When Chocolate Is Not Enough... (16 page)

She allowed herself a wistful sigh.

‘A week later I was officially his doting girlfriend, and I finally had a chance to see Paris as it should be seen. With the person you are totally besotted with. It was a magical time. I was so in love with that man and the wonderful future we were going to have together, working side by side for Barone.’

Max exhaled loudly. ‘Congratulations. At this point I have to tell you that I’m beginning to feel slightly nauseous at how sweet all this is. Paris in the spring? Okay. I get that. So what happened next?’ he asked. ‘Why are you not in Paris as the master chocolatier for Barone Fine Chocolate? You were working together as partners, and from what I’m hearing you made a great team.’

‘What happened was that life kicked me in the shins and reminded me not to have such delusions of grandeur. My dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour and was given six months to live. So of course I came home.’

‘Oh, no. I am so sorry. That must have been traumatic.’

‘It was. Dad came to Paris to spend a whole month with me, and we had the most wonderful
time together. Pascal charmed him, Chef Barone took us all to the most amazing restaurants all over Paris, we worked in the shop together and we talked and talked. But at the end I knew I had to come home back to England and be with him for as long as I could.’

‘Why do I get the idea that your great plans didn’t work out quite the way you expected after all?’ Max said in a low voice.

‘Back in our small house, we both knew that every second we spent together was precious. And we had fun. Just lots and lots of ridiculous fun. The very best bit was cooking together. Really cooking. Whatever we wanted. It was a different world from Paris—but I loved it.’

Her head dropped and her fingers gripped Max’s palm a little tighter.

‘It was so very hard to see him fade away in such a short time. I wanted every day to be longer and I felt so guilty for being ambitious. I tried to talk to him about it—he simply kept telling me that he loved me, that the last thing he wanted me to do was move back and take over the bakery and live
his
life. A life in which he had compromised his own ambitions to make a secure home for his family. I had been given the chance to make the most of my skills—but most of all he wanted me to be happy. I had a wonderful, exciting new life and
a boyfriend we both adored back in Paris. I had everything he had ever wanted me to have.’

Daisy slipped her hands away from Max and strolled over to the stone balustrade, gazing out over the gardens where the sun was now setting over the tall oak trees.

It took a few seconds for Max to rise and stand alongside her, but her eyes faced forward as she whispered, ‘After he died, I found out that he had known about the diagnosis for months but had decided not to tell me. Because he knew that I would want to come back and be with him instead of living my dream life.
His
dream life. In Paris. He loved me so very much, you see. That’s why he sold the bakery to a doughnut chain before he came over to Paris to see me. He was cutting off my escape route back to the life he had known. I had nowhere else to go but forward. But you know what? It just made me so sad. To think that he knew that he had a terminal illness while I was sitting with Pascal in pavement cafés, drinking coffee in the sunshine.’

Daisy felt Max wrap his arms around her waist so that she could lean back against his chest, confident that he could take her weight. The warmth of his body was so comforting that she almost cried with the delight of it.

‘I felt so guilty, Max. And so very, very selfish.’

Max leant his chin on her shoulder and tightened his grip around her waist in an all-embracing girdle of support.

‘But that was his decision. He wanted his little girl to be happy. As a father I can understand that. I would probably do the same myself. He must have been a remarkable man.’

‘I know. He was. A very remarkable man. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how much he had sacrificed to make a home and a secure life for me—especially after my mother died and there were just the two of us. He could have moved to a restaurant job, but the wages are so low even then he believed it would be impossible. He gave up his dreams for me. And that crushed me, Max. It totally crushed me.’

She shook her head and sucked in a few breaths of cooling air, trying to soothe her burning throat.

‘You needed time to grieve,’ Max replied, in a voice as soft as the gentle breeze that wafted onto the terrace. ‘How did you cope with your loss? Did you go back to Paris and become a demon in the Barone kitchen? Throw yourself back into your work?’

‘No. That was just the problem. I was paralysed. I didn’t know what to do! I lost interest in food. I lost my passion. My mojo. My zest for the crazy life I had been living, where I’d
spent my whole day surrounded by chocolate in every possible form and heaven was working out the exact proportions of hazelnuts and cream and sugar for my praline mousse. All of that work and that life just didn’t seem relevant or important any more. My dad had shown me how futile it could be to tie yourself down to one place and let your dreams slip away through your fingers. But the very thing I’d thought I wanted held no attraction for me any longer.’

She lifted both hands and dropped them down to curl around the edge of the cool stone.

‘The only thing I knew for sure was that Pascal was still in Paris, waiting for me. So one morning I just threw my bag into the car and headed off to France. All along the way I started building up this wonderful picture of my new life with Pascal, and all the plans we had made about opening up new shops and new markets for the wonderful chocolates I had come up with.’ She clenched her fist. ‘What an idiot I was.’

‘What happened? Had things changed while you were away?’

Daisy nodded slowly. ‘Oh, yes, things had changed. I arrived late at night, after driving all day, and expected my loving boyfriend to be waiting for me with open arms. I hadn’t told him I was coming. It was meant to be
a lovely surprise after he had begged me to come back soon because he was missing me so much. And it was a surprise, all right. I won’t bore you with the sordid details, but let’s just say that contrary to all his desperate telephone calls, telling me how much he missed me, he was not sleeping alone. The new student at his uncle’s shop was prettier and richer than me, and he had simply moved another besotted female into his apartment to take my place.’

Daisy shook her head. ‘She was even wearing the same bracelet that he had given me for my birthday. I simply couldn’t believe it.’

Max was silent as Daisy blinked away foolish tears for something she’d thought she had lost but in fact had never had in the first place.

‘What did you do?’

