B00CACT6TM EBOK (12 page)

“Why not?” she squeaked. And clapped her hand back over her eyes. She had not just said that.

The purring growl from him crawled all over her bones. “Because when I do leap over that gap, I want you to tell me every single thing you imagined me doing. I wouldn’t want my own ideas to get in the way of your creativity. You seem to have a lot of it—where I’m concerned.”

He was going to kill her. “You had better not leap across that gap! You could fall! Knock on the damn door!”

A little pause, and then a slow, slow grin. “Why, thank you, Jolie. I may very well take you up on that.”

And, of course, her whole body just went
yummy.

He watched her a second, his eyes glittering, but finally released his balcony railing with a sigh. “I’ve got to get back to the restaurant. The dinner rush will start soon.” He half turned and paused, suddenly diffident, hopeful. “Come eat with me?”

It just undid her, the way he said that. All aggressive, all
yes-you-like-it
arrogance all the time—and when he invited her to enjoy his work, so exceptional that people flew in private planes halfway around the world to eat it, he was as shy and eager as a would-be-cocky teenager trying to coax a girl into watching his baseball game.

“Of course, I will,” she said. “How could I resist?”

“We need a system,” Gabriel told Jolie the next morning, falling into step with her in the soft pre-dawn. Fortunately, he didn’t have trouble catching up with anyone, let alone someone half his size striding down cobblestoned streets with her head bent and a gym bag slung over her shoulder. Slowing down was more his problem. “Maybe whistles.
You know how to whistle, don’t you, Jo
?” He switched to English for the quote, making his voice as breathy as he could.

“You so do not resemble Lauren Bacall in any shape, fashion, or form,” Jolie told him grumpily.

“Well, then, you say it to me. And then all I have to do is whistle when I want you to come.” He grinned.

Jo cut him a dark look.

“Down,” he added limpidly. He took her gym bag and slung it with his over his own shoulder. “When I want you to come down from your apartment. So we can walk together to the gym.” This was nice. He was used to the ephemeral, to seizing the moment, to pleasures that took all his effort and then disappeared in a mouthful, but still he didn’t know if he dared think too much about how nice this was, walking through the pre-dawn streets. He had never dated anyone who got up as early as he did.

Jolie grunted. And she had been in such a good mood after he finished feeding her at the restaurant the night before. After she trailed, blissful and stuffed, back into the night to her new apartment, he had pretty much floated through the rest of the evening.

He peered at her. “Do you need coffee? I could have brought you a cup.”

“By leaping over the railings with it?” she said snappishly. “Don’t blame me when you get burned.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve handled hot things before.” He grinned at her.

Jolie stamped extra hard on the paving stones, and he caught her arm agreeably when that made her almost twist her ankle. He would have liked to be holding her hand again. It was just a little unnerving to reach for it, though, given what she had told him about her penchant for getting sick of men. He had been dumped so many damn times.

With aggressive come-ons, at least you knew where you stood. Holding hands, you got—hopeful.

“You don’t seem to have gotten enough sleep,” he said. “Thinking of me?”

She shot him a glare hotter than hot caramel.

His lips parted as realization sank deliciously all through him. “
Merde
, you were.” His voice dropped to a rumble. “Thinking of me. All. Night. Long.”

That was the sweetest, most erotic victory that had ever surged through his veins. She was going to
kill
him if she kept doing things like that.

She glared at him, livid.

“I thought we should date a little longer before I actually did come leaping over the balcony,” he said apologetically. “Considering the way you reacted last time I knocked on the door at midnight. I wanted to, though. Does that make you feel better?”

“If you don’t stop consoling me for not having had sex with me, I will kill you,” Jolie said between her teeth.

He sighed. “You are so illogical. Isn’t that what got you upset? What did you want me to say? That I didn’t come by because I wasn’t interested? That sounds a hell of a lot ruder to me. Plus, it’s not even true.”

“Nrggggh!” Jolie grasped a chunk of her hair and yanked.

