The Chocolate Kiss

CHAPTER 22



Philippe Lyonnais aime . . . Christophe’s blog post read for February 14, a takeoff of the petits plaisirs of Amélie Poulain. Under it was a picture of Magalie’s chocolate, her own hand curved around the handle of the pot the way it should be curved around him, the liquid streaming thick and dark into a cup. Even with the Web’s theft of some of its rich color, the photo was enough to make anyone starve.

He hadn’t ever even drunk the damned stuff yet, Philippe thought in acute agony. Half of Paris was going to be flocking to La Maison des Sorcières, imagining themselves savoring what delighted him, and he would still not know what it tasted like. Or what it would do to him. What she wanted to do to him.

Putain de bordel de merde. What was she doing to Christophe right now? That man could wheedle himself into all kinds of territory where he didn’t belong.

“On this Saint-Valentin, what does le prince de pâtisserie love? He loves rich, thick chocolate stirred by a sorcière.”

Another photo, this time a close-up of the tea shop’s window display and the dark-chocolate witch with her little basket. One could just catch a glimpse, but probably not recognize, the tiny sliver of the rose-petal heart peeking out of the basket.

“He loves the magic brewed in this shop, La Maison des Sorcières.”

An excellent photo of spilled crystallized violets made Philippe wonder suddenly if Aja would be willing to supply him some for a violet and chocolate macaron.

“Does he even love a witch?”

Philippe stood staring at the last photo. His own expression in it didn’t surprise him in the least; he had known that about himself for some time. But Magalie . . .





“Philippe Lyonnais!” Christophe exclaimed happily. “You’re the person who enchanted Philippe Lyonnais!”

Magalie stirred uneasily in his kitchen in the Ninth Arrondissement, a very nice kitchen, quite spacious for Paris, with a little island, even; but she really liked being in her own. The whole chocolate-making felt wrong here. Whom was she supposed to be luring?

Christophe was entirely likeable, attractive in a fun way with his curly hair and his enthusiasm, but she kept seeing Philippe’s face every time she glanced down at the chocolate, and the thought of luring Christophe instead made her physically ill.

Christophe didn’t seem to care so much about being lured, though. He seemed to be triumphing over the fact that he had lured her. But her worth to him seemed to come from Philippe, as if the world’s best pâtissier had cast value on her just by looking at her. An idea that drove her insane.

“Do you know he was apprenticed part-time when he was fourteen? When he was nineteen, he took charge of the new Saint-Germain shop, and within the year he had a dessert featured in Le Monde? At nineteen! And he loves you! I haven’t had this much fun since the Chocolate Thief story. Thank you for coming.”

“I don’t—I never said—Philippe Lyonnais—l-l-loved me.” Just trying to get the words out made her hyperventilate. Philippe Lyonnais, love me? Love me?

“I saw him myself. And I talked to his staff.” Christophe made a kindly, dismissive gesture at her modesty. “Everyone knows he’s obsessed. And they can’t get enough of your hot chocolate. It’s a beautiful story. And I get to be the first to tell it! Did you see my blog post for today?”

“No-o.” Magalie’s whole reason for working with Christophe had been to get a blog post from Paris’s most famous food blogger about La Maison des Sorcières. She should have been delighted to learn he had already started writing about her. But given all this talk of Philippe’s obsession with her, she was a little hesitant to see what he had actually posted.

“Look!” Christophe said enthusiastically, whipping out his laptop. “Don’t you love this photo?”

Magalie looked at the title. Philippe Lyonnais loves. She blinked, feeling dizzy enough that her own pot of chocolate in the photo started to look like an abyss she could fall into.

He scrolled down.

And her body folded a little over the screen as if it had just reached out and punched her.

There was Philippe, leaning into her, the crescent moon over their heads, a bare inch between their lips. The hunger in their faces was so . . . naked. She looked as if she would die for him. Die to have him close that last inch of space and kiss her.

“I’ve already had 150 comments!” Christophe said gleefully. “There’s another one right now: Damn it, I hate her! I wish I could enchant him. Don’t take the hating thing seriously—you have to have a thick skin when you blog. And there have been thousands of hits. You’ll have lines out the door tomorrow.”

Yes, but at what price? She didn’t want the whole world to see her naked. Good Lord, Philippe might be looking at that photo right now.





Magalie wanted a mask to wear on her way home. She told herself that, given the two million people who lived in Paris and the eleven million within its greater perimeter, thousands of hits on Christophe’s blog did not make her notorious, but she felt overexposed. She wanted to put that deadbolt on her door that Philippe had talked about.

What had she been doing, trying to beat the lines at Lyonnais? She didn’t want lines. She wanted to be private and secret and recognized only by those who sought out something rare.

She was glad to be back on her island, welcomed by its seventeenth-century calm. But when Thierry waved at her and asked if she had liked her roses, she blushed, her heart beating like some strange muscle that didn’t know how to work anymore. Had Philippe sent her flowers?

