The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (37 page)

“I’m so lucky.” Patrick rubbed her nape absently. “You’ve always been exactly who you are. To the very best of your ability. No illusions, no tricks. If a man can get you…he’s got
you.
”

Her heart hiccuped at that word
you
, pronounced as if it was some glorious prize. As if no more wondrous prize could even exist. “I’m not…I’m not Cinderella?”

“No, you’re the fairy godmother in training, remember? The woman who wants to learn how to make her own magic for everyone else, not the woman who waits around for someone else to make magic for her.” His eyes held hers, the slightest curve to his mouth but nothing laughing in those eyes at all as he repeated: “And I got lucky.”

Her stomach felt the way it had on that ride up in the glass elevator – going up and up and up, this giddy, beautiful terror. “I don’t see how luck had anything to do with it,” she murmured. He had gotten her the internship, he had seduced her while pretending to mentor her, he had tricked his way into her apartment…and, above all, through it all, he had made himself, all his life, into a man with whom a woman couldn’t help but fall in love.
Un
prince charmant.

Patrick considered a moment, clearly searching for any situation in which he had left room for luck to have a role in whether he got what he wanted. “You existed,” he said finally, simply.

The effort not to cry was almost strangling her. He squeezed her nape gently. “
Allez
, Sarah, let’s go eat.”

Her mouth dropped open as he led her back to the elevator. Wait – that was
it
? That was – well, it was a lot, but – damn it, he was
always
doing that to her, it was just like the very first days of her internship, when he would wink at her or smile at her and make her feel so damn special, and then – move on, casually, as if nothing had happened. No impact on his world, just being himself. That should be
illegal
, to take a woman to the top of the Eiffel Tower and start a conversation like that, and tell her he was lucky she existed, and then…go eat.

Damn it, sometimes it was a good thing she didn’t hate him anymore, or she would hit him over the head.

***

Great iron girders framed the incredible view from the restaurant, the waiters acting as if Sarah and Patrick were famous movie stars, circumspect and even more perfect than usual. Sarah eyed Patrick as they were shown to the table with the best view in the restaurant.

“What? Too cramped? Would you rather have gone somewhere else?”

“You take this kind of treatment for granted, don’t you?”

He looked around blankly before he caught on and laughed. “They just want me to work for them. The starred restaurants always act like this. Besides, no matter how happy a restaurant is in its
chef pâtissier
, never underestimate the kitchen team’s desire to prove that what
they
can do will outshine anything we can.” He shrugged. “We do the same thing, if we have a chef in the house.”

Sometimes he was a lot to process. “You could work
here
? They’ve asked you?”

He blinked, and his eyebrows went up a little. “
Merde
, Sarah, they’ve only got one star. Of course I could work here. They would love to get another one.”

“Only” one Michelin star. The stratospheric world she had found herself in, when she had only ever imagined one dance at the ball. Only dreamed of learning some pastry skills in Paris, à la Hepburn, and going home to her own little world again. When Patrick interfered in someone else’s dream to suit him, he sure didn’t make it smaller. “You haven’t been tempted? To work with all Paris spread out at your feet?”

He made sure no waiters were in earshot. “Not even remotely. But that doesn’t stop us from doing each other favors. No, if I decide to head my own pastry kitchen, the people will be coming there for me, not for the damned building.”

She smiled a little and ran one finger over the tips of his, resting on the table. All those calluses from so much work, all his life. Funny how he kept that arrogance in him in such a low key, so that no one realized how strong it was – and how merited – except in rare, occasional flashes. Like when he thought his name should be worth more than the Eiffel Tower’s.

“
Do
you ever want to take on a restaurant of your own? Would you rather do that than engineering? You were just a kid when you dreamed about Mars.”
Have you let yourself notice how much you love what you do, yet, Patrick? How much you’re in your element? How much you would hate working on things that are cold and far away across a solar system, things you can’t reach out and touch? Or are you still afraid what you really love will be wrenched from you if you ever admit it?

