The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  Still more silence. “When you say he got ‘upset’ . . . what did he do?’

  Summer started to cry. She threw herself away from him, all her weight yanking on her wrists, and he caught her and pulled her back into him hard. “Oh, fuck,” he whispered, holding her very tight. “What did he do?”

  It calmed her almost instantly, the tightness of that hold. She could press her face into his chest, and this time she didn’t have to pretend her own darkness, this time she could have his. She scrubbed her face against him, trying to bury herself deeper. He curved a hand around her head, and she hiccupped and stopped crying, every muscle in her body relaxing. This felt so good. So exactly what she had been seeking, all her life. Just this moment, making everything about her okay, for the rest of her life. “Nothing,” she whispered against his chest, and he took a gasp of breath. “Nothing. He just kind of—lost it, and he—grabbed me, but then—someone else heard, and—it was okay. I know I shouldn’t have—I just—everybody loved me, and they didn’t even know about my father’s money, and I just—I shouldn’t have been so—spoiled.”

  He petted her back in steady strokes. She lay against him until, under that stroking, she saw nothing at all. No images of accusation and raging hurt and hard hands ripping at her, no thud as her body hit the sand. Just steady, enveloping darkness, and the scents of citrus and something warm and dark. Oh, she could stay here forever.

  “I didn’t mean to be,” she said despairingly into his chest. It felt easier to say this, when she could only see and smell him. “Tane was so cute, and he kept playing songs for me, and it was the first night I was there”—the hand stroking her checked just the tiniest bit, but then continued—“and I was so happy. But then, he was so laid-back, I mean his house was filthy, and he just lay around smoking marijuana, and he drove me crazy. And we had only been dating for a couple of months, and he didn’t seem to care, and Nato was all aggressive and macho, and he just went after me, and—I don’t know. Everyone was so exotic, and I was so exotic to them, and I guess nobody seemed real to me yet. It was like I was living in a story. It was easy to just fall for him instead and not think about the effect. But then—he was so bossy, and jealous, and he thought I should be cleaning his house but then he would get so mad at me about how I didn’t do it right, and—then he moved into my house, while I was at the school. And I just wanted to get away from him, and Puni was so funny, and he was always leaving me flowers, and . . . I don’t know. I didn’t really understand I wasn’t the only main character in this story.” She went ahead and said it for him: “Spoiled.”

  He said nothing for a while. He had stopped the long, steady strokes, but one hand still rubbed gently on the small of her back. “You were—how old? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Fresh out of Harvard, via a yacht cruise?”

  She gazed downward somewhere in the vicinity of his navel, her eyes barely open against his chest. His voice was so quiet, so calm.

  “How does getting summa cum laude at a place like Harvard work?” He sounded neutral, a researcher gathering information. “From here, we have the vague impression that it’s the top university in the world, but very expensive. Is the summa cum laude something your father bought for you?”

  Everybody always thought that. “I worked for it. I worked all night on presentations, I locked myself in the library and studied for exams, I wrote papers until eight in the morning. Then fell asleep on top of one and had my grade docked for turning it in at 9:30 instead of 9:00.”

  “No favoritism?”

  Sometimes she wanted so desperately to be back on that island where no one cared, she thought she would crack into a million pieces just so she could be more easily shipped there. “I think the professors who were impressed by my father, and maybe graded more lightly, were balanced out by the ones who graded harder because they thought I was spoiled, or because they were trying so hard not to grade too easily that they went in the other direction. I worked. I met with professors when I got bad grades on exams and tried to figure out a way to do better. But—you know, they are good at long-range planning, at Harvard. How much, behind the scenes, might have been influenced by the hope of having one alumna and her father leave with extremely good impressions of the school . . . I can’t know that.” Ever. Never, in any situation she had found for herself, except teaching school on that island, could she know for sure how much was to her credit. “And they give some kind of cum laude to half their graduating class, so . . . I don’t know. I did work for it, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Her father hadn’t thought it meant much. And he was one of the few people who knew for sure that he hadn’t openly bought it.

