Shadowed Heart (15 page)

“Are you even going to last with me any length of time to get something like that set up?” he asked Nico and reached up to pick his first peach. His hand curved around the fruit in the tree above him, and he paused, savoring something oddly powerful about the moment. He’d spent his whole life in Paris. Fruits arrived in his kitchen in flats, cradled carefully in plastic. Or he’d picked them up himself at four a.m. at the restaurateurs’ market in Rungis. But here he could pick fruit out of a tree. He could plant a seed and watch it grow and from it feed his wife and baby. “Because I keep getting the impression you’re going to ditch me soon for something more your style.”

Nico gave him that
nah-I-could-watch-a-cute-lamb-for-hours
smile. “You’re pretty interesting. Anyway, I tend to think of things in terms of five-year commitments.”

“What, were you in the Legion étrangère or something?” Luc asked wryly.

Nico just smiled at him benignly and started to fill his basket with peaches. Luc found himself eyeing the edge of the other man’s T-shirt sleeve to see if a
Honneur, Fidelité
tattoo appeared when it slid up those bulky biceps.

“Speaking of things that aren’t anybody’s business,” Nico said easily, “how are you handling imminent fatherhood?”

Luc clutched too hard and bruised his peach. He, who never hurt
anything
fragile. He could handle things that most people could break by breathing too hard. “It’s not imminent. Seven and a half more months.”

“Ah,” Nico said and laid a couple more peaches oh-so-carefully into his basket, so that never a bruise could touch them. “That well?”

Luc frowned at him.

“How about Summer? I haven’t seen her around the restaurant as much. She feeling all right?”

Luc scowled at his peach. “The scents are getting to her. I guess it’s—I think it’s just normal.” He slid a glance at the other chef. “I don’t suppose you know anything about pregnant women?” After all, the man could probably birth baby lambs with no problem.

A tiny grin almost escaped Luc, as he imagined Summer’s reaction if he compared her to a ewe: laughing, minatory, coming at him with a pretend threat to his person that was really just an excuse to touch him.
Damn,
he missed his wife.

Nico looked, briefly, rather darkly amused and just shook his head. “You want me to ask my cousins?”

Luc’s grip tightened on the poor peach. No. He could handle this on his own. He had to. He’d never been able to count on anyone but himself. Well, and Patrick, and look where that had gotten him.

“You want me to handle picking these peaches for you, so you can go home and ask your wife?” Nico said. “She might have some thoughts about pregnant women. Considering, you know, that she is one.”

Yeah, but what if she told him that she couldn’t handle it, that she was going to leave him, go back to her islands where she was happy? Luc ran his thumb over the peach again, and at the movement, his lungs eased enough that he could breathe.
You’re part of that island happiness now, remember?
Their bodies sprawled together last night in their bed… “She’ll like this,” he said. “The peaches. I want to do it for her.”

“Luc.”

Luc looked up at the unwonted seriousness in Nico’s tone. Nicolas held his eyes, this strong, intent gaze Luc hadn’t realized that hazel was capable of. “I hear becoming a parent for the first time is one of those great challenges people hit in their lives. In some cultures, they throw parties, do all kinds of things to organize help for the new parents. So if you want me to pick some peaches for you, so you can give them to your wife and still have time to talk to her—it’s okay to let me have your back on this one. You’ll get my back for me on something later, right? That’s how it works. It’s picking peaches, Luc. Trust me, I’ve done worse.”

Yeah, there was a lot of blood and guts on the savory side of the kitchen. Or—Luc slid a glance to that edge of a T-shirt where no tattoo showed at all—in the Foreign Legion.

“You’re not actually going to reach out and scratch me behind the ears at some point, are you?” Luc asked, reaching for another peach.

“Nah.” Nico assessed him head to toe, sidelong, and then smiled. “You’re not tame enough yet. You might bite.”

You know, it was official. No one capable of handling a top kitchen was actually sane.

Luc found Summer from the music. Bemused, he tracked it to a room he hadn’t even realized they were using.