He shrugged. As if it didn’t matter. Of course. “I’d probably go to a two-star restaurant, if I went. It’s more fun to be the person who catches its next star, rather than just keeping the three stars it already has. You can’t go higher than three, so you’re just stuck there afterward.”

Stuck at three stars. Patrick’s stratospheric view of the world was oddly addictive. He was so damn adorable in that unconscious arrogance. Maybe because it was unconscious. He didn’t mean to be arrogant; he was just so used to being that good.

“Luc’s good at maintaining them, but to me – it gets kind of boring. Catching the third one was fun –
merde
, that was fun – but ever since, it’s just convincing critics over and over that we haven’t fallen off our game.” He managed not to yawn. “And see, I don’t even care what the fuck the critics think, you know? That’s one of the reasons I’m not entirely sure I would be a good head chef. But Luc does, and…” An indolent wave of his hand.

“And you care about him,” she said softly. “And that’s how it works out.”

“So far.” Another supple shift of those broad shoulders. “Sometimes I think if I met the right chef de cuisine – if he hit me just right, even one with no stars but with a lot of conviction – it would be fun to go start a completely new place with him, somewhere out in some village in the
provinces
, and make it into such a legend that we had people helicoptering in to see us. I mean” – he grinned – “
that
could be fun. I can see the helicopter pad right now. And once I’ve got that going solidly, maybe going and working on another place. I’m really good at consulting, actually. You know, revamping a whole pastry kitchen, getting everything and everyone working right and the menu perfect? I’ve only done it a couple of times because it’s so hard for Luc to spare me long enough, but – I’m really good at it. I don’t mean to brag.”

She shook her head slightly, smiling.
Go ahead and assess yourself honestly, Patrick. It’s good for you. I know you’re not bragging, and I’m not going to try to take the things that make you feel the most alive away from you. And I can completely see how you would be really good at that.

“They almost always try to hire me to take over when it’s time for me to leave. But then, Luc – I always felt as if I would be sealing him into his tomb to walk out on him. And he did half raise me, you know, or the me I’m proud to be.”

Her hand closed around his fingers. “I love you
so much
,” she whispered. That
heart
in him.

“Sarah.” His fingers linked too tightly with hers. “What did I do to deserve you?”

That caught her so off guard, she started to laugh a little. “What did
you
do? Patrick, are you
kidding
me? Your whole damn life! That’s what you did.”

“Sarah.” Struggling visibly with emotion, Patrick drew her hand up to kiss it and incidentally hide his face from the rest of the restaurant, behind their joined hands.

“I hope you’re proud to be
all
of you. And I’m pretty sure you deserve a lot better than this.”

His hand tightened on hers. “No. There isn’t better, Sarah. If I deserve you, then I’ve gotten my third star.” He stretched his free hand across the table to pet one of her earrings, that starry gift he had given her that night in Montmartre.

Was that what those earrings meant to him, that she was like a star? Only the highest prize a chef could aspire to?

Or, wait – the highest thing an astronautical engineer could aspire to? Dreaming as a young boy, probably pasting pictures of the planets to his walls. Or hiding them under his bed, where his mom wouldn’t spot them.

Oh.

She drew
his
hand across the table and kissed
it
, hiding her face now, too shaky for this public place.

The waiter came back with their menus, and she opened hers like a wall against the room, grateful for the respite. They were on their second course before Patrick brought up something serious again, and of course, he did it casually. “Luc called when you were in the shower, by the way.”

Her mind flashed over all his opportunities to mention that between the shower and now. A lot. So it was probably important. “Is he back? He can’t have been calling from Tahiti or wherever he is, can he? It would have been three in the morning there.”

“Maybe they made him drink kava or something and he had to agree to it to survive the wild island rituals.”

She gave him a look of great patience.

Patrick smiled. “Or maybe he made up with Summer and they’ve been – well, it’s kind of like imagining your brother making love all night, Sarah, so I try not to get a picture. But what he said was that he was going to open his own restaurant in the south of France, and did I want to either take over this one or join him.”

