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Then she remembered Joe—she was meeting him downstairs in less than an hour. Their Lamaze class was at eight. Laurel wished things between Annie and her weren’t so strained. But how could she be sorry that this falling-out between Annie and Joe had brought her closer to Joe?

“You could set the table while I get dinner on,” Laurel suggested mildly. “Just let me get out of these shoes.” She sat down and pried off her low-heeled pumps. Rubbing a swollen foot, she added, “At the rate I’m going, my feet will look like scuba fins by the time this is over.”

“Good. Then maybe you’ll stop borrowing my shoes.

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It’s a curse, having a younger sister with the same size feet.”

Neither one mentioned the baby, but Laurel felt the tension between them ease a bit. As Annie came around and stood beside her, she found herself, out of old habit, leaning into her sister’s side, the sharp angularity of Annie’s hip as comforting somehow as a mother’s plump belly. Now she could feel Annie’s fingers, cool and competent, kneading the tired muscles in her neck, and Laurel allowed herself to slip backwards in time, remembering when it had been just the two of them—two survivors in the same boat, paddling toward shore.

How had the horizon become so blurred? How could they have drifted so far apart? In spite of Annie’s touch, or maybe because of it, Laurel felt the pinch of tears beginning in the bridge of her nose. This little moment wouldn’t last, she knew. Why kid herself?

She felt the baby move inside her, a gentle twisting sensation that somehow stabbed her more deeply than if a knife had been plunged into her. I can’t keep this baby, she realized. It’d be wrong. Selfish. And now she wouldn’t even have her sister to console or comfort her. Annie wanted to help her, she sensed, but something was holding her back. Resentment? Or was it her feeling that if she gave in, she’d somehow be letting go of Joe for good?

Laurel felt her sister draw away from her, watched her move toward the row of bright yellow cupboards that Laurel, years ago, had painted with Dali-like designs of plates, cups, knives, baskets of bread and fruit. Noting the square angle of Annie’s shoulders as she began taking down plates and glasses, the sharp knot of bone sticking up from the scooped neck of her sweater, Laurel felt the tears in her nose rush up into her eyes, and wondered why, when she needed Annie’s strength the most, were they holding one another at arm’s length?

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EILEEN GOUDOE

Annie watched Emmett stamp on the doormat as he came in, small rivulets of water cascading off his boots. She waved to him from behind the display case where she was waiting on a customer, holding up a finger to say she’d be with him in a moment.

“I’ll have one of those. Just one.” The plump woman in a raccoon coat pointed a gloved finger at a tray of dark, lumpy chocolates. Not dainty like Girod’s truffles-these were the size of golf balls. A mistake Annie had made with her very first batch, which strangely, wonderfully, had turned out to be a success. The woman gave a nervous laugh. “I’m supposed to be dieting.”

“Why is it,” she heard Emmett drawl, “that the women who’re so worried about their weight are usually the ones who don’t need to be?”

Annie glanced up, and saw him now leaning up against the old marble-top shaving stand on which sat the cash register, one water-stained boot crossed casually over the other. He caught Annie’s eye and winked. Annie felt a rush of heat in her cheeks, and quickly looked away, busying herself with wrapping the single bourbon truffle in filmy crimson tissue, and placing it in a small bag-also crimson, with the name she’d given her shop embossed in gold script: Tout de Suite.

She handed it to the woman, who was now blushing and smiling delightedly. Annie felt both irritated with Emmett and happy to see him.

She’d agreed to meet him for dinner, but at Paolo’s, not here. It was only a quarter to six, and she wouldn’t even be closing for another fifteen minutes. And after that, she’d still have to tally the day’s receipts, take inventory of what was left in the display cases and in the refrigerator in back to see how many of each item she’d need for

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tomorrow, and she also needed to check to see if Doug had really fixed the tempering machine.

Emmett, damn him, knew perfectly well that she couldn’t stop and chat with him right now. So why was he giving her that impish smile, as if … as if he possessed some delicious secret that he’d reveal only if she begged him. As if she didn’t already know!

Warmth crept into Annie’s cheeks as she remembered Emmett, earlier this week, quietly, almost offhandedly, inviting her to go away with him for the weekend. She’d told him no, but he’d merely shrugged, as if he felt confident it was only a matter of time before she would cave in. After all, what was holding her back? They’d been lovers once, so why not now?