She snuck glances at Philippe’s windows as she walked past but could barely see them through the lines of men waiting to buy the perfect Valentine’s gift. He was probably too busy even to gloat over the fact that he had such long lines and La Maison des Sorcières had none.

She touched a finger to her bare collarbone. She hadn’t put on the necklace Philippe had given her. But she wished now that it lay there, in secret under her sweater, filigree chain and moon warmed by her skin.

There were no lines at all before La Maison des Sorcières, despite the blog post, and she felt exhausted. Maybe part of her didn’t want to deal with Philippe-style lines down the block, but it hurt her that, even stripped naked for the world to see on a blog, she kept failing at the attempt to matter more than he did to people.

She discovered that the door to the shop was locked, and she focused on the sign written in Geneviève’s cryptic, slanting script. Morally opposed to Valentine’s Day. Closed in protest.

She sighed and let herself in, leaving the door unlocked and taking down the sign. It considerably complicated her efforts to generate more business that her aunts continually sabotaged the attempts.

She showed Aja the sign in the kitchen, with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, Gen just needed some space,” Aja said easily. “I’m sure you can take it down now, if people have gone away.”

Magalie sighed and threw it into the trash.

“So how did it go?” Aunt Aja asked. Dressed today in a warm brown kameez and salwar pants embroidered with golden yellow, she was humming while she boiled grapefruit peel three times. Three times, she said, was the key to clean all the bitterness out before she could turn it into sweet, intense candied fruit. “Tu l’as aimé?”

Did you like it? Magalie heard. She started to flush. “We didn’t get that far,” she muttered in embarrassment. Seriously, sometimes Geneviève seemed to have worn off too much on Aja, with the indiscreet questions.

Aja’s mouth might have twitched. She poked at her grapefruit peel with a wooden spoon, watching the beads of air form under the surface but not quite rise to the boil. “After two hours in his kitchen, you don’t know if you liked it or not?”

“It’s not Philippe’s kitchen. He can try to dominate it all he wants, but this kitchen stays mine. Ours, I mean.”

Aja tucked her lips in, her eyes dancing. Bubbles began to rise to the surface of the grapefruit water.

“And it was hardly two hours,” Magalie muttered. More was the pity. In two hours, they could have . . .

“I meant this afternoon,” Aja said, with such excessive gentleness, it was clear she was trying not to laugh her head off. “Did you like Christophe? Really, Magalie. I am always a little curious about these male-female things, but I hope you don’t think I would ask my own niece to describe her sex life to me.”

Magalie choked. Damn French pronouns. They could be a little more precise. Tu l’as aimé? Anyone who was completely obsessed with an abortive sexual encounter could have made the same mistake.

“Unless there was some sex life with Christophe, too?” Aja suggested.

“No! Tata!”

Aja shrugged. “Well, that’s what you choose when you keep your barriers up. Either you can have no one, or you can have lots of superficial someones. If you want to have something more than that, you have to make room for the person. And trust that person to make room for you.”

Magalie hunched her shoulders, feeling sullen. Only Aja and Geneviève could make her hunch her shoulders. “It’s not so easy. We’re like ganache; when you make room in yourself, and then the other person is gone, your shape is all—funny.” Her hands worked the air uneasily as she remembered the many times she’d ended up with that funny, unbalanced shape. Trying to get her chocolate ganache of a soul, long since cooled and hardened into what she had thought was its right shape, to lose the imprint of those missing others and return to a nice, smooth whole. Unfortunately, her soul seemed to be really lousy at melting again and stayed misshapen for a pathetically long time.

“Haven’t we made room for you?” Aunt Aja said gently. “The way Geneviève and I make room for each other?”

“Of course you have!” Magalie said on a rush of love she didn’t even know how to express, except by always being there, being the heir and apprentice they so wanted. Their needs and hers suited each other perfectly. If only she could keep this place safe.

“But it’s true the spot could close, I guess, if any of us chose,” Aja said wisely.“If you love someone, you have to make room for that person every single day.”

Magalie shook her head involuntarily. She had often thought that Aja and Geneviève’s relationship was like a fairytale, out of this world, those nearly forty years of constant, supportive life together. Aja’s experience of couplehood didn’t match what Magalie had seen of it elsewhere at all.

“Don’t you think you are worth room in others’ lives?” Aja went on.

“Of course!” Magalie’s jaw went out stubbornly. For some reason, her own affirmation made her eyes prickle. She had been making room for herself, over and over, for so long, only to lose it again, it was like a bruise on her heart.

She couldn’t stand prickling eyes.

“You’re our heir, Magalie. In our wills, this shop and this building go to you. Didn’t you know that?”

She had known it. And long been grateful for it. Her aunts had given her a permanent home. A place in the heart of Paris that would always be hers, if she didn’t lose it. There were so many ways she could lose it, though. For instance, a small witches’ shop could lose its economic viability.

“Do you think if you left, that room we’ve made in our lives for you would be gone?”

