The Chocolate Heart (18 page)

He braced one forearm on it as the rain pounded him. “Think you can handle that?” he asked evenly.

Summer's heart tightened until she thought something would snap. She lifted her chin. “In exactly seventy-seven days, I will have earned my father's investment in Pacific Island communications and will be going home to my island and my kids.
My
job. So you tell me how that works out with being your forever toy, to you.”

His face tightened under a wash of cold rain.

A wave of impotent rage pushed her forward, past the edge of the umbrella, rain streaming down her own face. “And I, too, have a heart that can be broken. I'm sorry, I must have thought you knew.”

I
,
too, have a heart . . .
Luc shoved his hands through his hair, staring at the Eiffel Tower through his apartment window. Did she really think he did not know that? Or had so many people forgotten her heart that every single thing he did with her had been seen through that fear?
How badly did your heart get hurt before you would prefer to be fucked and left on the floor rather than risk it again?

How could anyone live with her heart so unprotected, nothing between it and the people who would eat it for dinner but a shimmering smile?

He finally left his apartment well after midnight and walked Paris, crossing luminous bridges over the Seine, glistening with the recent rain, strolling past the Tuileries as far as the Louvre, then crossing the Pont des Arts. He loved walking this city, each step a reaffirmation of his victory over it. He had started out as the lowliest and most despised and forgotten of children in it, and now he owned Paris. Everyone flocked to him.

He had beaten his own life, beyond recognition. And he didn't know why, in reaction to Summer, the very person he had to be so perfect to reach, that old life had come back out of its coma, ready for another round.

From the Pont des Arts he strolled back along the Left Bank as far as the Eiffel Tower, walking down the long Champ de Mars. In the playgrounds there the hand-cranked carousel was closed, night stealing the colors from all its pretty ponies. He had never once ridden on that carousel as a child—no money—and now he was too big.

Summer Corey would have ridden it as many times as she wanted, a happy little girl, trying to catch rings on her wand as the carousel went round and round and her pink pony went up and down. He hoped she had laughed and laughed, in pealing delight.

If he ever had his own child, he was going to be the worst father ever. Unwilling to deny her one single thing. But so driven to be in control.
Putain,
what if she didn't like sweets, like her mother, and left him no way to express
anything
for her?

What the hell had he just thought? He pushed the idea from his mind before he got vertigo, gazing at the night-shadowed playground.

Once, when he was nine or so—young enough to still be with his father—he had played for much of a morning with a little blond girl here. He still remembered it. In fact, he still had the little jeweled flower bracelet she had given him in a cardboard box of similarly rare precious toys in his closet. He hadn't been lying about keeping his toys forever.

But he let everything else go. Just like his mother, really, who had let
him
go, the person who—surely? Her own child?—should have been most precious to her. Even his father had let him go, although not before he had tried to keep a ten-year, desperate clutch on his son that had taught a harsh lesson to both of them. It was a clutch that had left Luc nothing to hold onto but a little girl's flower bracelet and that had left his father, in the end, with nothing.

For the twenty years since Luc had been torn from his father's grasp, Luc had taken raw ingredients, shaped them into something incredibly beautiful, tiny magical drops of his heart, and let them be taken from his hands and carried away to be eaten.

He never even tried to hold on to his sous-chefs, into whom he poured so much training. When they were ready he loaned them the money to get started and sent them off to soar.

He hadn't been able to keep that little girl, either. Only the two of them in the playground, on that winter day when everyone else their age was in school. Two more disparate creatures could hardly exist, she a magic princess child, five or six, all golden, her features almost ethereal, such a pretty little girl, so untouched by time that she could have stepped out of fairyland into the tense world of Paris.

She had looked at him as if he had hung the moon. In his worn, poor clothes, with his tense, rough manners, and his sullen knowledge that everyone looked down at him. Or didn't see him at all.

The little magic princess, who was so tiny and charming and beautiful she made all those elegant snobs on the Métro look like peasants, had followed him all over the play equipment while he showed off for her, and she tried to do what he did, and he jumped down from the bars to stand under her and tell her to be careful.

He had wanted her to be his little sister so he could keep her and her utter adoration all for himself, so he had made up a fairy tale where he was her dark knight, and she was his princess, and he used to play it sometimes in his head, long after his father had come to get him and her nanny had taken her away. In fact, when Bernard fostered him, he used to think of that little girl as he added this little touch or that little flourish to a pastry that would make her clap her hands in delight and look at him as if he was her world.

