The Chocolate Heart (4 page)

“Four days. No sleep. Very bad seasickness.”

He didn't seem to appreciate the fact that she had an excuse. If anything it annoyed him, but it was hard to tell from his controlled expression. “That explains a lot.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

The twirl of his wineglass in his fingers released a sweet, golden scent. “We opened a bottle of champagne. I had allowed an author to spend the day in the kitchens, for research, and she wanted to thank the team.”

How much of the bottle could he have drunk, if it was split among a whole team?

“In the kitchens?” she said blankly. Hadn't he said he ruled this place?

An obsidian glint in an otherwise polite face. “I believe I did introduce myself to you last night.” Another twirl of the wineglass. An edge crept into his voice. “I suppose you've forgotten my name.”

She grinned at him. “Well, yes, but I never forget a beautiful face.”

The glass stopped twirling so suddenly wine sloshed up its sides. Black eyes glittered.

“I'm just teasing you! Luc Leroi, see? I remembered.”

His jaw tightened. “You flatter me.”

“Do you want me to drop to my knees, your majesty?” She sparkled her smile right into his tense face.

His lashes veiled his eyes. The tiniest smile relaxed the tension in Luc's fine mouth. “Only if you like the position,” he murmured.

Wait. Had he just—

“Mademoiselle Corey!” A voice pulled her attention to a tall, lanky man in his thirties with straw-colored hair and a certain geekiness to his face. Alain Roussel, the hotel director. They had met earlier, just hours before her father announced publicly that the hotel was now hers. “I see you've met Luc!”

Luc gave the other man a sardonic look.

“Again,” Alain allowed lamely.

“It's like associating with royalty.” Summer fanned herself. “It's going to my head to be on a first-name basis. Or am I presuming . . . ?” A teasing up-and-under look at Luc.

Alain nodded relieved approval. “It hits us all that way at first. But you'll get used to it.”

What? “He's really king of something?”

Luc's expression remained flawlessly polite. She didn't know why she had the impression he wanted to strangle her. Alain looked appalled, but an older man drifting into the scene eyed Luc with slightly malicious amusement.

Alain Roussel gave Luc an apologetic grimace, which he doubtless thought was over Summer's head. Somehow, she had that effect on men—they dismissed the possibility she could have anything but looks and wealth. Luc was the one who recouped the moment, giving a wry, minute shrug of his shoulders to Alain, his self-possession today unshakeable. “I believe my grandfather might have been making a statement about Gypsies being the kings of the earth when he invented Leroi to fill out some form. No hereditary kingship, no.”

Gypsies? As in colorful caravans and dashing black-haired adventurers, or a poor, wandering, much-despised population?

“Luc is our head
chef pâtissier,
” Alain Roussel said stiffly.

Summer stiffened. Of course. Oh, yes, didn't that figure. He had been a dessert personified last night—so gorgeous and enticing, snapping himself out of her hands at the last second and leaving her to huddle in cold loneliness because she had said the wrong thing. Maybe he and her father had swapped notes on how to keep her in line. “Congratulations.”

One black eyebrow rose minutely.

“Thanks,” Alain said, throwing her off.

She glanced between the two men. Luc's mouth curved in a kind of edged amusement, as if underneath that curve he didn't find her ignorance in the least bit funny. “For being able to convince me to work here,” he explained gently.

“He's
world famous.
” Alain stressed the words so hard they almost squeaked out of him. “He's the very best.”

She tried to switch gears. “Sounds like the work of a great director—recruiting top talent and keeping it happy.” She winked at Alain and stage-whispered: “Is he temperamental?”

“Not even remotely,” both Alain and the older man who had come up said at the same moment.

“He's a perfectionistic bastard, though,” admitted the older man, with considerable empathy.

Alain laughed. “Nothing but the absolute best for him.”

Oh. So maybe she just wasn't good enough.

“I should think not!” her father exclaimed, joining the circle with her mother beside him. “He's the jewel in this crown I just gave you. Only two other hotels in Paris can claim a three-star restaurant, and it makes all the difference between the best and the would-be best. And
none
of their chefs draws the media he does. Don't you lose him, Summer. He's the reason I bought you this place.”

