by Teri Wilson
She’d hardly said a word to him. Then again, they were back in the courtyard in full view of the press, the judges, the spectators. And their families.
The taste test challenge was to begin with the spectacle of each contestant tasting the challenge item. Leo wondered how he was going to pull that off in front of all the cameras, since he had no intention of actually eating any chocolate. He supposed he’d have to fake it somehow.
Right.
Okay, so he’d just have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Surely he’d figure something out. One thing was certain—he would never, ever do this again.
He glanced at Juliet beside him and was surprised to find her watching him. Studying him, as if they were the only two people standing in the crowded courtyard. She was surrounded by the scent of lemons, cool basil and rosemary from the garden, chocolate. The perfume of Rome.
God, how he wanted her. Even here. Even now, standing on the precipice of doom.
“In bocca al lupo,” he whispered.
She smiled in return, but still considered him with that hauntingly penetrating look. “Crepi il lupo.”
Crepi il lupo. May the wolf die. Leo was about to lie down and die right alongside him.
Juliet turned to face the crowd again. She was close enough that he could reach out and touch her if he so chose. But what business would one competitor have reaching for another’s hand or stroking the hair of one of his fellow chefs, right where the sunlight danced on her shoulders?
“This is it, Juliet. We’ll never stand here again. Not like this,” he murmured.
She glanced at him, and her emerald eyes grew wider. Softer. “What do you mean?”
He crossed his arms and looked away, once again carrying on with the ridiculous charade that they had nothing nice to say to one another. “I mean, I’m finished competing against you. I won’t do it again. I don’t even want to do it now.”
His eyes flitted back to her, unable to stay trained elsewhere for long.
Her lips parted. A word, a question dangled on her tongue. Why? Leo could sense it as clearly as if it were visible, made up of color and form.
She closed her mouth, the word unspoken. Because she already knew the answer. “I don’t want to compete against you anymore, either. But stopping isn’t going to change anything.”
He lifted a brow. “Won’t it?”
She glanced toward the audience—no doubt dominated by a horde of feuding Arabellas and Mezzanottes—and then back at him. “My family won’t all of a sudden like you simply because they won’t see you at the next chocolate fair. They’ll just hate you from afar.”
Hate him from afar. Much as he’d been loving Juliet from afar.
He grew very still. Loving Juliet? Is that what he’d been doing?
He hadn’t planned on falling in love. Didn’t think he was capable of it. He’d been running from love his whole life, from the tumultuous love of his family to the business-arrangement-disguised-as-love that had been his engagement. He’d always considered love a heavy burden under which he’d just as soon not sink.
And here he was. In love with Juliet. His only love sprang from his only hate.
“You’re right. I can’t stop this on my own.” One man fighting against history didn’t stand a chance. “But if we try, maybe we can stop it together.”
Juliet met his gaze. Full-on this time. No surreptitious glances, no fleeting looks. If she was worried about what her family would think, her expression gave no indication.
Electricity danced in the air between them. And its source seemed to be the sparkle in Juliet’s eyes.
“Then let’s start right now,” she said, the slight tremor in her voice the only hint that something altogether different was happening.
Leo glanced at his watch. Four minutes to eight. The competition was set to start in less than five minutes. “Now?”
“Yes. Now.” She took a deep breath. “No more competing. Starting right now. Whoever wins, we split the prize fifty-fifty. We make this competition about us. Not yours, not mine. Ours.”
Then Leo watched, spellbound, as she extended a hand toward him. She let it hang there between them, ready for him to take hold and shake it. To agree to her terms.
If only he could.
She offered him a smile as well as her hand, and a pang hit Leo dead in the center of his chest. Correction. Those weren’t her terms. Not really. They were their terms. Everything he wanted for the two of them.
His fingers itched to shake on it. To agree to the deal, even though it would have been wholly unfair. He was heading into the taste test challenge at a distinct disadvantage. In truth, he didn’t have a prayer. Barring some unforeseen miracle, he was about to fall on his face. Quite spectacularly so. Now wasn’t the time to join forces. Not unless he wanted to be another in a long line of Mezzanottes who had no qualms at the thought of taking advantage of an Arabella.
He had qualms. He had plenty of them. Enough for all the wrongs that had been committed in the name of the feud. On all sides.
“Leo?” Confusion—and a dash of pain—shone in Juliet’s eyes. She glanced down at her hand as if she couldn’t remember why she’d offered it to him in the first place.
He exhaled a strained breath. “I want to. God, I want to. More than you know.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the life left Juliet’s beautiful green eyes. Her bottom lip trembled. And that tremble just about did Leo in.
How were things going so wrong, so quickly?
He reached for her hand. Not to shake it, but to hold it in his.
She jerked out of reach. “But you won’t. Will you?”
“Not won’t. Can’t.” There was a difference. A big one.
The expression on Juliet’s face said otherwise. She flinched as though she’d been slapped. Witnessing that look, and knowing without a doubt that he’d been the cause of it, wounded Leo to his core.
