The Chocolate Heart (13 page)

“Why?” Luc asked crisply. The dinner rush was nearly over, and Summer had not even made an appearance in the restaurant to be tempted further. Did he have to be so desperately satisfied that she had eaten a piece of fruit he had peeled and cut? “Too small?” She swam a lot, but her metabolism couldn't be anything like his.

“Also.” Patrick nodded thoughtfully. “But mostly, I just don't think she'll find that many sweethearts in Grégoire's Hell Bar. Not with what I just saw her go in there wearing.”

T
he hotel's sculpted, blue-tinted glass bar made the place look like the land of the dead. Its descent into hell was even scheduled. In a few minutes, at eleven, the bar turned red as electric rock started blaring.

Luc spotted Summer instantly. Against the unworldly blue, she glowed like natural light in a zombie room, her pale gold dress blending with her golden skin: shoulders bare except for a knotted strip of silk, vaguely Grecian in its loose caressing of her body, neckline draping. A dress that begged for touch.

She leaned back against the bar, one leg swinging gently, a drink in her hand, truly beautiful, that golden beachcomber in her skin and coloring combined with the ethereal goddess structure of her bones, delicate and defined and somehow strong at the same time. Her body curved deliciously, so small you knew you could manipulate it any way you wanted if she yielded it to you.

The man on the stool beside her leaned toward her, saying something, and Luc stepped away from the door. Her gaze flickered toward his movement, and she stilled.

She didn't smile.

Well. Hate was better than indifference, right?

He took a step toward her, and she turned her smile on the man on the stool. A man who had black hair, damn it all. Could there be anything more annoying than to be her type? He crossed the room.

In a flirtatious testing—
are you willing to let me put my mouth on you?
—the man brought her glass to his lips. As he lowered it, Luc took it calmly from him and slid it across the bar. Grégoire, who had not become head barman here by being oblivious, disposed of the glass immediately and brought out a fresh one.

“Luc Leroi.” Luc extended a hand to the man.

The man tried to squeeze it too hard, American businessman style, but Luc had hands like a pianist whose piano keys often weighed forty pounds, and he just let the force bounce off him, not even worth a brief handshake pissing contest.

“Summer.” Because the other man was clearly American, Luc thought,
What the hell, I'm not French for nothing,
took Summer's hand, and kissed it.

It jerked minutely in his.

That tiny jerk vibrated through him, a soft chime that would not stop. His hand caressed hers involuntarily in reward as he lowered it.

“Summer . . . Corey?” the other man said, his eyes sparkling with even more interest, and Summer gave Luc a disgusted look.

“I need to talk to you.” Luc pulled her off the stool, with a cool glance for the businessman. “You'll excuse us. It's business.”

“Business?” Summer's startled credulity made him feel guilty.

“Well . . . not exactly,” he admitted, as he slipped them into the Terrace des Fortunées, a vast room completely abandoned at this hour. Through the wall of glass windows, the empty white square of the courtyard ice rink glowed coldly, drizzle freezing to its surface.

Summer faced him with arms folded, pulling the silk of her dress across her breasts. She looked so delectable and golden, in the darkness lit only by the soft courtyard lights, that he kept thinking she would wink out if he didn't close himself around her to protect her from the draft. His whole body ached with the need to protect her. To take her. “Then what, exactly, did you want to talk about?” she said coldly. “I was busy.”

He slipped his hands in his pockets to make them behave. “That. What you were busy doing.”

Her smile mocked him. He wanted to wind back time, to the moment he had first seen her, to that vulnerable, love-filled person he had believed her to be. He wanted to erase the mistake he had made, when pride drove him out that door and left her lying there. Where might they be now, if he had made love to her until her body was warm and trusting? With his heart in her trash or her heart in his hands?

“What I said, about higher standards—”

“Fuck you,” she interrupted.

He rocked back on his heels. “I beg your par—”

“You should. You're boring me.” She turned, brushing her dress as if crumbs of him were stuck to it.

He grabbed her arm, and she went still, staring down at his hand, gold against gold. “No,” he said softly, on a note of realization. “No, I'm not.”

She pulled on her elbow, barely.

Instead of tightening his hold, he moved his thumb. Just lightly, grazing up and down. She took a soft, quick breath. He stroked again, exploring his power, watching her breasts rise and fall under the drape of her golden dress, watching her eyes. “Did you like the mango, Summer?” he asked softly.

Brilliant lagoon-blue eyes flicked to his, and then she angled her face away.

