The Chocolate Kiss Read online

  Geneviève looked offended. “This is my niece we’re talking about.”

  Aja said nothing. Magalie suspected her of keeping thoughts to herself, as she often did. The two women, who thrived on their city and its marchés aux puces and other markets and quixotic stores, had long ago begun expressing hints of concern that Magalie didn’t seem more at ease in the rest of Paris. They made her run all errands that took her off the island, and they were always quietly pleased—or, in Geneviève’s case, sometimes loudly—when she went out clothes shopping. Between love of fashion and errands, Magalie got lured off the island at least two or three times a week. She could brave a lot for the clothes in this city.

  But it was true that it always felt a little like leaving a peaceful, walled garden and heading out to war.

  She went to work on her second chicken foot, her fingers sticky, and contemplated the growing number of skulls broodingly. “He seemed to think I was some peasant he could ride right over,” she muttered, a dog with a bone.

  Geneviève shook her head severely. “And he looked like such a fine young man, too. If you like that sort of thing. Peasant. Do you know, I don’t think we should leave any post without a skull.”

  “There’s always supposed to be a post missing a skull,” Aja pointed out.“You have to leave one way in, if the prince is smart enough to find it. That’s the story.”

  Geneviève sniffed. “Just because Baba Yaga got careless when she got old doesn’t mean we have to.”

  It was October, Philippe reminded himself, looking at La Maison des Sorcières’ window. He might be mistaken to take the display personally. A little wink and a nod toward the American Halloween could explain the chocolate skulls on chocolate stakes, the small bits of candied orange peel that made the skulls’ glowing eyes, the orange-peel chicken legs peeking out from under the windowless, doorless chocolate log-cabin house the skull-posts protected.

  This witch-house salon de thé had enchanted him the instant he saw it. It had been a major factor in his selection of this location. The Île Saint-Louis had been a natural choice, a luxurious island in the center of Paris, an enticing bridge away from one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions, Notre-Dame. His shop was always in all the guidebooks as one of the top ten places to experience in Paris; as a polite gesture, he could make it easier for weekend tourists and not force them to choose between himself and Notre-Dame.That old cathedral had been through a lot, after all, what with revolutions and world wars, and he didn’t want to make it feel any worse.

  But this island was so blissfully peaceful. All the tension in his muscles relaxed whenever he stepped onto it, as if time had released him, and he had slipped into some idealized seventeenth-century world where everyone had money and time and the comforts of electricity. But, even with all those factors, he had researched other places before he bought the space here; the Luxembourg Gardens area had appealed. Then, walking this street, he had seen the witches’ window.

  And he had fallen in love with it. So different from the glamour he offered, but so enchanting. He had liked the thought of being just down the street from La Maison des Sorcières. Yes, his name alone was enough to give a street like this all the cachet it needed. But this quirky, bewitching place was like the bottom note of a perfume, that something you discovered later, that lent a richness to a neighborhood, that made it a place people came to linger. Where he wanted to linger.

  It had never occurred to him that the “Sorcières” wouldn’t be thrilled at his arrival. Magalie Chaudon couldn’t possibly understand the benefits his name would bring her.

  Magalie Chaudron . . . silk and boots and leather, angled chin, and hot brown eyes, and all of it in a package he could pick up with almost no effort, which was good, because when he kissed her, he was going to have to lift her up to do it, and he wasn’t going to stop for a long time.

  But first, she had to regret that moment when she had flicked disdain all over his macarons and turned on her heel. He was going to make her crave him. First.

  He searched the skull-posts and smiled a quick, feral smile of satisfaction. There, in the corner, where it was impossible to see from inside the shop and difficult to spot from the outside, one of the skulls had broken the chocolate seal between it and the post and rolled off by a corner of the log cabin.

  His mother, the Jungian psychologist who had fallen in love with a real-life fairy tale in his father had loved to read him and his sister stories when they were little. So he knew what a man could do with a missing skull off Baba Yaga’s barricade.

