When Chocolate Is Not Enough... (17 page)

She reached up and smoothed the lapels of his jacket, and as he looked down at her in astonishment she looked up into his eyes, pulled him closer towards her and, in a very clear voice, said, ‘Pascal knows me. He knows how I work, he knows my recipes, and he knows the kind of desserts I do well. He’ll have done something similar to try and cut me out. This
party is over for me, Max. I only have a few hours to come up with replacement desserts. And I don’t know if I can do it.’

With that she patted him on the lapels, took a long swig from her champagne glass and walked with as much dignity as she could out across the patio towards the entrance to the kitchens.

Only with her small high-heeled steps and his long-legged bounds it only took a moment for Max to catch up with her and stand, hands on hips, blocking her way forward.

‘Not running out on me are you, Flynn?’ Max asked in a strong accent which matched the pitch of his jaw. Then his voice softened and he stepped forward and took both her hands in his. ‘I have news for you. Team Treveleyn is still very much alive and well. I got us into this mess and it’s my job to do what I can to get us out. Just tell me what you need me to do.’

Daisy tried to focus on his face, but her eyes were too full of tears. Through a burning throat she forced out a hoarse reply. ‘You have to talk to your customers. The estate needs you to sell what you grow. I’ll be okay.’

Max slid towards her, and before she knew it she was trapped inside his arms, his hands pressed against the thin fabric of her dress.
Her head fell forward, so that when he spoke, the sounds of his words reverberated inside his chest and through the bones of her head.

‘You are more important to me than the cocoa beans.’

Hardly believing that he had just said that, Daisy lifted her head and saw his earnest face. And she knew that he meant it.

He stroked her cheek with the most gentle and featherlight stroke, but his blue eyes were focused tight onto hers, bright with smiling energy and excitement. ‘All that was in the past, Daisy Flynn. You’ve come a long way since then. A very long way. I believe in you and your ability. You won’t let yourself or me down. You can do this. I know that you can.’

Daisy opened her mouth to call him on that promise—but what she saw in his face at that moment made her question seem petty and insulting. What she saw in those eyes and that expression told her more powerfully than words or a written contract that he meant what he said.

‘Time to let the battle commence. Are you ready? Good. Let’s go back, then—and we are
so
not going through the kitchens, Barone or no Barone. Let’s do this, Daisy. Let’s show them that Team Treveleyn is not so easily thwarted.’

Max shuffled inch by inch across the bedroom carpet in his stockinged feet so as not to wake Daisy. She had fallen asleep, exhausted, in the crook of his arm well past midnight, after many long hours working through every possible gourmet chocolate dessert which could beat the chocolate mousse cake combination which she was convinced Pascal would expect her to make. And so far she’d failed to come up with anything she was happy with.

He sat down slowly on the bottom corner of the bed and watched her as she slept. She was lying on top of the soft bedcover on her side, dressed in an old T-shirt and men’s pyjama bottoms which stretched seductively over her lithe body, revealing curves he should probably not be ogling.

But it was no use. He wanted to see her breasts lift and fall under the thin fabric covering her chest. He wanted to run his hands over the long line of her back as it curved away from him. He wanted it so badly he could almost imagine what it would feel like to touch her warm skin from neck to toes with his fingers.

Heat bubbled up, tingling in his hands and neck. His throat was dry, his palms sweaty.

Daisy Flynn was a lovely woman who had seen a lot in her short life. She deserved to be
treasured and loved and cared for by someone worthy of her.

And, if there was a queue, he wanted to be the first in the line.

Was he even capable of giving her the love she needed?

Just the thought of loving someone again was hard to get his head around, and yet here he was. Looking at a stunningly lovely woman he had only met a few days earlier—and yet somehow he felt as though he had known her always. She had waltzed into his life and made a place for herself in his heart which had been vacant for a long time.

Like it or not, he was falling in love with her.