  Luc cupped her face in both hands and studied her a long moment. “You know how you are spoiled, Summer? If I talked to myself the way you do to yourself, I would be sleeping under a bridge. It’s quite a luxury, to be able to spend your life beating yourself up and still sleep in a suite like this. Quit.”

  Quit sleeping in luxury suites or beating herself up? She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve been trying,” she murmured. Trying both. “I don’t really have this trouble on the island.” Neither luxury suites, nor a vulnerable opinion of herself. Or maybe on the island her self-esteem was vulnerable, but no one was attacking it.

  His eyebrows flicked together. His hands tightened on her cheeks. “You’re happy there.”

  Her smile bloomed. “Very happy.”

  His face tightened. “You worked very hard, and earned something very difficult that you decided didn’t have any value, and went on a cruise, and jumped off on a remote island. And acted like a girl let out of a convent at Carnival, although I really don’t think you’re the first college student to have three affairs in a year, Summer. And after a year away, a violent attack, and the ruins of your easy paradise, you still chose to go to another island rather than come home. While you stopped dating entirely. For three years. And then walked in here and straight up to me.”

  “You know, I was really just trying to get someone to show me to my room,” Summer mentioned, aggravated.

  A sharp smile, the edge of his teeth showing. “There were three actual bellmen standing in that lobby, Summer. With uniforms on and everything. I can promise you at least two of them would have jumped at the offer of a yacht.”

  “Oh?” She tried to look interested. “Which ones?”

  He just looked at her a long moment. “You know, Summer, one advantage I have over you is that every damn thing I’ve accomplished in my life, I know exactly who accomplished it. I have no doubts about myself whatsoever. So you might not want to test me so much. I’ll pass.”

  She gathered her bathrobe around herself and gazed at him in utter awe and envy of that confidence, that complete conviction. Wishing that confidence was wrapped around her in place of the bathrobe.

  He stroked a lock of messy hair back, drawing it through his fingers and playing with its texture. Holding her entire being with just that gentle tug and shift against her scalp.

  “Tell me something, Summer,” he said very quietly. “Why are you so afraid I’ll catch you? No one else ever has.”

  He had no idea how hard she fought not to give herself entirely up to him. “I don’t know.” I’ve just known from the first you could. I want you to hold me. And never let me go.

  But I want to be able to go. Before I get crushed. It’s so miserable here. She didn’t make sense.

  To want something so much and to be so desperately afraid of it.

  She grinned. “Maybe because no one else was nearly as gorgeous?” Or as strong. Or as steady and controlled. Or as full of that pent-up passion that she longed to free. “Anyway, I’m out of here in April, so I’m just exaggerating about being trapped.”

  She was lying even worse than usual, that was what she was doing.

  That flicker in his face again. What had happened to his iron armor? That was the second time she had landed a blow. “We’ll see,” he said.

  “What?�
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  “How much you’re exaggerating. Although I would prefer some other word than ‘trapped.’ ” He tucked the hair behind her ear. “ ‘Held,’ maybe?”

  A spark blown in the wind, caught in two strong hands that closed over it like a warm cave.

  There was a knock on the door, and Luc’s hands flew faster than sight, closing her bathrobe, flicking tangles out of her hair, before room service brought in a selection of viennoiseries.

  “Are you sure they’re going to survive without you?” she asked after the man pushing the cart left. She felt self-conscious, sitting on the edge of the bed, breaking a roll so that golden flecks spilled onto her bathrobe and the scent teased warmth around her.

  “I think over the past five years here, I’ve earned the right to come in late one morning.” But tension built in him, under that cool ease, like a coiled spring. He tried not to pace, but that energy didn’t know what to do with itself. “I need to set up a schedule that will free up some of my evenings. Now. Starting this week. It will be good for the sous-chefs to have full responsibility more often, and probably good for me to not be looking over their shoulders, although”—He winced a little at some image of possible results, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “It will be good for everyone. I’m even thinking about working with Hugo and Alain to close the restaurant Sunday and Monday. None of the other three-star restaurants stay open seven days a week.”

