Shadowed Heart (17 page)

Really? Cade hadn’t assumed Summer would screw it all up?

“Wait, what—how do you even know? What are you doing here?” Had her
mother
told them?

“Well, not because you told us, that’s for sure,” Jaime said, with only half-kidding severity. “You know, I can read texts if you don’t want to bother to call.”

“Luc.” Cade laughed and rolled her eyes.

“Luc called you? Last night?” After their fight?

“Are you kidding me? He’s called pretty much every day since you learned it. Sylvain can’t stop laughing.”

What?

“It’s hilarious.” Cade grinned.

“Dom’s a little bit pissed,” Jaime mentioned. “Since he and Luc were the ones who actually worked together in a kitchen back when they were starting out. His feelings are hurt Luc would call Sylvain instead of him.” Then Jaime grinned, too. “It’s pretty cute. He gets all grumpy and go-to-hell about it. But if you could just slip a word in Luc’s ear that it might be nice to call Dom a time or two, too, I’d appreciate it.”

“Luc keeps calling you?”

“Yeah, I should probably just buy up the entire contents of the American store in Paris and ship it down here to you to save on trips, but then I would miss out on all the fun of hearing him try to act as if he’s not in the least desperate and confused.” Cade started laughing again.

Jaime looked disgruntled. “See? I don’t understand why Cade gets all the fun.”

Cade just laughed again. “Umm…how do you think Dom would react if some other hot chef started calling you every day?”

Jaime scrunched up her face as she considered. Then she shook her head. “Yeah, that couldn’t end well.”

“What does he call about?” Summer asked blankly.

“Oh, my God. Pickles.” Cade was dissolving into chortles. “Peanut butter. Whatever he thinks you might be able to eat. The man has gone off the deep end. It’s pretty adorable, actually. Especially when he starts hinting about how lovely Provence is this time of year.”

“Hinting about…Luc invited you two down here? When? Last night?”

“The first time was a few days ago.” Cade grinned again. “I have the impression he needs a little moral support.”

“Hey,” Jaime said, before Summer could quite decipher all of this. She was looking at Summer’s notes on the calendar and desk. “I know some women in Côte d’Ivoire who were designing the most perfect baby sling,” Jaime said. “They were just doing it as a small business—micro-funded, you know—but if you’re interested in doing more products than swings, I could put you in touch. Their slings were really pretty. All these bright colors.”

“I’d invest in that,” Cade said. “Especially if you’re guiding the entrepreneurs, Summer. You’d make sure they have their heads screwed on straight, when it comes down to actual business.”

“You would?”

“It would be cool,” Jaime said. “Particularly if it can help support small businesses like that sling one. Micro-funding for women entrepreneurs in developing countries. I’d sit on the board. Hey, and did you think about devoting a part of the profits to providing supplies and medical care to low-income moms or teenagers in at-risk pregnancies?”

Summer blinked. The project expanded in her vision, linking to other people, becoming more and more…
implicated.
Not an island. Not alone.

“Count me in.” Cade pushed open the glass doors to step out onto the terrace that ran the length of the house. “Wow, your view. Beautiful.” Cade stopped at the wall and gazed down the herb-dotted cliff to the Mediterranean, then tossed Summer a smile over her shoulder. “Not
too
big a change from your island, then?”

As much as Summer loved the sea and scents of Manunui, the people were what she missed the most. And the safety from the judgment of the whole rest of the world.

“
Magnifique
,” came a male voice from farther down the terrace. Sylvain stepped out through the glass doors from the kitchen, tall and physical and graceful, a poet crossed with an athlete. In some ways he reminded Summer a little bit of Luc—both roughly of a height, both black-haired, both with that passionate intensity—but Sylvain was so much more relaxed and amused in his skin. Luc worked so damn hard to fit right in his own. So focused on making everything about himself perfect, all the time.

Sometimes, once in a rare, rare while, Summer managed to convince him for the space of a nap in a hammock or a lazy afternoon that he was still perfect to her, even when he stopped trying.

