When Chocolate Is Not Enough... (10 page)

And here was another father who had done the same.

Oh, Max
.

Just like that her arguments about working with him seemed to fade into trivial gripes about his lack of technical skills. So he had bought a blending machine with a faulty speed control? That was hardly the end of the world.

And his chocolate
was
fantastic.

Maybe her decision to take off had been a little hasty. Maybe—just maybe—she could still make this work.

The heel of her right hand knocked several times against her forehead.

She was such a totally soppy girl. She was probably going to regret this. But she would give Max Treveleyn yet another chance.

But he had to understand why she was so serious about the work, or they would not
stand a chance against the seasoned professionals at the conference.

With a huge sigh, Daisy stood up and peered at her reflection in the bedroom mirror.
Well? Are you going to do it or not?
she asked the girl with the crazy hair who was looking back at her.
Because you have to decide one way or the other. And you have to decide right now. You either go for it completely or you walk away now. No compromises
.

And absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent guaranteed no touching. At all. Ever again.

Ten minutes later, after much rummaging about in the cupboards in the hall, Daisy shuffled across the kitchen wearing a pair of football shorts and the smallest vest she could find, which still fell down over her hips.

She stepped outside the back door, looked around—then instantly froze, hardly believing her own eyes. Transfixed.

Max was still scrubbing down his arms on the patio, and she could see that the curls of blond hair on his tanned chest were slicked dark with sweat and cold water from the hosepipe he must have used to wash with.

She had always thought of herself as a town girl. Not glamorous or super slick, but definitely an urban dweller.

But the sight of Max as he towelled himself off in the sunshine hit her hard in what was most definitely a more primitive part of her brain.

There was a reason why the race of cavemen had survived—and this was it.

From where she was standing she could see the muscles working all down his back and shoulders as he washed away the last remaining brown flakes.

One thing was for sure.

Max Treveleyn was not hot chocolate fondue at all.

Max Treveleyn was a huge tower of freshly baked choux pastry profiteroles filled with whipped vanilla-scented Chantilly cream and then smothered in warm, molten bitter chocolate sauce. So that each bite gave a smooth tang of dark chocolate on the outside but was creamy and luscious in the middle, squidging out of the sides of your mouth if you tried to eat a whole one all at once.

How could she have got it so badly wrong?

Because if there was one dessert that she could not resist it was chocolate profiteroles.

A shiver of anticipation swept through Daisy as she considered how long it would take her to dash to her car with her wet dress and pretend that she hadn’t changed her mind. It would only take a few minutes, and she
could drive away and put this whole crazy idea down to a near-miss.

There was not an ounce of fat on his back. Each muscle and sinew seemed defined and pumped as he worked. The last time she had seen a body like that was on TV one evening, when she’d been flicking channels and had come across a swimming contest where the male swimmers were explaining the different strokes. Topless. Wearing small trunks.

That had been on film. Seeing it for real only a few yards away was quite a different matter. Max was not a professional dancer, or an athlete in any way, but if he ever wanted a change in direction he could be. She would even write the recommendation herself.

Were men
born
with shoulders like that?

At least Max was wearing pants.

As she watched, dry-mouthed, it was a guilty pleasure simply to take a moment to watch as his biceps and the muscles in his back and shoulders moved as he swept the bucket of water up and tipped it over his long blond hair.

He really was spellbinding.

She was ogling the man she was going to be working with over the next few days.

Oh, boy.

Why, oh, why did she always have to lust after the handsome ones who were so far out
of her league as to be on another planet? She had been here before. Okay, a chocolate shop in Paris was not exactly the same as a country garden in deepest English countryside, but it was just the same. One look. One smile. And she was right back to being a girl from nowhere who was putty in the hands of a powerful gorgeous man.

In other words—she was pathetic.

She had learnt from her mistake with Pascal and knew precisely what she had to do. Accept the fact that she was attracted to this man and get on with her work. No touching. Simple.

She would handle this her usual way. By keeping him distant. That was the thing.

