The Chocolate Kiss

CHAPTER 17



When Philippe finally finished with Christophe, without strangling him even once, and got back to La Maison des Sorcières, Magalie had fled.

At least, he liked to think of it in terms of terrified flight, and that she had worried he was going to catch her tail every step of the way. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so confrontational earlier, but she drove him insane, the way she’d put that armor straight back up, blades all out, after this morning on the quay. Just when he thought she was finally yielding.

Whatever it was she was doing, she wasn’t there. Only Aja, who let him in with a benign look and offered him a cup of tea.

Oh, God. These women just would not give up on trying to turn him into a toad. He toyed with the cup and went to the kitchen door, to make sure Magalie wasn’t hiding behind the coats. She was small enough. No. It was empty. But he slipped into the blue room to discreetly empty his tea into the sink and spotted . . .

Under those coats—how interesting. A little door, almost entirely hidden.

Philippe glanced back at Aja, but she was following the previous customer to the sidewalk, her back to the room, the two women speaking softly.

He pushed the door open, squeezing the coats against the wall. Outside, the cold air hit him with force, as if laughing at him for not taking one of those coats with him. But there was no wind. He stood in a small, cobblestoned courtyard. Ivy climbed up one wall, but otherwise the space was winter-bare. A lion face gazed at him from the opposite wall of the courtyard, the basin under it clogged with dirt and some brown dead plant.

He looked around but saw only one other door, in the wall to the right.

It opened into a stairway. Narrow and steep, its walls were plain white, giving no hint of what he might find up there.

He set his foot on the bottom stair, half-expecting Aja to come calling after him or Geneviève to come barreling down at him. Or Magalie. His body tightened with hunger. Magalie to confront him. Yes.

But there was no sound, except his own foot hitting the next step, and then the next. He picked up speed, mounting now quickly.

By the time he reached the seventh floor, his heart was pounding hard, and he didn’t think he could blame the stairs. He took a long breath, staring at the door, his body tight all over. There was no peephole. She wouldn’t know it was him.

How could she have no peephole in her door? That was crazy. This was Paris.

And the door hadn’t even been pulled closed properly. He looked down at the knob, the latch not caught, ready to swing open at the first rap of his fist.

He knocked gently. The door nudged a little open, and he caught the knob to keep from barging in. No answer. “Magalie?”

Still no answer.

If she was taking a shower with her door unlocked and half-open, he was going to kill her. “Magalie?” he called, a little more loudly.

Silence. Maybe something was wrong. Had she tripped or hit her head as she came into the apartment? Had someone broken in—was that why the door was open?

He shoved it wide. “Magalie?”

No body on the floor. No signs of anyone, and the place was too small for her to be hiding. So she was all right. She just wasn’t there.

Relieved of his fear, he could focus on the room, and the white on white hit him like a fairytale. Arousal ran through him like electricity. He had stepped into the sacrosanct heart of her.

White gauzy drapes streamed over the windows. White walls, not a glaring white but with some tint in it secretly to soften it; his sister would know—blue, maybe. On the wall, a splash of purple—lavender, he realized. A painting of a field of lavender. So that was Provence he had heard bouncing around in her accent, suppressed. There was something else, too, though. A tiny hint of the way Cade Corey talked, except so much more subtle that Magalie couldn’t possibly be American. What was her story? Why did he still know almost nothing about her?

A white downy comforter covered the narrow bed, pulled over it a little carelessly. The bed was empty. A wry smile kicked his mouth at the thought of what Magalie would have done if she had been in it and woken to find him kneeling beside her, his kiss tingling on her lips. Waking the sleeping beauty in her tower.

She would love to see him on his knees, he had no doubt. But as for him seeing her vulnerable and kissing her while she was so—judging by that morning and her reaction to it, she would probably hit him.

For himself, he didn’t fantasize about having her on her knees. But stripped of all her armor, defenseless in his hands . . . yes.

He crossed to the window, knowing quite well he should go. But he had to see if she could make out his name on his shop from her windows. He pulled aside the filmy drapes. It was like being at the top of the world here. He could see the Seine, over to the left, past the tip of the island. And the towers of Notre-Dame to the right. And far away, a sliver view of the Tour Eiffel. His heart squeezed oddly at the thought of her standing there at night, watching it sparkle.

