Criminal Confections (22 page)

I'll admit it. Blatant pleading gets to me every time. I'm a sucker for anyone who really,
really
wants my expertise.

“Well, I might be able to wrangle a consultation for your troubled toiletries line,” I compromised. “It's a new area for me—being nonedible, that is—but I know I can do better than—”

Tang-flavored Tootsie Roll soap,
I meant to say, but . . .

“What? There's nothing wrong with our house toiletries! They're fantastic!” Christian frowned. “I
mean,”
he said with the elaborate (and insulting) patience of someone conversing with a child, “that I want to offer you a job. A
real
job.” He paused. “I want you to take over Adrienne's job. Immediately.”

 

 

It took at least thirty seconds for that offer to sink in. Once it did, I reeled. It hadn't even occurred to me that Christian might be proposing a full-time post. “I'm flattered, but”—
at the moment, “San Francisco chocolatier” looks like a literal dead-end job
—“I'm not looking for anything permanent.”

“Don't tell me your answer right now,” Christian urged.

“I just did. My answer's
no.”

But even as I said it, my mind started drifting toward my potential alternative future as Lemaître Chocolates' head chocolatier. I could move into one of those cute Victorian houses in the Lower Haight, plant petunias in my Painted Lady's window boxes, take the Muni to work (on a cable car, natch), get myself a little cocker spaniel or a French bulldog for company. . . .

I was halfway to signing imaginary mortgage papers before I came to my senses, prompted by Christian's agitated expression.

“Take some time to think about it,” he insisted. “Really.”

I didn't plan to do any such thing. But while I was there . . .

“I'll confess, I thought Rex was a shoo-in for the job,” I remarked, blatantly fishing for more information from him. “With Adrienne gone, I figured Lemaître would need another expert—”

“
Rex?”
Christian gave a moue of disgust, then ripped into another candy bar. Perfunctorily, he offered me half. I shook my head, rescuing my taste buds from an assault of cheap tropical oils, dubious chocolate, and stale peanuts. “Rex was my uncle's protégé, not mine. The last thing I wanted was for Rex's arty-farty ‘cacao essences' and ‘artisanal aroma pods' to infect Lemaître. You'd think the guy invented chocolate-based molecular gastronomy, the way the city press wet themselves over him.”

Maybe that had been true a year or two ago. I'd seen the media clippings myself in Rex's portfolio. But I couldn't help thinking about Eden's (almost guaranteed) unflattering profile.

However brightly Rex's star had shined, it had dimmed by the time I'd met him. Melt had definitely been on the skids.

“But there's a reason I ousted Bernard,” Christian went on after swallowing a huge bite of cheap candy, “and there's a reason those rumors about Lemaître and Melt merging are bogus.”

Then they
weren't
true? That was interesting.
Eden had seemed pretty sure she was onto something with that approach.

Maybe I wasn't the only one with a penchant for angling.

“I guess if those rumors had been true,” I observed, “they would be history, now that Rex is out of the picture.”

“Yep. Can't merge with a dead man,” Christian pointed out prosaically. He took another bite, mindlessly chomping.

He didn't exactly seem racked with grief about Rex. Which only made me wonder . . .
how
dead set against the idea of a merger between Lemaître and Melt had Christian been? Enough to have taken desperate measures to make sure it would never happen?

Maybe Christian was stressed because he'd followed his uncle's hated protégé to the ridge and pushed him to his death. Even homicidal maniacs probably got ulcers and acid reflux.

I wished I didn't have to consider it. But given the several murderous looks I'd seen on Christian's face during our acquaintance, he absolutely seemed capable of impulsive violence. Plus, he'd just confirmed Bernard's status as Rex's mentor. Until now, only Isabel had mentioned that—and she (along with being currently on the lam) was notoriously unreliable.

Things were gradually starting to come together, though. Bit by bit, I was compiling a more complete picture of the Lemaître empire . . . and all its scheming, double-crossing denizens.

