Turning Up the Heat (13 page)

“No.” No, that wasn’t right. She—

“If I leave you feeling you’re nothing.” He dragged one hand over his face, too hard, leaving white marks on the sun-flush. “I—
nothing?
I gave all of me to you—
all of me
—and that made you feel as if you were
nothing
?”

Léa stared at him, across a small tropical room that seemed as vast as a great void. “I gave all of me to you,” she said, low, muffled. She had never even realized it before. All of her. To him. To everyone else. “And I didn’t even get you back for it. You were too busy.”

And she had missed him so much. Tears poured down her cheeks again at the memory of all those times he had been so far away, in the kitchens while she handled business in some other part of the restaurant, on a TV set while she sat in the green room, in Paris while she helped her sister move into her new apartment in Nice. The distance that had grown until she looked back on those first few desperate years with
nostalgia
, because at least then they had seen each other sometimes, when she and her siblings pitched in every way they could, setting tables, waiting tables, on the line in the kitchen, prepping whatever needed prepped. Watching Daniel be glorious, watching him drive everyone before him, even her, though he reached out from time to time to squeeze her shoulder or the nape of her neck in apology, when he realized what a taskmaster he was being. She had never minded. She understood him, the need that drove him, and she knew they were in it together.

“Léa.” His voice was strained and cautious. “I can’t do
Top Chef
, and consult all over the world, and run a three-star restaurant,
and
be home more often. You have to choose.”

“
I
have to choose?” She scrubbed her face, trying to get a grip. “Daniel, it’s your choice. I don’t want to limit you.” She never wanted to do that. “Fly as high as you want to. I’m behind you.” She was, she really was. She always had been, and so proud of him. This was just a little, stupid moment of collapse she was having.

His jaw was very hard. He clenched the windowframe behind him. “Léa. I’ve never taken a single appearance, a single consulting job, that you didn’t book for me. Or, if they spoke to me directly, that I didn’t think, ‘Oh, she’ll like that, I should do it.’ And send them to talk to my wife, about scheduling. In case she should ever look at my calendar and decide I was too fucking overbooked and maybe she would like to see me some weekend.”

In the tight line of his jaw, in the rigid muscles in his arms clenching the windowsill, there was so much anger that the realization of it shoved straight across the room into her, like a truck collision. Léa stared at him.

The moment stretched, breakable or buildable. Like molten sugar that could be formed into anything wonderful, as long as you didn’t let it chill too much and drop it, shattering everywhere. “I—when they came to me, they always said you wanted to do it,” she said, pleating her hands. “So I would find a way to fit it in.”

His mouth twisted, bittersweet. “Maybe I should have made my priorities clearer to you. Maybe
a day with my wife, the woman I’m doing all this for
should have been in your calendar system as one of those first-precedence entries that can’t be changed. At least once a week,
putain.
” He leaned his head back against the window frame, looking exhausted.

As exhausted as
she
felt. Daniel, who was indefatigable.

She found herself drawn closer to him, step by step, with the urge to stroke that tension off his face, to tell him it was all right.

He watched her come to him. His mouth twisted again. “You say I take up too much of your space, you say I leave you nothing, but here you are, ready to care for me again. That might be your problem, Léa.” A dark, bitter pain in his voice. “The problem besides me. You make us think that care of yours is inexhaustible. Because it—almost—is. And nobody can get too much of it,
chérie.
Nobody is ever going to turn it down. It’s up to you to not offer it sometimes, if you need some for yourself.”

She reached up and traced those lines by his eyes. Daniel had started developing fine lines of tension around his eyes years ago, by his mid-twenties at least. They relaxed a little under her fingertips, his face weary, stricken. “I like taking care of you, actually,” she murmured. “I always have. It makes me feel—special.” Those damn tears filled her eyes again. “As long as you’re there. As long as it seems to matter.”

“I’m quitting
Top Chef
,” he said suddenly, harshly. “I’m sorry, Léa, that’s over. If we need some influx of cash at some point, you can talk them into paying me triple, and I’ll come on as a special guest. I’m sorry, I just”—His head arched back, his neck muscles corded. “
Fuck.
As long as it seems to matter. When it’s all that’s ever mattered. This drives me insane.” His hands flexed on the frame of the window again, and she saw the nails that held it to the wall shift.

“No!” she said, appalled at her own selfishness. “Don’t quit for me! Daniel! I’ll be fine.”

The nails shifted more. He was literally going to rip the frame out. Strong chef’s hands. “I’m not quitting
for you.
Have you listened to anything I’ve said? I’m quitting for
me.
If you want anything else for you, Léa, you’re going to have to do it. Damn it, Léa. You say you can’t give me any more.
I can’t give you any more, either.
”

She drew a breath as if he had struck her. He winced at the sight, wrenching the frame. “
Fuck.
Putain. Merde.
Léa. We could have hired a business manager years ago. You could have been drawing and painting beautiful sights all over the world for the past three or four years at least, every time we went out for a consulting job, instead of making friends with the chef’s wife so you could help her learn how to run their business better.
Merde
, Léa, how much of our time do we spend up in Paris? It’s an artist’s paradise. Our
house
is an artist’s paradise, the views are incredible, I wish to hell I could enjoy them more often.
Nobody
stopped you but you, because”—He broke off and sighed suddenly, like a long, drawn-out collapse, all the air and muscles leaving him until his fingers loosened the frame to rise to her face. “Because you just don’t know how to take for yourself. Do you? Your giant of a father—you grew up cheering for the great man in your life, didn’t you? From the margins of his attention. Taking care of your siblings. Bandaging wounds, patting his apprentices on the shoulder and promising them they could survive. Taking care of people. Never putting yourself first.”

