The Chocolate Kiss

CHAPTER 12



It took Philippe two weeks to realize that one of the reasons Magalie’s chocolate seemed to taunt him so pervasively, even in her absence, was that his employees were bringing its scent back into his kitchen on their clothes after every damn break they took. One of his chefs had just strolled back to work with a hot-chocolate mustache that now stained the white sleeve he had scrubbed guiltily across his face at Philippe’s fulminating gaze.

And he still had not gotten her to step into his own shop once. It made him want to rend things.

Instead, he escalated. Putain, but he would make her regret that.

The magazines and blogs raved about Philippe’s display windows: “irresistible,” “the epitome of temptation,” “an ecstasy of touch, taste, and sight,” “heartbreak itself to walk by and not walk in,” and “no one can pass untouched.”

Except one.

She was driving him mad.

She hadn’t tried one confection he had put into his windows. He hadn’t even caught her lingering for one mere second to look at them. She hadn’t acted tempted in the least.

She sent other women his way, for God’s sake. He was pouring everything he had into those window displays. And she acted as if her whole, entire being didn’t bleed with longing. As if she could sleep at night.

He couldn’t. He woke up dreaming of chocolat chaud.

Thick, luscious, dark chocolate. Stirred in a warm cave of a kitchen by a slim hand that wore its perfect manicure like armor, a shell she couldn’t go out into the world without. Rich hot chocolate stirred in a kitchen where the aroma was a drug that overwhelmed all who entered. What was she stirring into it? What wishes or curses? I’ll drink it, I’ll drink it. Can’t you take just one bite of something of mine, so I can taste yours? Soon he was going to be begging her on his knees to deign to taste one of his pâtisseries. His. Philippe Lyonnais.

He strode out onto the street for a breath of fresh air and not to stroll by that witch house yet again. It wasn’t his fault the nearest park was closer to her end of the street. And that he needed to stretch his legs a lot.

He glanced down the street, despite his best efforts.

A tall, dark-haired man stood looking at the witches’ display window and then opened the door with easy familiarity.

Philippe stiffened through every muscle of his body. Sylvain? What the hell was Sylvain Marquis doing down there?

Not that he gave a damn what Sylvain Marquis was doing, of course. The man made good chocolate—Philippe would give him that—but that hardly made him a worry to Philippe Lyonnais. But just what did he think he was doing on this street in the first place? This was Philippe’s territory.

And going into . . . A great clawed paw reached inside him and raked. Was she eating Sylvain’s chocolate? Was she feeding him hers?

He started down the street, a long, angry prowl.

When he stepped into the salon de thé, the silver bell rang a crisp warning note. Magalie, Geneviève, and Sylvain were all bent intimately over a small table, a stretch of paper before them, Sylvain’s poet’s-cut hair falling forward to brush the hair wisping expertly from Magalie’s chignon, the black strands of both blurring together.

Philippe drew a choppy breath, rage pounding up inside him like some enormous drum that made it hard to hear anything else.

He knew that Sylvain Marquis was busy naming all his new chocolates after a pretty billionaire who melted every time he smiled; Philippe had just agreed to do the pièces montées for their wedding. But how well did he know Sylvain’s character, after all? He looked like a damn ladies’ man, certainly.

And his hair was touching hers. And Aja was bringing out a tray of tea and chocolate. That Sylvain could drink. Nobody was trying to humble him. And Magalie’s eyes were sparkling with pleasure. The rage pulsed until Philippe’s ears buzzed with it, a bass that was too close, too loud.

“Sylvain,” he said, crisp and cool, as if the very neutrality of his voice could bring himself back to reason.

Geneviève gave something over the door behind his head a stern look. “I might need to fix that bell. How did you manage to get in again?”

Sylvain glanced up and lifted a quick hand to clasp his. “Philippe. How is the new salon doing?”

“As could be expected,” Philippe said, which was about as modestly as he could put “record-breakingly well,” and he had no idea why all three women gave him a look as if he had just been impossibly conceited and needed to be taken down a peg. He almost didn’t care about the attitude of the older two women, but the withering dismissal in Magalie’s eyes made his blood burn.

Only Sylvain seemed to respect his phrasing. “Congratulations.” He reached out and clasped his hand again. “You’ve worked hard for it.”

Sylvain would know about working hard for success in their world of ultra gourmet cuisine. It was maddening to have the one person in the room Philippe most wanted to lift up and throw out of it be the only one to give him his due.

“And now that you’ve shared that with us,” Geneviève said, “you’re welcome to go away. Advised to, even.”

“Maybe,” Magalie said with a silky, malicious smile, “he can’t stay away. Maybe he wants some chocolate.”

He stared at her for a moment, his breathing too deep, the scent of her chocolate filling his lungs until it was almost but not quite a taste on his tongue. Bordel, what would it taste like?

His impulsive stride to harry Sylvain Marquis out of his territory had brought him here with nothing with which to tempt Magalie in exchange. He felt the disadvantage keenly. Sylvain had probably brought the witches a damn gift of his damn chocolates. Which she had probably eaten. Putain de bordel de merde.

He tried to make out what was on the roll of paper over which they had all been bent. Drawings. Something fantastical. He recognized the slashing, flamboyant lines of Sylvain’s sketching, as he had worked on special projects with the chocolatier before. The two other styles were a whimsical curving line, almost like a fairytale laced with a cartoon, and an angular, cryptic hand that spoke of another generation. That last must be Geneviève. Meaning that whimsy twined with laughter was Magalie’s?

He leaned one elbow back on their display case, as purchase against the longing that swelled through him and tried to take him over. He was never going to come near her without something tempting in hand again. Something tormentingly, excruciatingly tempting.

