B00CACT6TM EBOK (25 page)

“You tell yourself that, Pierre. In fact, tell me again why your daughter has to do all the commuting back and forth while she’s working on the Côte d’Azur? What’s the matter—you can’t even land a consulting job in the south of France anymore? Is that because you’ve been sitting on your butt for so long?”

Pierre’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything else at all, but that green glittered and burned.

“Well, I just came to gloat.” Gabriel glanced at his watch. Yeah, he wanted to give himself plenty of time to get out of here before Jolie finished up with Philippe. “By the way, just so you know. That Rose you stole from me? My girlfriend? My life? I don’t even give a fuck. Because
I’ve
got something better.
I’ve
stolen
your daughter.
”

And he turned around and walked out of the living room—and straight into Jolie.

“Oh, fuck,” he said on a gasp, sick.

She was standing stark still in the hall, a purse slung over her shoulder, her face white, her fists clenched. He hadn’t even heard her come in.

“Jolie.” He reached for her shoulders.

She wrenched them away. “This was all about the two of you, all the time?”

What?

“All that time you were screwing me, it was really just to screw him?”

Gabriel made a low sound, as if someone had just gutted him. He couldn’t believe she had just said that. All the times they had made love, all that beautiful, hungry happiness—
screwing her
? In some vindictive game against her father?

How could he feel that wonderful, ready to do anything for her, ready to risk even her—for her—and she find it so easy to think he was so horrible?

Yes, she had caught him essentially ripping out a kitten’s entrails, but couldn’t she at least stop to wonder why?

When he held out his heart to her, what the fuck hell had she seen? Why did people always think his heart must be so damn ugly?

“You bastard,” Pierre said from the living room doorway, and Gabriel looked up to find the older man staring at him, both fists clenched, eyes glittering. “You really went after my daughter? To get back at me?”

“Fuck you,” Gabriel told him,
va te faire foutre,
and grabbed Jolie’s shoulders again, dragging her out of the apartment. He locked her back against the door, his arms on either side of her head.

“It’s still all about you two, isn’t it?” Jolie said bitterly, and even though her mouth twisted and her jaw set hard, the gold-and-green eyes started to fill with tears. “I can’t believe even you came all the way up here just to hurt him, through me.”

Even
you?

Even
? She was supposed to
know
that he was—better than this. Her prince.
Merde.

Maybe the problem was that what he had just done
was
in a way some of the best of him—the ability to be ruthless to reach an end.

“You—I
knew
some part of you was just using me to get back at him! I knew it!”

All the color drained out of Gabriel, as if she had unplugged some great hole in his soul. “Oh, you knew that, did you?” he said between barely parted lips. “Nothing I ever did made you think any better of me than that?”

“Well, if it did, it was because I was as stupid as my mother!” she spat at him.

He spoke each word as if it cut his mouth, precise and perfect. “The mother who dumps a man for being who he is, after ten years? Was that how stupid you were? Who destroys a
family
because it’s easier than sticking with someone?”

Jolie stared up at him, her face very white.

Gabriel pressed his face down close to hers and spoke between his teeth. “You go back in there, and you tell your father how much I hurt you. And you see what happens.” He straightened away, because he suddenly hurt so much he couldn’t stand it, and strode toward the elevator.

He had only gotten two paces when he turned back. Anger was a deep, powerful, protective thing. Almost like putting protective gear around his heart. “Jolie. I know you heard me say it. But I still can’t understand how you could believe it. Damn you. Deep down, you always did think I was just a beast, didn’t you?”

Jolie let herself back into the apartment, feeling lifeless, as if everything around her had turned to shades of white and gray. Maybe it was something like what her father felt in his depression. Maybe.

Her father, who had just been horribly, verbally abused by the man who claimed he loved her.
I’ve stolen your daughter. Ha, ha, ha. How’s that for payback?

“I always told you not to fall for a chef,” her father said softly. Pitying
her.
“We’re self-absorbed bastards. The last man in the world I would want you to get involved with is someone like me.”

That wasn’t entirely true, though. The thought came slowly through Jolie’s fogged white-and-gray brain. The last man in the world he had wanted her to get involved with, at least these past few years, was someone
other
than himself.
Of course he laps up the attention. So would I.

She walked to the window. Gabriel was halfway down the street below, eating up the distance with angry strides.

“He can’t help it, you know,” her father said, an unusual gentleness in his tone. It reminded her of the times they would lounge on his couch at two a.m., discussing the world. “He can’t help thinking of beating me first, before he thinks of you. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you at all.”

Jolie’s jaw set against tears, her nostrils stinging.

“But if he thinks he’s going to steal you out of my life like your mother did, he can go fuck himself,” her father said abruptly, descending into kitchen language as if Gabriel had woken it in him. “I can make a place for myself in Provence. I can have restaurants on the Côte d’Azur begging me to come consult with them. I’m
Pierre Manon.
”

She looked away from the street, blinking. Her father’s face looked—cleaner, the muscles tighter. He was opening and closing his left fist.

“When did Luc say he wanted to host us for the cookbook demo?” he asked sharply, in a tone she hadn’t heard from him in five years.

“Next weekend,” she said slowly. “At least, that was the original idea.”

“Then we need to start running through how we’re going to do it,” he said firmly. “I want it to be a show-stopper.”

Jolie turned her head swiftly to look back at the street. But Gabriel had already disappeared around the corner.

Gabriel sank back against the alley door to the kitchens, the last one to leave, and stared at the opposite wall, so close he could punch it. If he wanted to break his knuckles on stone.

He tilted his head back to gaze at the thin sliver of stars through the narrow gap of buildings above him. Then he closed his eyes. He felt—defeated. He felt like he needed that year’s safari in Africa, far away from anyone or anything but elephants and wildebeest. He had known he was taking a huge risk for her, but part of the way he had managed it was to never truly acknowledge the possible negative consequences.