  Find his way in.

  A little silver bell chimed as he opened the door and stepped inside.

  Odd things struck him as he moved into the empty shop. Odd things were meant to, he was pretty sure. He was a little surprised he didn’t have to duck them flying at his head.

  But no, he had slipped inside unannounced, and, for the moment, nothing and no one was bombarding him. He could take a second and look at things he had only been able to glimpse briefly before. The old pink scales on top of the tiny display case. The nature of the tartes au chocolat inside, a little rough and homey, as if they had come straight from someone’s mother’s kitchen. Not his mother’s: their desserts had appeared almost magically from the Lyonnais professional kitchens, made by his father or one of their chefs. But someone’s mythical mother, a mother who surely existed, the kind of mother who let her kids watch Disney movies without requiring a comparative analysis of them and les frères Grimm afterward.

  A giant chocolate seahorse hung from the ceiling, twirling slowly as if to invite him to dance. An array of silver molds from another century filled the shelves behind the display case. An askew archway led from this small entrance area into a room beyond.

  A voice called, “Une minute!” from somewhere back there.

  He felt his chest tighten. Something happened to his breath, so that he had to concentrate to keep dragging it in. He almost recognized that voice. Except for its friendly welcome.

  He walked back through the little second room and its astonishing array of conical hats, including old paper New Year’s hats from 2000, a birthday princess hat, a medieval lady’s hat, and, of course, some that were wide-brimmed and black. He glanced at it all, trying to take in what he was dealing with, but he couldn’t hesitate. Something pressed him to reach that voice, and the owner of it, there through the last door.

  He stopped just short of a little archway to a minuscule kitchen. Three coats, hung to the left of that doorway, puffed out enough to partly block his way in. Magalie Chaudron stood working at a counter of tiny blue tiles that would have driven him insane. How could she keep the grout between the tiles clean? What did she do when she wanted to roll out something—pull out a mat every single time? And how cool did those tiles even stay? How anyone could stand to work with anything but marble, he didn’t know. Granite, à la limite. Small blue tiles?

  She had two tart pans set out on it, and she was running a spoon over the chocolate with which she must have just filled them. Imperfectly. He had to clamp down on the urge to grab a white towel and wipe it all around the edge of the tart pan to clean away the crumbs from her crust. He flinched a little when he saw some of those crumbs spill onto the chocolate surface itself. Which she didn’t even make perfectly smooth. Her ganache had cooled too much before she poured it, and she left the path of her spoon visible on it. His palms itched so badly, he had to dig his fingers into them to keep from grabbing the spoon and taking her to task like a clumsy apprentice.

  Behind her, close enough that in her place he would risk hitting it with his elbow every time he turned around, a pot of chocolate sat on a burner turned to its lowest heat. The scent of it reached out and curled around him. Chocolat chaud. When was the last time he had drunk chocolat chaud? Cold weather was settling in, leaves going brown, and the idea of curling up with a cup of it suddenly seemed so inviting.

  She worked without even an apron, smiling a little. Her hair was coiffed ag
ain with that careless perfection he had seen the other day, another set of black boots adding ten centimeters to her height and helping her slim-fitting jeans do great things for her butt. A sweater in a blend of midnight blue and black dipped sexily toward one shoulder.

  He took a long, deep breath of chocolat chaud as his gaze ran over that butt, then fixed on that glimpse of her collarbone. And you wanted to take her to task like a clumsy apprentice? Keep your priorities straight, Philippe.

  She still hadn’t seen him, concentrating on her chocolate. His chest was tight enough to make breathing an effort, and she hadn’t even noticed he was there?

  He stepped into the doorway. And just let his presence fill it. He dominated kitchens thirty times larger than this most waking moments of his day. She had to wear stilt heels to reach his shoulder. So he just stood in that archway and willed himself on her.