Summer was…
merde
, she looked so cute. He leaned in the doorway, the pure, damn adorableness of it punching him in the stomach. She had her eyes closed, and she was bumping and grinding and punching the air.
ROAR!

She tried to roar, too.

Oh, hell, that was so cute it was
hot
, it grabbed him right between the legs and tried to jerk him over to her, and he braced himself against the door jamb, because he had
not
come over here to take his wife against her—desk?—in a two-minute quickie.

She had a desk?

A huge calendar papered the length of a wall, pages of a great desk calendar torn out and taped side by side, up through March. A big star marked February 12, the date the baby was officially due. Around the star, a heart had been drawn in marker, and it looked as if Summer had traced over that heart again and again, maybe every time she paused in front of it.

A corkboard was full of papers and some photos of people who looked in their early twenties, with that characteristic American softness to their lips, as if they’d never learned to use their facial muscles in anything but a smile. He’d never seen them before, a diverse mix of people who didn’t look any relation to each other or to Summer. More papers were strewn across the desk.

The phone in Summer’s hand rang, and her eyes opened as she started to answer it—and then she saw Luc.

Her face just
lit.
“Luc?” she said wonderingly, as if he’d just shown up alive after he’d been declared MIA for years.

And before he could figure out how to digest that, she was across the room in a lunge of delight, her hands clasping behind his neck, the phone’s new “Roar” ringtone continuing in one of them, ignored. “Hey!” she said happily, squeezing him. “You came to
see
me. What are you doing here? It can’t be three yet, can it?” Sometimes he could take a couple of hours’ break at three. He’d made a point of it that brief period they were in Paris, but starting the new restaurant here had completely swamped him, and she’d adapted to his inability to get away without complaint, coming instead to him.

She’d acted so completely compliant about it and yet—
this
much happiness and surprise because he had taken a fifteen-minute break and walked over from the restaurant?

“Hey,” he said and wrapped his free arm around her, holding her in close. Her body felt so sweet and warm against his.
Right where her belly is pressed against me, that’s where our baby is.
And he felt instantly guilty that his penis was right at that level. “I brought you something.” He lifted his basket.

“
Peaches
.” She grabbed one, pausing just long enough to kiss her lips to its skin and close her eyes in anticipation.

He parted his lips to offer to peel it for her, but it was too late. Her teeth sank deep into it, in one luscious, hungry bite. The sound she made in her throat charged every erogenous zone in his body. He tried to angle his body a little so that his damn penis wouldn’t poke his baby in the head.

“Oh, God, that tastes so good. I haven’t managed to eat more than crackers all morning. This is
perfect.
” Summer licked the juice that was running down the skin.

Luc wet his own lips.

“Did Nico bring them in?” she asked.

“No, I—I picked them.”

Her head drew back in surprise. “
You
did?”

He shrugged awkwardly. “Also I made you some ice pops. I put them in the freezer.”

“Peach?” she asked hungrily.

His teeth tried very hard not to set. “Lime.”

“Oh.” Her face tried very hard not to fall.

He gazed down at her a moment. And then he lifted his hand and gently stroked her hair from her face. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I make you some in half a dozen flavors. If you want a dozen different ones, just let me know.”

Her face softened. She rubbed her face against his fingers and then just nestled her head against his shoulder, still holding her half-eaten peach in one hand. “You still love me, then?”

“I—” God, it scared the hell out of him, how often he had to reassure her about that. What if one day he forgot, and she just slipped through his careless fingers?
You, of all people, have no excuse for ever having careless fingers.
But still…it would be nice to relax once
in a while.
“Summer. Can we just take that as a given? Please.”

But he caught the way her expression drooped, even half hidden by his chest, the way her head bent. So apparently they couldn’t.

She nodded, though, as if they could. Damn it, it would make his life so much easier if Summer wasn’t such a compulsive liar about her feelings.

“
Soleil
. I’ll always love you. No matter how terrible I am at proving it to you, it will always be true.”

She drew a little breath of relief and sighed it out against his chest, nestling her face into him. It drove him absolutely crazy that she would be
relieved
to hear he still loved her.
When he had just told her the day before.
How could she be
that
insecure?