He had never expected to feel this way again. Hoped, maybe—but had never expected it to happen. But where did that leave him? Leave
them?
Because, unless he had got it hopelessly wrong, she felt the same way about him. And just the thought that she might care about him made his heart sing.

What could he offer Daisy?

How many times had she told him that her dream was to open her own chocolate shop in the city? That was never going to happen if they got together.

He had sacrificed everything to make the Treveleyn Estate a success, and telling her
how he felt now would be the best way to set them both up for years of hard work with little to show for it and a lifetime of regret and broken dreams.

Daisy stirred gently in her sleep and sighed gently as Max looked into her calm, unlined and relaxed face.

Twenty-four hours from now they would be heading back to London and their separate lives. He had Freya’s birthday party and Daisy had a full workload with her friend Tara.

And then he had to fly home. Back to St Lucia. Alone.

Without Freya. Without Daisy.

Max shuffled around the woman he loved and bent down to press the gentlest of kisses on top of her mussed-up hair so that she did not even stir.

His fingers longed to ripple through that hair just as much as his body willed him to slide next to her on the bed and hold her in his arms.

But he couldn’t be so selfish. The weight of his past and what she had come to mean to him were too heavy to ignore.

It was time to let Daisy Flynn become the girl who got away. Even if it meant keeping his true feelings locked inside for the short time that they would be together.

He had to let her go. So that she could fly high on her own wings without feeling trapped on an island without the chance to realise her dreams.

So he slowly slid away, his eyes never leaving her face, until he reached the bedroom door and was forced to return to his own room, where he knew that sleep would be impossible.

Because the truth was too hard to take.

He had broken his promise to Daisy. He had let her down.

He pressed the palm of his hand flat against the bedroom door, reluctant to break the connection. Right next to a poster for the hotel chain’s newest hotel. Set in an old tea plantation in the tropical highlands of Sri Lanka.

Strange how the colonial style plantation house looked so much like his own house on St Lucia. They had probably been built around the same time.

According to the poster, the hotel group were looking for other innovative virgin eco sites, and were offering eco-tourism, employment, and guaranteed investment in the local community.

Max tapped two fingers against the poster.

Maybe he should follow Daisy’s example
and take a completely fresh look at how to solve his problems?

Time to crack open his laptop. He had some research to do, and he had to do it fast.

M
AX
pulled up his chair at the breakfast table in Daisy’s bedroom and poured himself a glass of cool, freshly pressed orange and mango juice.

‘Oh, I needed that.’

He smiled across the table at Daisy, who was huddled on her chair, both hands clutched around a large beaker of very strong-smelling coffee. She looked exhausted, and had jumped at his suggestion that they take advantage of the room service option rather than face the other contestants over a sumptuous breakfast buffet in the main dining room.

‘Have you eaten yet?’ he asked, and started cutting into his organic bacon, mushrooms, sausage, poached eggs and fried bread. ‘You really should. You need strength, energy—whatever.’

‘Do you have hollow legs?’ she moaned as he speared a mushroom and popped it into his mouth.

‘Who? Me? Just a healthy appetite,’ he replied, waving his fork around. ‘And you forget that a traditional full English breakfast is hard to find in the Caribbean, unless I make it myself. English bacon and sausage are in very short supply in that part of the world.’ He paused, his reloaded fork halfway to his mouth. ‘I tried to cook eggs once. I think my housekeeper threw the frying pan away rather than try to clean it. Not a success. How about you? Have you had enough to eat?’

‘I’m good. Lots of carbohydrates. Juice. Now all I need is another gallon of coffee and I might stay awake long enough to cook this morning.’

Max put down his fork long enough to spread a generous slice of butter on his toast. ‘There have to be some advantages to being in the fifth round. For one, you can watch the first four pairs of contestants and find out how they work—or don’t work—before you start yourself.’

She shook her head. ‘Too late for that. I handed the conference office my full menu and recipes as soon as it opened at eight this morning. So, unless I have some kind of disaster, I am locked into those three dishes. Only small tweaks are allowed now. That’s it,’ she said fatalistically, and took another long sip of coffee. ‘I am doomed. All that work in the
run-up to this competition and I’ve wiped it out in one huge risky decision. I should probably apologise now and get it over with.’

