The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (39 page)

Jo knew the third time she missed the damn town that she was going to get there too late. Sainte-Mère. How many Sainte-Mères existed off the Côte d’Azur, and how many roads to those towns were under construction?

She should never have accepted a stick shift from the car rental place. If they had held an automatic for her per her reservation, she would at least be negotiating these cobblestoned streets, narrower than her car, without fearing she would shift gears wrong and end up in a wall. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get back before tomorrow morning, at this rate,” she told her oldest sister on the phone. “I’ll have to catch a late train. Cover for me.”

“How?” Estelle asked.

“I don’t know!” Jo cried, frantically trying to back down a near-vertical slope the size of a piece of spaghetti, in order to allow a car to pass coming the other way. “I’m sick or something and don’t want to expose him. You can come up with something!”

It was twelve-thirty when she finally fit her car down the small spiral ramp that passed for the entrance to the parking lot for the old walled part of town. Plane trees shaded the little parking area, and she climbed a staircase from it to the place below Gabriel Delange’s restaurant.

The scent of jasmine wafted over her as she stepped into the place, delicate and elusive, as the breeze stirred vines massed over sun-pale walls. A surprisingly quixotic and modern fountain rippled water softly in the center of a tranquil, shaded area of cobblestones. She stopped beneath the fountain’s stylized, edgy angel, dipping her hand into the water streaming from the golden rose it held. Fontaine Delange, said a little plaque.

He had a city fountain named after him already? Well, why not? There were only twenty-six three-star restaurants in France, eighty in the world. He had put this little town on the map.

His restaurant, Aux Anges, climbed up above the place in jumbled levels of ancient stone, a restored olive mill. She would have loved to sit under one of those little white parasols on its packed terrace high above, soaking up the view and exquisite food, biding her time until the kitchens calmed down after lunch. But, of course, his tables would be booked months in advance. In another restaurant, she might have been able to trade on her father’s name and her own nascent credentials as a food writer, but the name Manon was not going to do her any favors here.

The scents, the heat, the sound of the fountain, the ancient worn stone all around her, all seemed to reach straight inside her and flick her tight-wound soul, loosing it in a rush. Stop. It will be all right. Your father is out of immediate danger, has two other daughters, and will survive a day without you. Take your time, take a breath of that hot-sweet-crisp air. Relief filled her at the same time as the air in her lungs. That breath smelled nothing like hospitals, or therapists’ offices, or the stubborn, heavy despair in her father’s apartment that seemed as unshakeable as the grime in the Paris air.

She walked past an art gallery and another restaurant that delighted in welcoming all the naive tourists who had tried showing up at Aux Anges without reservations. A little auberge, or inn, gave onto the place, jasmine vines crawling all over its stone walls, red geraniums brightening its balconies.

She turned down another street, then another, weaving her way to a secret, narrow alley, shaded by buildings that leaned close enough for a kiss, laundry stretching between balconies. Jasmine grew everywhere, tiny white flowers brushing their rich scent across her face.

Kitchen noises would always evoke summer for her, summer and her visits to France and her father. The open windows and back door of Aux Anges let out heat, and the noises of knives and pots and people yelling, and a cacophony of scents: olive oil, lavender, nuts, meat, caramel . . .

As she approached the open door, the yelling grew louder, the same words overheard a million times in her father’s kitchens: “Service! J’ai dit service, merde, it’s going to be ruined. SERVICE, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!”

“—Fast as we can, merde – putain, watch out!”

A cascade of dishes. Outraged yells. Insults echoed against the stone.

She peeked through the door, unable to resist. As a child and teenager, she had been the kid outside a candy shop, confined to her father’s office, gazing at all that action, all that life: the insane speed and control and volcanic explosions as great culinary wonders were birthed and sent forth to be eaten.

At least fifteen people in white and black blurred through a futuristic forest of steel and marble. Four people seemed to be doing the yelling, two chefs in white, two waiters in black tuxedos, separated by a wide counter and second higher shelf of steel: the pass, through which elegant plates slipped into the hands of waiters, who carried them into the dining rooms with—ideally—barely a second’s pause between when the plate was finished and when it headed toward the customer who was its destination. A wave of profound nostalgia swept Jolie.

“Connard!” somebody yelled.

“C’est toi, le connard, putain!”

A big body straightened from the counter closest to the door and turned toward the scene, blocking her view of anything but those broad shoulders. Thick, overlong hair in a rich, dark brown, threaded with gold like a molten dark caramel, fell over the collar of the big man’s chef’s jacket, a collar marked with the bleu, blanc, rouge of a Meilleur Ouvrier de France. That bleu, blanc, rouge meant the chef could only be one person, but he certainly wasn’t skinny anymore. He had filled into that space she had used to only imagine him taking up, all muscled now and absolutely sure.

His growl started low and built, built, until it filled the kitchen and spilled out into the street as a full-bodied beast’s roar, until she clapped her hands to her head to hold her hair on. Her ears buzzed until she wanted to reach inside them and somehow scratch the itch of it off.

When it died down, there was dead silence. She gripped the edge of the stone wall by the door, her body tingling everywhere. Her nipples felt tight against her bra. Her skin hungered to be rubbed very hard.

Gabriel Delange turned like a lion who had just finished chastising his cubs and spotted her.