And there, yes, not as close or as dominating of her view as he would like, but she could see it: Lyonnais. If she liked, she could stand up here and watch for his arrival every day and cast hexes on him. Maybe that was why his shoulders always prickled when he walked into his shop.

He turned away and spotted telltale signs on a sheet pan soaking in her sink. She was trying to get off cooked-on egg white.

Macarons. His lips drew back in fierce delight. Had she been trying to challenge him at his own game? And if so, where were the results?

He glanced around for her trash. Now he was getting truly down and dirty, and after this he would have to leave before he started going through her underwear drawer.

Although . . . he had been wanting to know forever what her underwear looked like. Would she by any chance favor black lace, as some of her outfits suggested? Or would it be something airy and white like this room?

He glanced toward the drawers fitted under her bed. Just check the trash, Philippe. That’s bad enough. He pulled open the door under her kitchen sink. The trash can slid right out, pulled by a chain on the door, and he smiled in feral victory.

There they were. Flat, dry, grainy, pitiful attempts to imitate him. Clearly not enough to satisfy her craving. Heat licked through him at the thought of her frustrated face as she scraped them off the sheet pan and dumped them into the trash. Had she been wearing her boots while she did it, or did she pad around her apartment barefoot? Did she paint her toes with that same perfect armor she wore on her fingernails, or did they get to be bare, here where no one could see? Had she gone to her window to glare down the street at the word Lyonnais? Had she imagined strangling him? And had she craved him, longing to sink her teeth into what he made? Or just skip to the source and sink her teeth straight into him?

He heard those heels of hers on the stairs before she got to the door, and he closed the trash away again. That could be his secret weapon, that he knew she was so hungry for him, she was trying to make her own feeble imitation.

As her footsteps got closer, he leaned casually in the window, for all the world as if he owned the place. He would be damned if he would be caught out like a furtive underwear-sniffer, and, anyway, the stance of ownership would drive her crazy.

She stopped abruptly in the doorway, staring at him in a first instant of—what was that? Stunned, hungry confusion? Or was he guilty of projection? And then, of course, outrage.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She carried a couple of elegant bags from a Marais boutique in one hand. He imagined suddenly a scene in which she wasn’t glaring at him for being there, a scene in which she modeled what she had bought and asked his opinion. He didn’t even care if she was modeling a damn tennis shoe. It was the thought of her being happy and relaxed and eager to share. What a hopelessly arousing fantasy. Hopeless because it was as far away as the moon.

“Invading,” he said.

The way she looked at him drove him insane. Her chin up, her throat exposed, until it was all he could do not to accept the challenge and lay his teeth against her skin. Feel the thrill of fear and delight run through her body just before she found out exactly what those teeth were going to do. She liked to look at him as if she despised him, but her eyes kept running up and down his body in a way that left him maddened with arousal. He doubted she even realized she was doing it, most of the time. Sometimes he saw her catch herself and try to stop it: the quick, involuntary flick of her gaze down his body and back up, the lashes that so briefly hid her eyes before the brown was forced back to battle his gaze. Or sometimes on the way back up, her gaze would get caught on his mouth and linger there, or run over his shoulders, or rest on his hand. It drove him mad.

She had control of that gaze right now. She was glaring at him.

Yes. Look at me. I’m very clearly not what you wanted. You didn’t invite me. But I can make you notice me.

“The door was unlocked,” he said. “And not even properly closed. You leave it that way a lot in the middle of the city?”

“It’s our building,” Magalie said impatiently. “Aunt Geneviève’s. Who would come in?”

He raised his eyebrows and opened one hand, flicking his fingers just enough to make sure she looked up and down the body of one person who had gotten in. God, he loved it when she looked him up and down.

Rather than admit she was in the wrong, she just angled that chin at him more. “If it had been locked, I’m sure you would have just kicked down the door.”

“Don’t you have a deadbolt?” he asked incredulously. He glanced past her. Bon sang, she didn’t. “Magalie. Are you crazy?”

