All for You (7 page)

“I mean, that took some guts, the little nobody from the
banlieue,
to insist that one of the rising star chocolatiers hire me. And then to work my butt off making sure I deserved it, that I helped make us the best.”

After a moment, he nodded, and his face softened. “You always did dream really big, Célie.”

Well … she supposed so. Dreaming of running off with Joss in some vague life of bliss and security had probably been dreaming really big.

Her chin lifted. A smaller dream, nevertheless, than the ones she had turned out to be capable of accomplishing, once she put her heart into them instead of into him. “So who else are you looking up?”

Joss had the blankest expression. Finally he shoved both hands across his face. “I hadn’t really thought about looking up anyone else.” And, while she was still trying to digest that, “You cried?”

She tried for a flippant shrug. “A girl can change a lot in five years.”

Too late, she remembered that she’d pretty much spent the last half hour crying, ever since she’d first seen him.

Joss lifted an eyebrow but courteously refrained from pointing her tears out to her. He was silent until they reached the base of the next footbridge over the canal. “Célie.” Abruptly he grabbed her by the hips, lifted her off the ground, and pivoted to set her three steps up on the bridge, so that her eyes were on level with his. The easy strength of the act rushed through her entire body. “I came back for you.”

Her breath stopped, and it hurt that way, all stopped up in her chest. It hurt so much she wanted to cough it out, straight into his face, to hack him back from her happy life and all the hurt he could do to it. “I haven’t been waiting for you, Joss.” She made her voice mean. She made it as mean as she could.
“I’ve moved on.”

He shook his head. “I can understand now why you didn’t wait for me, Célie. But I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Work things out?” Jaime asked with quiet sympathy that afternoon.

Célie grimaced and shrugged, whisking her chocolate into cream. Across the steel counters of the hot room in the
laboratoire
, where all the burners were, she felt more than saw Amand, their sandy-haired caramellier, exchange glances with Jaime.

It was weird how subdued her own subsidence had left the
laboratoire
. As if she was its electric current and the power had gone out. Only Dom and Jaime resisted that power outage, and Dom had a particularly bad-tempered edge to him today. Every once in a while, he would look at her and then walk to the window to glare out of it and make sure Joss didn’t stand below.

After each glare, Célie would find some excuse to sneak a look through a window and check for herself.

So far, no Joss.

Guillemette, from downstairs, slipped discreetly up to her. “Your, ah, friend just sat down at one of the tables. Should we serve him?” She tried to keep her voice low, but she underestimated Dom and Jaime’s current state of alertness.

“Is that bastard stalking you?” Dom pivoted, chisel in hand. “I’ll go take care of him.”

“Or we could call the cops for that,” Jaime intervened firmly.

A sharp, feral show of teeth in what was Dom’s idea of a grin. “No, I want to do it.”

“Dominique.” Jaime laid a freckled hand over his muscled forearm.

Seriously, the way she said his name was adorable.

Dom glanced down at her hand on his arm, one black eyebrow lifting. “Is that supposed to be your magic trick to get me to behave?”

Jaime smiled. “Is it working?”

Dom held up thumb and forefinger, about a centimeter apart. “Only a little bit.” But the energy of his body was shifting, as he turned more toward Jaime, as he focused on her. The aggressive gleam in his eyes was transforming to tenderness and a smile.

“Dominique.”

There she went again. Of course the man was going to go all mushy over someone who said his name like that.

“I told you I was a bad bet,” Dom said.

Célie slammed her big metal bowl of ganache against the steel counter. Chocolate fountained out of it, splattering up over her face and black chef’s jacket. “Damn it, Dom. Look what you made me do!”

She swiped a hand across her face. Since her work in chocolate wasn’t “hot” work, involving few things likely to burn her severely, unlike Amand, she was able to wear a short-sleeved chef’s jacket, and a lightweight one at that. But that left her nothing to wipe with. She hunted around for a towel, growling under her breath. “Stupid bad bet thing. Men who ruin women’s lives … because they’re stupid idiots …” She sent Dom a venomous glance as she dragged a white kitchen towel across her face and chocolate-sloshed arms.