“I wouldn’t mind working in a kitchen with
this
view,” Sylvain added as big, dark Dominique Richard followed him out. Dom brought that rough suggestion of danger to the terrace, but Summer was more comfortable around him these days than she once had been. Mostly because he seemed to like her a lot more these days. Ever since he and Jaime had spent a week on the island for Luc and Summer’s wedding, his attitude toward her had shifted to this rough-edged, casual affection.

Summer loved it. She’d always had a really huge weakness for being liked.

Luc stepped out onto the terrace after the other two men and looked at her immediately, quick, intense, searching. His face tightened a little at whatever he saw, and he slipped his hands into his pockets and went with Dom and Sylvain to the wall to look at the view.

“Oh, before I forget.” Cade pulled a big jar of peanut butter out of her purse—the Corey brand from Summer’s childhood visits to her cousins.

“
Merde
, Cade.” Down the terrace, Sylvain made a dramatic show of wincing and holding up a cross to ward off the devil. “Couldn’t you have waited until I was out of sight?”

Big, bad Dom rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh. No matter what Sylvain reacted to, Dom pretty much had
to treat it like a ridiculous reaction. That was just the way those two fit together.

“Luc
really wanted peanut butter?” Summer glanced toward him involuntarily.

His hands were still in his pockets, the way they always were when he struggled with too much emotion and didn’t have a dessert outlet for it. His eyes held hers as soon as she gave them the chance, pleading and pushing all at once.
I’m sorry.

Her breath tightened, and she covered her belly to protect it again from his hurt.

“Apparently it might help you with your nausea.” Cade grinned and held out the peanut butter. “You want some?”

“Umm…maybe in a little bit.” Summer couldn’t even conceive of wanting peanut butter, not with her stupid stomach, but she took the jar politely and snuck a glance at Luc again. He hadn’t looked away. He leaned back against the terrace wall with the other two as if he was relaxed, but there wasn’t a relaxed line in his body. Even at the best of times, that man was terrible at relaxation.

He needed her for it. If he didn’t have her, he’d tighten and tighten himself, like a guitar string that was too stubborn to snap. Titanium that would break the tuning pegs, break even the fingers twisting them, before he would break himself.

Her heart ached again, and her free hand kneaded her belly nervously.
Why did you say that to me?

That ugly, terrible thing.

I trusted you with the most fragile, precious thing about me, and you struck at it to save yourself.

“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell us yourself!” Jaime exclaimed. “If Luc hadn’t needed pickles and peanut butter, we still wouldn’t know. We’ve been
waiting
for you to crack and call us yourself, so we could pretend to be surprised. What’s the fun in having a baby all alone?”

Well…well…good point. But when would Summer have gotten the courage to reach out to her cousins and risk more reactions like her mother’s?

Or Luc’s.

“Well, it’s early yet,” she tried.
Apparently I’m not supposed to tell anybody at all yet.
So if something does go wrong I can be all alone with it, I guess. Wouldn’t, after all, want to cling to others during a terrible time and burden them with…me.

“
You
knew,” Jaime argued. “Me knowing was just a phone call away.”

“Excuse me?” Cade adopted that calm superiority she did so well. “I’m the oldest. She should have called me.”

“You should have called me,” Jaime told Summer. “So as not to expose your baby to noted chocolate felons.” Cade’s reputation as a chocolate thief was going to follow her forever. “But either way, you should have called one of us.”

“They say not to start announcing it until after the first three months.” Summer looked at Luc again, a sharp, hard glance, shards of glass cast across the terrace, glinting in the light. His lips pressed in that merciless self-control of his, but his eyes held that wild, intense mix of pleading for forgiveness and accusation.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
And,
How could you?

She bent her head.

“Oops,” Cade said wryly, her own blue eyes laughing, in complete innocence of any concerns about a first trimester. “Well, the cat’s out of
that
bag. What with all those calls for pickles.”

“So it’s true about the cravings?” Jaime asked curiously. “You hear rumors, but—” She waved a hand at the peanut butter in Summer’s hand.

“Having Luc Leroi hunting for American pickles and
peanut butter
makes it really hit home,” Sylvain supplied, amused.

“There is nothing wrong with peanut butter, Sylvain,” Cade told him, with steely patience.

Sylvain made a little sound of compressed hilarity and raised his eyebrows innocently at his wife’s look. “No, of course not,
chérie
,” he said with such patent insincerity that Cade poked him. He caught her poking finger and rubbed his thumb over the tip of it, gentle, subtle, possessive.