“Oh, yes, he's wonderful.” Her mother squeezed Summer's waist. “You'll have to watch your weight around this one. He'll get you, if you're not careful.”

Luc's gaze flickered between Summer and her mother, and she just tried to bear it.
I'm not getting Botox so I can look as young as my mother, damn it. Not even to survive three months in Paris.

“Hugo Faure, too.” Her father nodded appreciatively to the older man. Stouter and shorter, with a more dated sense of fashion, he too had dark hair that was only starting to gray, and emanated a rougher-edged arrogance.

“Chef cuisinier,”
Alain mouthed to her from out of Hugo's sight, looking anxious.

“Oh, so
you're
responsible for all this delicious food?” Summer squeezed herself to the chef 's arm in breathless admiration. “Hugo Faure! What an honor!”

Luc's eyes almost narrowed. He took another minute sip of his glass of wine.

“And to meet you, too, of course!” she gushed at him, because he had seemed just a tad temperamental to
her
the night before. She gave him a warm smile to make up for the belatedness. He gave her a tiny, edged smile in return.

He wasn't even
remotely
temperamental? Like, not known for hauling women off by their hair to their hotel rooms when they annoyed him? She rubbed her cold arms surreptitiously in memory of his warmth closing over her.

Luc turned away to say something to a waiter. Yeah, she just riveted his attention, didn't she?

“You'll have to show me your kitchens sometime.” She layered it on a little more, shifting her efforts to Hugo. Starstruck enthusiasm always worked on the older men on the island.

“My kitchens are your kitchens,” Luc said courteously, turning back to her.

Well, that was true, but . . .

“I was being polite.” His eyes narrowed again.

He made her brain dizzy. As if she was breathing out carbon dioxide but only breathing in him.

“I'll be happy to show you around as long as you can stay out of the way,” Hugo told her roughly.

Her father gave both men a sharp look and glanced at Summer to see how she would reinforce her ownership of the hotel. “I'm pretty discreet,” she promised Hugo humbly.

Her father frowned in severe disappointment at her lack of backbone, amusement leaped suddenly in Luc's dark eyes like a secret, and Alain Roussel stared at her as if she was insane.

Look, the indiscreet part of last night was
his
fault,
she barely stopped herself from saying, then sent Luc a grumpy look. He had gotten her all over the Web again. Her first damn night.

Her breath whooshed out of her as silk and a fine edge of soft wool slid over her bare arms and closed her in warmth and scent. A waiter straightened away from her, his face politely neutral, as she looked straight at Luc.

He smiled at her urbanely, and she must be imagining that hungry, satisfied edge to him like a cat watching a mouse wander well past its safety zone.

She rubbed the edge of the coat between her fingers. Dior, maybe, the texture very fine. It had to be Luc's, she could tell by the labyrinth of scents: chocolate, butter, spice, stinging bright scents, and secret, mysterious warm ones. She wanted to get lost in them and never come out until morning.

“What the hell is that?” her father asked, since apparently that rule about keeping Luc happy didn't apply to him. Her father had ambitions for a son-in-law with a brilliant financial mind.

Luc gave her father a cool look. Her fingers stilled on the coat. The
chef pâtissier
looked at one of
Forbes
' top five hundred, who had just bought the hotel where he worked as a Christmas present for his spoiled daughter, as if he had the potential to be a headache and inconvenience and not much more.

She pulled his coat more snugly around herself, without even realizing she was doing it.

“Better?” Luc asked gently, reaching out to button the jacket near her throat, so that she wore it like a cape. Her heart beat so hard as his fingers grazed her throat that she was sure he would feel her pulse there.

What was wrong with her? What had she started with her stupid exhausted carelessness the night before? “Was I not up to the dress code?” Her quick grin invited everyone into the joke. “Coat and tie only?”

“You were perfect,” Luc said calmly. “But you looked cold.”

Her father's critical look made her want to tuck herself up against Luc and thumb her nose at him.