“Did I pick out a good one? Ripe and rich, soft, condensing sunshine into its juice? Did I bring you what you wanted?”

“I don't want you to use
tu
with me,” she said, hard and flat, cutting across the spell he was trying to weave.

He took a breath at the slap of it. For a moment, he could only stare at her.

“We aren't on familiar terms,” she said coldly. “And I don't want us to be.”

Sometimes it was terrible to have so much self-control. For example, he could not wrap both hands around her arms in white-hot anger and squeeze his overly
familiar
imprint on her. “My thumb in your mouth is a familiar term.”

Now she did pull her arm free. Just as well. It was all he could do not to crush it in his grip.

“Yes, but I believe we established that my blow jobs weren't up to your standards, so let's stick with
vous.
”

The words ripped at him. They were so ugly. And she stood there in that golden dress, so lovely, and . . . like a tiger, ready to rend her cage.

A cage? What the hell? He shook his head, hard. “Summer. I didn't mean—”

“Jesus, you are boring,” she said and strode toward the door.

He thrust it closed with the flat of his palm over her head. She turned in the shelter of his body. Or the cage of it. And stilled, taking a slow breath in exact time with his as he filled himself with the scent of her. Coconut and wistful, determined sunshine.

Her eyes dilated as her head fell back and she stared at him, tongue touching her lips. His body hardened as arousal drove him to crush her back against the door.

Exactly as she wanted. Exactly as she had dressed tonight to go into the bar and let any man do.

“Don't you want to know what I meant, about standards?” he asked tightly. The urge to let himself be
just any man
was terrible, crushing his body between desire and his own adamant resistance to it.

“No,” she said. “I don't. You'll forgive me for not talking this out with you, but I have a lot on my mind.”

But . . . arrogant perfectionist, he refused to do it. And he blamed himself, looking down at her smallness trapped by his strength. He actually felt guilty for refusing to let her use him as her blind release and then drop him.

An arrogant, masochistic perfectionist. But then, he always had been. Was famous for it, even.

If he touched her, she would do something. Suck his thumb into her mouth,
putain,
and crack him like a sugar sculpture in the last few minutes before the contest bell rang, years of merciless work shattering to pieces. He had seen it happen so many times, to so many men, that shattering just before someone could have won the prize.

So he put his other hand on the door, framing her. “Summer, I'm trying to tell you that I would like—”

 

Rage pushed Summer off the door. An impossible force in her, a cyclone spinning her in a gilt trap of formality and tension. All she wanted was his heat, his darkness. And His Superior Majesty despised her for that.
He'd left her alone
because he was too damn good for her. And now he wanted to crack her open to him? Spill everything that mattered inside her out for him, so he could paw through it because he was in the mood?
Fuck
him.

“Do you know what I would like?” she asked brutally. “You're gorgeous. You're all passion, locked up so tight you would never deign to release it on someone like me. And you despise me. And I would like you to fuck me up against the wall until I can't think anymore, until I
absolutely cannot think,
and then I want to pick myself up off the floor and
go teach kids on my island,
and lie on the beach and watch the waves roll in. That's
all
I want from
you.
”

A moment's impossible silence while, from far away through the rage, her words started to echo back to her. Merciless black eyes bored into her, that long matte body rigidly still. “Off the floor,” he said precisely.

The first hint of a flush started to rise. Oh, God, when her anger receded out of her, this was going to be
awful.

“After the bout of . . . fucking . . . I would leave you on the floor.”

She stared at him. Red swept in, embarrassment and more fury. “Just get the hell out of here!”

He gently pulled the door open, shifting her weight like a windshield wiper shifted rain. Slipping through, he closed it precisely and quietly behind him. Its hard support pulled away from her back, leaving her standing with nothing, there in the abandoned room.

Slowly, her rage drained away. She brought her fists up to her temples and sank back against the door. Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ. What had she just said?

S
he was huddled in writhing shame on the floor of her room, her bed between her and the Eiffel Tower, when one of the bellmen knocked at her door with a long, narrow package, neatly tied with a bow. Inside, she found what must be some kind of kitchen implement, long, thick, bulbous, very smooth wood, and beside it, a little beautiful glass jar of flavored oil. The writing on the card included was angular, neat, clear: “In case this may be of service. L.L.”

It was such a relief to have the rage come back. She swept into the kitchens on it, a force so powerful it could take care of anything and everything in her path. It took her right up to Luc, still in street clothes, glaring at some dessert he was making, as the others cleaned up around him. He turned and watched her approach, black eyes completely unimpressed, but that didn't stop her. “You're
fired.
Get out.”

