Shadowed Heart (11 page)

“I just need her to get me some peanut butter from that American store of hers. In case there’s some kind they like from their childhood. Probably some Corey subsidiary produces some, right?”

“Luc.” Sylvain sounded horrified. “You can’t do that to your wife. She probably left that benighted country just so she could
escape
peanut butter. I mean, why else would she have come?” Teasing glowed rich and dark under his words, as if even Sylvain’s humor had this base of melted, gleaming chocolate.

“For me,” Luc said tensely.

Sylvain sighed. “You know, Luc, sometimes your sense of humor—“

Yes, he had caught the fact that Sylvain was joking, he just didn’t find it that funny. It would have been far less responsibility on his shoulders, when he found his wife sitting alone and sick in a damn alley behind his restaurant, if Summer had come to France for any other reason besides or even in addition to him. It would have given him something to fall back on if he failed.
Look, I know things seem bad right now, but at least you’ve escaped peanut butter!

Yeah, that was going to work, all right.

A flashing vision of his old sous-chef Patrick getting hold of that peanut butter hope and wickedly twitting Luc with it until Luc had to laugh, until it became genuinely funny, reducing all his gut-deep panic into something silly and manageable. But Patrick was taking courses in math and physics to prepare for engineering while he simultaneously helped cover the transition at the Leucé, a schedule even more insane than Luc’s, so it wasn’t as if Luc could call on him. And after that he would be going to California. So Luc
really
couldn’t call on him. Couldn’t let himself need a friend at all.
The best things in my life always leave me.

A deep breath. “This website I found says sometimes it helps with morning sickness. It’s something about the protein.”

A moment’s blank silence. “Well, couldn’t you give her something better? Grind up some hazelnuts, or some almonds, make a nice little
praliné
base—do you need me to come down there and show you how to do this stuff?” Again the humor.

But Luc stopped, standing still on the restaurant terrace looking out to sea. Because—no, obviously. And yet, for some reason, he didn’t want to say that no. And he had no idea why he should want Sylvain coming down to interfere in his kitchens with that arrogance of his, acting as if he’d invented chocolate personally and was the only person in the world who could properly handle anything to do with it.

“I’m going to try some other things, too. The peanut butter is extra. In case she only likes a certain brand from her childhood or—look, can you just ask Cade?”

“Sure,” Sylvain said, amused. “You know, all joking aside, you could actually call her directly. I’m a tiny bit more secure than certain people to whom I might be speaking.”

Luc looked at his phone rather blankly. Calling another chef’s wife directly had never occurred to him as a possible means of communication before. How would he feel if Sylvain called Summer?

Fairly indifferent, he realized on a blink of surprise. For all her past filled with boyfriends, he couldn’t even imagine Summer leaving him for another man.

That wouldn’t be why she left him.

Tension recoiled, tight and deep.
Why
had his own mother left him? Life just too tough, and she’d preferred to ditch him and his father for the warmth and happiness she found back in her island home? She’d certainly found maternity too much to handle.

Insane Me, please, please, please leave me alone.

I need to be sane for this. I’ve got to be. I’m going to be a
father.

And I’m still trying to figure out how to be a husband.

“So when are you coming to visit?” he asked Sylvain abruptly. “June in Provence. It’s a nice time to be down here.”

A tiny silence on the other end. They’d been on teams for contests representing France, they’d met in professional associations and worked on charity benefits together. But chefs rarely had time to hang out with other chefs over drinks, and they hadn’t ever even had dinner at one another’s homes until Cade had dragged Luc and Summer over there in her initial matchmaking attempts. So from there to acting as if a visit to Provence to see them was normal and expected was a bit of a leap.

“Lonely?” Sylvain asked, voice still chocolate-easy but sympathetic. “It’s a switch from Paris, isn’t it?”

Luc rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s for Summer. I think she needs, you know, female friends, right now.”

Another little silence, impossible to interpret. “Well, let’s see—lavender in bloom, the Mediterranean right there at your doorstep, and a pregnant cousin. I’m pretty sure Cade would be happy for us to take a trip. You’re not inviting Dom and Jaime, too, I hope?”