  Her resistance surprised him, how gradually she came out of her chocolate. As he pushed his presence through the room, at first her smile deepened and grew more secretive. Her head rose, and a little shiver ran over her body, like that of someone cold who had stepped into warmth.

  She looked slowly toward him, as if waking from a pleasant dream.

  And jerked, her spoon smearing chocolate over the edge of the pan.

  “Allow me.” He couldn’t help himself. The tarte was only one step from him. He grabbed a tissue out of a box as the only thing in her kitchen remotely approximating a professional’s white towels, and he wiped the edge of her pan. One clean sweep, all the way around, getting rid of not only the smear but also those damn crumbs.

  He might have yielded to the urge to grab the spoon and smooth that chocolate out properly, except that she looked as if she might hit him with it. He rubbed the dusting of greenish crumbs between his fingers and looked into her furious eyes.

  All trace of her smile was gone. She was practically hexing him with her gaze alone. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  His step to the tarte had brought their bodies together: his biceps to her shoulder, his hip to her ribs, his thigh to her hip. There was no space for her to give him in this tiny kitchen. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t have backed up a step even if there was. It drove him mad with arousal, her inability to back up.

  “Is that apricot?” On an unlit burner behind the chocolat chaud was an orange mixture that looked and smelled suspiciously like fresh-made apricot jam.

  Apricots. The green crumbs of ground pistachios. She had made a pistachio crust. With an apricot filling. The exact flavors in the Désir she had refused a week ago.

  Had she been thinking about it? A vindictive smile curled his mouth. Had she regretted what she had refused, until she tried to do something with those flavors herself?

  If she had, she was outraged to have him discover it. “What. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Doing—in my kitchen? Get out!”

  Excitement kicked through him. He shouldn’t have interfered in her kitchen, that was inarguably true. The most basic etiquette. But now that he had, now that their bodies were touching and she was so mad, he felt an almost irresistible desire to crowd her some more and see what she would do. It unfurled in him, prickling inside him with claws, taunting him into action. “Why, bonjour to you, too, Mademoiselle Chaudron. You let a skull fall off one of your posts.”

  She frowned, glancing uneasily toward the display two rooms away, completely hidden from her by his shoulders, and that clawing thing inside him laughed and tried to push him forward. He liked the fact that his shoulders blocked her view. He liked the fact that his size overwhelmed this room. It was unsettling, how much self-discipline he had to call on to maintain some level of civilized behavior. Self-discipline was one of his greatest strengths, meaning that he wasn’t used to having to think about it to get it to work.

  She folded her arms, despite the fact that the movement bumped into him aggressively, and lifted her chin. “Did you come to apologize?”

  He gaped at her. “Did I come to apologize? For what—how rude you are?”

  She took a hard breath, and his eyes flickered over her chest, and then he had to take a hard breath. Maybe his self-discipline was getting out of shape. It felt thin and feeble before the pouncing-lion-thing growing stronger inside him.

  “You open a shop right next door to us as if we aren’t even here. You come into my kitchen and try to take over, as if you know how to do it better than I do.”

  He gave her tarte an incredulous look. He couldn’t help it. He did know how to do it better than she did. There was something enticing about her tarte, true, like a childhood with a mythical mother he hadn’t had, given that his mother had only set foot in kitchens to kiss his father. He wouldn’t mind at all coming home from work and curling up comfortably to find himself offered a slice of such a tarte. It would make him feel . . . loved. But his chocolate tartes had a surface so smooth, you could see your face in it.

  Her lips pressed together at that look, and a flush showed along her cheekbones, her eyes glittering. “You think I’m rude because I didn’t curtsy to you when you forced your way in? Didn’t thank Your Highness for riding your white stallion over everyone else’s work and life?”

