The Chocolate Heart (19 page)

S
o she tried.

To make up for her temper and her screwups.

She really tried.

A little midnight-blue dress, silky and dark to bring out her eyes and set off her hair, one part naughty suggestion and two parts elegantly flirty. Skin fresh from the spa, impossibly tall, strappy sandals that would bring her up to his shoulder. She looked like someone a supreme perfectionist could stand to be seen in company with. Which she should, given how much she had had to practice at that role all her life.

She stood a moment in the entrance to the dining area, wondering who the critic was. She hadn't been able to catch one of the staff to give her a clue—probably just as well. Her acting would seem more sincere if it wasn't aimed toward one person.

You like Luc,
she told herself, trying to get into her role.

How does it feel to like him?
Muscles in her neck slowly unwound, sending a little shiver down her spine, as if ice had melted. As if something fighting too hard, for too long, had finally been allowed to give up. She wanted to turn on her heel and hide back in her room.

But it was too late. She had offered herself on the altar of the hotel's success; she had to carry through.

You like him.
Oohs and aahs as a waiter reached a table. The Aladdin's Cave, little footprints sneaking across jewel-flecked sand to where the sesame seed lay. Exclamations of delight and wonder as someone hesitated a long time before the beauty of the creation, turning it every which way to examine it, before finally dipping a spoon into it to find out what such beauty tasted like.

And then more aahs. Eyes closed in exquisite pleasure.

Tropical fruit bloomed in a small crystal vase, papayas and mangoes and pineapple arching out of it in a stylized exuberance of hibiscus, bougainvillea, birds of paradise. A single white tiare flower made of sugar, just like the flowers that grew on a bush beside her little hut by the beach, graced the yellows and golds of the mixture on one side.

Three golden orbits of a star around a dark, proud mountain. Pomegranates spilled like blood across new-fallen snow. Gold light falling into a rugged, dark abyss, melting a pool of liquid chocolate where it fell. The red-white
Pomme d'Amour
gleaming its dangerous challenge.

They were all for her.

Every single one, something he had made for her.

In this very same room where she used to sit as a child, watching every table fill with desserts she would never get to taste.

She turned her head to let her gaze linger on the dessert at the last table—a playful collection of those handcrafted chocolate-marshmallow teddy bears that she had seen in the playroom, now dancing around a mass of golden curlicues—and nearly ran into Luc.

He steadied her with a hand around her arm, and she looked up past that familiar open-throated white shirt, immersed in the pretense that she liked him.

His black eyes seemed very dark, gazing down at her. That was silly, they were always dark. His fingers held her arm gently, and his chest rose and fell, once, on a deep breath.

“Hello,” he said and bent.

She stared up at him, caught by that supple, always-controlled mouth as it descended.

He closed his hand around her chin and turned her head just enough to kiss first one cheek, then the other. The brush of his lips teased mere millimeters away from the corners of hers.

They had never exchanged
bises
before. What did cheek kisses even mean, in their situation? Her fingers touched the corner of her lips as his exceptionally controlled fingers slid slowly from her chin.

“Summer.” He tucked her hand into his arm. “Come have dinner with me.”

Right, to show their solidarity to the critic. Her stomach shimmered with a thousand little fairy wings as she walked beside him, her fingers curling into the silk-wool blend of his coat.

The maître d' sat them at a tiny table for two tucked under an enormous bouquet-tree of roses, in the corner of the glass windows that revealed the night-lit streets of Paris. And yes, the damn Eiffel Tower, glowing in the dark, a backdrop to Luc's head.

“Where's the critic?” she murmured as she sat, to keep herself focused. The maître d' glanced at Luc in surprise, and Luc took one of her hands across the table and pinched the knuckle gently, making a little
no-no
gesture with one finger over the back of her hand.

“Don't worry about it.” He shook his head slightly at the maître d' as he left. “You're doing beautifully.”

Of course she was doing beautifully. She always did. It was just . . . people seemed to think that was something wrong with her.

“The first time I sat down at a table like this, I was probably three years old,” she said wryly. Some of her earliest memories were of not getting one of those desserts, in fact. Her training in how to do beautifully had been merciless. “It might even have been in this same room, although it's been remodeled.”

Luc laughed ruefully. He seemed to have forgotten that his fingers still curved over the back of her hand. Relaxing from the pinch, they began to trace over her knuckles as if his hands didn't know how to be still, caressing the soft skin and tendons. “The first time I sat down to a three-hour dinner in a three-star restaurant, I was twenty-five. That table over there. I had been making the desserts that went on tables like this for years by then. They were courting me to come here, and I saw what Hugo Faure could do, and what this place could be, and I agreed.”

“And we're so lucky to have you,” Summer said, a little loudly.

He pressed his nail into the back of her knuckle and stroked over it again immediately, chasing away the reprimand. “Summer, don't worry any more about what the critic might think. Just relax. Be yourself.”

Relax. Be herself. The temptation of it. Relax into him, let him wrap darkness around her and hold her there, the way she had always craved. Just keep her safe a little, until she could get back to the sun.

“Trust me,” he murmured, fingers stroking the back of her hand.

There was a reason she wasn't supposed to do that, and it didn't have anything to do with him. But it blurred, under those skilled fingers. They found every part of her hand, so idly, so absently, forgotten by him. The exquisitely sensitive flesh between thumb and index finger. The just-short-of-ticklish spot at the base of each finger.

The Eiffel Tower behind him started to sparkle like stars in his black hair, and she forgot even how much she hated that tower.

Luc said something to a waiter, dictating how he wanted the dinner to go, orders so natural, so rhythmic, with no need for any menu, that despite her complex rebellion against someone else dictating her choices, they rocked her like a boat in a sheltered sea. He queried her with his eyebrows and a little smile, and she nodded, ready to do anything for that little smile. His fingers had never stopped stroking her hand the whole time. Nor had he ever once looked at her hand as if he knew what his fingers were doing.