Max was going to help her take a step closer to opening her own chocolate shop and making the dream she had shared with her precious father come true. He had sacrificed so much for her—she owed it to her dad as well as to herself to give this contest everything she had.

If she was really lucky Max would keep his top on.

And if he didn’t?

Just at that moment he whipped a towel from the back of a garden chair and turned around. And looked at her.

Really looked at her
.

As though he was seeing her for the first
time and he liked what he saw. His eyes met hers, and for the first time in her life Daisy knew beyond any doubt what it felt like to be the object of a man’s total admiration and respect. Her heart and her mind sang.

The smile lines at the sides of his mouth lifted up and he nodded. But his eyes never left hers.

‘Nice outfit,’ he commented. ‘It looks a lot better on you than me.’

‘Undoubtedly true, but thank you all the same. I’m considering giving your chocolate another chance—but first there is something you need to know.’

He gave her a lazy smile and wrapped the towel around his shoulders before stretching both arms onto the back of the chair. ‘Go ahead. I’m all yours.’

Daisy paused for a moment, then lifted her chin, heart thumping. ‘Okay. Short version,’ she replied. ‘You already know that my dad was a baker, but he loved chocolate. People used to come for miles to order special chocolate birthday cakes, and even a couple of chocolate wedding cakes—but they were not so popular back then as they are now.’

Her hands stilled and she lowered the bowl holding her wet dress onto the patio.

‘But he was never satisfied with the block chocolate he bought from the local wholesaler.
So every week there would be deliveries arriving in the post from suppliers with strange foreign names. From South America, Africa, Belgium.’ She looked up at Max and nodded. ‘I had the best stamp collection in my school, and for a while I thought Flynn’s bakery was going to become Flynn’s Bakery and Chocolate Shop.’

As Max watched, her throat seemed to tighten, and she turned away from him and licked her lips.

‘But somehow it didn’t happen. When I asked him about it, he said that business had fallen away and we didn’t have the money to invest in more chocolate work. He was a single dad doing the best he could. He’d come back to it later.’ Daisy coughed and shook her head. ‘He died of cancer three years ago, and I found the recipe I showed you earlier tucked into the back of a chocolate recipe book. He had been working on the perfect mixture for his own brand of chocolate for years and never told me.’

Max took a breath, as though he was about to offer his condolences, but stayed silent, letting her talk, letting her tell him in her own way.

She reached into her overall pocket and pulled out the precious piece of paper she had rescued from Delores. She turned around to
face Max. ‘So you see, this is not just about the contest. This is personal. I want to honour his memory in the best way I can, and this is the way I can do it. That means that you are going to have to prove to me that I can trust you. Because you will not be given a third chance. Not with me.’ Daisy smiled and blew out hard. ‘And now I have become stupidly sentimental. And very bossy. Crazy, huh?’

She lifted her hand to wipe away a tear from her cheek, and gasped as the paper fluttered to the patio stones.

Instantly Max swept down to pick it up, but as he stood up and presented it to Daisy she looked up into a face so full of sadness and regret and longing and understanding that her own heart took a second beat. Because at that second she felt a bond with this man she’d only known for a few hours which was so deep and so powerful that it made her dizzy.

Daisy was lost in those hypnotic blue eyes, wiping away sensible thought and replacing it with an unbidden desire to connect with this remarkable man.

This was probably why, without his asking permission or forgiveness, she allowed him to wipe away the single tear that had fallen onto her cheek with his thumb.

‘I am so sorry for your loss. I truly am. Thank you for telling me. And for giving me
a second chance to show you that I can make this work. For you, me and your dad,’ he said seriously.

‘In that case,’ she replied with a small sniff, ‘if we are going to make some more chocolate this afternoon we had better start on the cleaning. So … Where do you keep your mop?’

‘W
ELL,
that took a lot longer than I expected.’ Daisy sighed as she ducked her head to step down into the kitchen. ‘Your kitchen is so wonderfully cool. It’s bliss.’