  What? He didn’t act like that. Did he act like that? Did she really see him that way? He folded his own arms. He had to be careful when he did that not to knock her in that proud chin, that was how much bigger he was. “I think you’re rude,” he said coldly, “because you are rude. Even if you have a problem with me, you could express it correctly. With some modicum of manners. At the very minimum, you could have accepted the peace-offering that I made you.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. Even though her arrogant chin just barely passed above his folded arms, she kept her boots braced and her body right in close, like a boxer refusing to yield. Blood roared through his veins, a genuine jungle roar, dying to be unleashed.

  “That macaron?”

  She said the word with so much disdain, his head nearly blew off. A Dubai sheikh had sent a private jet to pick up boxes of those macarons, so that his guests could have them at their freshest, just that morning. Multiple movie stars had them flown to Hollywood once a week. People bit into his Désir and then went online and blogged five drooling, raving pages about it. This weekend, he was making the desserts for a party for the President of France. And he wasn’t even stressed over it. It was commonplace. He was Philippe Lyonnais.

  He had told her that already, though.

  “You have a big idea of yourself, don’t you?” she said.

  Well . . . yes.

  “Come muscle in on someone else’s territory, try to steal their customers, and offer a little bit of sugar to make up for it?”

  “Un petit peu de sucre? One of my—” He caught himself, but unfortunately there was no rewind. He couldn’t back up and erase the emphasis on the my. Her derisive look made everything inside him roil. “It was a nice thing for me to offer you. It was one of my—that is—” He broke off, then tried again. “I made that one with my own ha—”

  Her lip was curling.

  He dug his fingers into his biceps to keep from curling them into her biceps and lifting her straight off the floor. And to think he was known for his calm temperament in his kitchens. The non-volatile star chef. “You know,” he breathed very quietly, feeling his voice going almost guttural, “you should have tried it. Just one bite of it might have been worth more than you think.”

  Her eyes flickered. Yes. She wondered at least a little about that, whether she had missed out on something incredible.

  He thought about giving her another chance. The pressure in this room was enormous right now, the clash of two Titans in a space the size of an elevator. Hot burners to one side, no room for error, and the scent of chocolate, maddeningly powerful, overwhelming everything.

  But if he could get her to bite down into one of his works of art, would everything dissolve away from her but his flavors on her tongue? Would all the muscles of her stiff neck relax in bl
iss? Would those molten brown eyes slide half-closed? Would she look up at him, when she had recovered from the first taste, with her lips parted, her eyes begging for more?

  She smiled suddenly. He was so deep in his vision that it took him a second to realize she couldn’t be smiling over any bite of him, because she hadn’t tasted him yet. Uneasiness stirred. There was something very disturbing about that smile.

  She turned away from him to the pot of hot chocolate. To turn away from him—that might be a yielding, right? It might show physical consciousness, at least, and a need to break free from it.

  He looked at her bent head, the glossy black hair, the little smile on her face. She seemed utterly focused now on her chocolate. One perfectly manicured hand, nails some rosé Champagne color that matched the subtle gloss on her lips, stirred the pot with a wooden spoon.

  It was strange how hungry the sight made him. Surely he got enough sugar just taste-testing his own work. And almost certainly his work was of higher quality, he thought arrogantly.

  She lifted the spoon, unctuous chocolate clinging to it. Thick and pure, probably rich with cream and high-quality dark chocolate, the liquid slid slowly back off the spoon. The scent of it promised bliss. Chocolate and cream and . . . what was that spice? How odd that he couldn’t recognize it. He could usually tell whether cinnamon came from Sri Lanka or Madagascar just by the smell.

  “Enfin, bon,” she said, “if you think I should apologize for my rudeness, maybe I should be the one to offer you something.”

  She stirred the pot exactly three more times and then dipped a ladle into it and poured the thick, rich liquid into a small, handle-less cup.

  She held it up to him. With a little smile.

  His heart beat hard, a warning drum. He looked from the cup to her. Why did he feel that if he drank the stuff, he would turn into a toad?