‘Do? I did the one thing he had not expected me to do. I made a huge scene. I ranted, I raved, I cried and screamed, and then I flung all my things into my suitcase while he made excuses along the lines that it was all
my
fault for leaving him on his own for three months just when he needed me most to help build his new business empire.’

She looked up and blinked hard.

‘I remember standing outside the apartment in the dark with a suitcase and a couple of plastic carrier bags, feeling as though the world had been whipped away under my feet.
People were walking along the pavement and I couldn’t believe that they could go about their lives and still be happy when my life was falling apart around me.’

‘That must have been a low point.’

She nodded. ‘I was too exhausted to drive anywhere, so I spent the night in a local hotel and went to see Chef Barone the next morning. After all, I still had a job and I owed it to my boss to keep my promises. But Pascal had taken with him every one of the new recipes I had come up with for our wonderful new joint venture, and all of his uncle’s most popular desserts. And claimed that they were his own work.’

She shook her head.

‘His uncle was furious and felt totally betrayed. I was a mess. But what could I do? I was a student, and his uncle was an honourable man who was not going to destroy the family by suing his own nephew. This was exactly what Pascal had expected. The family knew, of course—but Pascal was their golden charmer, who could do no wrong in their eyes. It was simply business. Nothing personal.’

She sniffed.

‘Nothing personal. If Pascal only knew how very angry he made me when he said that to my face.’

‘Angry because he had stolen your work
and was passing it off as his own? Or angry that he had cheated on you?’ Max asked.

Daisy pressed the side of her cheek against Max’s face and took hold of his arms, locking his body against hers. ‘Both. But most of all I was angry that I had allowed myself to be used by a professional con man like Pascal Barone. He never loved me. He saw that I was a shy, quiet girl who was in Paris for the first time on her own, and that I was talented enough to create something he could use for his own benefit. He used me to get what he wanted. Then dumped me when he had everything he needed to go out on his own.’

‘Isn’t that a bit harsh? Don’t hit me. But you could have laughed in his face and tied him up with lawyers at the first mention of a partnership.’

‘Have you never been in love, Max? Have you never trusted someone so much that you would give your life for them in a heartbeat? Can you understand that? Understand what it is like to be so infatuated that you see only the good and the best in the other person? So in love that you could never even imagine a time when your lover would let you down or not want to be with you? Have you?’

Max froze as the impact of each word of Daisy’s question washed over him, penetrating
his heart and his mind with such ferocity that he had to pause for a second to pull himself together before answering.

Oh, he knew what that felt like. He knew only too well
.

He had been totally blown away from the moment he’d seen Kate walking up the long curved road that led to the plantation house on that hot, sultry January afternoon all those years ago.

She’d been wearing a simple white sun top, and tiny shorts which had displayed her stunning long model-perfect legs in all their glory. She might as well have been an alien creature, dropped into his life from outer space.

And he had been totally dazzled.

So dazzled that the thought of what their lives were going to be like going forward had never even crossed his mind. Of
course
she would have to adjust to life in a hot climate, in a rambling old family house with little in the way of luxury and modern conveniences.

They’d loved each other and that was all that mattered—they would find a way to make it work. Kate had loved the beach and her life in the sun.

The fact that he had only known her for a few weeks hadn’t been important. They had a lifetime to get to know one other. Why wait
to start their married life together? They had nothing to worry about, did they?

Max lifted his chin and tried to keep the sadness from his voice when he replied. This was Daisy’s story. She needed his support right now—not to hear about the mistakes he had made in his need to bring love into his life.

‘Yes. I know exactly what you are talking about. I was married for three years before I started to realise the difference between infatuation with a dazzling human being and real love, and what that means when you are struggling to hold your marriage together. Good and bad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Kate walked into my life in January and we were married in the June. The weeks in between were like a total whirlwind, with no time to think about the small print. When Kate met me she thought that life on an island in the Caribbean was going to be like one long extended beach holiday. Three years later she was a young mother, with a husband who was working every hour of the day on the estate just to pay the bills. That is a lot for someone so young to handle.’

Daisy half turned in the circle of his arms and looked up at him with such wide-eyed pain and sadness that his heart melted.

‘Then you understand. But I thought …’ She faltered, and seemed to swallow hard before pressing her forehead against his chest so that he could not see her tears.

‘You thought?’ he encouraged, and moved his hands higher up her back.

‘I thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life with Pascal—working with him side by side to create a chain of remarkable artisan chocolate shops. Of course I trusted him. I adored him. And he used me. He broke my heart. And I will never forgive him for that.’ She gave Max a wavering smile. ‘I thought that I was the only one who had made a fool of myself when it came to love. Looks like I was wrong about that.’

She blinked away tears of anger and pain.

‘But do you know the worst part? Just seeing Pascal again brings back all my old feelings of not being good enough. It’s infuriating that he can still suck away my self-confidence like that.’

‘Then don’t let him get away with it. You have just as much right to be here as anyone else. More. You have learnt your craft the hard way. The way I see it, your apprenticeship is well and truly over, Miss Flynn. It is your time to take your place with the master chocolatiers. And don’t you dare forget that. Especially
when it comes to one Pascal Barone,’ Max replied, with a fierce smile that made her heart sing. ‘You
know
you can work your magic with this contest. Team Barone won’t stand a chance against the mighty power of Team Treveleyn.’

‘I don’t know, Max. Pascal wasn’t joking about the work involved in this competition. He will have the best team in Paris cooking up a storm tomorrow. I really am sorry. You have worked so hard, and now I have screwed this up for you. But you still have the conference. The people here will still want to buy your cocoa. Maybe you should focus on that side and leave me to salvage what I can?’

Max startled her by standing up and drawing her to him. ‘We’re in this together.’

Daisy scanned his face, which was creased with concern and regret, and could not bring herself to disappoint him. But he deserved to hear the truth about how she felt.