Well, of course. That was human nature. Magalie set her jaw, not willing to insult her aunt with the truth. Besides, she wasn’t going to let the space for her here close over, because she was never going to leave it.

Aja studied her for a moment and sighed. “It’s true that if friends can never count on you being there the next time they need you, the place they leave for you might be very small. That’s self-defense. If you abandon people—even if it’s not your fault—they will eventually get over you and find someone else. Good for them. But you’re an adult now, and you can build things as deep and as long-lasting as you want to. I wish you wouldn’t underestimate your ability to make people love you.”

If her pride hadn’t prevented her, Magalie would have wrapped her arms around herself protectively. “I think I’d almost rather talk about my sex life.”

“Really, Magalie. I wouldn’t want to invade your privacy.” Aja dumped the water off the grapefruit peel, taking a layer of bitterness away, and half filled the pan again with cold water, still more bitterness to go. “Philippe left something for you, by the way.”

She moved, and only then did Magalie see the pink box Aja had been blocking from view while she said what she needed to say.

Magalie’s whole body kicked into overdrive, longing sweeping her. And fear. What would it be this time? What would she have to resist?

She took the box out into the little table in the entrance area and sat down to make sure she was stable. And very slowly opened it.

Oh, Magalie thought, as if she had been hit in the stomach. Oh, oh, oh. It was his most beautiful one yet. Exquisite shells of pale pink closed around some secret heart of ganache or buttercream, she couldn’t tell. Couldn’t tell because raspberries, pure deep red, circled whatever secret was inside, hiding it from view. One raspberry crowned it, beside one exquisite rose petal, beaded with a tiny drop that suggested dew but had to be glucose syrup. It was February, after all. The dark, perfect reds of the fruit and petal rested against paler pink, the surface of the macaron so glossy and smooth, not a grain of sugar left visible in the meringue that had made it.

Just for a moment, it was as if someone had brought an exquisite rose in the heart of winter into her dark, warm cave. She was having trouble breathing. It looked so utterly beautiful. She wanted so badly to sink her teeth into it. Slowly, carefully, with all due respect, letting her mouth linger over every instant of the pleasure: the delicate bite of the macaron shells between her teeth, the tart-sweet juice of the raspberries spilling out, the unctuous cream inside . . .

It was a rose. It was a heart. It was a princess’s crown, studded with red jewels. It was the treasure box that the third son brought back from his quest to win the fair lady’s heart.

It was a trap.

If she ate it, she might never be herself again.

And being herself was all she had.

If she ate it, he would win. He would know he had won.

He was flaunting his skill. He was gloating over her as he so easily dismissed her chocolat chaud.

It looked so beautiful.

Maybe she could let him win.

Maybe she could let him make her into something else.

Was it really more important to her to stay Magalie than to eat a bite of this?

She sat staring at it.

The silver doorbell chimed, and her head jerked up, but it was only Madame Fernand, exquisitely dressed in clothes that had gotten too big for her thinning body, with her bouncy poodle pulling at the leash. Magalie ducked behind the counter and bent down to pull out the package of tea Aja had made for her.

It took her only a second to find it, but while she was down there, she heard Madame Fernand make a soft exclamation.

She lunged up, hitting her head on the counter. Madame Fernand was fighting with her poodle, its paws up on the table. Magalie dove for the box, her body brushing past the dog’s as she caught it. She tripped over the chair legs, tangled with the dog, and fell sideways, catching the rose-heart just short of the floor. The raspberry fell off and rolled across the wood.

The poodle scarfed it up and tried to snatch the pink macaron from Magalie’s hands.

Magalie growled.

The poodle faltered.

“I’m so sorry!” Madame Fernand tugged ineffectually at the leash. “She was at it before I could stop her. I’m so sorry, ma petite. Was it from that young Lyonnais? He does make beautiful things, doesn’t he?”

Magalie came to her feet, shaking. She couldn’t believe the stupid poodle had eaten that raspberry. Her raspberry.

You’ve already touched it. Eat it now before something else gets it. Can we please just find out what it tastes like?

In private. She did not dare taste this gift in public view. She recovered the box and closed the macaron creation very carefully inside it, then set it on the top of the display case, out of reach of poodles. Madame Fernand kept excusing herself in her high, failing voice, as Magalie held the door open for her.

All at once, the dog jerked, sending the old woman careening. Magalie caught Madame Fernand as the dog yanked its leash free and darted down the street.

“Oh, dear!” Madame Fernand exclaimed. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”

Magalie righted the woman, making sure she was steady on her feet.

“Sissi!” Madame Fernand cried, in vain. Down at the end of the island, the poodle trotted across the street into the park.

“I’ll get her,” Magalie said.

Her boots weren’t the best for running, but she found the dog at the tip of the island, down on the lower quay.

She stood still at the sight, her face flaming in outrage and humiliation. For the poodle had apparently run with a purpose. Gérard’s rangy German shepherd was humping her enthusiastically, the poodle standing still for it, panting happily.

And all that from one raspberry.