Annie couldn’t have explained it to him. She wasn’t even sure she understood herself what was holding her back. When she was with Emmett, she felt it, sure … this urge, a compulsion almost, to touch him, to feel the span of his broad hand covering hers; to stroke the underside of his jaw, where the roughness of his beard stubble gave way to skin soft as chamois. And yes, dammit, she thought about him in bed, his hard shanks pressed against the insides of her calves, his broad brown chest hoisted above her like a bulwark. And him inside her … thrusting … high … each stroke bringing her closer to the edge of delicious frenzy …

God, she had to stop this … this sophomoric fantasizing. It wasn’t love, what she felt for Emmett-it couldn’t be-because how then could she still feel so strongly about Joe?

Sex, she thought. It’s like the tides or the sun rising, you can’t control it, but you sure can count on it. In her case, she could count on it messing up a perfectly good friendship, and distracting her with memories and feelings she’d have been better off leaving behind in Paris.

But with Emmett, there was more to it than just sex. Though—let’s face it—sex was a big part of it; Emmett was an incredible lover. But he was also a wonderful friend. Not the way Joe had been, unfailingly kind, a kind of big brother—Emmett teased and needled her, he challenged

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and coerced her. He … well, he got under her skin somehow … and sometimes it wasn’t all that comfortable.

Emmett, she sensed, knew things about her that she didn’t want him—or anyone—to know, and that made her nervous. Like now. How, when she hadn’t given him the slightest encouragement, could Emmett know that he was starting to get to her?

The heat in her cheeks had moved up to her hairline, making her scalp feel tight, itchy. Part of her wished Emmett would just go away … stop making her feel things she didn’t want to feel … and part of her was glad he was here, glad he was so persistent. If it weren’t for Emmett, she knew she’d never do anything in the evenings but drag herself home and crawl into bed. After getting up at five each morning to pick out fresh fruit at the wholesale market on Ninth Avenue, then coming here, setting up in the kitchen, constantly checking that her two eager assistants, Doug and Louise, didn’t burn anything or fall asleep stirring the huge pots of ganache, then racing through the rest of the day waiting on retail customers or hailing cabs to get to a meeting with some hotel or department-store buyer, by this time of day Annie was usually ready to drop. Yet Emmett’s popping in was like a cool breeze on a hot day. It revived her somehow.

“You’re early,” she told him when the plump woman had left.

“I was showing a loft in Tribeca, and I thought I’d drop in, see if you needed a hand with anything.” He looked over at waiflike Louise, a Twiggy lookalike with her cropped hair and miniskirt, busy refilling one of the white wicker display baskets. Louise caught his glance, and lowered her eyes, blushing deeply. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control out here, but how about that tempering melter you said was cutting out on you?”

“Doug supposedly fixed it before he left.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“In those clothes?” As he was shrugging off his overcoat, she took in his muted cashmere blazer, button-down shirt and silk tie, perfectly pressed gray slacks. In her plain

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black skirt and ivory silk blouse, she felt underdressed by comparison. “You know you’re going to get chocolate all over you.”

But Emmett’s blazer was already off, and he was rolling up his sleeves. “Good. I’ll taste irresistible then. Make it twice as hard for you to say no to this weekend.” He winked at her again. “And even if you do, I may shanghai you. For your own good. Before you work yourself to death. Besides, with or without me, you owe it to yourself to visit Cape May. It’s like going back in time.”

“I thought it was a summer resort.” Annie closed the sliding glass panel to the refrigerated display case.

“You’re changing the subject. But yeah, it is. Only didn’t anyone ever tell you the best time to visit a summer place is in the winter?”

“Why is that?”

Emmett came around to her side, and hooked an arm about her shoulders. “Because when it’s cold and blowing like hell outside, you get to go inside where it’s warm. And because we’d be just about the only visitors around. Sort of like having the whole playground all to ourselves.”

He was so close, she could see the faint sprinkling of freckles on his jaw, and the layers of blue, like a river’s shifting depths, that his eyes were made of. Imagining the two of them snuggled under a quilt in an antique brass bed, the wind howling about the eaves of some seaside inn, she felt something low in her belly give way.