“So how did you end up on an island of under three hundred people teaching school?” he asked, just like every man she had sat down to dinner with since she got here. That, too, lulled her. Made her feel as if she knew what she was doing.

“I jumped ship.” She smiled, still remembering the joy of it.

A querying eyebrow. The bruise on his cheek looked worse today, blue and yellow.

“Some of us had rented a yacht, for a postgraduation cruise. And I got off when we stopped to swim in a lagoon and decided not to get back on.”

Those fingers stilled on the back of her hand. He looked at her very steadily, under utter control. “You left your boyfriend at the time without a second thought.”

She supposed it was normal he assumed she had a boyfriend on a postgraduation cruise. She nodded.

An odd expression on Luc's face. For the first time he looked down at his fingers lying over the back of her hand. “That must have thrilled him,” he said, low, a strange tension in his voice.

“He recovered. He's got a promising career in Hollywood now, in fact. I wouldn't have suited him.”

“Don't you mean he wouldn't have suited you?”

“Also.” Very few men seemed to suit her fixation with ambitious oblivious workaholics and her pathological need for attention and desire to play in the sand. None, in fact.

“You never regretted it?”

“Just once.” She shrugged, and then grinned. “Tropical island paradise. Even I'm not too spoiled for that.”

“Tropical island paradise. Without electricity. Or luxury. Or variety.” Luc was watching her intently.

“I didn't say it would suit
you,
” she said a little sullenly. That dream of getting him to run away with her on a yacht was so long dead by now. Or it should have been.

His face tightened.

“And the electricity only goes out some of the time,” she muttered.

“So when was that once you regretted it?” That sudden, contained grin of his, that intense look full of warmth and passion all pent up, that hit her so hard. “A bad sunburn?”

He was
teasing
her. “Umm . . . no.” She took a strong swallow of her wine and closed her eyes a moment on its dulcet gold, her stomach churning at the real reason for that one regret. She opened them to find Luc still watching her intently. “You know, you have stars in your hair,” she said, and then flushed.

He touched his hair, confused, and then glanced behind him at the sparkling Eiffel Tower. With a laugh he turned back to her, his eyes very intrigued. Warm and dark. “You have the sun in yours. But all the time. Mine will go out in a minute.” He cocked his head, his smile deepening to show a heretofore unguessed-at crease in each cheek. Just a bit too restrained to be a proper dimple, which was like him. “These stars will,” he clarified, with amused arrogance.

She smiled, but she felt a little anxious. “I can't really affect your star count, can I? You're amazing.”

His eyes caught hers. He sat up slowly straighter. “You mean that.”

Well, of course she meant it. “I had been in the Pacific for four years. I just really didn't know who you were at first.”

“But then why—” He caught himself and shook his head. “Thank you,” he said simply.

The waiter brought two white . . . plates didn't seem the right word, since they were barely two inches wide and a foot long. Three tiny mouthfuls occupied each one: a delicate flat white spoon with a gleaming mint-colored jewel; a slender stick that speared two little orange-dusted, savory marshmallows; and an eggshell-size white cup of soup over which balanced a puff of something on a mahogany spoon.

“Hugo's newest
amuse-bouche.
” Luc smiled. “I was working with him on it. I invented something like this for one of my plates.” He indicated the mint-colored teardrop. “It's the thinnest capsule of gelatin that holds it together, and then . . .” He broke off. “You'll see. He wanted to do the same thing in a savory dish. And then these.” He pointed to the orange-dusted marshmallows. “I've dropped this particular dessert for now, the one where I did two little handmade
fraises
—a little play with the
Fraises Tagada
candy that most people loved as children here. But Hugo was always intrigued by the idea of doing a similar texture and look, but with something savory. The sugar is usually key in a marshmallow, so we tossed ideas back and forth for several days before we came up with this. Try it.” He sat back. “Taste. Feel what happens with the textures.”

It was already so simple—the white on white, the small mouthfuls—and so elaborate and so completely beautiful. It reminded her, incongruously, of a Polynesian weaving of flowers, the sweet-scented white on green, simple in look and not that easy to do, rich with its own nature. She glanced up at him, wanting to show such a lei to him, to watch his creativity play with it, to see what dessert he came up with based on it, then caught herself and shut the thought down.
That's not going to happen, Summer.

He picked up his own teardrop-bearing spoon and lifted it to his mouth, raising his eyebrows at her expectantly until she lifted hers, so that they slid the spoons between their lips at the exact same time.

Liquid burst into her mouth, cool and green, some bubble of spring. She smiled over it, laying the spoon down. He nodded to the middle element of the long, narrow plate, the marshmallow creation. Two transparently thin rectangles framed it below, and he indicated them first. “The switch in textures,” he said. “It's the essence here.”

Crackling on her teeth, a savory, nutty flavor on her tongue. Then the gentle, dusted warmth of the little bits at the end of the stick, which made her smile, they were so surprisingly like and not like a marshmallow. And then the savoriness of the light puff on the wooden spoon, and the reassurance of the smooth, pea-based puree.

Luc watched her as she ate it. She, who had eaten so many of these things, so many elegant dinners, handling herself among the most mercilessly elegant company, began to feel self-conscious. “Do you have fun?” she asked suddenly. “When you guys come up with something like this?” Obsessive-compulsive perfectionists at play.

Luc studied his little wooden spoon, twirling it in the fingers that had played with her knuckles. She kept feeling that touch, ghostlike, with every deft movement of the spoon. “Y-yes,” he said, with some reservations. He smiled ruefully. “Patrick is infinitely good for me, in terms of lightening me up.”