“Here, let me have that.” Gabriel freed her poor hair from her fist and linked his fingers with the misbehaving hand.
Putain,
but that made the whole walk better. And it had been so damn fun already.

Walking through the pre-dawn streets, the scent of jasmine barely awake, cicadas singing, while the cutest thing he had ever seen sulked because he hadn’t invaded her apartment. It was so much more fun than every other morning he had ever walked by himself to the gym that he didn’t know what to do with that much enjoyment.

“You know, all coffee does,” he said, “is kick your heartbeat higher. So if you’ll excuse me”—He flipped her against the nearest jasmine-covered wall so fast she was still stumbling when his mouth closed over hers. One kiss, hot, hard, and headily deep. She made a sound, her fingers sinking into his biceps, and he jerked his head up before he could completely lose his mind. “There.” He took one of those hands digging convulsively into his biceps and placed it flat over his heart instead. “It worked for me. See? What about you?” His hand slipped over her heart, and it was hardly his fault that women’s hearts were tucked behind their breasts like that, was it?

Jolie gave a little sighing sound, closing her eyes as she sank against the jasmine, surprising him into having to catch her arm to help her stay up.

Heat flushed his entire body. Wow.

That was so hot.

He glanced back up the street. Really, carrying her back to her apartment before Madame Delatour saw them like that and spending the next two hours inside it with her was all the workout he needed this morning. He bet he could let her practice her flexibility, too.

Lava-hot joy surged through him. Now that would be an
awesome
way to start a day.

Jolie got her hand up to circle around his wrist, just above the hand pressed to her brea—
heart.
She didn’t seem to be able to do much with it, though, like force herself to pull it off. “About sex,” she said.

He grinned with pure, hungry delight. “I love how you think about that even more than I do.”

She tugged on his wrist in pique, but by accident he forgot to let her budge it. Her breast felt so damn good. And that glaze in her eyes even better. “If we—you know—do it,” she managed.

If
, right. That was so funny. Gabriel was smart enough not to laugh, though.

“We have to be professional about it,” she said.

“
What?
”

She floundered. “I mean—just sex. And not let it interfere with our professional relationship.”

He scowled at her. Their professional relationship was him feeding her and watching her melt in orgasmic delight. How the hell separate did she want them to get?

Her eyes pleaded with him. “You have to not get upset when I say I’m done.”

He snatched his hand back, as if she had just crisped his palm black. You would think he would know after all those years playing with fire that getting burnt fucking hurt. “
You
say you’re done?” he snapped, for something to say to make himself feel better. “What about me? Why don’t I get to say it?”

She frowned. Well, good. At least it bothered her to have the idea turned back on her. It didn’t seem to bother her that long, though. “I don’t have any patience,” she explained apologetically. “You probably have more.”

No one, in his whole entire life, had ever accused him of patience, which was a weird thing, because there was almost nothing a man needed more of to succeed in his field.

Patience.

Persistence.

Passion.

And, all right, a healthy dose of fury when necessary. “No,” he said flatly. “No fucking way.”

She gaped at him. Damn it, there went his prince image
again.

Well, tough damn luck. “If we have
sex
, and you dump me after you get all those orgasms out of your system, I get to get as upset as a I damn well please.”

He didn’t know how calming Jolie found her yoga after that, but he had one hell of a weight workout. It was just a damn shame the gym didn’t allow people to throw some of those weights across the room when they needed to.

He half-expected Jolie to duck out of their cookbook session that morning, but she showed up—in professional shoes, with round black toes, rolling and tightening an apron over a white chef’s jacket, her hair all tucked up.
Putain
, but she was cute. He wondered if she thought that get-up quelled his imagination.

He smiled at her, the way a sabertooth smiles at some adorable little herbivore wandering into its lair, and welcomed her into his office. It was the first time since every able-bodied family member among the Rosiers and Delanges had pitched in to renovate the mill to his specifications that he regretted his office was glass-walled.