“Aunt Geneviève owns the building.”

He knew that. He had looked up the ownership of all the buildings on the island before he bought here. It was, doubtless, one of the things that allowed the women to operate a small shop in an outrageously expensive area. The property was worth multiple millions. The only question was how they managed to pay the property taxes. Not off a salon de thé with five tables, that was for damn sure.

“When the shop is closed, the door to the street is locked; the only people who can get inside are the aunts, me, and the tenants on the other floors.”

Tenants. That explained the property taxes.

“You’ve never given any delivery person the code to get in through the courtyard entrance?” he asked dryly. They were a business. Half of Paris probably had the code to get in and leave shipments.

She frowned. “We know our suppliers very well.”

Bien sûr, and every person who had ever worked as their delivery boy, too.

“Besides, my aunts would notice if anyone came through,” she said with an insane degree of confidence.

He felt like strangling her. “Nobody stopped me.”

She frowned at him as if that was further proof of his infamy.

“Get a damn deadbolt on your door, Magalie. And use it.”

“I can’t believe you!” she suddenly erupted, to his deep satisfaction. “I can’t believe even you would have the nerve to break into my apartment and then stand there lecturing me! Get out!”

He folded his arms, so tempted to say Make me, he had to bite his tongue hard and think that through. He didn’t really want to come across as a man who would muscle his way without permission into a woman’s apartment and refuse to leave. She truly did manage to bring out the beast in him. And she hadn’t even managed to slip him one of her potions yet.

“I’ve never heard of a prince getting kicked out of a tower this way. Not that I would presume to call myself a prince, but since you insist,” he added in a tone designed to infuriate. “Usually he gets some kind of reward for his invasion.” A kiss, for example. He refused to say the word out loud. Let her blame her own mind for leaping to the idea.

But Magalie gave him a scathing look that made him wonder if she was about to comment on the origins of those tales, when the invading prince was more likely to rape the sleeping princess than kiss her to wake her up. His head almost blew off. True, she called him a beast, and the prince label was an accusation of arrogance, not of gentlemanliness, and true, he had invaded her apartment. But if she even thought—if it even crossed her mind that he might—if even for a second she had the slightest fear that—

“I’m not a princess,” she said dryly, proving her mind was off on a different track altogether.

“Yes, and, speaking of which, if you send another spoiled blonde my way, I’m going to feed her something that makes her fall in love with you, and see how you like it.”

Magalie’s arrogant expression flickered. Abruptly she seemed to notice the winter-evening dimness of the apartment and crossed to turn on the light by her bed. Her heels sounded wrong on the apartment floor, too aggressive for this space. He wondered if she usually took them off by the door. Had his presence required her to keep on her armor?

“I don’t feed them anything to make them fall in love with you.” She frowned deeply, seeming unsure where to put herself. Maybe usually she sat on the edge of her bed now, kicking off her shoes, curling up to examine her purchases . . . His blood surged long and slow and hot through his body at the image. “A poor, innocent princess? Why would I do something like that to her?”

“They don’t look that innocent to me, but thank you for reminding me of moral considerations,” he said politely. Really? She hadn’t been sending those would-be seductresses his way? Something bitter was released in him, dissipating so fast, he had to struggle to keep his fighting form. “It’s true, it would be quite reprehensible to make anyone fall in love with you.”

Her eyes flashed. He almost laughed. This was fun. He felt aroused and infuriated and so alive, he held himself still only by his years of self-discipline. He knew how to pay precise, attentive care to the smallest of movements, how to wait as long as it took for something to be perfect.

She dropped her packages onto the bed, started to take off her jacket, and stopped herself. Oh, so she would usually shrug out of her jacket about now. And drop it carelessly across her bed or hang it up? No, hang it up. The room was so peacefully uncluttered. “If I wish anything on anyone, it’s usually strength and courage and clear-seeing, which they never seem to have enough of. I have no idea why that would lead them to you.” She looked as if she had bitten into something rotten in polite company and didn’t know where to spit it out.