“It must have been hard for you, having your uncle mentor Rex instead of you,” I said. It was odd that Bernard—the king of traditional chocolates—would have taken a shine to someone with avant-garde tastes like Rex. “How did you cope with that?”

Eden would have been proud of my leading question. All I lacked was a recording device and a bloodthirsty demeanor.

“By being
better.”
Christian wadded up a candy bar wrapper, unbothered by the persistent racket coming from his treadmill. “And by keeping an eye on Rex, just like I do everyone else.”

I nodded. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies—”

“Right under your nose. Exactly.” Christian eyed the wreckage of his chocolate binge, then shook his head. “Nobody else has the balls to invite their competitors to a retreat. Just me. It happens here, on my turf, where
I
control it.”

I pointed out the obvious. “You can't control
everything.”

“I can come damn close to it.” For a heartbeat, Christian's expression filled with malice. Then, resignation. “At least I used to be able to. These days . . .” He sighed. “The excitement is all in the chase. You know what I mean? When I was taking over Lemaître, I
loved
coming to work. People used to run scared from me. They did
everything
I asked, right down to abandoning their offices and moving into dinky little cubicles. It was so—”

“Tyrannical?” No wonder Nina was frazzled. Under Christian's regime, Gandhi would have developed a few tics.

“
—gratifying.”
He shook his head, looking me over with new and appreciative eyes. “You're sassy. I like that about you.”

He thought I was kidding. I hadn't been. Christian wasn't doing much to sell me on his
non
murderous side. Any man who relished putting people out of work and inspiring fear might be a man who was capable of murder, too. Especially of his rival.

But of Adrienne?
Yes,
I decided, remembering the way he'd bullied her—the way he'd accused her of sabotaging him. The Christian I now sat across from would have unquestionably taken personally her selling secrets. He might have wanted revenge.

Struck by the thought, I shivered. Hey, at least I wasn't choco-roasted anymore. Maybe I wasn't quite so pink, either.

There was a bright side to everything—even confronting another human being's fundamentally avaricious nature. Right?

“I was wrong about you, Hayden.” Christian beamed at me. I felt as if I'd passed a creepy secret admission exam. “It wasn't until you had the sense to withhold Adrienne's notebook and use it for leverage that I realized we were on the same page.”

Ugh.
Viscerally, I wanted to
turn
the page. Christian and I weren't at all the same. I hadn't “withheld” Adrienne's notebook as a bargaining chip. I'd done it—was still doing it, with the help of Danny's street smarts—out of loyalty to my departed friend. I couldn't see that changing anytime soon, either.

“I'll expect to have you
and
that notebook when you accept my offer, of course,” Christian went on blithely. “But the way you schooled me at ‘Name That Chocolate!' was the cherry on top. That's when you really sold me. Anybody else would have had the sense to let me win. You saw how everyone else buckled, right?”

They'd “buckled,” I knew, because they'd been beaten—not because they'd thrown the charity contest on purpose. But since Christian was willing to gab, I was willing to listen. For now.

“But
you
didn't.” He smiled at me again. “I can't say I wasn't pissed you won. I was. I was going to fire your ass.”

I gulped, belatedly realizing I'd almost “expertised” my way out of a lucrative consulting job. If my pride had cost me another gig (don't ask), Danny would have been appalled.

“Firing me would have been a mistake,” I told Christian evenly, “given everything I know about your company.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

I almost laughed. I'm about as menacing as a sleepy kitten. But I guess people tend to see themselves everywhere, don't they? “I don't know,” I said coolly, revising my opinion of Christian's intelligence downward. “What do you think?”

“I think maybe I underestimated you
twice.”
Christian leaned back, steepling his hands over his taut abdomen. How did he stay so buff while munching cut-rate candy? “I think maybe you were a little pissed yourself. You couldn't troubleshoot my nutraceutical chocolate line, so you erased the evidence of it.”

