Then she went out on the terrace and gazed down at the twilit sea, brushing her hand back and forth across the lavender in the nearest pot to release the scent. Solitude felt more normal on the terrace than inside. Thoughtful, quiet. A choice.
Because it was a choice. Not an easy choice, not a walk-in-the-park choice, but a definite choice she had made. To leave her island, for Luc. To face solitude at first. To support him, while he worked like a dog to build a new restaurant, a new reputation here, and to believe in him, that he would not have to work that hard and leave her this alone forever.
To draw on all the strength and sense of self she had built in those islands to help her get through the first, toughest part until she could build strength and value here, too.
She covered her belly with her hand. So quit whining, Summer. Grow up. Quit needing so much attention. Don’t be so spoiled.
A little hiccup of hurt in her heart at the word.
She repeated it to herself, harshly, like her dad: Spoiled.
Right.
She bent her head, stroking her belly. I want to spoil you. But I’m not supposed to. Not supposed to ruin you that way. I want you to turn out—perfect. So everyone will love you.
A ripple of profound shock, her head jerking up. That last part had sounded like her mother.
No. No, no, no. I’m not doing that to my baby. Not teaching her how to be perfect as if that’s the only way she can hope to earn love.
Oh, hell, how am I supposed to get this right?
***
A light was glowing on the terrace outside their bedroom when Luc got home, the doors between bedroom and terrace wide open so that the indoor and outdoor spaces blurred. Lavender scented the space, from the pots tucked against the walls, and stone, and maybe a distant hint of the sea. Summer sat at the tall table there, her laptop open.
“You’re still up?” Luc came behind her to put a hand on her nape, rubbing her silky hair as he bent to kiss her. She closed the laptop right away, though. Had that been a glimpse of a coconut palm on that web page? His stomach knotted. “Shouldn’t you be getting your rest?” Pregnant women got tired, right? He himself only rested when Summer dragged him down into a hammock, so it was hard to wrap his mind around the idea of rest as an actual need. He had made it to the age of thirty without ever having a moment’s true rest, so how could it be a need? No, it was this special gift, this privilege, that Summer gave him.
“You’re up late, too,” she said, a tiny, rough grain of sand in the silk of her. She must be sleepy. He smiled, thinking about ways he could make her sleepier—all soft and heavy and curling up satisfied—and gave her nape another pet before he started to undress.
“Bloom,” he explained as he pulled off his shirt. Discovering those should-have-been gorgeous chocolate domes covered with the pale, splotchy shades of chocolate improperly tempered, a discovery he’d made half an hour before the service started, still made him want to gnash his teeth. “That’s why I’m late. On all the chocolate domes. It’s our most popular dessert, Summer, and…every single one. I swear to God you have to watch this team every single second. Who doesn’t know how to temper chocolate?”
“Me.” A glimmer of a smile, just this elusive shimmer of it over his skin. God, he missed her. He knew it was bad of him to try to dominate all her time and attention that way, but he loved when she came to hang out all evening in the restaurant, helping where she could, tucking herself into a corner when things got so crazy she was in the way. It made his whole evening just kind of—sing.
And God, but she was good at handling customers. Whenever she stood in for the maître d’, people acted as if they’d been suddenly invited into the private home of a princess and allowed to dine there, welcomed with that elusive friendliness of hers that seemed to say: This is a rare and special grace for you, to dine here with us this evening. Isn’t it wonderful to be so lucky? What special people you must be.
He was pretty sure she even believed that about him, that anyone who tasted his food was blessed by the gods.
“I’ll teach you.” Oh, yeah, what a delicious idea. Him standing behind Summer, hand around her wrist, guiding her as they lifted and spread melted chocolate over marble. As she dipped a knuckle in it to learn when the temperature was right…as she sucked it off…or offered it to him. “Whenever you want.”
A tiny flicker of a glance that confused him, as if she didn’t believe him, when he was already being sucked right into that fantasy so deeply that his mouth watered from it and it was all he could do not to bend over her right now and suck on far more of her than just a knuckle. He could start with a knuckle.
“You’ve been working late a lot,” she murmured to her laptop, open again now that he was at an angle where he could no longer see it.
He paused with his hands at the waist of his pants and searched her face, but he could only see that exquisite, delicate profile, as she focused on what she was typing. “It’s just getting everything started. We’ve only been running two months.” He hesitated, feeling ridiculous and awkward, all things he had trained himself long ago not to feel and definitely not to show. But he could show them to Summer, surely. “I want to have a star for the baby,” he admitted, trying not to flush. He shrugged his shoulders to make them more comfortable. But he could expose this to Summer. She was the only person in the world to whom he could expose his heart in words, and not just food. “I want her daddy to have a star.” The heat grew in his cheeks.
She looked up at that, and her expression softened. The warmth of it reached out to him, curling tendrils around his bare, tired body. Making it less tired. Making him want to hurry up with that shower so he could come back over to her. “You’ve had three already,” she said gently. “Luc—she won’t care about a star.”