Even at the age of ten, he had known that the only way that little girl would need his protection was if he dragged her out of her bright, happy life into his own dark world. Even at the age of ten, a part of him had not cared, as long as he had that adoration for his very own. As long as she looked at him as if he hung the stars.

 

“You're not quitting?” Patrick asked the next morning, after multiple attempts to tease Luc resulted in no response at all, nor movement, Luc standing deep in thought, hands pressed on marble. “For real this time? You seem . . . very quiet.”

“I'm thinking,” Luc said. In the mirrored surface of a glossy, heart-shaped chocolate tarte his face looked honed, determined—born out of chaos, ready for a war of the gods. “And no. I'm not quitting.” He trailed four rose petals across the tarte and changed his voice to carry through the kitchen. “Everyone listen up. We're doing a new menu tonight.”

 

Summer was going to ask Patrick about the fight—after all, he was always nice to her—but as soon as she saw him in the hall, half the question was answered. “Wait.” She stopped dead in front of him. “It was with
you
?”

Patrick tried to grin, but his mouth had taken several punches. The corners of his eyes crinkled, though. “Don't blame yourself. I've been trying to provoke him into a fight for years.”

“Blame myself?”

“Oops. I've said too much.” Patrick covered his mouth with one extravagant hand, its knuckles swollen.

“Wait.
Now
can I fire him? He can't fight with his
employees.
” And it would save her from—she wasn't sure anymore what it would save her from. Her heart tangled so badly when she thought of him that it was all she could do not to throw herself at him and ask him to save her from the mass of dark vines.

Except she had thrown herself at him and asked him to save her before.

Patrick laughed. “Mademoiselle Corey, I understand the desire to strangle Luc, but you probably shouldn't keep sublimating it into an urge to fire him. I mean, you could take me as your head
chef pâtissier,
but I think I would rather strike out on my own. Get my own stars. I'm not that interested in stealing someone else's. Besides, I like the bastard.”

“Why?” Summer asked incredulously.

“His perfectionism, his passion for his work, his imagination, his patience—even though it makes me want to hit him sometimes—his self-control (which makes me want to hit him
all
the time), his discipline, his sense of humor, and his
joie de vivre
. Also, you know, there aren't many chefs who are willing to let you learn every damn thing you can from them and then back you when you go off to become their rival. Or take a screwed-up fifteen-year-old under their wing and become a lodestone he can still rely on twelve years later. Don't tell him I said any of this, will you?”

“We're not on friendly gossip terms,” Summer said very dryly.

“Well, no, clearly, but there's always pillow talk.”

Summer gaped at him, as if that lazy, easygoing surfer had reached out and wrapped a fist around one of her internal organs. And then squeezed.

All while hanging out waiting for the next wave.

“His
joie de vivre
?” She ignored the pillow talk reference as best she could. “Are we talking about the same man?”

“No, but that's because he hasn't been himself since you showed up. Oops, there you go, I said too much again.” Patrick pretended to bow and headed on. Almost at the corner, he paused and turned back. “He looks just as bad as me, by the way, he's just hiding most of it. I went for the ribs. I don't know how you might compare—maybe you could get his shirt off?”

He strolled around the corner, laughing.

S
ummer's kids had timed a video conference when both sides of the world would be awake, 7:30, and for once they were getting enough bandwidth to make it happen. Their grins kept freezing in the slow, choppy connection. Whenever the image froze she would hear the audio of the youngest kids complaining she wasn't moving, why not? And in the background, explaining, was her substitute, Kelly—an ambitious new graduate in her father's employ, who had leaped at the opportunity to help Sam Corey out by spending three months in the islands.

They were showing her presents they had made her and were going to send her on the next boat. “Since we know you must be missing us!” They had been for their annual shell-collecting trip on the nearby, unpopulated island where a certain tiny orange snail crawled rampant, and had finished the painstaking process of cleaning them and threading them, ten long strands for her. Several other batches of ten already hung in her little house on the island.

One of the older boys had carved a dugout canoe, having learned the technique from his father, who sent them to be sold at the market on the main island a week's boat trip away. “To travel back,” he said. His younger brother beamed proudly as he showed her the little tiki he had carved to take care of her.

“I love it!” Summer exclaimed, and there was a knock on the door.

God, she hated hotels, the way no space was really your own. “Come on in!” she called.

No card key slid in the lock. Another knock.