He gave her a bemused look back, both eyebrows lifting a little. Jaime nodded at her in firm approval of all that grumbling.

Célie threw her towel down on the counter. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Dom’s eyebrows slashed together. “I don’t think so. If he’s stalking you, I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s
Joss
, Dom! Don’t be an
idiot
!” Célie stomped across the
laboratoire
. “As if he would ever—damn it, I hate you stupid men!”

The glass doors didn’t slam worth a damn, probably just as well right then or she would have left glass shards all around her. She stomped down the spiral stairs with clangs of metal and glared at Joss.

He sat against the backdrop of the white rosebud-embossed wall. His little table looked oddly bereft in that salon. No one had served him yet, and he was such a big guy who had spent five years in war zones with the damn Foreign Legion and, and … someone should be spoiling him. With all the delicious melts-in-a-desert food the stomach of a big guy like that could hold.

She stalked over to him. His gaze flicked over her face, and his eyes dilated visibly. “Hell, Célie, you know how much I like chocolate.”

What?

“You’ve got it all—over—” His hand lifted toward her face as he drew his lip just a little under his teeth as if tasting something.

She jerked back a step, thrown completely off balance. Something started to fizz disturbingly in her stomach as she stared back at him. His hand dropped, and he swallowed.

Oh, hell. She tried to pull herself together. “Joss. What are you doing here?”

He just looked up at her with those gorgeous eyes and that stillness he had, emphasized by five years of military discipline. “Would you rather I wait outside?”

It was all she could do not to just shove the table aside and climb into his lap, bury her head in his chest and hold on tight.
Why did you leave me, you bastard? Oh, thank God you’re home.

Yeah, and that would be insane.

Plus she’d already done it once.

“Joss, you know I love you—”

A little jerk ran through his body. And hers, as the echo of her own words ran through her.

“Like a brother,” she hastened to add.

“Fuck, Célie.” He turned his head away, his jaw setting. “Like
Ludo
?”

Okay, well, maybe not like her actual brother. Or like any other male she’d ever known. But, but … “But I’m not your person to come home to here.” Oh, hell, had she just said that?
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
“I’ve moved on.”

“Moved on from what?” Joss asked.

She stared at him.

“We never dated, Célie. I wasn’t Sophie’s boyfriend, but I was never your boyfriend either. I was saving you for later.”

Her jaw dropped. Fury sizzled once deep in her stomach and then just flared all through her. “You son of a bitch.”

“For when you were
older
.” He tried to regroup. “And I deserved you.”

“I’m going to fucking
kill you
!” Célie pressed her hands into his table and her weight into them as she leaned her body over his.

“Okay,” Joss said, and just lifted the table to the side to expose his body to her, shifting the table as if neither it nor her pressure on it weighed anything. “You can do that.”

Oh, that bastard. It was now so easy to climb into his lap and bury herself there while she started crying again that her eyes prickled from it.

She turned away in dramatic temper before she could let him see that and stomped back across the room and up the stairs.

Dom and Jaime met her at the top of them, shifting from that spot in the glass walls where they must have watched the whole thing. Jaime shook her head with some bemusement. “It’s fascinating how little you guys care about what your customers think.”

Oh, yeah, Célie had kind of forgotten about all the customers watching that scene.

Dom gave that sharp, tear-someone’s-throat-out grin of his. “They’ll come back.” He pressed his hand to his chest and gave Célie a hopeful look. “My turn?”

“Dom, I told you to leave him alone!” Célie stomped past him and grabbed a plated éclair off the counter in front of Thierry, whose job it was to both plate and descend the pastries and hot chocolate to the half dozen tables below. “Give me that.”

“Hey!” Thierry protested. “That was for the woman at table three.”

“Dom can make her another one.” Because it wasn’t as if she would have been able to talk him into making one for Joss. Célie stuck her tongue out at her boss and stamped her way into the ganache room with the plate. This room, on the opposite side of the
laboratoire
from the room with all the stoves and the variations in temperature and humidity that using them caused, also held the wire shelves scattered with metal trays of finished chocolates ready to be taken downstairs as the display cases needed replenishing.

