B00CACT6TM EBOK (7 page)

Damn it.
She took a hard step back and ran into the jasmine-cushioned wall, the vines grabbing at her hair.

He opened his eyes. And stared at her pressed back among the dark green vines and stars of white. She felt—caught. Held still for him by vines of jasmine. If he cornered her against that wall and kissed her, she would not manage one word to fight him off.

“Good
God
.” He sprang to his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets and striding away to the edge of the curving walls.

The light slowly grew in the
place
, and a door opened from an old building with sea-blue shutters, a bent woman with white hair coming out with a little dog. Gabriel took another hard breath, focusing on the old woman like a lifeline.

“
Bonjour, Gabriel
.” Her eyes flicked with bright curiosity over Jolie.

He dipped his head. “
Bonjour, madame.
”

The old woman kept walking, slow and careful but leaving them to their peace. Some of the tension eased out of his body.

“I’ve got another idea. About how you can make up for stealing my Rose,” he said over his shoulder, without turning to look at her. “But maybe we should talk about it later. This afternoon? What are you doing for lunch?”

She rubbed her arms, knowing she should move out from the shelter of the jasmine. But it smelled so good around her, and the effect on him was so enticing. She kept imagining him turning, prowling back toward her, sinking his hands through the vines on either side of her head, lowering his mouth . . . maybe she could slip her hands into the vines, hold herself prisoner to him. . . . “I thought you never took anyone out to lunch or dinner,” she said with as much stiffness as she could manage.

“Oh, I wasn’t asking you to lunch.”

Her mouth set. She straightened out of the jasmine.

“I’m
working
,” he growled defensively. “You of all people should know what a three-star restaurant takes.”

Yes, she remembered her father’s hours. Before he lost that third star, without Gabriel there to keep it for him, sank into a depression, and quit, which was at least better than literally falling on his big butcher’s knife, as some chefs did.

“But what are you going to eat?” Gabriel asked.

A vague wave of her hands. “I don’t know. There must be some good restaurant around here.”

He turned back enough to give her an incredulous look.

“Where I don’t need reservations six months in advance and an inexhaustible fortune.” Jolie rolled her eyes. Didn’t he know she would be lapping up everything that fertile brain and those supple hands could produce, if she could?

Straight, strong eyebrows drew together. “You’re not paying in my restaurant. I may not be able to take you out, but,
putain
,” his eyes glowed with a strange, vicarious hunger, “I can
feed
you.”

Gabriel Delange. Feeding her.

If she threw herself across that little fountain and kissed him, would she be sending mixed signals?

Or sending consistent signals for the first time?

“I don’t want you to turn away someone who has a reservation,” she said reluctantly.

His expression changed. “You mean you want to sit at a table?” Was that
wistfulness
that crossed that strong, dangerous face?

“Where were you thinking I would sit?” she asked, confused. “Is there a bar or something?”

“I was thinking you could come into the kitchens.” He hesitated. “It wouldn’t be very comfortable, though,” he admitted. “And you would have to eat standing up.” That buoyant, animal energy faded. His hands flexed in his jeans pockets. He looked increasingly glum, resigned.

“In
your kitchens
?” Jolie lit like the morning sun, slipping over the centuries-old buildings at last to shine straight into their little alcove.

Gabriel’s gaze caught on her face.

“Can I take notes? And pictures? Can I
write about it
?” Plunged into the heart of how he worked, of what he made. And not peeling grapefruit until her fingers screamed, but able to watch.

“You can do anything you want,” he said slowly. He wasn’t moving, except for his eyes, tracking over and over her face. “I told you. Anything at all.”

“So are you enjoying your vacation?” her father asked, sullen and slurred, when she called, and Jo stiffened with shock.

“My—”

“Your sisters told me.” His voice dragged painfully.

“But I’m n—” Jo stopped. Of course, what
were
her sisters supposed to tell him about her absence from his side in his moment of need? Her perfectionist, narcissist father, so desperately short of the attention he craved. “It’s for the book, Papa. Publicity.”

“You’ve been doing all the signings without me?” he asked resentfully.

She rubbed between her eyebrows. “No, I—promised to do a little talk on food writing for a writers’ group down here. How to make contact with chefs, how to work with them . . . I couldn’t let the group or the publisher down. I knew Estelle and Fleur were going to be with you.”

“No one complained about not having the real chef there?” he asked roughly.

“Of course they wanted you, Papa.” An easy one. “But this particular talk was focused on the food writing itself, so we managed. I’m rescheduling the demonstrations until you feel up to it.”

“Until I feel—” Her father made a harsh sound, like he used to when some underling’s spot of sauce on a plate was a millimeter off. “I told you I can’t do demonstrations like this!”

But it’s my first cookbook! It’s
our
cookbook. It deserves a launch!
She bit her tongue. She couldn’t stress her father right now. What if it drove him into another stroke? “Don’t worry about it.” She stared out at the white parasols on the upper terrace of the ancient mill.

Great chefs. Fascinating. Extraordinary. Impossible.

Maybe no one rose to greatness of any kind without being a narcissist. And no one rose to become a great chef without knowing how to make other people hungry. For more of them.

“When are you coming back to Paris?” her father asked morosely. “Or are you coming back to Paris? Too busy with the book, I suppose?”

“Papa!” His narcissistic life had peaked once. And then he had lost his wife and daughters, to a trans-Atlantic divorce. Then one of his stars. And two months ago, he had lost his skill, with the stroke. Her heart tore at her, at the utter devastation of his faith in himself, that arrogance he needed most of all. “Of course I’m coming back to Paris! I’m only here a couple more days.”