  Really? He would do that for her? When she would never in her life have dared to ask? Hope sparked, all unexpected. “I can give people raises to compensate for the increased responsibility or the shift in hours, if that helps. Or work out a way to compensate for any loss in revenues.”

  His jaw tightened. “Summer. I don’t care if your father gives you the entire world wrapped in a bow. I do not need you to intervene in my kitchens. I don’t need you to help me accomplish anything in my life.”

  It hurt so much, it was so utterly true, that she couldn’t do anything but hold the bathrobe together at her throat while behind its plush white all her insides plunged in dizzy, sick freefall.

  “I probably really should go.” He shifted to thread his fingers into her messy hair and kiss her. He cocked his head when he lifted it, searching her face. She didn’t know why. Her lips had responded to his. A perfectly proper kiss. He must have decided it was one, too, or if it wasn’t, that it didn’t matter as much as getting to work. He stroked her hair back from her face, curved his hand around the nape of her neck, and gave it a little squeeze.

  At the door, he stopped just long enough to look back at her and hold her eyes. She was still managing a light smile, which made his eyes search hers again, but her smile didn’t falter. “By the way, Summer,” he said, “in case you didn’t realize—your taste in men has improved.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Luc leaned over the big calendar on his desk, erasing and writing things in. Damn it, why the fuck did the president have to eat here so much? Luc would have to be on that night. Next Friday, he was taking Patrick and Noé out to Valrhona to help develop a special Leucé chocolate, so that day was shot. Here—Patrick was just going to have to handle that banquet. It was good preparation for his own place, being in charge at the big events.

  “So can we take my car?” Patrick asked, stepping cheerfully into the office. “To Valrhona?”

  Luc gave him a wary look. He had never ridden passenger with Patrick before, and God only knew what Patrick might do. “I was thinking I would drive.”

  “You’re always thinking you would drive. Everything. Seriously, you have to learn to let go.” Patrick moseyed over to Luc’s desk and set one hand on top of the calendar before Luc thought to flip the page. Patrick’s glance only flickered down to it—by rights, not even long enough to read it all—but his face suddenly split into a grin, and he looked closer. Then looked back up at Luc, the grin half-fading into something . . . practically misty-eyed. “Luc. This is adorable.”

  “Patrick, will you get the fuck out of my—”

  “Has she seen this? I’m getting all mushy just looking at it.” Patrick tapped a finger on one of the many slots where something had been erased or put in brackets and words like, “S.—theater?” “S.—skating?” had been added. And then there were all the slots were Luc had determined he should be able to take the afternoon break instead of working through it and had just written,“3–5: Summer.”

  Luc set his jaw and rode out the flush as best he could. It had been easier to keep himself from flushing a few days ago, before Summer shattered his control. The damn control just hadn’t been working right since.

  Patrick frowned, studying the calendar further. “You know, Luc, I might want to have a love life, too. Do you have to put me on all the evening slots you’re going to the theater? Make Noé do some of them. He loves being out of our shadow.”

  “ ‘Our’?”

  Patrick grinned. “Well, it’s true that I cast more of a radiant glow, but for some reason, not everyone wants to bask in my reflected glory. Besides, if I’m on all the nights, and you’re mostly days, I’ll never see you again.” He looked utterly woebegone. “Not to mention, I’m not sure how many fine crumbs you might grind our intern into if I’m not there to protect her. Why don’t you switch her to nights with me?”