His eyebrows rose faintly.
“Bonne chance,”
he said and turned back to the insanely complex and delicate war of light and dark he was concocting on a plate.

At the far end of the pastry kitchen, some
assistant
in white hissed something panicked to someone she couldn't see and another left at a run. Hugo Faure came charging around the corner, grabbing her. “
Non, non, non,
mademoiselle. Luc—ignore her.”

“I was,” Luc said briefly, stretching hot golden sugar in his bare fingers with no sign that it burned.

“Mademoiselle, please to come talk with me.” Hugo Faure was dragging her away by the arm.

Alain Roussel appeared suddenly, running at the same speed. He grabbed her other arm. “Mademoiselle. I was looking for you. Something urgent. Luc,
s'il vous plaît
—” The director made a frantic cutting motion at him, slicing away anything she might have said.

Luc shrugged one shoulder minutely, not enough to affect the precision of his work as he stretched that gleaming gold sugar so fine, so breakable.

She tried not to look back at him as they dragged her away, but at the entrance she couldn't help one glance. He focused as if she didn't even exist.

And she hated him so much, if her arms hadn't been held, she could have grabbed up that heavy pot there and—

Alain and Hugo dragged her out of sight, closeting her in someone's office.

“Are you
mad
?” Hugo exploded. “Do you know how hard he was to get in the first place? Are you trying to knock one of the stars off of
my
restaurant?”

Summer grabbed up random papers on the desk and ripped them across. Some part of her was scared by her own rage. It was too like her father's. Not violent with body, but violent with words, destructive, and occasionally breaking things. She had thought she had learned a better way—for four years she had been so calm and easygoing—but it was only because nothing had ever gotten to her enough.

“Mademoiselle, with the greatest respect in the world,
non.
” Alain Roussel said it flatly, as if
he
owned the damn hotel. Did everyone here believe himself above her? “Luc may not be fired. I won't fire him, Hugo won't, our accountant will keep paying his salary and give him a raise to make up for the annoyance.
Non.
”

“Et non et non!”
Hugo raged. “How dare you—just some spoiled
brat
—to come into my restaurant and try to—”

“Hugo,” Alain interrupted firmly, his absolute calm cutting across the other man's fury. “Please. I'll speak to Mademoiselle Corey.”

“No one needs to speak to me.” Summer squeezed her hands around the edge of the desk to choke herself. “I've got it. I've got it.”

Stick it out. No firing Luc. No
talking
to Luc. Pace her room, pace the hotel, pace Paris even, swim around that damn pool, stare at the cold rain. Try not to go out with any of her father's candidates, even to save herself from loneliness. Get her father's investment in satellite communications and get out of here, back to the sun.

Three months. Even she was not too spoiled for that.

“But need I remind you,” she said icily to both of them. “That
you
do not own this hotel. And I'll fire
whomever
I please.”

Hugo drew himself up. “Me, for example?” he said, so much more icily that her own attempt looked like a balmy spring breeze.

Alain grabbed her and put his hand over her mouth. “Hugo. Please. Mademoiselle Corey—please.”

Hugo spun on his heel and strode out, his body one giant, dangerous
humph.

Alain let her go. “Mademoiselle. Take some deep breaths.”

“
I've got it.
And I can fire you, too.”

“Yes,” he said soothingly. “And bulldoze the hotel while you're at it. There's always some trouble transitioning for a new owner.”

“What part of ‘ownership' do you not understand?”

“Mademoiselle. Are you sure this is what your father would want? For you to destroy one of the best hotels in the world? You do understand that more people than you are affected by your decisions.”

Her father had forced her off her island to make himself happy, and now he was in Poland, or maybe it was Croatia, and his only texts had been to tell her to quit pissing Luc off. He could take his hotel and—

She took a hard breath, finally, as Alain had recommended.

“Or is that what you want?” Alain asked delicately. “Are there—some issues there?”

“
No.
No issues. Luc, he—” She broke off, unable to tell what he had done. Any part of it. Especially her role in it.

“I'll talk to him,” Alain promised soothingly. Why the hell couldn't she have been attracted to
him
? She needed someone soothing right now. Not some snooty bastard who thought being her lover was beneath him. “I'll ask him to stay away from you.”

She would give something to see the expression on that gorgeous, perfect, controlled face when Alain asked him to stay away from her.

He would probably respect the warning, too. All too readily.

God, spring seemed so very far away.