“You can’t,” she said, her voice hollow and distant.
He held up a hand. “It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it?” She rolled her eyes. Naturally.
Because wasn’t that exactly what people always said when the truth was every bit as awful as it seemed? It’s not what you think.
Damn it, why couldn’t he seem to say the right thing? “Look, I’m serious.”
“I’m sure you are. Quite serious about beating me.” Her voice grew wobbly, and a hysterical laugh escaped her lips. “How could I have been so stupid? I thought you actually thought you wanted to put an end to the feud. To build a life together.”
That’s exactly what he wanted. “Juliet...”
“Make up your mind, Leo,” she said a little too loudly.
Their families had to know something was going on. Not that Leo cared at the moment. And for once, Juliet didn’t appear to care, either. There was fire in her eyes. Fire he’d seen each and every time she was passionate about something. It made him want to grab her and kiss her, draw her bottom lip between his teeth, whisper to her exactly how he felt about her so there would be no more misunderstanding.
She aimed that fire directly at him. “You just said you didn’t want to compete with me anymore. So which is it? You do or you don’t?”
He didn’t. Period.
He was going to have to tell her about his chocolate allergy. He didn’t want to. Not now. Not like this. If he did, one of two things would happen. Either she wouldn’t believe him, or she’d take pity on him and help him with the challenge. Leo wasn’t sure which of those options would be worse. He liked to think she trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t lie to her. But he didn’t want her pity either, no matter how badly he needed this win.
He ground his teeth together and took a deep breath. “Look, there’s something I
need to tell you.”
“That you gave me the chocolat chaud recipe? I already know. I found it. This morning, actually. Clearly, it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.” Her fire dimmed a bit, replaced by a smoldering vulnerability.
Her words caught Leo off guard. With all that had transpired in recent days, he’d stopped wondering if she’d found what he’d written in her grandmother’s recipe book. At first her silence on the subject tormented him. Giving her that recipe had seemed like such a great idea at the time. He’d meant it as a gift. A secret he’d bestowed upon her with which he’d intended to fix everything that was broken between them and their families.
The answer. A few generations too late.
“And what did you think it meant?” Leo crossed his arms.
He knew what he’d been feeling that night when he’d lain beside Juliet, overwhelmed by the storm that had swirled to life inside him when he’d taken her to bed. He still felt it. From the very center of his being.
I love you.
The words pulsed between them. As deafening and colorful as if they’d been spoken aloud or written in the sky in shimmering letters made of stardust.
“It doesn’t matter what I thought.” Her voice grew hoarse, and her eyes were suddenly glittering behind a veil of tears. “Not anymore.”
Enough. “You want me to make up my mind? Done. I don’t want to be on opposite sides. I want us to be a team. Forever. But I can’t agree to share the prize because...”
He was cut short by the sound of clapping hands echoing off the timeworn walls of the monastery-turned-cooking school.
The contest proctor stood in the center of the room, a barrier between the audience and Leo and Juliet. “Contestants, the time has come!”
Of course it had.
Just when he’d been about to set things straight, fate had to step in and remind Leo who was boss. If fate was indeed real, and if Leo could somehow get his hands on it, he would have happily pummeled fate into the ground at that moment.
“In accordance with the rules of this, the final round of competition, the contestants will be presented with a challenge item which they will be required to duplicate as closely as possible.” The proctor launched into a long-winded explanation of the rules.
It was the same old, same old. They would have five minutes to taste the challenge item and come up with a plan. Or rather, everyone but Leo would taste the challenge item. He planned on looking at it, taking it apart, dissecting it, smelling it. But tasting it? No. Even if taking a few bites wouldn’t kill him, it was sure to cripple him with a headache. And he’d be counting the seconds until he felt his throat begin to close up. Either way, he was screwed.
Behind the proctor’s back, Leo sought Juliet’s gaze. Somehow, some way they needed to finish their conversation. It was going to be difficult doing so when she refused to even look at him. She stared straight ahead without so much as a glance in his direction.
Leo looked back at the proctor and found the man staring at him in expectation, as though he’d just asked him a question. And Leo hadn’t the vaguest idea what that question might have been.
“Mr. Mezzanotte?” he prompted.
Leo needed to get his head in the game. Didn’t he have enough working against him as it was? “I’m sorry. Yes?”
“It’s your turn to sample the challenge item.” The proctor waved a hand at a silver tray piled high with truffles. Truffles of no special distinction whatsoever. From this distance, they looked like every other basic truffle Leo had ever laid eyes on. “Please, step forward.”
He ventured one last, unreturned glance at Juliet. Then he squared his jaw and approached the silver tray.
This is it. The beginning of the end.
He just hoped that on a day as black as this, only one ending awaited him.
* * *
Juliet watched Leo push his thumb into the center of the challenge truffle and inspect its contents. She watched him rub the ganache between his index finger and his thumb. She watched him bring the truffle toward his mouth and let it linger a hair’s breadth away from his lips before lifting it instead to his nose for a sniff. She watched him inspect it, smell it, feel every miniscule bit of it. He might have even talked to it. But the one thing he didn’t do was taste it.