  Ah. Luc glanced through the glass walls at Sarah carrying a giant mixing bowl that looked bigger than she was, face flushed with the strain and jaw set in absolute determination not to ask for help. He slid a glance at Patrick, who rested against the desk with his back to that view, possibly on purpose in order to keep himself from slipping over to help her, but it was always hard to tell with Patrick. It would ruin ten years of working Patrick past his screwed-up childhood if Luc kept Sarah out of his reach. But Patrick wasn’t a boy who could barely shave anymore, and Luc wasn’t sure what that made of him, the chef, to sacrifice their intern’s right to an un-harassed work zone to keep Patrick happy. It would help if he had any idea what Sarah thought about Patrick, but Sarah would hardly confide in him. An odd thought crossed his mind, Summer slipping into their kitchen life with a smile, helping negotiate these workplace romance issues. Maybe if she was very clearly attached to the chef, which would give her a natural role as queen here and make her less of a threat to other women . . .

  Alain Roussel pushed the door to the office open, glanced at Patrick, and hesitated as he looked at Luc.

  “Oh, don’t mind me.” Patrick folded his arms like a man in for the long haul. “You can say anything in front of me.”

  Alain looked at Luc again, waiting. Luc flicked open a hand. “Go ahead.” Patrick settled more deeply into his position, looking pleased with himself.

  Alain took a deep breath. “We’re to close the restaurant Sundays and Mondays, starting three months from now, as soon as current reservations run out.”

  Luc gaped at him. Patrick’s arms fell from his chest. “I beg your pardon?”

  “She’s the owner, Luc. I couldn’t argue her out of it. Actually, she wanted it to start next week, and I argued how much damage that would do to our reputation to cancel so many reservations. So she thinks she’s compromising. She was very—did you two get in another fight or something?”

  “No.” She had seemed just a little—odd when he kissed her that morning, but . . . wait, what the hell business was this of Alain’s? Luc gave the director a cool look.

  Alain glared at him despairingly. “Did you have to crack? I never expected any control out of her, but you.”

  “It gives a man a whole new perspective on life, doesn’t it?” Patrick said cheerfully.

  “I’ll talk to her.” It confused Luc no end to not feel angry. The thought of taking two days off a week to enjoy her made him feel as if, for the first time in his life, he could lay his head down on his desk and just—let all the tension drain out of his muscles. His desk, putain, non, that would be a waste. How about two soft breasts . . .

  “No, you won’t,” Alain said bitterly, and Luc
was already so deep into the fantasy that he narrowed his eyes dangerously at having someone try to interfere in it.

  “Talk to her. She’s gone out for a run.”

  A run? Summer swam for exercise. And hated winter. “In the rain?”

  Summer ran until she couldn’t run anymore. She came in streaming, her face coated with rain under the baseball cap with which she had tried to keep it out, running clothes plastered to her body, limping on calves already tightening up.

  Luc appeared before she had even gotten through the lobby, sugar on his hands and a red streak down his cheek. He stilled a half-second at the first sight of her, and then came forward fast. Under that controlled, superb flow to his movements, wildness simmered very close to the surface.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” He swung her up into his arms, which earned them a few flashes of cameras, and hauled her off to the elevator, where she writhed her way out of his hold, hunching her shoulders as cold water dripped down them.

  “I can’t swim far enough in that fucking pool.”

  He punched the button for her floor. “How far did you run?”

  “From here to Notre Dame and back? Probably about twelve kilometers.” God knew, she had walked the distance enough in her time. She brushed past him as the elevator doors opened, limping despite herself.

  He came after her. “How far do you usually run?”

  “I don’t. But I’ve got great cardiovascular.”

  “So your lungs could handle it way past what your legs should have.” He marched her straight into her bathroom, opening the faucets full blast, stripping them so fast with those flying, deft hands, she barely had time for an exhausted blink. He picked her up and he sat down in the great pool of a tub, with her in his lap, hot water foaming around their legs as the level rose. She shivered violently at the warmth.

  He drew one of her legs up, massaging the foot and calf with clever, strong fingers. “Trying to get away?” His voice was—angry. Arousal grew in him, pressing into her naked butt, the water foaming furiously around their thighs. Outside, city lights fought the growing dimness. Oh, God. Not only was she naked to that snooty city, but the way he held her leg up to massage it meant that her sex was spread wide, too. The water burbling against it.