“Me, too,” she whispered. “I’ll always love you, too.”

His heart started to beat very fast. God, to just
tell
him that, when she could take herself and their baby away from him so easily and leave him with nothing. It was cruel.

“Hey.” She looked up at him. “I will.”

“I know.” He smiled down at her. Part of him knew. The ever-shrinking part of him that was sane. That said to the rest of him:
She’s not your mother, you idiot. How can you be
that
insecure?

She stroked his face. “I really will.”

He smiled wryly. “Because I’m so lovable, right.”

“Well, yes. Exactly.” She leaned up onto her toes to kiss him.

Mmm, that was good. Arousal, already punched awake by her dance and her bite of that peach, surged more eagerly. He wanted to wrap her up and bury himself deep and never, ever let go, but…no. He was here to check on her. To talk, not have a quickie and run back to work.

She relaxed down out of the kiss, smiling up at him, still caressing his face. “And you’re not terrible at proving you love me, Luc. I’m just, you know, a little screwed up, and also I think this pregnancy stuff must be making me hormonal.”

He turned his face into her hand and held it to him as he kissed her wrist. “You’re not terrible at proving it to me either,
soleil
. I just—well, likewise.”

A flicker of a teasing smile. “You’re hormonal?”

“I certainly feel as if I am,” he said, heartfelt.

She laughed a little, her hand caressing. Her eyes grew searching but tender about it, careful. “So…are you okay?” she asked, which confused him. That was what he had come home in the middle of the day to ask her.

“Never better.” Right at that particular second with her pressed against him, it was almost true. “You?”

She made a so-so gesture with her hand. “Yucky,” she said ruefully. “Most of the time.” She lifted her peach. “
Thank you.
”

He bent his head until he could slide his lips right next to her ear. The scent of her hair, that coconut and tiare scent of her, went straight to his head. His heart. His groin. “You go ahead and crave whatever you want,” he breathed. “And I’ll give it to you.”

Summer’s breath drew in, fast and soft. Her hips nestled against his, seeking different pressures.

Mmm.

God, he could so easily keep nudging her right back against that desk right now.

He did nudge her back, but just so he could prop her on the edge of it and set the basket of peaches down beside her. “Eat your peach,
soleil
.”

Yeah, he could sublimate. He could get off on that, just watching her sit there, with her legs spread a little so he could stand between them, eating that peach, licking that juice. Maybe he’d snatch just a little bite of it from her hand.

Arousal pressed in him again, hungry and sweet. She was his wife. He had all the time in the world with her. Their
lives.
He could tantalize himself now and linger over the idea until tonight.

Although if that was the case, why did he always, always feel as if he didn’t have enough time?

You might want to think about finding time to talk about baby names with your wife.

“What are you up to?” He picked up one of the papers spread on the desk behind her to see it better. A baby swing. Another. Another. With all their reviews printed up, highlights through different remarks. His heart squeezed. Was Summer getting worried about getting the baby right, too? “Isn’t it a little early to start shopping for swings?” Thirty-three more weeks, right? He could get the restaurant running a bit more smoothly first, and then they could hunt for baby gear together. The thought of it bemused him.

But Summer’s expression stiffened, this little flash in her eyes as if he had hurt her somehow. What? “Why too early?”

“Well, I mean—” He opened a hand helplessly. He hadn’t even gotten used to the idea that a baby was going to
come
, and she was already outfitting them? “I want to help.”

The stiffness relaxed out of her expression, her eyes crinkling a little with pleasure. “You do?”

What? “Of course I do.” It sounded…adorable. Fun. Vastly reassuring, to walk hand in hand with her through stores trying to figure out what a baby needed. As if they were in this together, building a solid future, as if it was all just normal and happy and hopeful. “I
really
do,” he realized. His schedule rose up before him like a wall, a monster wall with hands that grew out of its stones and grabbed at him greedily. The restaurant. All the demands of perfection that lay between him and that moment shopping for a future with his wife.