Strength and courage and clear-seeing. He felt himself draw a long, deep breath, like at the gym when he had just finished a punishing set of exercises well. Or at the Meilleur Ouvrier de France trials when the last, extravagant, impossible spin of sugar held. “Thank you,” he said, “for the compliment.” The extraordinary, beautiful compliment.

“It wasn’t intended.” She scowled.

“Yes, I gathered that.” But maybe, when she stirred her chocolate and thought of strength and courage and clear-seeing, maybe some part of her thought of him. He reached out and caught her window frame, to give himself some purchase. His hand curled slowly harder and harder around it.

She had just undone him utterly with a few words and might, or might not, be willing to mold him back together again.

She folded her arms, and her foot made a little aborted gesture, as if she wanted to kick her bed. The lamp gave off a soft, warm light that seemed to embrace her tense body. Normally she would be relaxing in that bed, wouldn’t she, soft and at peace? “How many spoiled blonde princesses are we talking about?”

“Since I’ve opened here?” Overprivileged young women who had walked into his shop and started throwing themselves at him as if he was going to catch them? “A few.” And he hoped she could recall exactly how beautiful the women had been.

Her arms tightened under her breasts. He wondered if she could catch his gaze flickering over her body at movements like that, the same way he sometimes caught hers. Of course she did. And no doubt gloated. “So you’ve been having fun,” she said dryly.

“En fait, Magalie, interestingly enough, I’ve been working nearly nonstop. Things will settle into a good routine eventually, and the new people I’ve brought in will learn their jobs enough for me to leave them to it, but for the moment, that’s how this goes. And on the few occasions when I’ve stopped working, it hasn’t been to provide an overindulged socialite with courage and strength she should be trying to find in herself.”

It was to spend time with his family, because a man had to have priorities. To go to the gym, because it helped him keep his sanity. And . . . well, she was just going to have to figure out the third and dominating focus of his time and attention herself. He wasn’t exactly being subtle.

“I don’t have time to go shopping,” he said, gesturing at her bags from the Marais. He regretted the words immediately. Was he playing for pity? That was not the reaction he wanted.

She gave his body an incredulous look, shoulders to feet and back again. And of course his body hummed deliciously in response. Pretty clearly, he didn’t inspire her pity. So she liked the way he dressed, did she? “The jacket and shoes are from two years ago, Magalie. A fashionista like you can’t tell? Plus, my sister likes to shop. And when it comes to clothes, I make quick decisions. I pass a window that has something I like, I buy it, and I keep going to my next appointment. It takes five minutes.”

For some reason, that last seemed to annoy her. God knew why. Too arrogant? Too princely? Was she thinking he thought she was a sweater?

He sighed.

The silence stretched, and he wondered why she didn’t tell him to get out again. Then a slow smile grew as he realized why. She couldn’t, because if he just shrugged his shoulders in response, she couldn’t take the embarrassment of not being able to enforce her own orders on her own ground. She couldn’t throw him out, and she would probably die before calling the police or in any other way admitting she needed someone to help her against him. Her pride didn’t allow her any way of getting rid of him unless he went of his own accord. She certainly wasn’t going to ask him. And he didn’t feel like volunteering to go. This pale room so high above the world, with the soft, luminous light falling all around her, filled him with a strange mix of peace and rightness and that vivid, hungry aliveness.

His own accord liked it right where he was. He grinned at her. That would teach her not to lock her door.

She tilted her head up at that grin and gave him a long, searching look. Bon sang, but she was going to kill him with that stretch of bare throat here in the vulnerable intimacy of her private tower. He wished . . . he wished she had invited him in.

She put her hands on her hips. “You know, this is exactly like you. To barge in where you aren’t wanted and where you have no right to be, without even the courtesy of asking. Do you want me to show you my underwear drawer, too, or have you got a pair in your pocket already to take home with you?”

He laughed in pure respect for her technique. Drive him into a rage so that he stomped off. Good luck. It was nice up here. “Not yet, but I wouldn’t turn down the offer.”

She snapped her mouth shut, and her eyes fulminated.

He tilted his head. “According to Maman, the first time she read ‘Rapunzel’ to us, I was three, and when she told us about the prince coming back every day with another rag that Rapunzel could stitch together for her eventual escape, I said, ‘Why didn’t he just bring a rope the first trip?’ ”

She looked completely lost at this change of subject. What, was the reference not obvious to her?

