. A little out of focus, because she had been letting Ari, one of her six-year-olds, use the camera. Summer, hanging like a pig for roasting from a wooden pole being carried by two men. They had all gone to Nuku Hiva for the Heiva festivities midsummer—pretty much the entire island had gone, all together on the deck of a cargo boat—and the men had just finished taking second place in the race with the poles laden with bananas over their shoulders. They had started joking about whether Summer weighed more than the bananas, which, of course, had quickly degenerated into jokes about whether she weighed more than a trussed pig as they pretended to carry her off to be roasted. Then one of the men, a little drunk by then, had made a joke about peeling the banana and eating it, and Summer had laughed and dropped off the pole to go do something else. She had been two years celibate by that time and kind of liked the idea of being peeled and eaten by someone, but her whole balance on that island depended on the missionary morals self-portrayal.

  The photo slid, and she winced. That stupid expression on her face, frozen by the camera just at the wrong second, but she had kept it because it was the one that had captured Moea’s upside-down grin, as he hung from a branch, offering her a mango.

  The next one . . . oh, for crying out loud. The proper way to climb a coconut tree was not to wrap one’s legs around it but to press the soles of the feet to the trunk on either side, pushing up with a frog-like motion. This series captured multiple ludicrous moments as Summer tried to learn the technique, various islanders laughing uproariously in the background.

  She looked as awkward and ridiculous as it was possible for someone to look. Normally this series made her laugh her head off, but—

  She grabbed the remote and turned the screen off before Perfectionism Personified, who doubtless hadn’t had an awkward moment since he was thirteen, could see any more of the show.

  He looked as if he was trying to suppress physical pain.

  Didn’t that just figure? One day, he would probably marry some picture-perfect woman he could hang up on the wall in his apartment, instead of having to deal with any flaws.

  Eyes of pitch cut toward her. “What the hell was that?”

  “Oh, get over yourself,” Summer said, stiffening. Did he think the whole world was supposed to be perfect all the time, just in case he was watching?

  A flicker of confusion in his eyes, but it didn’t knock him off target. “What the hell were you doing on that island?”

  “Teaching school.” She shrugged. “I’m not saying I could handle it in an urban high school, but on a tiny island in the Pacific, it turns out to be the perfect job for me. Everyone loves me.”

  “You were smiling.” That tiny muscle flexed in his jaw, probably his equivalent of pure rage. “Like you were happy.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize my being happy would ruin your day.”

  “Who the hell was taking those pictures?” He shifted, his body suddenly dominating hers. His eyes glittered. “Damn it, you do. Have an island lover.”

  “I haven’t had a boyfriend in three years!” she yelled, and he jerked as if, for once, she had whipped him. “And it’s not your business.”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “It is. Trust me, if I was constantly coming on to you, you would have the right to know if I had a girlfriend.”

  She whitened. “I’m sorry, grabbing a woman in a car and telling her you want her for your toy doesn’t count as a come-on?”

  He ignored that. “That damn smile you do here doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

  “I’m just trying to be nice. What am I supposed to do, scowl at everybody?” Which people would have criticized, too. Nobody had ever been happy with her here. Rich and blond and none of it to her credit, she had been born to be the world’s scapegoat.

  “I don’t want you to be nice to me,” Luc said.

  “Yes, you mentioned.” She put her desk between them.

  “When? Do you define blow jobs as being nice?” Luc asked incredulously.

  She flushed crimson. “I never actually—”

  He made a slicing motion of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry. Let’s not bring that up again.”

  She took a deep breath at the apology. Her mouth softened, tremulous, that close to burying her head against his chest and crying. The urge scared her to death. She did not want to be fragile, and definitely not around him.

  “Summer.” His voice changed, dark-night gentle. Dark knight. “I didn’t mean what you chose to think, about the toy, you know. Why do you always hear the wrong part of what I’m trying to say?”

  “Look, I’m busy,” she said roughly. “Just tell me what you want.”

  He watched her a long moment before he allowed her change of subject. “Let me show you the kind of thing that has been spreading through the media.” The headlines came up as soon as he typed the hotel’s name into her computer, images of her and him, titles like: “Is the Leucé falling apart?” “Irreparable Differences?” “New Directions for Luc Leroi?”

  “It’s an uproar, Summer. Bloggers and critics are slipping in from everywhere, trying to be the one to catch the story, or the first to predict the loss of a star. There’s a writer from Le Figaro here tonight. Supposedly in secret, but we’ve got good connections. I want you to act like you like me.” Black eyes rested on her. “Like you wouldn’t dream of being parted from me.”

  “I’m trying!” Alain had already talked to her about it once. In public, she smiled around him until even her face hurt.

  That muscle in his jaw ticced. “Like you really like me. Not like some socialite raised to heap extravagant praise on the woman she’s about to stab in the back.”