‘Thanks. I’m glad that you like it,’ Max replied as he flung an arm out towards the kitchen table and chairs. ‘How about some coffee to keep us going? Hopefully we won’t have to spend another two hours cleaning after the next batch.’

‘Please. And don’t even joke about that.’ Daisy coughed and waved her arm around as dust flew up from every surface. ‘I … er … take it you haven’t been to the cottage for a while?’

‘I spent three weeks over the Christmas holiday here with Freya. Kate had booked a ski holiday with her new boyfriend,’ Max replied, then paused before shrugging. ‘Who is now her new fiancé, by the way, so it was down to me.’ He half turned towards Daisy as he filled the kettle and smiled. ‘Do you remember what
the weather was like in January? The snow fell for five days without a break. It was the first time in years that the village was cut off—and you know what? It was wonderful. I would not have missed it for the world.’

‘Wonderful?’ Daisy looked at him in shock. ‘How did you manage with a little girl to amuse and take care of?’

‘My first stop on day one had been the supermarket, so we had a full refrigerator and store cupboard. We didn’t starve. It might sound weird, but even lugging logs to feed the open fires turned into fun when I was pulling them on the same wooden sledge I used as a boy, through snowflakes the size of large coins falling vertically from the sky.’

‘You do make it sound rather magical.’ Daisy sighed again. ‘Your little girl must have adored it.’

‘It
was
magical, and Freya loved every second. The village had turned into a winter wonderland, which to a seven-year-old like Freya was like a fairytale come alive. Complete with snowball fights, sledging contests on the gentle hillside behind the house, and a real Christmas tree from the local forest. And you should have seen the snowmen we made.’

Daisy found a clear spot on the table to rest her elbows. ‘Freya is a very lucky girl. My January was rather different. You can imagine
what a nightmare the snow is when you are being paid to create someone else’s wonderful New Year party. I spent every hour of the day working with Tara just to keep up with the orders. Then battling through the weather to make our deliveries. It was madness in the city.’

‘Freya and I are both lucky to have avoided that.’

Daisy stopped rummaging around inside her huge shoulder bag and glanced up at him. ‘I was admiring the photographs of Freya when I was getting changed. Do you manage to get back to see her very often?’

Max rested his hands on the back of a chair for a second, then lifted them away and raised them shoulder-high as he spoke. ‘Often?’ he repeated sadly, his eyebrows crunching down as creases formed on his brow. ‘As often as I can. But this last Christmas was pretty special.’

Max busied his hands pulling down mugs and plates from the shelves above the worktops. ‘Problem is, these days I spend most of the year in St Lucia so the cottage is left empty. It doesn’t like it. And the garden is a jungle.’

He looked up just as Daisy reached over and touched the first of two large hand-painted beakers hanging from hooks below the dresser
shelves. He had to stop himself from jumping up and snatching the china from her fingers.

Freya’s favourite cup! His little girl would be heartbroken if anything happened to it.

‘It’s okay. I have some mugs here,’ he said quickly. ‘Would you prefer coffee or tea?’

‘Tea, please—if we have milk. Otherwise coffee would be fine,’ Daisy replied, and shuffled into a comfier spot on the padded seat cushion.

‘Oh, we have milk. There may even be cheese and crackers. And if we don’t want our own cooking tonight we could always have dinner at the local pub. The chef is Italian and some of his regional dishes are pretty good—especially the braised beef and … What?’ he asked as she looked blankly at him.

‘Dinner?’ Daisy looked at Max as though he had suggested running off to join the circus. ‘Why would I want to have dinner here?’

She tilted her head slightly, and there was enough of an edge in her voice to drop the temperature in the room a few degrees lower.

‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding. I am driving back to London tonight, with some blocks of Treveleyn Estate chocolate. I hope that you did not expect me to work on the recipes here and travel back and forth to London every day.’

‘Oh, no. I would not expect you to do that.’
Max raised one eyebrow higher that the other. ‘I expected you to stay the night so that we can work on the recipes together here tomorrow. Sugar? Or are you sweet enough?’