Max wiped ketchup from his upper lip before sitting back in his chair. Daisy bent over from the waist and banged her forehead twice on the tablecloth before closing her eyes. Her fingers were still clutched around the coffee mug, and Max slowly untangled them one by one.

‘Come on,’ he said with a smile, as he stood up and walked around the small bedroom table. Before Daisy could complain, he slid one arm under her legs, the other around her waist and lifted her into his arms so fast that pure instinct made her fling her arms around his neck.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Taking you over to the bed, of course. You need to lie down somewhere comfy while you tell me all about the new dessert you are going to make. Because last time we talked there wasn’t much progress on that front.’

He lowered her onto the bedcover, flicked the quilt over her bare feet, and went back to pour himself a coffee before perching on the end of bed and staring at her over the rim of his cup.

‘Don’t keep me in suspense. What have you
come up with? I presume it contains some form of chocolate?’ he teased.

Daisy pushed back against the solid wood bedhead and pulled a pillow onto her chest. ‘Oh, Max. The more I think about it, the more I think I might have made a horrible mistake. It’s just too risky for a contest where so much is riding on the results. I am an idiot. I should have chosen something more conventional.’

Max shook his head from side to side. ‘We went through all this at some ridiculously early hour this morning. That’s precisely what Pascal and the rest of the competition will be expecting you to do. So—what strange and magical culinary delight have you come up with?’

She exhaled slowly. ‘When my dad came to visit me in Paris, Chef Barone spent hours with us almost every evening, eating, drinking and talking—lots of talking. Sharing our love of confectionery and chocolate. On our last evening we cooked a meal together—just the three us. And my dad made this dessert. It only took twenty minutes to bake—but wow! I mean
wow
. Even Chef Barone asked him for the recipe, but he said that it was going to be one of the last things he would ever make after a lifetime of experimenting. He called it a Fleur Delice and it was his legacy to me.’

A single tear slipped from the corner of
Daisy’s eye and Max passed her a box of tissues from the bedside cabinet. But she had already used the pillowcase.

‘Then it must be something very special,’ Max replied in a low voice. ‘Because if it’s good enough for your dad it’s good enough for this contest.’

She glanced up at him, then her fingers started making shapes in the quilt by crunching it into tight rolls of fabric.

‘That’s why I may have made a mistake,’ she whispered. ‘You see, I’ve actually only made it once before. It was my dad’s birthday, and he was having a lot of problems. We both knew that he had already lived a lot longer than the doctors had expected. This was going to be his last birthday.’

Without saying a word, Max walked slowly around to the other side of the bed, slipped off his shoes and sat on the bed next to Daisy, his back against the bedhead so that his left side was touching her right.

It seemed only natural for her to mesh the fingers of her right hand between his.

She looked up into his face as he stroked the hair back from her forehead in silence, content to listen to her speak although her voice was so thin and strained.

‘It was a lovely sunny day, so we ran away to the seaside and walked along the beach and
ate fish and chips for lunch. Then I drove us back home for a quiet afternoon watching his favourite movie, to be followed by a meal made up of all of his favourite dishes. With his Fleur Delice to finish. I had just poured the wine and I went to wake him from his nap. And he was gone, Max. He had just slipped away in his sleep.’

The words caught in her throat, and he wrapped his arm around her waist so that her head could fall onto his shoulder.

‘When I was on my own that night I ate the Fleur Delice. All of it. Every single mouthful. And it was so amazing. It would probably be a bestseller, but I haven’t made it since.’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ Max murmured, his chin pressed against the top of her head. ‘It’s too special and way too personal for you to serve to your paying customers.’

Daisy closed her eyes and luxuriated in the warmth of his body pressed against her side. Without thinking of the consequences she leant sideways against him, daring to push the boundaries that they had set only a few days earlier.