How he did most things, really.

But just right now . . . the negative consequences of holding his heart out there one more time were far too obvious. His heart still felt like someone had bludgeoned it with rolling pins.

Something touched his arm, and it flew out in reflexive testosterone, slamming into a small body. He saw who it was a half-second too late, Jolie, knocked back against the wall.

“
Putain.”
He dropped on his knees to check her ribs and because he sure as shit did not want to loom over her after he had just accidentally hit her. “Are you all right? Jolie,
bébé
. Oh, fuck, you should
never
sneak up on a man in the middle of the night like that. And what are you doing taking the train at this hour? I told you—oh, fuck, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

Jolie began to cry. Just burst into tears.

“
Putain.”
He sat on the old cobblestones and pulled her into his lap, fingers checking her ribs , stroking the whole length of each one, compulsively. “I’m so sorry,
bébé.”
He rocked her, like a child.

“I’m all right.” She ran her hands over his hair and face and shoulders, digging her fingers into the shoulder muscles to clutch him hard. His whole body responded to the touch in startled relief. He had not really thought he would feel that again.

Well . . . maybe his heart, huddled in wounded self-defense, had nevertheless already been starting to come up with a little plan that might show her he was not a beast, but—

“I’m just so glad to see you,” Jolie said. “I didn’t—I ran after you, as fast as I could. But you were already gone.”

“Really?” Now he could feel those tight-furled petals around his heart blooming open, in startled wonder. “To . . . make up? Was that just a bad fight?”

“I shouldn’t have said that about—screwing me,” she said, on another burst of tears. “I love you. I didn’t mean it. I can’t believe I even could say that. You’re so wonderful.”

His heart stopped. Those last petals clutched tight around it. He couldn’t understand why they gripped in such panic. Hadn’t this been what he wanted? To hear her say
I love you
?

Except they were—they were only
words.
Anyone could say them.

His old girlfriend had said she loved him, too. Several women had said they loved him, in fact. They’d meant it at the time, too. If you started believing in that kind of thing, you left yourself wide open when they decided they didn’t really love you enough to love . . .
you
.

He stared down at her. In his arms, she felt small and entirely his. A man could fall so easily for that feeling. A man could give up his whole damn heart for it and then wake up one day to discover someone had gotten tired of his heart and fed it to the dogs.

He had pressured her and pressured her to say those words, until anyone would think he was almost
trying
to leave her no other choice than to bash him over the head and run away—afraid to let up on her in case she shut him out, afraid to slow down in case she softened and let him entirely in. But she hadn’t run away. She’d still kept looking at him as if she found him entirely enticing.

He
had run away, this afternoon. And she—
she
had come after
him.

He rubbed his hands against her ribs again, surreptitiously checking that he wasn’t imagining this—that she was right here. Saying she loved him.

She was. Those were her slim muscles, and that was her softness. That was the scent of her, stale from a train ride. And those were her unfamiliar tears, cried over him. Cried over them.

Now he had to make a choice. Now that he had her, he had to actually believe in her.

No.

It was harder than that.

With nothing held back, with nothing kept safe, with only her own guarantee because life had none, he still had to make the choice to leave himself wide open to her.

Her gold-brown head rubbed into him, rubbing her tears against his chest.

Yeah. As if he had ever had a choice.

He bent and kissed her, full out and wide open, putting all of him into it, because—that’s what she deserved. And that’s what he always did. He always did think people deserved better than he could manage without trying.

He kissed her until she settled against his shoulder happily, tears still tracks down her cheeks. He kissed her until even he relaxed a little, believing she was there again. He kissed her until he couldn’t kiss her anymore, until he had to lean his head back against the stone wall behind him and breathe.

He put some effort into it, the breathing, gazing rather awestruck at the stars. Had they always been that beautiful? That close and that scary?

“Anyway,” she mumbled against his shoulder, “I was yelling at you about the wrong thing.”

Uh-oh. He angled his head, trying to see if he could catch her mouth again before this went any further. The kissing had been
so
nice.

“Isn’t it funny how people do that sometimes, focus on the wrong thing in a fight as some kind of cover for the real problem?”

Oh, God, this didn’t sound good. He took a deep breath and tried to remind himself of his decision five minutes before to believe in her.

“Gabriel!” She lifted her head and held his eyes, which put her at the perfect angle for his mouth to silence hers, before she could start talking about problems.

He almost did and then it occurred to him that if she had come all this way to tell him she loved him, after that fight, maybe he shouldn’t take over the moment and turn it into what he wanted. Maybe he should let her talk.

He took a firm grip on himself, one of those many, many moments when she never knew how hard he was working to contain himself.

“Will you think two seconds about what you just did? You horned into
my father’s
life,
my father’s
health, without even talking to me about it, because you’re so determined to get what you want all the time.”

“It’s not like he was some stranger, Jolie! I know him better than you do,
merde.
” Actually, he knew Pierre a lot better than he knew Jolie, too, when he thought about it. The two men had worked together for sixteen brutal hours a day for four years. And then the man had dumped him. Shit, and all this time, he thought he had been scared she would act like her
mother.
She got the dumping genes on both sides.

“Gabriel!
I don’t care.
You need a damn
stop button.
”

“It worked, didn’t it?” he said indignantly.

“That doesn’t mitigate your gall in doing it! He’s
my
father, Gabriel.”

“Yes, but he was
my
chef.”

“You could have stressed him right into another stroke! Just because you were so convinced you knew better than I do!”

“And did I?”

“No, you stressed him into calling Luc Leroi to set up that demonstration and into contacting a few would-be starred chefs down here in Provence to see how they would like to learn how to reach that next level,” Jolie admitted.