“And you're welcome in my kitchens any time you choose,” Luc told her, with exquisite manners that reinforced his possession of those kitchens. “You won't get in my way.”

Damn it. She really hated men who didn't let her get in their way.

“Welcome to the Leucé.” And he walked off and left her. Again. Draped in his coat, his scent twining all around her.

S
ylvain Marquis stared as Luc approached, reflected back on himself in a vast gold-framed mirror that glinted with the lights from the chandeliers. In it Luc saw Summer forget him almost instantly, turning that sweet smile on the first man to take his place. “How did you manage to do
that?
” the chocolatier asked.

“Do what?” Luc pretended to sip his wine again. He was damned if he would get any alcohol into his system tonight. That half glass of champagne the night before had clearly left him far too vulnerable to being . . . cracked like a raw egg.

“Walk out on Summer Corey. She's exactly your type.” Dark-haired poet Sylvain, media darling, regularly named the best chocolatier in the world, had a gift for sounding as if he couldn't possibly be wrong, no matter what subject he talked about. He was at the gala because of his wife, Cade, presumably. Billionaires always stuck together.

“No, she is not.” How would Sylvain know? Luc rarely gave himself enough time to date. It didn't work out for him. His dates declared him too controlled, too careful, not affectionate or attentive enough. And the couple of times he had let himself go as a teenager had been disastrous, reducing him to a clinging, desperate, love-starved person he could not stand to be again and whom the girl in question hadn't been able to stand, either. It boggled his mind, the degree of touching and warmth and relaxation between someone like Sylvain and Cade. How did they
do
that? And, having attained it, how did they manage to go out in public, and not lock themselves in an apartment for the rest of their lives, wallowing in it?

“Luc, please. She's exactly any man's type.”

That set Luc's teeth again. “Aren't you married?”

“No, she is not,” Dominique Richard interrupted, sounding annoyed as he joined the conversation. “She's the kind of woman who
thinks
she's any man's type, which isn't the same thing.” He sounded as if he held a long-standing grudge against that kind of woman. But then, Dominique often sounded as if he held a grudge. Big, dark, aggressive, the bad boy of Paris's chocolate scene had only recently been caught by a girl-next-door type who left him so softened and fragile whenever she was around that Luc had to look away. It wasn't good for men like him and Dominique to have their raw-egg insides pouring out.

Damn Patrick for that image.

“I'm married, but
you're
not married,” Sylvain pointed out. “We were talking about you.”

“Then let's stop. I'm sure talking about you would be much more interesting.”

Which proved how knocked off-balance he was, to swell Sylvain's head even further. “Inherently,” Sylvain agreed, with a gleam in his eye. “But I haven't kidnapped a stranger and carried her off to her hotel room to ravage her recently.” He managed to look both pious and regretful.

“It's not my fault your marriage is boring,” Luc retorted. Dominique laughed. He and Dom had worked for a while in the same kitchen on their way up, and Luc had always been one of the few people who could get along with Dominique. Possibly because each man had a fundamental hole in him from his childhood that the other sensed. “What do you do, gossip nonstop?”

“There's a viral YouTube video of it, Luc. Some guest caught it, or some hotel employee, but I think you had better go with guest if you don't want someone fired. According to Cade, Summer used to trail paparazzi like a comet before she disappeared for years.”

Luc glanced at Summer, currently smiling up at yet another dark-haired man. Had half the men at this party dyed their hair black to play to her type, or what? In that glittering room, she shouldn't have stood out as the most golden thing in it, but she did. The only gold that was real.

Merde,
really? Had he been working all his fucking life not to reign over this gold and marble palace around him, but to have
her
?

“Are they related? She and Cade and Jaime?” Cade Corey, the elder of two heirs to the multinational conglomerate of Corey Chocolate, had married Sylvain Marquis in a surreal turn of events the winter before. One of the best chocolatiers in the world and some producer of mass-market milk chocolate. Even Luc's lip had curled in involuntary revulsion at the
mésalliance.
Sylvain had been accused of selling out more than once.