At first she thought he’d simply lost track of time. But when the proctor announced that his five minutes was up, Leo’s face showed no hint of regret. He’d purposely not tasted the truffle. Not a single, miniscule bite.
Naturally, she wondered what in the world he was up to. There was a time when she would have thought he was possibly showing off. But that time had passed. He might have been a Mezzanotte, but Leo had never shown an ounce of arrogance when he competed against her. Not even when she’d shown up at the balloon festival with those awful strawberries. Granted, he was French trained. In all likelihood, he was probably capable of defeating her without even tasting the challenge item. She knew it. He knew it. But he wouldn’t want everyone else to know it, too.
“Miss Arabella?” The proctor directed his attention toward her. “Step forward to taste the challenge item.”
She took a deep breath and willed herself to stop worrying about Leo. He was a smart man. He had to know what he was doing, even if his actions appeared to be monumentally stupid. He was serious about this competition.
Serious enough to turn down her offer to join forces and share the prize.
She realized she’d already bitten into one of the truffles, chewed and swallowed without even being conscious of what she was doing. Now, who was the one acting monumentally stupid?
Forget Leo. Forget him and his chocolat chaud. Don’t think about his perfect forearms or his perfect handwriting.
She selected another truffle and took a bite. The sweet, light flavor of culinary lavender burst on her tongue. That’s as far as she got before her thoughts drifted back to Leo again. And the way she’d just stood there, holding out her hand, fully expecting him to shake it.
God, it was mortifying.
No, not mortifying so much as completely devastating. She’d been ready to give him her heart.
Who was she kidding? He already held her heart and soul in his hands. She’d surrendered it to him, knowing full well what she was doing.
Yours.
The trouble was...now she didn’t know how to take it back.
Tears pricked behind her eyes, ready to spill over. She blinked furiously and stared at the remaining half of the truffle in her hand. The temptation to seek out Leo’s gaze was overwhelming to the point of pain. But she refused to succumb to it. And she certainly didn’t want to look at her family. Who knew what they were thinking after witnessing the intense exchange between her and Leo?
Concentrate.
She popped the remaining truffle in her mouth, closed her eyes and tried her best to let go of all her senses, save for taste. As with her first bite, lavender was the overwhelming flavor. Along with chocolate, that is. But she knew she was missing something. There had to be more to it than the obvious.
She let the creamy ganache sit in her mouth for a bit. It was sweet. Sweeter than most chocolate ganache. She’d assumed the sweetness came from the lavender. Unlike lavender that was grown for bath soaps and oils, which tended to be bitter and strong, culinary lavender was known for its delicate sweetness. It was perfect for cookies, tea cakes and flavored crème brûlées.
Not until she swallowed did she detect the barest hint of caramel. But when she did, she knew she’d hit the nail on the head.
Her eyes flew open. Caramel. Of course. Just a dash. Not so much to overpower the lavender or make the truffle sticky, but enough to add another layer of sweetness.
Chocolate. Lavender. Caramel. And probably a dash of sea salt. Because where there was caramel, there was usually sea salt. Not
Leo’s fancy fleur de sel maybe, but garden variety sea salt.
She turned to face the proctor. “I’m ready.”
He checked his watch. “Are you quite sure, Miss Arabella? You still have approximately one minute left of your allotted time.”
“No, thank you. I’m ready.” She didn’t want to overthink things. She was pretty sure she was right. If she kept tasting it, she might invent new flavors to add into the mix. Flavors that would overcomplicate the recipe and send her veering off course.
“All right, then.” He nodded and called the name of the next contestant.
The name Agostoni was embroidered above the pocket of her chef’s coat. Juliet wondered if she was one of the Agostonis—an Italian family who’d created an empire out of their bean-to-bar chocolates and then subsequently sold it to a huge food company. Probably.
The Agostoni girl could win. So could any of the other handful of competitors. The odds were that neither she nor Leo would end up victorious. So, in essence, her proposed pact would have been a long shot even if he’d taken her up on it.
Somehow that still didn’t take the sting out of his rejection. She struggled to swallow. Her throat was bone dry. She felt sick to her stomach. She could feel Leo’s gaze on her, unwavering and as hot as his legendary chocolat chaud. She wished he would stop looking at her like that. She wished she could somehow forget he was there. She wished so many things.
How on earth was she going to get through the rest of this day?
The five-minute rounds for each contestant to taste the challenge item seemed to take an eternity. She watched the other chefs taste the truffles, smell them, roll them around between flattened palms and take them painstakingly apart. The head chocolatier from Jacques Torres even held one of the truffles aloft and let it fall to the ground with a splat. What exactly that was supposed to accomplish, Juliet hadn’t a clue. The crowd seemed to like it, though. Even Leo’s uncle Joe had a good laugh. Juliet was one hundred percent certain it was the first time she’d ever seen the man crack a smile. But then he caught her watching him, and his trademark scowl made a swift and immediate return.