  She folded her arms. What the hell did he know about the social survival skills necessary in an elite boarding school full of pampered but poorly raised girls? Walk a mile in her high heels and then maybe he would have an excuse to mock how she balanced in them. Or he might even understand why she preferred going barefoot. “What else do you want me to do? Kiss your feet in full view of the dining room?”

  “No. Relax and put some sincerity into it. As if you genuinely like me.”

  “I’m doing the best I can!”

  That made his jaw tighten until she thought he might crack something. “Maybe your acting ability isn’t up to such a challenge. Maybe you should try genuinely liking me instead.”

  She gaped at him. “How in the world am I supposed to manage that?”

  That perfect face of his hardened. Obsidian eyes flicked, unsettlingly, over her body and to the wall behind her. “Quite.” He turned and left.

  CHAPTER 20


  So she tried.

  To make up for her temper and her screwups.

  She really tried.

  A little midnight-blue dress, silky and dark to bring out her eyes and set off her hair, one part naughty suggestion and two parts elegantly flirty. Skin fresh from the spa, impossibly tall, strappy sandals that would bring her up to his shoulder. She looked like someone a supreme perfectionist could stand to be seen in company with. Which she should, given how much she had had to practice at that role all her life.

  She stood a moment in the entrance to the dining area, wondering who the critic was. She hadn’t been able to catch one of the staff to give her a clue—probably just as well. Her acting would seem more sincere if it wasn’t aimed toward one person.

  You like Luc, she told herself, trying to get into her role.

  You like him.

  You like him.

  How does it feel to like him? Muscles in her neck slowly unwound, sending a little shiver down her spine, as if ice had melted. As if something fighting too hard, for too long, had finally been allowed to give up. She wanted to turn on her heel and hide back in her room.

  But it was too late. She had offered herself on the altar of the hotel’s success; she had to carry through.

  You like him. Oohs and aahs as a waiter reached a table. The Aladdin’s Cave, little footprints sneaking across jewel-flecked sand to where the sesame seed lay. Exclamations of delight and wonder as someone hesitated a long time before the beauty of the creation, turning it every which way to examine it, before finally dipping a spoon into it to find out what such beauty tasted like.

  And then more aahs. Eyes closed in exquisite pleasure.

  Tropical fruit bloomed in a small crystal vase, papayas and mangoes and pineapple arching out of it in a stylized exuberance of hibiscus, bougainvillea, birds of paradise. A single white tiare flower made of sugar, just like the flowers that grew on a bush beside her little hut by the beach, graced the yellows and golds of the mixture on one side.

  Three golden orbits of a star around a dark, proud mountain. Pomegranates spilled like blood across new-fallen snow. Gold light falling into a rugged, dark abyss, melting a pool of liquid chocolate where it fell. The red-white Pomme d’Amour gleaming its dangerous challenge.

  They were all for her.

  Every single one, something he had made for her.

  In this very same room where she used to sit as a child, watching every table fill with desserts she would never get to taste.

  She turned her head to let her gaze linger on the dessert at the last table—a playful collection of those handcrafted chocolate-marshmallow teddy bears that she had seen in the playroom, now dancing around a mass of golden curlicues—and nearly ran into Luc.

  He steadied her with a hand around her arm, and she looked up past that familiar open-throated white shirt, immersed in the pretense that she liked him.

  His black eyes seemed very dark, gazing down at her. That was silly, they were always dark. His fingers held her arm gently, and his chest rose and fell, once, on a deep breath.

  “Hello,” he said and bent.

  She stared up at him, caught by that supple, always-controlled mouth as it descended.

  He closed his hand around her chin and turned her head just enough to kiss first one cheek, then the other. The brush of his lips teased mere millimeters away from the corners of hers.

  They had never exchanged bises before. What did cheek kisses even mean, in their situation? Her fingers touched the corner of her lips as his exceptionally controlled fingers slid slowly from her chin.

  “Summer.” He tucked her hand into his arm. “Come have dinner with me.”

  Right, to show their solidarity to the critic. Her stomach shimmered with a thousand little fairy wings as she walked beside him, her fingers curling into the silk-wool blend of his coat.

  The maître d’ sat them at a tiny table for two tucked under an enormous bouquet-tree of roses, in the corner of the glass windows that revealed the night-lit streets of Paris. And yes, the damn Eiffel Tower, glowing in the dark, a backdrop to Luc’s head.

  “Where’s the critic?” she murmured as she sat, to keep herself focused. The maître d’ glanced at Luc in surprise, and Luc took one of her hands across the table and pinched the knuckle gently, making a little no-no gesture with one finger over the back of her hand.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He shook his head slightly at the maître d’ as he left. “You’re doing beautifully.”