“
You
put me first, for a while,” she said shyly. His release of anger and the gentleness that rose up in its place lured her in, making her want to curl into him and luxuriate in it. “When you met me. It was—I never felt anything like that. It was so
wonderful.
” The way his eyes would grow so brilliant, watching her, so hungry and intent and sweet, too, as he leaned over her in the grass, stroking her cheek with a flower.

“Yes, and even that, you thought was partly for the restaurant, didn’t you?” He dropped his head back against the frame again. “Eleven years,” he said under his breath. And then, “I guess I did put myself first. It was so fucking addictive, being your hero. I have to say, you never made me feel like nothing, Léa. You’ve
always
made me feel like I was your whole world. To the point that if you stopped believing in me, I think I wouldn’t exist.” He gave a rough, despairing laugh. “You’ve got to admit, it’s a beautiful irony,
chérie.
I gave myself up for you. You gave yourself up for me. And we’re here scrabbling to find enough of each other we can hold onto.”

“Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to establish boundaries,” Léa said, reaching up to rest both hands carefully on his sticky, sunburned chest.

“Maybe,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t know if it’s something I’m able to do. I told you I can’t get enough of you. Of you being happy with me.” His mouth twisted again. His eyes met hers, a glimpse of dark, bittersweet humor in the beautiful gray. “I acted like a drug addict who had had his supply threatened, when I came after you here, didn’t I?”

She shook her head, her mouth curving at last, and the relaxing of those smile muscles made two more tears spill out over her cheeks. She shifted a hand to his cheek. “You acted like you. It just took me a while to realize you were acting like you. Like maybe we needed a chance to get to know each other better. Not better, differently. Out of our usual patterns.”

“Yes,” he said softly, lifting his own hand to her cheek, so that their touches exactly matched. “I had kind of forgotten that you ever wanted to do anything but the restaurant and...sit in my stands, cheering me on. I’m sorry,
chérie.
It’s hard to refuse all of you, when you offer it so generously. And I sunk all of myself into this, too. It was hard to—see anything, but the work.”

“Don’t you like it at all?” Léa asked doubtfully. It was impossible to believe that someone could rise to the absolute pinnacle of an insanely demanding profession without having a passion for it. Damn it, his passion for it was so obvious. In his mind was it really, always, a passion for her?

“I hate
Top Chef
for days ahead of time, but I do enjoy the high afterward, when I win and you can’t stop talking about this or that thing I did on it like I’m some superhero. I
hate it
when I lose. I want to hide in some hole where you can’t see me for weeks. But I do love the rest. Food, and living with all my senses, and control. And I like being the biggest man in your life, bigger even than your father. I like being the best of the best. It’s only lately that I’ve started to realize that the price I was paying for being the biggest man in your life was...you.”

“Daniel. You do understand that there’s never been any question of you losing me. I really, really only came here because I needed to...take some time for me. To figure out why I was so tired, what I needed to change. I never intended to not come back.” Although for a while there, the time she wanted to stay away had seemed to stretch infinitely, no end in sight. A figment of her exhaustion, and he didn’t need to know about it. Maybe some part of him suspected.

“Léa. I’ve been losing you for years. I do want more of you. I’m sorry. But it can be a
more
where you set up your paint things in the garden and utterly ignore me while I lie on a lounger nearby and dream up menu ideas for someone in Las Vegas, if you want. I just—I want to be around you. When we can relax. When I can be something other than a chef. And you can be whatever you want to be.”

“Something other than a chef while you sketch out menu ideas?” she said wryly, her hand drifting up to run through his hair.

“You might have to help me with the concept of hobbies.” His hands settled at her hips, pulling her in closer to him. That odd little curve to his mouth, the one that hid a profound reserve. “I wouldn’t mind learning some other facets to myself.” The tips of his fingers stroked up and down her bottom, very gently. “Maybe we could even find some hobbies we do together.”

“I love you,” she said softly.

His eyes brightened. “I’ve always loved hearing that twenty or thirty times a day. I might be a little greedy.”

Or astonishingly insecure. He was so incredible, so much larger than life. Was his whole sense of himself really so dependent on her?

Maybe they did both need to switch gears in life, to take a deep breath, to let themselves expand outward instead of that spear-like drive forward all the time. It was so odd to think this about Daniel, who took the world on like he was its spear, but maybe they both needed to develop—a stronger sense of self.

He lowered his forehead to hers. “Let me stay here with you another week or so, Léa. Let me take this vacation with you. I can go help Moea turn his restaurant into something that will solve their guest problem, and you can learn how to paint again, and we can go scuba-diving. Sailing. Windsurfing. Lazing on a beach. All those things we’ve never done. And share the same bungalow. And maybe learn some other new things about what we want.” His mouth curved, and his eyes held hers for a tiny, hot second.

She smiled, with a little flush. His fingers lifted to trace the color on her cheekbones.

“And then after that,” he said more slowly, “if you want to stay on a little longer without me...I guess I’ll handle that. Reasonably sanely. If you don’t stay too long. And when we get back home...” He looked at her a moment, then drew a long, hard breath, bringing himself to some sticking point: “I want to hand over the day-to-day running of the kitchens to Marc,” he said, referring to his
second.

Léa’s jaw dropped. Okay, so...wow. They really didn’t know each other’s wants
at all.
She could never, in a million years, have imagined Daniel accepting less than absolute, shining-star control over those kitchens. He had fought like a feral dog for it.

“He will be excellent at it—he already does handle it half the time, when I’m consulting or on shows. And if I don’t let him have the official status, he’ll leave me for a kitchen where he can be king soon anyway. There’s only so long a chef with his talent can stand to be someone else’s
second.
”