Her heart thumped as if she had been caught out on the savannah without a rifle. Her fight instinct urged her to stalk across the small space between them, sink her hands into that thick hair, jerk her body up him, and kiss that mouth of his until he stopped roaring with it.

That would teach him.

And her flight option wanted to stretch her arm a little higher on that door, exposing her vulnerable body to be savaged.

She gripped that stone so hard it scraped her palm, fighting both urges.

Gabriel stood still, gazing at her. Behind him, the frozen tableau melted: petits commis, waiters, sous-chefs, all returning to their tasks with high-speed efficiency, the dispute evaporated. Someone started cleaning up the fallen dishes. Someone else whipped a prepped plate off the wall, where little prongs allowed them to be stacked without touching each other, and began to form another magical creation on top of it.

Jo tried to remember the professional motivation of her visit. She was wearing her let’s-talk-about-this-professionally pants. She was wearing her but-this-is-a-friendly-visit little sandals. Given the way her nipples were tingling, she would have preferred that her casually formal blouse have survived her one attempt to eat chocolate in the car while she was wandering around lost for hours, but no . . . her silky pale camisole was all she had left.

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose just a little as his gaze flicked over her. Curious. Perhaps intrigued. Cautiously so.

“You’re late,” he said flatly.

“I had a lot of car trouble,” she apologized. It sounded better than saying she had spent hours circling Sainte-Mère and Sainte-Mère-Centre and Sainte-Mère-Vieux-Village, utterly lost. Wait, how did he know she was late? This was a surprise visit. “I’m sorry. I know this is a bad time.”

“Bon, allez.” He thrust a folded bundle of white cloth at her. She recognized the sturdy texture of it instantly: a chef’s jacket. A heavy professional apron followed. His gaze flicked over her again. “Where are your shoes?”

“I—”

“If you drop hot caramel on those painted toenails, I don’t want to hear about it. Coming to work without your shoes. I thought Aurélie told me you had interned with Daniel Laurier.”

“Uh—”

Eyes blue as the azure coast tightened at the corners. “You made it up to get a chance. Parfait. And you’re late. That’s all I need. Get dressed and go help Thomas with the grapefruit.”

Probably she should have told him right then.

But . . . she had been having a hellish two months, and . . . a sneak peek into Gabriel Delange’s kitchens. . . .

A chance to work there through a lunch hour, to pretend she was part of it all. Not in an office. Not observing a chef’s careful, dumbed-down demonstration. Part of it.

She had spent the past two months dealing with hospitals and fear and grief, and he had just handed her happiness on a plate. What was an impassioned food writer to do?

Not the ethical thing, that was for darn sure.

Enjoy this excerpt? Get
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Acknowledgements

First of all, a huge thank you to Laurent Jeannin, head pastry chef at Le Bristol, Paris, as well as to all his team, for their kindness and patience as I researched in their kitchens. The incredible generosity of the people I meet during my research in this field never ceases to amaze me. Thank you also to Éric Frechon, the head chef (and Meilleur Ouvrier de France) of those kitchens, for tempting me with tidbits while I was there. L’Épicure, in the Bristol, is a Michelin three-star restaurant, that rarest of accolades, and Le Bristol in Paris is a five-star luxury palace hotel, so it was invaluable to me to be able to draw on what I learned there as I worked on
The Chocolate Rose, The Chocolate Heart,
and
The Chocolate Temptation.
You can see some photos of that research on my website:
www.lauraflorand.com
.

Many thanks also go to Leah Marshall, the director of Le Bristol, Paris, for organizing the visit and to my agent at the time, Paris-loving Kimberley Cameron, who put us all together.

I want also to thank Bonnie Lau, the chocolatier and owner of Miel Bon Bons, who was a student at Ferrandi in Paris and who allowed me to pick her brains for information. (“Culinaire” is invented. Ferrandi is where a real Sarah Lin would go.)

On the writing end, I want to thank Karen Dale Harris, my editor for this book, as well as Arran McNicol, copy editor, for their sharp eyes and careful feedback. And a big thank you again to Alicia Condon at Kensington for being the first to believe in this series! And if you like the book, here’s a shout out for the kind and generous Elyssa Patrick, who convinced me that no, I couldn’t throw it in the trash, in one of those periods of authorial despair when I really was tempted.

And thank you to my readers! Your emails and encouragement remind me why I write!

About Laura Florand

Laura Florand is the award-winning author of the Amour et Chocolat series (
The Chocolate Thief, The Chocolate Kiss
), where sexy Parisian chocolatiers woo the women they love with what they love best – romance you can taste. Her books have been translated into seven languages, received the RT Seal of Excellence and been nominated for RT Magazine’s Book of the Year, received starred reviews from
Publishers Weekly
and
Library Journal
, and been recommended by
USA Today
, NPR, and
The Wall Street Journal
, among others.

She was born in Georgia, but the travel bug bit her early. After a Fulbright year in Tahiti, a semester in Spain, and backpacking everywhere from New Zealand to Greece, she ended up living in Paris, where she met and married her own handsome Frenchman, a story told in her first book
Blame It on Paris.
Now a lecturer at Duke University, she is very dedicated to her research into French chocolate. For a glimpse behind the scenes of some of that research as well as recommendations for US chocolate, make sure to check out her website:
www.lauraflorand.com.

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