For some reason, out of the blue, Luc started to smile, and that one gesture made all the tension in him ease. “You know you love him.”

“I do
not, merde
.” A thumping noise on the other end of the connection, possibly Sylvain’s head against something.

Luc’s smile grew until it almost felt—relaxed. Enjoying himself. “It will be fun.”

Sylvain’s groan as he hung up was so expressive that Luc was actually grinning as he left his office. Things were starting to heat up a little as they got closer to lunch hour, Nico’s side swinging into full battle mode first, Luc’s in a half hour delay after. He poked his head in on Nico. “Good peach,” he murmured.

In under half an hour, standing at this spot between the main and pastry kitchens would be like standing between two battle zones, the insane clash of pans and flash of knives and flame on Nico’s side, and the more delicate, more intense, equally brutal work on Luc’s side, with its own clashes of pans and plenty of flaming torches, smoking liquid nitrogen, boiling caramel and oil. Right now, things were practically calm in comparison. Of course, it was
all
calm in comparison to a luxury hotel kitchen with a hundred cooks on staff. Over all, Luc liked this smaller kingdom, but sometimes his leftover adrenaline didn’t know what to do with itself.

Nico, his knife blurring through potatoes as fast as a hummingbird’s wing, gave him a quick, pleased smile, without even coming close to cutting his own fingers off or slowing his rhythm. “Yeah?”

“Summer liked it.”

“Aww.” Nico beamed. “Did I help feed the little baby? Damn. Makes a man feel good about himself, doesn’t it?”

It would, yes. If Luc ever managed it. “I don’t suppose you have any peanuts over here?”

Nico looked at him blankly. “I thought you said West African dishes didn’t go with our style.”

Maybe Sylvain was right, and he should make a hazelnut butter instead. Surely hazelnuts would be a
much
better flavor, even to a pregnant woman.

“We can order some,” Nico said. “Especially
if you’ll quit being so damn unadventurous about the West African stuff. But it will probably take a few days. They’re not exactly common.”

Or an almond butter. That would definitely be better than peanut butter. “Those peaches…where did you get them?”

Wait, unadventurous?
Him?
There was a huge difference between being too elegant for peanuts and being unadventurous. He gave Nico one of his cooler looks, the kind that made pretty nearly everybody feel for their necks in this weird gesture, as if a mere look had cut off their heads.

Nico bit back a grin. “You going to go gleaning with me, Luc?”

Oh, God, that sounded like one of those cheap horror films where your past kept sticking its damn hand out of the grave. But…Summer had really loved that peach. It and pickles were the only things he had gotten right in this pregnancy so far. Not that he had been responsible for either one of them—the pickles had been Cade’s accomplishment, and the peaches Nico’s.

It would be nice if something his wife needed actually came from
him.

“Sure.” He thought the word came out fine. He thought it didn’t get stuck in his throat.

Surprise on Nico’s face, and then a quick, bemused flick of that hazel gaze over him. “You, uh, going to do it in one of your Dior dress shirts or can I persuade you to put on a T-shirt?”

Luc closed his eyes. “I’ll put on a T-shirt.” He did actually have some. He wore them under his chef’s gear and sometimes on Sundays, when he could relax with Summer.
Sunday.
Pure longing ran through him.
Coming up soon.

Nico grinned. “Got any jeans with holes in them?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Luc went back to his side of the kitchen.

Summer waved the apprentices off with a smile and took some deep breaths of the pine and sun and sea breeze. She wouldn’t go so far as to say her stomach felt delightful, but it was calmer here, in this open air. The tutoring session maybe hadn’t been her best—every time she bent too close to the young men and the cooking scents on them hit her, nausea had stirred again—but the apprentices had seemed to appreciate it anyway.

She closed her books, sneaking a glance at the table of women next to hers. They were laughing and chattering, exclaiming over the belly of the woman with the curly brown hair, who was beaming smugly. It made Summer’s chest hurt.