“Come
in
!” she called more loudly.

Another knock. Oh, for crying out loud. She took advantage of another freeze in the transmission to dart to the door. “I really don't want—” She broke off as the crack revealed the knocker.

“It's not housekeeping,” Luc said acerbically.

“What do
you
want?” she demanded rudely.

He gave her a long, steady look that made her throat itch. Like a premonition of hands closing around it. “You,” he said, and she started visibly, hand finding the edge of the table on which her laptop sat.

Black eyes followed the stretch of her arm, the grip of her fingers. She flushed and released it, then remembered her schoolkids.

The transmission seemed to be irreparably frozen. She wasn't even getting audio on her end, and Kelly was typing in the chat window to let her know.

“Can you still hear
me
?” she asked.

“Let's try again tomorrow. That's so sweet.
Moi, aussi, je vous aime.
”

She shut the laptop just as Luc shifted to try to glimpse the screen. His lips pressed together.

“You love someone?” he asked blandly, as if no one could possibly have suspected her of being capable of loving.

“Why else do you think I'm in such a hurry to get back to the islands?”

He shrugged. “Better weather, less work.”

Probably a lot more work, actually. Her kids' schooling was a lot less ambitious than her boarding school curriculum, but she did try to make sure they had a well-rounded education. And Alain so did not need her interference. “That, too. But I've got someone worth going back for.”

“Does he know the kind of things you say to other men when you're mad?”

Her lips pressed hard together. “Tell me what you need and get out.”

“Odd that you would use
vous
with someone you love.”

“I talk to all three of them at once. I thought I mentioned we were very laid-back in the islands.”

Luc smiled just a little. “Since you were actually talking to your schoolkids, that's quite nasty, what you're trying to make it come across as.”

Summer flushed and curled her hand into a fist to keep from grabbing the laptop and breaking it over his head.

“Do you talk to them often?”

She shrugged sullenly. Usually the satellite connection wasn't enough, and she had to get through another Paris day without the crutch of a handful of small island children.

“
Do
you have an island lover, Summer?”

Not in three years. “Is that any business of yours?” she asked him hostilely.

A tiny flexing of his jaw. “Apparently I think so. Or I wouldn't have asked.”

“Why don't you tell me what you want?” If he said
you
again ...

But he had stopped, his attention caught by the photos sliding across her giant television screen.

Lush green mountains plummeted into an azure bay, a photo that unknotted every muscle in her shoulders whenever she saw it, tension flowing out of the nape of her neck as the beauty of it sighed through her. It slid away, replaced by one of Summer sitting on the sand, legs folded, a tanned, raggedy mess of badly cut hair and uncared-for skin, and the Capri-length cut-offs that didn't even show off her legs properly but were as short as island mores allowed. She had black-haired kids piled all over her, one climbing up her back like a monkey, face peeking just by her ear, one toppled in her lap even though he was too big to fit in it, a couple of the older ones pressed on either side, grinning faces against her shoulders. Shy, serious Vanina was making bunny ears above her head, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

Luc made a soft sound. She glanced at him, her own grin at the photo fading. He looked dazed, a little blank, as if someone had hit him over the head.

A new photo slid into place. A little out of focus, because she had been letting Ari, one of her six-year-olds, use the camera. Summer, hanging like a pig for roasting from a wooden pole being carried by two men. They had all gone to Nuku Hiva for the Heiva festivities midsummer—pretty much the entire island had gone, all together on the deck of a cargo boat—and the men had just finished taking second place in the race with the poles laden with bananas over their shoulders. They had started joking about whether Summer weighed more than the bananas, which, of course, had quickly degenerated into jokes about whether she weighed more than a trussed pig as they pretended to carry her off to be roasted. Then one of the men, a little drunk by then, had made a joke about peeling the banana and eating it, and Summer had laughed and dropped off the pole to go do something else. She had been two years celibate by that time and kind of liked the idea of being peeled and eaten by someone, but her whole balance on that island depended on the missionary morals self-portrayal.

The photo slid, and she winced. That stupid expression on her face, frozen by the camera just at the wrong second, but she had kept it because it was the one that had captured Moea's upside-down grin, as he hung from a branch, offering her a mango.

The next one . . . oh, for crying out loud. The proper way to climb a coconut tree was not to wrap one's legs around it but to press the soles of the feet to the trunk on either side, pushing up with a frog-like motion. This series captured multiple ludicrous moments as Summer tried to learn the technique, various islanders laughing uproariously in the background.