Oh, God, he hoped Summer was wrong about that. Because that was what he was good at, getting stars. He didn’t have anything else he was sure he could get right. “She’ll be proud when she’s older,” he tried, more tentative than he liked. She would, wouldn’t she?
“Maybe,” Summer said. “But an adult child’s pride in her father is a small compensation for feeling loved by him when she’s young.”
Oh. And Summer would know, wouldn’t she? He flexed his fingers into his palms and ran through all the things he used to tell himself, when he was glaring at his father-in-law, that he would do better as a father. Play with his little girl on the monkey bars, let her sit in his lap whenever she wanted, sit her on the counter while he worked so he could make her beautiful, special things just for her. He could still do all those things. He could.
And they might even work, too. They couldn’t be worse than the way his and Summer’s parents had raised—or abandoned raising—them. Right?
Shit, how did he get this parenting thing perfect before they had the actual baby? What was he supposed to practice on?
“It will be better by the time she—or he—is born,” Luc promised. “The restaurant will be running more smoothly, and I’ll be more sure I can count on Antoine and the staff when I’m not there.”
She nodded understandingly and looked back at her computer. “Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” she murmured to her screen. “All my boyfriends were the same way.”
He stopped dead in the bathroom door, the needle sliding delicate and silver right through his ribs and lodging there. She hadn’t needled him that way in a long time. He’d forgotten how good she was at it. Smiling and sweet and silky, so that you kept wondering if maybe you’d stabbed yourself with the needle or something, since it couldn’t possibly have come from her.
He walked back across the room to her, a thin sliver of steel seeming to shift in his rib muscles with every stride. “I’m not one of your boyfriends, Summer.” He leaned across the table, planting his forearms on either side of her computer, dominating her space. “I’m your husband.”
Something flashed in her eyes, this bitten-back thing too ugly to say, that tightened his stomach into a knot
as he stared down at her. Don’t say that, Summer. Whatever you almost said about me being your husband, don’t say it.
Oh, God, what was she going to say?
“I thought I had one somewhere,” she murmured instead to her computer, tapping it thoughtfully.
He leaned in closer and snatched a kiss—just stole it, fierce and hard and not letting her resist it. She pulled back and looked at him. And then she shook her head a little and leaned back toward him. He tried to kiss her hard again, just take her over, I own you, you’re my wife, you’re mine, and she shook her head again, twisting her mouth free and then bringing it back, softer. Gentling him. Seeking what she wanted.
Oh. As the softness and warmth caressed through his own possessive anger, the tension in him unwound. He could do this, too. He shifted around the table, pulling her into his arms. Tension coiled back up again at the feel of her body, but such a healthier tension, whole and hungry instead of jagged and starved. “I should take a shower,” he murmured.
She licked the hollow of his throat. “You taste like salt,” she whispered. “And you smell like—mmm, lime?”
He petted her back, and she snuggled more deeply into him, tightening all the muscles in his body while her own muscles softened. Oh, that was a perfect fit, his growing hardness, her growing softness. “Since when have you liked lime so much?”
“Since it smells like you,” she said, and bit him. Arousal jolted through him at the tiny, hungry pressure of her teeth against his collarbone. He lifted her up into him, pulling her thighs around his hips.
Ah, yes, a perfect fit. Lovely. Lovely how this still worked. His mind flashed visions of a bump slowly getting in the way, then getting so big they had to give up this position entirely, and he stroked his hand between them over her belly, cupping it fully for the first time since she had told him, the whole awareness that a baby was in there turned surreal and beautiful. Did it feel beautiful to her? It was happening to her. God, how must that feel?
He kissed her again, trying to find out, trying to steal that feeling from right inside her and taste it himself. “You taste just the same,” he murmured. That was strange, too, as if she should taste new and exotic. “I’m glad. I’m glad you taste like mine.”
She pulled back a little, but he kept one hand firm under her butt, to keep that delicious pressure against his groin. “You don’t think you’ll like it when I change?”
“I think you’ll be the most beautiful pregnant woman the world has ever seen,” he said, in complete honesty. Merde, they’d probably be trying to get her to pose naked for Vanity Fair. And they wouldn’t have to touch her up, either. She’d cause some whole new wave of Madonna paintings among artists. Probably triple next year’s birth rate, with all the women who wanted to look like her.
Her face got all funny, crinkling up, her eyes so wondering it was almost as if a sheen of tears was making them sparkle. “Really?”
“Summer. How can you know so well how beautiful you are and still not know it?” Sometimes he hated the whole damn world that had ever gotten to her before he did.
She shrugged, all pleased and embarrassed. So he kissed one of those beautiful, strong swimmer’s shoulders. She could swim much farther than he could. And yet her shoulders would always, always be so much smaller. Is the Mediterranean enough of a swimming pool for her? Or is she missing the South Pacific?
It was weird how that made her sound so spoiled, even in his head, when it was actually one of the least spoiled things about her. She’d spent four years in the South Pacific, on a remote island, teaching school. Shut as far away as she could from everyone in the world besides her islanders and her school kids.