All three women fixed his elbow on their display case with a cold look.

He kept it there, though. The cold, flat hardness of the glass was good grounding.

He searched his mind for a solid, practical reason to have barged in. He needed to stop coming here just because he couldn’t keep away. It made him look pathetic. “I happened to spot Sylvain and wanted to catch him. To get your opinion on one of the pièces for your wedding,” he added to Sylvain.

All three women looked at him with, if possible, increased disfavor. He wondered what they had wanted his motivation for coming down here to be. To beg their forgiveness for his existence, maybe?

Well, at least he had slipped in the fact that Sylvain was about to get married. In case Sylvain hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it to Magalie himself.

Sylvain, the black-haired bastard, looked at him with a slight, perplexed flex of supple eyebrows. “You want me to give an opinion on your work?” he clarified neutrally.

“It’s for your wedding,” Philippe said, goaded. Surely that made it seem plausible?

“Well.” Sylvain grinned a little. His gaze flicked lightning fast between Philippe and Magalie. “I’m always happy to give you any advice I can.”

Le salaud. “Why don’t we talk about this outside?”

Where Sylvain’s forearm, lying across the drawing, wasn’t almost brushing Magalie’s, each of them clutching a pencil in happy harmony.

“I just got here,” Sylvain said, looking so amused Philippe might have to hurt him. “But I’ll stop by when I leave.”

Philippe tried again to make out the drawing without seeming to. Sylvain lifted his forearm so that the paper curled back over itself and over Magalie’s arm in the process, hiding the sketch completely.

Philippe dug his elbow hard against the glass behind him and curled that hand into a fist. “This is my street, Sylvain,” he said, goaded beyond caution.

All three women stared at him, and then he could actually feel the flame hit the gunpowder, the tension in the room flash a white heat. Geneviève rose and went to the door. “I’m sorry, but we don’t open for another hour. And then not to you.”

His face flamed with frustrated fury at this palpable lie. He was never going to get anywhere with them. Magalie had come out hating him; every step he took was wrong. And all he wanted to do was grab her and drag her out with him so he could have this fight in private where it belonged.

He held her eyes for one long moment. And then, putain de merde, gave a sixty-year-old woman the respect of letting her throw him out of her own place and walked back out the door. With Sylvain grinning like life was just one delicious spectacle.





“Your street?” Sylvain checked dryly an hour later. The kitchen was closed for the day, but Philippe had stayed.

Philippe plunged his whisk into egg whites and whipped them hard, by hand. He had excellent equipment for whisking egg whites, but sometimes whipping them by hand relieved a great deal of frustration. “It is mine. I’ve claimed it.”

Sylvain opened his mouth again, thought better of it, and closed it. After another moment, watching the egg whites mount under the speed of Philippe’s whisking, he said, as if he already knew the answer, “I don’t suppose you could try the humble approach?”

Philippe dusted superfine sugar in and whisked still harder. “No.”

Sylvain shook his head, started to speak again, and again changed his mind. As the egg whites stiffened to peaks, he finally said, “You know why I asked you to do my wedding, don’t you, Philippe?”

Philippe looked up at him, surprised. “Because I’m the best.”

“Exactly.” Sylvain didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the statement. Sometimes it was nice to talk to a man who knew the difference between arrogance and accurate self-assessment. “Enfin, with the sugar and egg whites and all that.” Sylvain made a wave of his hand, clearly excluding all Philippe’s chocolate from claims to superiority. “So you don’t need my input on the pièces montées.”

“Of course, I don’t,” Philippe said, annoyed. Trust Sylvain to be obnoxious enough to make him admit the ruse. He drew the whisk out, the egg whites light as air, clinging to it nicely. “Have you drunk her chocolate?” he asked, despite himself.

“Yes.” Sylvain gave him a small, malicious smile.

Philippe wished he had more to whisk, but any more and the whites would start breaking down. “And?” he asked the man considered to make the best chocolate in the world.

Sylvain’s smile got, if anything, more gloating. “You should try it sometime,” he said.

Philippe slammed the whisk back into the bowl, and fluffy egg white spattered all over him. Sylvain brushed a bit off one of his black eyebrows and raised it diabolically.

“I’m not trying her chocolate until she tries something of mine!” Philippe snarled. “Anything. I don’t care if it’s a grain of sugar off the tip of my finger. Something. Of. Mine.”

Sylvain’s eyebrows shot right up to the top of his head. “She’s never eaten anything you’ve made?”

Putain de merde. How had he managed to let that slip to the man whose fiancée had been willing to face prison just to get more of his chocolates?

“Not ever? Why? Is she diabetic? No, that can’t be right. I’ve seen her eat chocolate.”

While Philippe had never gotten close enough to Magalie to see her eat a damn thing. He snarled again.

Sylvain gazed at him with incredulous pity for a long moment, until Philippe could barely refrain from upending the bowl of egg whites onto the man’s head. “Eh, bien, tu n’es pas dans la merde,” he said at last conversationally.

Since when did Sylvain use tu with him? They both knew that vous was the basic rule of survival for a professional, sometimes-cooperative rivalry such as theirs.Was it impossible to maintain vous with someone currently as pathetic as Philippe was? “I realize that I am in deep shit, merci, Sylvain.”

Sylvain eased a long step back, probably to be out of reach of an upside-down bowl of egg whites. He slipped his hands into his jacket pockets and stood there easily as Philippe started dusting ground almond over his egg whites, still pretending to himself that these macarons were going to turn out all right.

“Been thinking of that grain of sugar on your fingertip a long time, have you?” Sylvain smirked.

“Get the f*ck out of here, Marquis.”