She recognized them vaguely. They crossed paths around town. The child that woman carried would presumably go to school with her own child. They certainly knew
her,
in fact probably thought they knew everything there was to know about Summer Corey and none of it good. And she didn’t usually allow other women power over her. She knew how
that
worked out, when she showed other girls she was lonely and desperate for their friendship. Her competitive, rich girl’s boarding school had taught her that. No, a silky smile as she strolled past, as if they couldn’t even dream of touching her much less hurting her, was by far the best way to handle other women.

But…would all those women’s kids grow up to be friends and go to each other’s birthday parties, while Summer’s was the one everyone hated? Just as people had hated her?

Even though all that lay between their tables was dry, light, pine-scented wind, the barrier felt like this thick, stretchy, transparent thing through which female laughter and solidarity could be seen blurrily but never reached. This elastic and unyielding barrier at which she could push and push but never push her way through.

She took a breath. And then, in the same way she’d learned to push herself out into public over and over at her parents’ insistence, with a silky, insouciant smile that hid her intense shyness, she stood and pretended to need to pass their table to leave. She paused, with a careless, friendly smile. “Congratulations,” she said to the woman with curly hair, nodding at her hands on her belly.

All four women looked at her with instant, visible chill, and Summer’s throat clogged, but she kept her smile. Only the pregnant woman gave a tentative half-smile back, wary but a little curious. “Thank you.”

“When is it due?” Summer asked.
Do you know more about this than I do? How nauseated have you been? Did you figure out any tricks to calm your stomach?

“Just before Christmas,” the other woman said.

So six or seven weeks ahead of Summer. Should she tell them? A group of strange women already looking at her with closed expressions?
No.
Their reaction to her approach to their table had told her the answer already. But their solidarity made her so
hungry.
That hunger gnawed in her belly, this terrible ache, until she was afraid if she couldn’t feed it, it would hurt her baby, too. That her baby would grow up isolated from all the damn world the same way Summer had. “I’m, ah—” Summer hesitated, and then even good manners couldn’t quite cover her shyness as she touched her own belly. “Me, too.”

But nobody laughed for Summer. Nobody exclaimed in delight. “Are you?” one of the other women said coolly, as if Summer had just tried to steal something from them.

“
Félicitations
,” the pregnant woman said. A couple of murmurs of
félicitations
followed hers. Then the other women just watched Summer, clearly waiting for her to move on and quit ruining their moment by trying to insert herself into it.

Summer didn’t stop smiling, but a knot lodged deep and hard in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down. She smiled over it. “I’m, ah, Summer,” she tried.

The women exchanged ironic glances. “Yes, we know,” one of them said.

Oh.

No one offered a return introduction. Well, why should they?
They
didn’t need friends. Definitely not filthy rich, spoiled brat friends with an international reputation that even four years in the South Pacific hadn’t lived down.

“When’s yours due?” the pregnant woman finally asked politely.

“Early February.” A February baby, for two people who had originally agreed to marry each other on Valentine’s Day.

“Should you even be telling people yet?” one of the expectant mother’s friends asked coolly. “You know what they say.”

Summer took a step back, her hand covering her belly. “N-o.”
And I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what they say.

The mom-to-be sent her friend an appalled look and pinched her arm. Yeah, because the friend was a bitch. Summer had gotten that part. “
Félicitations
,” Summer said again, her own voice gone cool, too, because
fuck you.
She walked on past the table and across the
place
, determined just to get through an archway and be out of sight, not to cry, damn them. She wouldn’t give them that.

And her stupid, stupid hormones were
not
helping with the effort not to cry.

A murmur from table behind her, and a woman’s voice exclaiming: “Well, what? The nerve of her, trying to steal all the attention for herself! She doesn’t have enough already? She probably isn’t even pregnant!”

I hate women. I hate them. I hate them.
Summer walked faster.
I want my island.
That island, where she didn’t hate other women at all, because they didn’t hate her. That island, where she could have hugs that felt soft but strong, that wrapped a feminine scent around her, that said,
We’re happy for you, happy to welcome your baby into our world. And don’t worry so much. You’ll be okay. We did it, and we are. Now here’s some monoï oil. Rub your belly every day so you won’t have stretch marks, and remember to rub it into the baby’s scalp when he’s born so he’ll have beautiful hair...