She drew away from him. This was crazy! She was just lonesome. For Joe. She’d be using Emmett … the way (oh, come on, admit it) she’d used him in Paris. And Emmett … wasn’t he using her in a way, too? He was new in town, probably lonely, so why not fall back on the good times they’d shared?

“Em …” she started to say.

He held a finger to her lips, and she could smell him, a nice, leathery, broken-in smell. “Later. You don’t have to decide right now. We’ll talk about it over dinner.” He stepped back with a smile as slow and sure as a sunrise.

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EILEEN GOUDGE

“Now, I’ll let you start closing up the joint while I go check on that melter.”

Watching him amble through the doorway that led into the kitchen, Annie asked herself, Sure, and what’re you going to tell him tonight? “Em, I shouldn’t, I’m not in love with you, but you see, the thing is I’d dearly love to get laid”?

But there was more to it than needing to put a lid on her raging libido. Dammit, she had a business that was just starting to get off the ground. It needed every ounce of her strength, and every minute of her time, or it would slip away and go under-like most start-up enterprises.

Grabbing her clipboard with order forms for bulk supplies from the shelf under the old-fashioned nickelplated register, Annie was seized by a sudden exhilaration. She looked about the place, at all she’d accomplished. Tout de Suite had happened so fast, was still happening so fast, that even when she slept she dreamed she was working.

She remembered her revulsion the first time she’d seen the place, with its grease-coated backsplash and hood, its grime-encrusted vinyl floor tiles. Now, seeing the walls with their gay, strawberry-trellis paper and the floorboards painted country white and covered with colorful hooked rugs, she felt a rush of satisfaction. Across the front display window, on caf้ rods, she’d hung white eyelet-lace curtains and a ruffled valance. And fixed to the walls, antique gaslight sconces, no two alike, which she’d scrounged up in a Nyack secondhand shop up the Hudson. Along the top of the display case, she’d placed white wicker baskets filled with finger-sized slivers of almond bark and tiny chunks of pecan brittle for customers to nibble on while they waited. Louise Bertram, the temp she’d hired for Valentine’s Day, who had stayed on when the orders continued to flood in, had just finished filling one basket and was starting on another.

Annie remembered how she’d feared that no one who could afford to buy fancy chocolates would ever venture into this grungy neighborhood, even if the word ever got out about how good her stuff was. And on the three wholesale accounts she’d managed to land, the profit margin

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was so low at first she thought she’d never keep afloat. But since opening up six weeks ago, her retail trade, at first almost nonexistent, had grown steadily, and now paid almost enough to cover Louise’s salary.

She looked up at the huge gilt mirror behind the register, over which hung a discreet handpainted sign, black on Chinese red, bordered in gold: TOUT DE SUITE.

HANDMADE CHOCOLATES FOR THE CARRIAGE TRADE,

SINCE 1973. People appreciated a sense of humor, Annie had discovered. Especially those not sticking to their diets.

Thinking back on those first weeks was like remembering a long illness, a delirium from which only moments survived with any clarity. She remembered how she’d worried. The money Dearie had left her—would it be enough for the designer, the contractors, the permits, the equipment, the decorating, the chocolate supplies, the two years of fourteen hundred dollars a month rent? What if the renovating went over budget? She wouldn’t have anything left to run the shop, and she’d be dead broke.

She’d decided to cut corners, as Laurel had suggested, by acting as her own contractor, but even then, when the carpenters, plumbers, and electricians came in with their bids, even the lowest ones were so much more than she’d estimated. She’d almost backed out right then and there. If Emmett hadn’t dug up a contractor one of his clients had recommended, who was supposedly both good and cheap, she might well have.

Andrzej Paderewski did seem honest, and his references checked out. But no one had warned her that not one of his carpenters, plumbers, or electricians spoke or understood a word of English. How to tell them they were supposed to be hanging a swinging door, and not one with ordinary hinges? Paderewski himself was nowhere to be reached, and how to convey to two seemingly deaf and mute Poles that they were installing a radiator where her cooling cabinet was supposed to go? She’d tried shouting at them, then cajoling, finally trying to get her message across through miming and hand signals. But aside from exchanging puzzled glances, and giving her sympathetic looks as if she were some kind of crazy lady, the men