The impact was flat and hard, like walking into a glass wall. Not unexpectedly – she had seen the reflections off that glass long before she reached it. But she had hit it just the same.

There went the last chance for her own dreams to have a say in their lives, didn’t it? What better choice could Patrick have, than to go with his hero, the man he had loved all his teen and adult life, and help
him
catch three new stars? She couldn’t ask him to choose her dreams instead, not over that.

That wall of glass into which she had slammed felt so cold and hard. Merciless. Impenetrable.

So was she going to stand there with her hands pressed against the glass, staring after him longingly while he walked away? Or was she going to walk around it?

She took a breath that didn’t cut her lungs nearly as much as she had thought it would. It felt almost…easy. “You know, Patrick, you’ve managed to put yourself in a position where you are surrounded by people begging you to fulfill whatever greatest dream you might have. And they
mean
it. The world is your oyster. I’m so proud of you.” Did she have the right to be proud of him, as if he was hers? Maybe that was still up in the air. “It makes me so
proud
just to be seen with you.”

His face lit. Waves of emotion struggled across his expression, fighting his need to hide them. “
Merde,
Sarah, I’m never going to take you somewhere public again. You’re dangerous. Come for a walk for a minute between courses.”

So they walked out onto the second-floor deck, gazing down at the city.

The south of France. She supposed it could be a crazy, wonderful adventure. She could learn more pastry skills and what lavender smelled like in late June. She could do this.

Hey, she’d graduated from Caltech, survived nearly six months in one of the top pastry kitchens in the world, and worn a garter belt. It might be that she could do just about anything.

Did he want her to?

She glanced up into eyes almost as deep and velvet blue right now as the deepening night over Paris. “What do you want to do, Sarah?”

I want to have you. But I want to have me, too.
“Patrick. You can’t decide your life based on my dream. You have to go for your own.” Yes. Certainty grew in her as she said it: at least once in his life, he deserved to go all out for his dream. She could do that for him. Whether it was to the south of France or to Caltech, she could be the one who helped make all his dreams come true.

I love you. And I love to see you dream. As if you can go all out for it again.

A little silence. “I am.”

Her eyebrows knitted.

“Sarah.” He heaved a frustrated breath. “That is about like you, to see through everything else I do and make me spell the hardest thing out. Didn’t you pay attention
when I was up there kneeling at your feet? Do I have to hire a plane to write it in big letters across the sky for the whole world to see, so I don’t have a chance in hell of protecting it from anyone who would want to destroy it?
You’re
my dream. All right? That’s why this is so
hard
on me, to say it. You’re the most important. All those other possibilities – they
all
sound fun. I could do any of them and end up with a beautiful life. As long as you’re in it. But,
merde
, Sarah, I could run off to Nepal with you, and we could open some little bed and breakfast for tourists and lead climbers up the mountains, and I could end up happy with that, too. If you’re in it. You’re what makes all those other dreams seem so easy to grab these days; as long as I have you, going for anything else seems like just a fun game. How badly could it hurt to lose a dream if I’ve still got the one where we’re together?”

The wave of him just washed over her. She couldn’t think or breathe, just be tossed and tossed in its incredible power. “I always saw you more in Hawaii,” she said, struggling for air. Oh, for God’s sake, she was using his technique – a little humor to try to give herself enough emotional space from that power of him to breathe.

He beamed at her, as grateful for that little release of humor as she was. “See, Sarah, you are always the smart one. I would
love
to learn how to surf. I feel like I’m made for it.”

“But Patrick–”

“There’s not a
but
, Sarah, shut up about the
buts.
The world is my oyster – fine. I can do a dozen things, and it’s thanks to my own ability to reach them –
d’accord, très bien, oui.
Well, and in one case, thanks to a certain person’s willingness to help put me through school
.
” He kissed her fiercely. “But you’re the pearl. I don’t see what’s so complicated about this. Now what do you want to do? Because I think that’s still a harder thing for you to negotiate, around the people you love and particularly around me, and I want you to have space for it.”