Younger sister Jaime had taken a break from reforming cacao labor practices long enough to get engaged to chocolatier rebel Dominique Richard about six months later, forcing the two archrivals into much closer contact than they could stand. And that had
really
pissed the Paris gourmets off. They had accused Corey Chocolate of trying to breed the quality out of them. So far the two men had managed to avoid killing each other, a restraint that was indubitably to Sylvain's credit. Nobody ever credited Dom with avoiding violence.

“Third cousins,” Sylvain said. “I guess they still invite each other to weddings because they don't have that many other cousins and the common last name gives some sense of attachment.”

“Her great-grandfather was my great-grandfather's older brother.” Heels clicking on the smooth parquet floor, Cade came up to give Luc a kiss on both cheeks. “The one whose barn my great-grandfather burned down when he was inventing a way to make milk chocolate. I guess the two of them were so intent on proving to each other they were right about the way to make a fortune that my great-grandfather managed to start a major chocolate company while her great-grandfather acquired endless acres, and each generation kept building from there. Our side was winning for a little while, until her father became one of the world's investment geniuses and shot their wealth into the stratosphere.”

It was hard to believe Cade could be related to Summer, even as third cousins. Although only a centimeter or two taller than Summer, Cade
felt
infinitely taller—as if there was nothing in the world that wouldn't yield to her when she walked straight into it with her chin up. Cade's hair was a straight light brown, and her blue eyes too direct for Summer's lagoon brilliance. If you tried to swim in
Cade's
blue eyes lazily, she'd strip you of all your assets, restructure you, and move in new management within the first few strokes.

Summer, on the other hand . . . would probably disappear like a mermaid into a glint of sun on a wave, dancing away.

“You do realize it's a bit surreal for Luc, Dom, and me,” Sylvain told his wife, “when someone hands you a top luxury hotel as a Christmas present.” All of them had worked with relentless determination and perfectionism to climb to the pinnacle of their professions.

Cade's expression cooled. “I worked, Sylvain.”

Luc and Dom flicked her incredulous looks, Luc's so subtle that she probably missed it, Dominique's as brusquely open as everything else about him. Cade's lips tightened.

“Not to climb, though.” Sylvain grinned. “Not until you had to work so hard for
me,
of course. That was a definite step up.”

Cade rolled her eyes, and Sylvain laughed and stretched a hand toward her. A subtle gesture, but it was enough. Cade shifted into that curve of his hold as naturally and easily as breathing.

Dom looked across the room instinctively toward Jaime, who had fallen into conversation with Summer. Luc followed his gaze because it gave him an excuse to look in Summer's direction.

Jaime's passion fruit–caramel hair had reached a sophisticated bob length now, after the violent attack that had made headlines in the chocolate world. The bob didn't suit her. If any adult woman should have her hair in two braids down her back, it was the extraordinarily freckled Jaime. When Luc had first met her, her wrist bones had stuck out, but six months of Dom's chocolate had put the flesh back on her, and she and Dom both had a glow that made Luc want to hang his head and kick something as sullenly as he used to when he was a kid in the Métro. Of all of them, Dom was the last man he would have thought would find such cozy, codependent happiness.

Instead of which, Luc was the last man. He didn't show even an inkling of his jealousy, of course. He was Luc Leroi, damn it. These days, other people could look at
his
life and long for
it.

“So what's she like?” Sylvain asked Cade. “Luc needs to know.”

Luc sent him a dangerous look. Sylvain grinned. The chocolatier had been insufferably smug even before Cade sealed the one chink in his arrogance—women—by settling that straight gaze on him and leaving no doubt as to her choice. Now there was really no being around the man at all.

“I'm pretty much her antithesis,” Cade said. “So I don't really know her that well. Besides, I don't want to comment on someone's girlfriend in front of him.” She smirked in an exact imitation of her husband.

“She asked me to show her to her room and then pretty much passed out in my arms,” Luc lied, driven. “Wouldn't you have picked her up?” he challenged the other two men.