She looked as awkward and ridiculous as it was possible for someone to look. Normally this series made her laugh her head off, but—

She grabbed the remote and turned the screen off before Perfectionism Personified, who doubtless hadn't had an awkward moment since he was thirteen, could see any more of the show.

He looked as if he was trying to suppress physical pain.

Didn't that just figure? One day, he would probably marry some picture-perfect woman he could hang up on the wall in his apartment, instead of having to deal with any flaws.

Eyes of pitch cut toward her. “What the hell was that?”

“Oh, get over yourself,” Summer said, stiffening. Did he think the whole world was supposed to be perfect all the time, just in case he was watching?

A flicker of confusion in his eyes, but it didn't knock him off target. “What the hell were you doing on that island?”

“Teaching school.” She shrugged. “I'm not saying I could handle it in an urban high school, but on a tiny island in the Pacific, it turns out to be the perfect job for me. Everyone loves me.”

“You were
smiling.
” That tiny muscle flexed in his jaw, probably his equivalent of pure rage. “Like you were
happy.
”

“Sorry. I didn't realize my being happy would ruin your day.”

“Who the hell was taking those pictures?” He shifted, his body suddenly dominating hers. His eyes glittered. “Damn it, you do. Have an island lover.”

“I haven't had a boyfriend in three years!” she yelled, and he jerked as if, for once,
she
had whipped him. “And it's not your business.”

“Yes,” he said flatly. “It is. Trust me, if I was constantly coming on to
you,
you would have the right to know if I had a girlfriend.”

She whitened. “I'm sorry, grabbing a woman in a car and telling her you want her for your toy doesn't count as a come-on?”

He ignored that. “That damn smile you do here doesn't mean
anything,
does it?”

“I'm just trying to be nice. What am I supposed to do, scowl at everybody?” Which people would have criticized, too. Nobody had ever been happy with her here. Rich and blond and none of it to her credit, she had been born to be the world's scapegoat.

“I don't want you to be nice to me,” Luc said.

“Yes, you mentioned.” She put her desk between them.

“When? Do you define blow jobs as being nice?” Luc asked incredulously.

She flushed crimson. “I never actually—”

He made a slicing motion of his hand. “I'm sorry,” he said abruptly. “I'm sorry. Let's not bring that up again.”

She took a deep breath at the apology. Her mouth softened, tremulous, that close to burying her head against his chest and crying. The urge scared her to death. She did not want to be fragile, and definitely not around him.

“Summer.” His voice changed, dark-night gentle. Dark knight. “I didn't mean what you chose to think, about the toy, you know. Why do you always hear the wrong part of what I'm trying to say?”

“Look, I'm busy,” she said roughly. “Just tell me what you want.”

He watched her a long moment before he allowed her change of subject. “Let me show you the kind of thing that has been spreading through the media.” The headlines came up as soon as he typed the hotel's name into her computer, images of her and him, titles like: “Is the Leucé falling apart?” “Irreparable Differences?” “New Directions for Luc Leroi?”

“It's an uproar, Summer. Bloggers and critics are slipping in from everywhere, trying to be the one to catch the story, or the first to predict the loss of a star. There's a writer from
Le Figaro
here tonight. Supposedly in secret, but we've got good connections. I want you to act like you like me.” Black eyes rested on her. “Like you wouldn't dream of being parted from me.”

“I'm trying!” Alain had already talked to her about it once. In public, she smiled around him until even her face hurt.

That muscle in his jaw ticced. “Like you really like me. Not like some socialite raised to heap extravagant praise on the woman she's about to stab in the back.”

She folded her arms. What the hell did he know about the social survival skills necessary in an elite boarding school full of pampered but poorly raised girls? Walk a mile in her high heels and then maybe he would have an excuse to mock how she balanced in them. Or he might even understand why she preferred going barefoot. “What else do you want me to do? Kiss your feet in full view of the dining room?”

“No. Relax and put some sincerity into it. As if you genuinely like me.”

“I'm doing the best I can!”

That made his jaw tighten until she thought he might crack something. “Maybe your acting ability isn't up to such a challenge. Maybe you should try genuinely liking me instead.”

She gaped at him. “How in the world am I supposed to manage that?”

That perfect face of his hardened. Obsidian eyes flicked, unsettlingly, over her body and to the wall behind her. “Quite.” He turned and left.