Stupid men. She pulled out some of those trays. Arabica again, yes. He’d liked the touch of coffee. And mint, because he used to have a weakness for chocolate mint patties, and boy would her mint chocolates knock his socks off in comparison. And honey-hibiscus, because she had come up with it all by herself, experimenting, and she liked to think it tasted like she would, if anyone ever knew how to properly taste her.

Stupid, idiot men with their stupid, idiot excuses for making a woman cry her heart out for years. She slammed the little chocolates down on the plate around the éclair, a little circle of them, and then, remembering how fast he had eaten that box like a starving man, added a second one of each. Fine, a third.

She stomped back out of the room. “Here.” She thrust the plate at Thierry. “For that idiot.”

“Now you’re feeding him?” Dom demanded, outraged. “My chocolates?”

She put her hands on her hips. “
My
chocolates. And don’t you dare charge him. It’s on me.”

Dom made a feral noise between his teeth and pivoted back to his lion sculpture. At the first tap, the entire ear came off.

“Ha!” Célie said. “That will teach you to always want to use excessive force.”

Dom gave her a dirty look.

“You know, I think I’ll just do the rest of my work today from your office,” Jaime said. “It’s mostly calls and computer stuff, and God knows what trouble the two of you’d get into without me.”

Joss played with the chocolates on his plate. He’d eaten that little box she gave him too fast, and now he was almost afraid to eat these. They’d be all gone, once they were eaten, and he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore—this visible proof that she cared about him. Still.

No matter how mad she was, she couldn’t let him sit here without food.

No, it was more than food. These were her special accomplishments. The things she was so proud of, what she had made of her life when he left to make something of his. She was feeding him, but she was giving him something much more precious and intimate and proud than a croque-monsieur.

He rubbed his thumb gently along the perfect smooth edge, circling the delicate design, a stylized red flower. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he bit into that, he would be biting into Célie.

Damn, but he wanted to bite into Célie. Bite into that supple, saucy lower lip of hers, and bite into all those curves, that happy, athletic roundness of hers, vibrant with energy. As if it was her task in life to produce enough voltage to light a whole grim, bleak
cité
, all by herself.

Clean that chocolate off her, that had smeared her forehead and one cheek and spattered in her hair. That winged, asymmetric hair. Wasn’t that just like Célie. Trying for the tough look and ending up resembling an elf longing for fairy wings.

I think I’m tough enough for both of us and all the world now, Célie. You can relax about the toughness and just let all that natural happiness play.

He bit into the red-flowered chocolate slowly. A hint of … something. It reminded him of the scent of Célie’s hair. He couldn’t put his finger on why.

The waiter wouldn’t let him pay, when he asked for the bill. That made Joss smile a little and glance up at the section of glass wall visible at the top of those spiraling metal stairs. But he didn’t spot Célie, peeking down at him.

Damn.

“When does Célie get off?” he asked the waiter.

“I don’t think I should tell you that,” the waiter said.

Joss sighed. These people acted as if he wasn’t perfectly used to waiting all day in stillness if he needed to. Hell, he’d once had to wait three days, watching the entrance to a cave, with only a canteen of water and some rations to pass the time. “Fine. We’ll do it the boring way.”

He studied the line of people behind a velvet rope, all wishing they could get at his table so they could eat one of these éclairs themselves. He supposed he’d have to give up his position of comfort, too. “Can I have a piece of paper?”

“We’ve got this.” The waiter handed him a postcard-size bit of heavy white card stock. It was stamped with an aggressive silver
DR
and then, in a corner, the formal details of Dominique Richard, store address, website, telephone number, info@dominiquerichard … Joss scowled. Then he drew a line through that
DR
and wrote “Célie” instead and flipped it over.

The blankness on the other side froze his brain, as it always had. He just didn’t know what to write to her. He never had. He always, always had needed to
be
that thing he needed to write, to be that thing there, next to her, touching her. What the hell was there to
say
?