  Of course she was doing beautifully. She always did. It was just . . . people seemed to think that was something wrong with her.

  “The first time I sat down at a table like this, I was probably three years old,” she said wryly. Some of her earliest memories were of not getting one of those desserts, in fact. Her training in how to do beautifully had been merciless. “It might even have been in this same room, although it’s been remodeled.”

  Luc laughed ruefully. He seemed to have forgotten that his fingers still curved over the back of her hand. Relaxing from the pinch, they began to trace over her knuckles as if his hands didn’t know how to be still, caressing the soft skin and tendons. “The first time I sat down to a three-hour dinner in a three-star restaurant, I was twenty-five. That table over there. I had been making the desserts that went on tables like this for years by then. They were courting me to come here, and I saw what Hugo Faure could do, and what this place could be, and I agreed.”

  “And we’re so lucky to have you,” Summer said, a little loudly.

  He pressed his nail into the back of her knuckle and stroked over it again immediately, chasing away the reprimand. “Summer, don’t worry any more about what the critic might think. Just relax. Be yourself.”

  Relax. Be herself. The temptation of it. Relax into him, let him wrap darkness around her and hold her there, the way she had always craved. Just keep her safe a little, until she could get back to the sun.

  “Trust me,” he murmured, fingers stroking the back of her hand.

  There was a reason she wasn’t supposed to do that, and it didn’t have anything to do with him. But it blurred, under those skilled fingers. They found every part of her hand, so idly, so absently, forgotten by him. The exquisitely sensitive flesh between thumb and index finger. The just-short-of-ticklish spot at the base of each finger.

  The Eiffel Tower behind him started to sparkle like stars in his black hair, and she forgot even how much she hated that tower.

  Luc said something to a waiter, dictating how he wanted the dinner to go, orders so natural, so rhythmic, with no need for any menu, that despite her complex rebellion against someone else dictating her choices, they rocked her like a boat in a sheltered sea. He queried her with his eyebrows and a little smile, and she nodded, ready to do anything for that little smile. His fingers had never stopped stroking her hand the whole time. Nor had he ever once looked at her hand as if he knew what his fingers were doing.

  “So how did you end up on an island of under three hundred people teaching school?” he asked, just like every man she had sat down to dinner with since she got here. That, too, lulled her. Made her feel as if she knew what she was doing.

  “I jumped ship.” She smiled, still remembering the joy of it.

  A querying eyebrow. The bruise on his cheek looked worse today, blue and yellow.

  “Some of us had rented a yacht, for a postgraduation cruise. And I got off when we stopped to swim in a lagoon and decided not to get back on.”

  Those fingers stilled on the back of her hand. He looked at her very steadily, under utter control. “You left your boyfriend at the time without a second thought.”

  She supposed it was normal he assumed she had a boyfriend on a postgraduation cruise. She nodded.

  An odd expression on Luc’s face. For the first time he looked down at his fingers lying over the back of her hand. “That must have thrilled him,” he said, low, a strange tension in his voice.

  “He recovered. He’s got a
promising career in Hollywood now, in fact. I wouldn’t have suited him.”

  “Don’t you mean he wouldn’t have suited you?”

  “Also.” Very few men seemed to suit her fixation with ambitious oblivious workaholics and her pathological need for attention and desire to play in the sand. None, in fact.

  “You never regretted it?”

  “Just once.” She shrugged, and then grinned. “Tropical island paradise. Even I’m not too spoiled for that.”

  “Tropical island paradise. Without electricity. Or luxury. Or variety.” Luc was watching her intently.

  “I didn’t say it would suit you,” she said a little sullenly. That dream of getting him to run away with her on a yacht was so long dead by now. Or it should have been.

  His face tightened.

  “And the electricity only goes out some of the time,” she muttered.

  “So when was that once you regretted it?” That sudden, contained grin of his, that intense look full of warmth and passion all pent up, that hit her so hard. “A bad sunburn?”

  He was teasing her. “Umm . . . no.” She took a strong swallow of her wine and closed her eyes a moment on its dulcet gold, her stomach churning at the real reason for that one regret. She opened them to find Luc still watching her intently. “You know, you have stars in your hair,” she said, and then flushed.

  He touched his hair, confused, and then glanced behind him at the sparkling Eiffel Tower. With a laugh he turned back to her, his eyes very intrigued. Warm and dark. “You have the sun in yours. But all the time. Mine will go out in a minute.” He cocked his head, his smile deepening to show a heretofore unguessed-at crease in each cheek. Just a bit too restrained to be a proper dimple, which was like him. “These stars will,” he clarified, with amused arrogance.

  She smiled, but she felt a little anxious. “I can’t really affect your star count, can I? You’re amazing.”

  His eyes caught hers. He sat up slowly straighter. “You mean that.”