B00CACT6TM EBOK (16 page)

He tested his strength against the balcony railing, making sure it wouldn’t cave away from him when he launched himself off it. Because those glances . . . a man sure as hell should not have a three-floor drop between him and responding to those glances.

“Hey.” She straightened, holding up a flat hand. “Don’t even think about it.”

He gave her a sweet smile. “Oh, I’m thinking about it.” His smile got meaner, as he leaned into the gap. “What are
you
thinking about, Jolie? Would you care to share some details?”

“If you ever try to leap across that, I will murder you! You could
die
! You could break your spine and be paralyzed for the rest of your life! Don’t you
dare
!”

“You’re going to murder me so I don’t die?”

She crushed the gardenia in her hand and threw the petals at him. He tried to catch one, but they floated too far out of reach, wafting down to the street below.

“Aww,” he said. “Now you’re throwing flowers onto my balcony. Isn’t that sweet? Do you play the guitar?”

Jolie’s fingers curled around the edge of the big gardenia pot in an ominous fashion. He was pretty sure he could catch it intact, but could she throw it far enough, that was the question. He didn’t want some passing pedestrian to end up with a cracked skull.

“Come for a walk with me before you do something desperate,” he said. “You know you like me better when I’m within reach.”

He had to admit he preferred sitting with her astride him, her pelvis riding his and driving him out of his mind as he kissed her, but still, there was something to be said for lounging near her on the stone wall by the
boules
court, shaded by pines, looking down at the spread of population to the sea, in the background the soft
toc
of the
boules
and the rumble of conversation from the older men playing. Was she remembering how successfully and cruelly she had manipulated him with their first kiss, only a few meters down the wall?

“Did
you
eat lunch?” she demanded suddenly.

“Raphaël was inventing something new with a lamb
confit
. I tried that.” Was she taking care of him? His mouth curved, and he looked down, rubbing his thumb against his jeans.

She was so damn pretty. Was she willing to consider this a date yet?

“I think Daniel and Léa are trying to wind it down a notch,” she said, making him blank. Where the hell was
her
mind? Off at lunch with Daniel again?

“Their marriage?” he demanded, horrified. They had always seemed so happy. It made him bitter and jealous, but, since his heart was so incorrigibly optimistic that way, it gave him a little bit of hope.

“No! No, how much of themselves they put into the restaurant. I think they’re trying to create a more balanced life. Have time for themselves, for a social life. Make actual friends they can hang out with.”

Gabriel considered that blankly. Hunh. Really? But then, of course, Daniel wouldn’t have the same problem Gabriel did, whenever he did try to take a Friday or a Saturday evening off and discovered that he had absolutely no one to spend it with, and the whole stupid evening stretched out before him so bleakly that he finally he went back to work, where he could pour his heart into something. Daniel could pour his heart into his wife. Probably children one day soon, too. Gabriel slouched a little lower on the wall, brooding.

“Maybe we should have them over for dinner,” Jolie said. “I liked them. And I’m interested in how he and Léa are going to find that balance.”

We
should have them over. Like a couple. He sat on his surge of energy as hard as he could, but he was just not very squashable. “Sure,” he managed to say. Neutrally enough. “Monday or Tuesday would work best. I’ll give him a call.”

And then he spoiled it all by bursting into a grin. “
We?
”

Jolie blinked, took a moment to think through the implications in what she had just said, and then looked shocked.

He just grinned at her.

Her gaze slid away but then back, very curious.
He
wasn’t the one staring at a man with eyes dilated, then hopping back whenever that man politely reciprocated, so he hoped she was searching her own convoluted soul.

He leaned in, so she didn’t search her soul
too
hard, to the point she found doubts, and kissed her. Thorough and hungry and in no hurry.

After all, why hurry, in her head they had time to develop long-term friendships as a couple now. He grinned again, even as he kissed her, and lifted his head before the surge of hunger could overtake him.