Her cousin Jaime talked about how it was the only way Summer could be real. She’d warned him about it, actually, in a little moment under a coconut palm tree at their wedding, nibbling at the pork from the great roast the islanders had done for them. Not warned him away, exactly—they were already married by then—just discreetly alluded to a problem he might need to be alert to, if he took Summer away from the place she felt so real and solid to the world where she felt fragile and alone.
You’re not fragile at all, he told her strong shoulder, rubbing his face against her skin, kissing his way to the curve of it. I’m here. All around you, see? Feel how my arms have got you? And I’m only fragile for you.
Because somehow, when I give you that fragile part of me, you give me back all my strength.
God, she felt so sweet. She smelled so sweet. She was so sweet. He still, to this day, could barely handle the amount of sweetness she had brought into his life, him, the world-famous pastry chef. “I love you,” he whispered into her throat, up to the curve of her jaw.
Her hands climbed up his back to grip his shoulders, pulling her in tight to him. “You do?”
So much reassurance, Summer always needed. He petted her. “Of course I do,” he murmured to that delicate curve of her ear. “I’ll always love you.”
Her arms tightened very hard around him, and she turned her face suddenly into his throat, taking a deep breath. “Even if I’m fat?”
He had a sudden vision of a plump Summer which amused the hell out of him. She was so compulsively slender. But yeah, he was pretty sure he would like it. Why not? Especially if she was comfortable with it herself.
Of course, if she ever even gained five pounds, her mother would stop by and start pinching her waist and smoothing her own clothes over her svelte form in satisfaction at being thinner than her daughter, so it wasn’t like the comfortably plump Summer was ever actually going to happen. But—he rubbed his hands over her waist and hips. “You’d still be beautiful,” he told her. “You know that, don’t you?”
But she didn’t. That was part of Summer’s problem. She’d been so damn beautiful her whole life that she had no idea what her actual beauty was.
“You’ll always be beautiful,” he told her, kneading his hands into her butt, possibly one of his hands’ top five favorite things to do in the whole world. The other four involved her body, too. “Because, Summer: You. Are. Beautiful.”
As if by breaking it down into small words, she could understand.
And she did for a minute. Her head lifted, and her face lit. She kissed him, long and sweet and deep.
“But if, when you say fat, you’re talking about being pregnant—merde, Summer, I’ve always wanted to see you pregnant out to”—he leaned her backward over his arm, which ground her hips so very nicely against his, and then backwards and backwards until there was as much room as he could imagine for a baby bump, which left her horizontal to the floor and clutching at his arms, all her security and stability dependent on him. He smiled at her, a fierce, sharp shard of joy—“here.”
He’d wanted to see her pregnant so much that he’d never understood how, once he actually got it, the panic of having so much happiness to lose would reach up into his throat and choke him.
“Luc.” Summer pulled at his arms, perturbed by her precarious position. But it wasn’t precarious. It all depended on him, a tantalizing, arousing power. She could depend on him. He wouldn’t let her drop.
He walked her backward toward the bed, still keeping her horizontal to the floor, laughing at her unease. I’ve got you. You’re mine. I won’t let you fall, but you have to put yourself entirely in my hands. You’re mine.
Arousal pressed through him at the way their hips ground together with each step, at how vulnerable she was to him.
“Luc, stop,” Summer said, her eyes flickering with anxiety, and he laughed and rested her on the bed.
I’ve got you, you know. Quit worrying. Shh, soleil. I promise you’re safe with me.
But laying her back on the bed made it far too easy for her to wriggle away and escape, so he drew one hand up her arms and caught her wrists, pinning them to the bed. Oh, yes. Yes, he liked her this way, stretched out for him, his. That dark thing rose up in him, that starved, old need to ravage her, fighting for freedom from his control. No,
he told that dark thing. He needed that control to make sure she came and came and came, to make sure every beautiful sensation in her body came from him. To keep her addicted.
“Luc,” she protested, pulling at her wrists. “Let me go.”
He laughed. “Use your safe word,” he teased, letting his other hand trail as delicate and tantalizing as he could make it from the hollow of her throat in a little dancing pattern down her breastbone, under her breasts, down her belly.
He loved her “safe word”. Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime. She’d thrown it out there ironically once in one of the more dangerous moments of their developing relationship, when everything seemed to keep going entirely wrong. These days, it had lost all sense as a “safe word”, provoking him to do more and more of whatever was making her say it and not stop, but that was okay. They were just playing. Playing that he’d captured her, playing that she couldn’t break free. She liked it as much as he did. He’d know if she ever really wanted him to stop.
He felt quite sure.
“Luc, I mean it.” She twisted with sudden, desperate strength.
His hand hardened on her wrists in instant reaction, and she made a pleading, angry sound—and his hand jerked back as he realized what he was doing.
She scrambled away from him, while his world swirled around one hard time and stopped dead again.
Summer dove off the bed and ran toward the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
“Summer!” He hadn’t—had she felt threatened? He—
Then the unmistakable sounds of retching came through the door.
Oh.
His stupid, possessive games had made her throw up. All the arousal and confusion slid off him in defeated shame.
Shadowed Heart Page 5