His smug expression baffled me. “Your nutraceutical line was doomed from the start,” I told him. “No one has ever devised a truly successful ‘healthy' chocolate. We both know that.”

There'd been numerous attempts to commercialize the cacao bean's inherent heart-healthy properties. But no matter how tasty those “good-for-you” chocolates may (or may not) have been, the fact remained: Nobody wanted their indulgences to be endorsed by a buzzkill board of white-coated doctors. Chocolate was
supposed
to feel decadent, luscious, and oh-so-bad for you.

“But I bet you thought
you
could do it, didn't you?” Christian pressed. “Hayden Mundy Moore: the famous ‘chocolate whisperer.' If anybody could achieve the impossible, it was
you,
right?” He paused. “Except in the end, you couldn't do it.”

I wasn't sure what he was driving at. I'd thought I might be able to work miracles, given recent advances in culinary-based nanotechnology. I hadn't, but I'd learned a few things in the attempt. In my book, that was progress. “My report is full of critical information that you didn't have when you began, as well as solid procedures for moving Lemaître forward, so—”

“Lemaître Chocolates was your only failed consultation, wasn't it?” Christian interrupted. “Adrienne just . . . stymied you.”

Okay. Now I was getting annoyed. Remember how I told you I'm not easily ruffled? I guessed I'd spent too much time with Christian, because suddenly my live-and-let-live policy felt deeply shortsighted. “Exactly what are you suggesting?”

He shrugged. “You tell me. How ruthless are you, Hayden?”

I looked at Christian sitting there, ostensibly waiting for me to (I'm spitballing here) fess up to
overdosing Adrienne
to hide my “failed consultation” at Lemaître. My blood boiled.

At least I knew now how ruthless
he
was. That he could even contemplate such a cold-blooded scheme spoke volumes about him.

At the very best, he had a
really
morbid sense of humor.

With effort, I kept my cool. “Look, Christian. I'm in demand. I intend to deliver my report—on our agreed-upon due date—and then go on to my next consultation. In the meantime, you should really have a look at your abysmal house amenities. Trust me, they need work. The fact that
you
aren't aware of their defects only shows exactly how much you need someone like me.” Not that it was going to
be
me. Not after this. “Consider that info a parting gift,” I added, just in case my intentions weren't clear. “Oh, and by the way—your killer spa equipment needs some serious refurbishment, too. See to it.”

I'd already left the pertinent details with Portia and Britney. I got up, intending to leave Christian sitting there, looking chocolaty and stunned. He obliged me—for a few seconds.

Then he applauded. “Bravo! Now I want you more than ever!”

Well . . . “You're just going to have to go on pining, then.”

There was no way I was taking another job with Christian. Not now. Not in this crazy place. I didn't even break my stride.

I'd almost made it to the office door by the time he reacted. “Hayden, wait!” His chair creaked loudly behind me. Candy bar wrappers rustled as Christian trod over them. Amid the thudding of his treadmill, he followed me. He grabbed my arm.

I froze, fighting an urge to unleash some choice self-defense moves on him. It was Barcelona all over again.

I clenched my jaw. “Don't touch me, Christian.”

He let go, then spread his arms wide. “You're mad? Hey, no. Don't be mad about
that.”
Hastily, Christian circled around to face me, partially blocking the door. He nodded toward his desk. “That, back there, between us? That was just a technique I learned in B-school. Pressure-cooker interviewing. You passed!”

“I'm thrilled,” I deadpanned, then opened the door.

At least I tried. It thudded into Christian's shoulder.

“Whoa!” He chuckled, rubbing his arm with a fake whimper. He shook his head. “Easy there with the killer instincts!”

I frowned, then hesitated. As long as we were being all chummy, I realized, I might as well push a little harder.

“Speaking of killer instincts,” I said, crossing my arms as I faced him again, “where were
you
when Adrienne died?”