Amused comments came from the nearest group of old men playing
boules.
“Try, try again?” one of them called. “You never give up, do you?”

He stiffened and pulled Jolie to her feet, his jaw setting. Damn seventy-year-olds. Nothing better to do than gloat over the younger men, knowing there could be no payback. And damn small hilltowns where everyone had witnessed the fiasco of his dating life for the past ten years, too. Yes, he had kissed a few other women in the past decade, but did they have to bring it up right then?

He drew her down the alley of his now very-favorite stone staircase in the world, arousal surging through him instantly at the memories. If he had been Pavlov’s dog, he would have been a damn quick study.

“Try again?” Jolie demanded, bridling. Maybe he could steal all the old men’s
boules
or something. That would make them suffer, although not nearly enough. “What did that mean?”

His jaw set. He would have folded his arms, but he had managed to get hold of her hand again, and she wasn’t trying to get it back. “You know how you’re always dumping men when you get sick of them? I’m always getting dumped.”

And wasn’t that just a wonderful thing to have to admit to someone you could eat for breakfast, probably every damn day for the rest of your life?

Jolie stopped under a line of three shirts hung high above her, tugging him around to face her. “Women
dump
you?” she said incredulously.

His heart swelled with pleasure, even while it got confused. She didn’t understand other women who did the same thing she liked to do?

She took a step into him, her fingertips rising to his chest. “They don’t get addicted?” she asked softly, her eyes just eating him up again.

Oh, that—he squeezed her into him in a rushing hug, kissing her until he had to reach out and twine his fingers around the nearest iron staircase railing to remind him that they were in a public street. Breathing raggedly, he flexed his arm too hard around her, driving her into his body, and when he finally forced his head up, she pressed her cheek against his chest, her breathing crazy, too, her hands curled into his shirt. All her weight lay against him. The triumphant, starving joy of it, to be what was holding her up. To have made her that weak.

He
sure as hell felt strong. Strong enough to carry her weight in one arm, and break down doors, and rip clothes, and. . . .

He drew a long, shaky breath, rocking them minutely on their feet, trying to calm himself.

Jolie rubbed her cheek against him and curled her fingers more deeply into his shirt, not trying to step away. He could feel her breath in little puffs through the thin knit. Her body was so pliant. He could just swing her up in his arms, her apartment was only a couple of streets away. Everyone would see them, and she would want to crawl out of herself with shame when she recovered and realized, but
he
wouldn’t mind.

He would feel rather savagely victorious striding through the street to her apartment with her in his arms in full view of the world, in fact.

He heaved another deep breath, rubbing her back with one hand, every calming gesture for himself he could think of.

Then she finally looked up at him, and before he could stop himself, he had leaned down to sip another kiss off those parted damp lips.

It wasn’t his fault. That face, tilting up from his chest like that—how was he supposed to control himself?

One little kiss, and then another, and then another three, his hand slipping free of the rail, petting her hair back from her face in urgent strokes, her mouth so delicious and so his. He couldn’t get enough of it and of her reaction to him.

Madame Delatour’s little dog saved him, sniffing at his ankle. He managed to lift his head again, to see Madame Delatour passing, not really looking at them, her face almost neutral except for the little smile that curved her mouth.

“I can’t touch you anymore,” he gasped. “I might die.” Stretching both hands behind him this time, he locked them around the twisting wrought iron bars of the railing. Jolie forced herself to take a step back, but then her gaze got lost on him. Her eyes ran slowly from his hands knotted around the iron, up his corded arms, over his undefended chest.

He squeezed his eyes shut, twisting his head away. “
Non, non, non
, don’t look at me like that. Jolie, you have no idea—” She probably didn’t. He always did seem to feel things more powerfully than anyone else around him. Out there, unshielded, and subjugated by his damn senses.

He peeked, and Jolie’s eyes were brilliant with hunger, the black of her pupils eating up the gold again. She lifted a hand to touch, very lightly, his straining chest.