“Before Cade, probably,” Sylvain said ruefully. “And gotten my heart broken.” Only an extremely observant, obsessive-compulsive person would have noticed the little squeeze he gave Cade's waist in gratitude for the fact that his heart couldn't get broken anymore. No reason at all for it to make a man conscious of how empty his own hands were.

“No,” Dom said. “Either she's well enough to stand on her own two feet and just trying to manipulate me, or I need to call an ambulance.”

Yeah, he talked big when Jaime wasn't around, didn't he? Luc gave him an annoyed look.

What was wrong with manipulation, anyway? He didn't mind if Summer wrapped that silky hair around his wrist to jerk his heartstrings. She could stroke her hair all over his body if she wanted. Or . . .
merde.
Maybe not. The key was to keep control, and twenty years of practice at perfect control might not be enough to overcome all the wildness still lurking from his childhood if she did that.

But he could manipulate, too. He could control things that were hot and cold and fragile and hard better than perhaps any other man on the planet, and he had barely gotten started. In about fifteen more minutes he would set before her a golden heart held gently in a dark hand, and her eyes would light like a child's, and her mouth would melt as she looked from it to him. That would be how he started, training her, until she couldn't even hear his name without melting, without wanting.

“I used to think she was pretty desperate for attention.” Cade shrugged. “It takes talent to have the media after her the way she did. Jamie had to be tear-gassed at G8 summits to get her picture all over the Web. But they never could get enough of Summer, and for a while she seemed to lap it up. The first year after she dropped off the face of the earth, I kept expecting to see a reality show turn up about her South Pacific life or something. But no, she stayed in the islands for four years, way past media reach. Jaime spent a week on a cargo boat getting out there once, just in case she needed someone to save her from a mad island chief or a sudden drug habit, and said she was relaxed, happy, and clearly adored by her schoolkids.”

“Her
what
?”

Cade grinned. Seriously, far too much of Sylvain was wearing off on her. “You guys didn't even chat a little to get to know each other first? She's been teaching school out on minimally populated islands that don't even have regular electricity. Her dad can hardly stand it. Well, he clearly can't stand it anymore at all. Why else would she be here?”

Because she had gotten fed up with tropical roughing it and wanted to spend a few months being pampered in a top hotel in Paris, luxuriating in every delicacy Luc's hands could create? Although . . . four years was a long time for a spoiled heiress to last before she got fed up. “Isn't she old enough not to do what her father says?”

“Oh, I'm sure Sam found some way to control the situation.” Cade looked a little amused, like someone who also usually had the power to control a situation. “Probably promised to invest in something they need out on the islands. I wouldn't put it past him to have some kind of bonus if she marries the man he wants her to while she's here, too. He's clearly marketing his top choices for future Corey Holding chairs.”

Anger stabbed through Luc. Across the room, Sam Corey stopped by his daughter and Jaime with a well-dressed man in tow. “Why? He wants her to be miserable?”

Cade's look was arrested. “That . . . might have a grain of truth. I know he's always blamed himself for spoiling her. He talks about it, when he gets frustrated enough.”

Luc remembered blame. Sometimes it flashed through him like it was yesterday, that blame. Sometimes he still believed it. “He's a doting father, then,” he said neutrally.

Cade looked doubtful. “I guess. In his way. If you ask me, she's probably got abandonment issues.”

Luc's and Dom's eyes met, and then both looked away, expressions unchanged. Luc didn't even know where their awareness of each other's shitty childhoods had come from. Neither was exactly the confiding sort.

“Abandonment,” Luc repeated, not particularly wanting to hear the sad story of a beautiful billionaire heiress's difficult childhood. Summer pushed his buttons enough already.

Cade shrugged. “Well—I don't know. If Dad had dumped
me
in a boarding school on the other side of the world at age thirteen, I think it would have broken my heart. Of course, my mom had just died, so I might have been a lot more fragile at that age.”

“Fragile” wasn't really a word Luc associated with Cade. On the other hand, Summer . . . he looked at her again, moving through the crowd, elusive as sunlight dancing over waves.