Summer glanced again at Luc, the distance between them this ache in her throat. He stared back at her a moment and then left the terrace abruptly.

***

In the kitchen, Luc stood alone in front of the open freezer, still for a moment, then forcing himself to pull out the ice pops. What would she like this time? Probably any choice would be wrong. Lime, he guessed wildly, but mostly even that choice was for selfish reasons. Mostly it was because he wanted back that moment when she had said,
Mmm, because it smells like you.

He wanted to be
mmm
again. He wanted…anything, really.

But he wanted to cut her passport into tiny ribbons, too. And he had barely enough control over that desire not to actually do it. She kept it in their safe. He knew right where it was. She trusted him with it. It had never occurred to her that she couldn’t.

It should never have occurred to him. And yet he had had to stop himself from attacking it with a pair of kitchen shears every single second of the past twenty-four hours.

He set the lime ice pop on a tray, along with a baguette and a selection of glasses and options for drinks, carrying it out for their guests. It was rude to serve his own wife before their guests, but he brought her the ice pop first anyway.

She just barely glanced at him. But he got to touch her hand very gently when he put the ice pop in it.
I’m sorry
.
I didn’t mean to hold on to you so tightly that I hurt you.

And:
Don’t disappear on me. Please don’t. Please don’t. I’ll get better at this. Please stay.

“Oh, is Luc making you Popsicles?” Cade exclaimed and gave Luc the fondest smile he’d gotten since he managed to alienate his own wife. “That’s so sweet.”

“Eating has been a little tricky,” Summer admitted to her cousins, rubbing her belly. But she slipped the ice pop into her mouth, and something about her relaxed when she did. Her eyes closed, and she took a deep breath.

So some tiny part of Luc relaxed, too.

Jaime caught Summer’s hand and lifted it to study her stomach. “You can’t even tell yet!” she exclaimed, disappointed. “When does it start showing?”

“Not for a few more weeks, I think.” Summer nodded to the pregnancy book she had left by the hammock on the terrace. Luc had been paging through it that morning, the morning off he had meant to spend with his wife. Reading what was happening to her body was the closest he could come.

“Oh, they have books,” Cade said with relief. Behind her, out of her line of sight, Sylvain studied his wife very curiously, eyes alert. “I suppose there are some kind of classes you can take, too?”

“I hope so,” Summer said wryly. “I only just found out for sure last week, about the same time I started feeling so sick.”

“Is the morning sickness lousy?” Jaime made a face. “Is it true what they say, that you get sick
every
morning?”

“It’s more like all the time.” Summer winced, probably battling nausea right this second. Luc opened the damn peanut butter jar, tore off a hunk of baguette, and spread it with peanut butter, handing it to her. Summer looked at him as if he had descended from another planet.
Tombé de la lune.
Fresh fallen into her world, disoriented and confused, and desperate to be accepted into it.

She nibbled a bit of the bread, then sucked again on her ice pop.

Cade grimaced sympathetically. “Apparently with me and Jaime, our own mom couldn’t stand chocolate.”

Sylvain jerked upright.

“She couldn’t even stand the
smell
of it,” Cade said. “And you know the whole town of Corey smells of it, right? She had to spend the entire first trimester at our beach house, both times.”

Sylvain stared at Cade, appalled. Nice to know Luc wasn’t the only one thrown for a loop by the ramifications of his wife’s pregnancy. That cocky bastard Sylvain couldn’t even handle an imagined one.

“So you weren’t scared at all?” Jaime asked curiously.

“I wasn’t, actually,” Summer said softly. “I was really excited.” After a second, she admitted more softly still: “Now I’m scared.”

Luc’s fingers flexed in uneasy fists. A vision of the night she had told him, him leaning back against the alley wall, trying to be strong. He’d failed her.

“Yeah, I bet,” Cade said wonderingly. She reached out to touch Summer’s belly. Cade, whom no one would have described as touchy-feely. “Does it feel strange? To have someone growing inside you?”

Luc blinked. Wasn’t it just—natural? It sounded disturbing to
him
, but didn’t women just handle that idea as part of who they were?