He snapped, on a quick flick of pure rage. Damn her, she shouldn’t
toy
with him like that. Cruel little I’ll-dump-you-when-I-please.

“I’ve got to go back to work,” he growled, striding away as fast as he could. And it was a good hour into the evening service before he calmed down enough to want to beat his own head against the wall, instead of the heads of everyone else around him.
You idiot. What a stupid moment to lose your temper.

She was clearly getting addicted.

It was amazing how much energy and pleasure surged through Gabriel on his walk home at midnight, when that walk was in the same direction as Jolie’s apartment. Even knowing that if he tried to redirect his path enough to show up at her door instead of his own, she would probably hit him over the head.

She hadn’t come to the restaurant that night. It pissed him off.
Come on, you love this, and you’re only here three and a half days each week. Don’t
waste
it.

He had almost called her to beg her to come by, but that had pissed him off, too. He had kept hoping she would forgive him for being a
connard
earlier in the day and show up on her own accord; and in the end, instead of calling her, he had just had a crappy, high-strung night, always checking the back door in the hopes to spot her coming down the alley. Always turning away in crushing, growling disappointment.

He lived so much too much on all his emotions. He wished sometimes that he could flatten himself out, be all even and self-possessed—like Daniel,
merde
—but then he gave up on it, because it felt horrible and two-dimensional when he actually tried. Who wanted to live life like a sheet of metal?

But,
merde.
He stood for a moment under their balconies, looking up at Jolie’s. Strongly tempted to throw a stone. To sing a teasing little serenade. To whistle for her to come. His grin flashed.

It left him wide open at her mercy, those emotions. Sent to heaven or hell by a touch of her finger or its removal, and
she
held cautiously back.

Well, not so cautiously sometimes, but she
wanted
to hold cautiously back.
No one else moves as fast as you. You need to remember that other people go slower than you do.

Oh, and if you do get what you want—me—then it’s at the price of your own heart, because I like to dump people. Sucker.

He fisted big fists and pushed himself up his own stairway. There was always that leap from the balcony if he cracked later, he promised himself, with a delighted kick of testosterone.

He took a shower and went into his kitchen to find some food. The potato chips were sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, which threw him. In his kitchens, he
always
put things back in their exact place. They were
always
where he wanted them.

Still, she had him pretty rattled. Maybe he had actually forgotten to clean up.

He reached for the bag and realized there was a big white note taping the bag closed.
Mange quelque chose de plus équilibré
, it said.
Eat something better for you.
With an arrow toward the refrigerator.

His chest tightened, so that he almost couldn’t breathe. He approached the refrigerator as if it might contain one of those exploding practical jokes, snakes springing out at him or something. No. Two simple glass containers of rice and—his heart beat so hard as he peeled back the lid—something with red lentils. He dipped his head and breathed in the fresh clear scent of cilantro and then the richer, earthy aromas it brightened. Dal.

Something good and filling and healthy that he would never in a million years eat at his own restaurant, where they didn’t serve Indian food.

Oh, God. He actually thought he might cry. Had she done this after he stalked away from her like a bastard?

The soft knock on Jo’s door came a little after midnight. She could feel him through the door, a dangerous monster in the dark, wanting in. She had stayed up late, then lambasted herself for doing so and gone to bed around eleven-thirty, only to twist and turn under the thin shelter of the sheet, watching the open balcony windows.

She pulled jeans and a shirt on over her pajamas this time. She just couldn’t be that brazen, to answer the door nearly naked twice in a row, especially knowing what was waiting out there. A great shadow, leaning into the door. “What do you want?”

His eyes flickered over her rumpled hair. She had forgotten to turn on the light. He was a darker figure than anything else there, indistinct and very large, shadows condensed in him. Danger brought to life.

“Were you asleep?” He was breathing deeply, and it couldn’t possibly be from the stairs. Not with the physical intensity of his life.

“A little bit.”