“When I was about twelve years older, it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t want to bring a rope. Maybe he was making Rapunzel earn her way to freedom one rag at a time with all kinds of sexual services. That one provided some great fantasies.”

Her eyes widened a tad. He loved the brown of them. It made him want to get very close so he could see if her pupils had dilated. Her winter-pale skin flushed.

“But now I’ve had another idea. Maybe one rag at a time was all he could talk her into. Maybe she didn’t want to escape. Maybe she liked it just fine in that tower with her witch guardian until some prince waltzed in and tried to drag her out of it.”

Her brow knit. She was getting it at last. “I am not,” Magalie said tightly, “a princess in a tower.”

He only smiled a little and shrugged. “And you don’t have to come out of it either, if you don’t want to. I like it up here.”

“Back to the sexual-fantasies theory?” she said sardonically, and then her foot twitched, as if she wanted to kick something else, possibly herself, for having brought the topic back up.

He grinned very slowly. He couldn’t help the thorough look up and down her body as his insanely greedy brain tried to process fifty sexual fantasies at once. “I wouldn’t object.”

“You know what I remember thinking about that story?” Magalie said. The deepening of her flush made his body frantic with heat. “Just another over-entitled man forcing his way in where he wasn’t wanted. And that the princess seemed oddly helpless for someone raised by a witch. I always felt like there must be parts to that story missing.”

“Forcing his way in,” Philippe repeated carefully. He looked once around the soft white of her apartment and down at himself.

“Yes. Someone exactly like you, for example.”

“Over-entitled?” As if someone else had given his success to him? There was a reason he wasn’t just another Lyonnais; he was Philippe Lyonnais. It had all come from his hands, his work, his sense of taste, his inspiration.

“Yes. You know, another selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant bastard.”

His mouth set against the hurt of that. “Such flattery.” Why did she so determinedly think the worst of him? He got on well with his family and showed respect, albeit sometimes mixed with exasperation, for his parents. He looked after his sister and babysat his niece one or two busy Wednesday afternoons a month, both to help Noémie and because he liked to. His circle of friends was small but very strong, and they could count on him when they needed him. He never beat out his rivals with underhanded tricks but with pure, superior quality. He took on interns to help them forge careers. Why did she always think so badly of him? How much damage had he done to her aunts’ business, for God’s sake? His staff was spending half their salary at La Maison des Sorcières.

“Christophe came to blog about us. He probably would have done two or three entries over time. A couple of recipes, a little piece on the shop. The most-read food blogger in Paris. And you couldn’t stand it, could you? You had to figure out a way to lure him off and get even more attention for yourself, even if it meant giving up one of your prized secret recipes to do it.”

He stood very still. He could feel it rise in him slowly, like the tide, the rage, coming in wave after wave—hitting his groin, reaching his heart, now his head. “You think I spent the afternoon showing that damn, encroaching blogger how to make my Désir—my Désir—because I wanted to steal attention from you?”

She folded her arms. It pushed her breasts up, as it always did. It sent him a little mad, as it always did. “Clearly.”

He turned his head sharply, staring out the window, because wrath was beating so hard in his head, he didn’t dare do anything else. Down below, two familiar forms exited the shop, wrapped for once in capes against a night too cold even for them. La Maison des Sorcières was closed for the night. Dark, empty, full of pointed hats and chocolate lures and danger.

“Where are your aunts going this evening?”

“A . . . friend’s poetry reading,” Magalie said jerkily, clearly thrown by the question.

He turned his head back, still sharp. “What recipe were you going to show Christophe? Your chocolat chaud?”

She hesitated, shrugged, and nodded.

“Your tarte aux pistaches et aux abricots? The one you invented because you were dying for my Désir macaron?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I was not dying for it.”

He held out an imperious hand. “Come show me.”

Her jaw set. “Will you stop ordering me around in my own apartment?”

“Magalie, if you will so very kindly come show me . . .” The beast she woke in him uncoiled in starved delight and roared. “. . . I will show you why I kept Christophe out of your kitchen.”