She gave him a very stern, very professional look. He wondered what he could do to get her to produce that stern, professional look when he was sitting on, say, his couch, all relaxed, just as she wandered into grabbing distance.

“Are you free?” he checked. “I forgot to ask about your promotional events. Just let me know when you need to be gone for one.”

Her eyes slid away.

“You haven’t gotten invited to do any promotional events?” he realized, startled. With Pierre Manon’s name on the cookbook? “You need a better publicist. You want the number of mine?”

It outraged him to think Pierre would profit from it, but
merde.
Her tiny font name on that cover deserved something.

“Papa’s had a stroke, all right?” she said tensely. An unhappier tension than the one he inspired in her, he could feel the difference right away. Nice to have the confirmation that he was so much better for her than her damn father. “He’s not up to the demonstrations.”

“Really?” Gabriel tried to quell the sick feeling of pity. That
salaud
was
not
getting pity out of him in addition to every other damn thing he had stolen. “Was the stroke that bad?”

She looked at his desk a long moment. “He could do demos,” she finally muttered, low. “Not as fast, not as graceful, but he could manage. But he feels uncomfortable. He doesn’t want people to see him like this. His nurses told me depression was normal.”

Yeah, Pierre never could stand people seeing him when he was down. He had tucked his tail between his legs when he lost that star and crawled away like a dog. Gabriel had felt an acute sense of victory at the time.
I guess you should have valued me, connard.

“But it’s your first cookbook,” it occurred to him, looking at that piquant face gone somber. Somber didn’t suit her. “You must have been so excited when it came out.”

She looked through his glass walls at the activity in the kitchens. “Papa’s stroke was only a few weeks before the release. I kind of had other things than happy excitement to focus on at the time.” She shot him a glance. “Sometimes I wonder, now, if he was stressing about what might happen when you saw that Rose on the cover.”

Fuck. Gabriel felt a weird shock of relief at the timing. Because if Pierre was heading toward a stroke, and it had occurred
after
Gabriel sent that lawsuit notice, then . . . what a hellish thing to have on one’s conscience. “You can’t blame me for that, Jolie. I hadn’t had any contact with him in ten years, at the time. Other than occasional subtle put-downs of his work in interviews, but come on. He’s spent his life in top kitchens, he can stand that much heat.”

She looked confused. “No, I’m not blaming you.” Her head sank a little. “Maybe I’m blaming me,” she muttered, very low.

“Blaming
you
? You couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.”

“I pushed him to put the Rose on the cover,” she reminded him. “I wanted it so much. It was always my favorite.”

A quick flick of painful pleasure. That dessert had meant so much to him. Beautiful, famous, photographed by everyone. Proof in and of itself that Pierre Manon had been right to put his faith in him as his chef pâtissier, despite his youth, proof that he deserved more respect than Pierre was offering him, proof even to his girlfriend that he was really a beautiful man on the inside and she should be tolerant of the fact that she never saw him. And then. . . .

Jolie grimaced. “He hesitated. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want it, but I pushed him for it.”

“Jolie. All the reasons that Rose made him uncomfortable happened well before you had anything to do with it and are his own fault. He could have owned up to it with you, right then. Said, ‘No, I don’t really feel right claiming this as my work.’ If he had an uneasy conscience, he must have known enough to realize he shouldn’t do it. If. Personally, I think he felt completely comfortable claiming it as his work, that he didn’t give a damn at all about me and my reaction, and therefore his stroke didn’t have anything to do with the cookbook at all.”

She sent him a resentful look but didn’t have the nerve to argue.
Yes, I do know your father better than you do, thank you. That’s the difference between working with him sixteen hours a day as his chef pâtissier for four years and visiting in his office from time to time.

Merde
, no wonder she kept putting up that dog-collar-fence thing when he stepped close to her. She had her father’s complete absence from her family as a glaring warning. On the other hand, at least if he got through that fence of hers, she was never going to be able to yell at him,
I didn’t know what the life was like!

No, she knew what the life was like, and so would skip the blame and just go straight to dumping him matter-of-factly.