She hoped she could talk Gabriel out of a lawsuit in two more days. Maybe instead he could take his vengeance out on her naked bod—she smacked herself on the forehead. Hard.

“I hate being so far away from you, Papa,” she told him and hated herself for the fact that it was only partly true. She had spent most of her life far away from him. He had never been there for her. But that had been her mother’s choice, of course, to move back to the States after the divorce. Her father’s famous three-star restaurant in Paris was hardly transportable in pursuit, especially since her mother, with full guardianship, could have waited until he started up a successful restaurant in New York and then moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, if she wanted. Jo didn’t think her mother would have done that; Brenda Manon had moved herself and her daughters back home to the U.S. because that was where her support network was, and her home country, rather than in an effort to get them as far away from her husband as possible. But then, Jolie’s parents had probably sheltered their daughters from their most acrimonious battles, so maybe her father couldn’t be so sure.

For Jo to choose to live her own life to her own benefit right now, when her father, who had never had any of them, so desperately needed her, would have been horrible.

“I love you, Papa,” she said firmly, and he gave a little sigh of relief. He needed people to love him so much.

“Thank you,
pucette
,” he said roughly. “You’ve always stood by me.”

It was two when Jolie stepped into the alley. A matte-skinned, burly dark-haired man stepped back to let her pass before him, and she hesitated because he was the one carrying a big case of bottles and thus from her point of view should have right of way. And also, no woman really liked having a stranger his size behind her in an alley, even if the broad daylight and the proximity of so many helpful people with knife skills made that a little ridiculous. But he just raised his eyebrows and waited politely, in that very French way that conveyed he was physically incapable of pushing in front of her to go first, no matter what kind of load he was carrying, so she went on. The scent of roses wafted over her as she went past him, and she glanced around, trying and failing to find some sign of a climbing rose.

The first person she saw when she peeked through the kitchen door was Gabriel. Dipping his finger into some orange powder, he bent over a plate until he almost touched it and blew carefully, so that that the powder fell over the spiral of chocolate on the plate in a scattering of flame, and her body clenched. All around him, his team worked like speed demons—sous-chefs flying to finish plates,
petits commis
and interns prepping the components, all engaged in making the lunch menu’s dozen desserts, requested via slips of paper waving from the metal shelf beyond him.

He slid the dessert down the counter to the pass, his lips relaxing from the pursed shape to reveal a grim cast to his face. Then he looked up suddenly and met her eyes.

He grinned, all the grim lines relaxing away. “You’re late. Don’t tell me you had car trouble again.”

“I thought things would be slowing down a little bit if I waited until now. I don’t want to be in the way.”

His eyebrows flexed together. “You’re not in the way. If I say you can be here, you can be here. You must be hungry.” A stern look. “You haven’t been snacking, have you?”

“No.” She hadn’t even eaten breakfast, in anticipation. “I’m starving.”

His face suffused with so much delight that her mouth dropped open and she stood stunned. Why, he wasn’t just dramatic, difficult, and compelling. He was
beautiful.
“Perfect.” He grabbed her by both arms and pulled her inside. His eyes flickered to her mouth when the move brought her body so close to his. She took a breath.

But he dropped her arms and reached out to take the case of bottles from the man behind her, whom she had entirely forgotten. “Matt,
bonjour
.” He shook the other man’s hand, once freed. “My cousin, Matthieu Rosier,” he told Jolie, with absent politeness. “Matt, Jolie Manon.”

“Manon,” Matt mused, his brown eyes squinting curiously. “Didn’t we burn someone named Manon in effigy once?”

“All my copies of his menus,” Gabriel corrected, slanting a quick glance at Jo. “Not an actual straw figure. Drinking with my cousins has a very bad effect on my maturity level.
It was ten years ago, Matt, merde.
”

“
Pardon
,” Matt said with complete lack of sincere apology, grinning as he bent down and kissed Jo’s cheeks. The scent of roses wafted around her more strongly, coming from his skin or clothes, and the gesture itself startled her; he must think she and Gabriel were personal, not professional acquaintances.

How right was he?

“Thanks for these.” Gabriel touched the dark blue glass bottles Matt had been carrying, and Jolie saw that they were labeled
eau de rose
, stamped with a dramatic R inside a flowering rose and the words Rosier SA. “The rose harvest is all in, then?”

“We picked the last of them three days ago. Finally. We had such a damn cold winter, it made everything late.” A kind of grumpy patience to Matt’s voice, as if he was someone who really liked forcing everything into the shape he wanted it, and yet, as a man who dealt with nature, knew he had one opponent he just could not control.

“I wish I could have gotten out more than once to help pick,” Gabriel said. “We all had to work in the rose and jasmine harvests when we were kids,” he explained to Jolie. “These days, they have big crews come in, but I guess most of us still like to pitch in a little bit, on a Saturday morning or in my case a Monday one. There’s something about spending a morning picking roses and ending up covered in the oils. The day after Matt’s birthday, I think the whole damn clan is out there, hangovers and all. It’s turned into a tradition.”

“Speaking of which, if you hit on a new good wine nobody has discovered yet, pick me up twenty cases or so. No man’s cellar should look as bare as mine does this week.”

“Sure. In fact, why don’t you go talk with Raphaël about it? He usually deals with the local wine-makers,” Gabriel said, with perfect friendliness, but his cousin flicked a glance down at Jolie and laughed suddenly, for no reason.

“Raphaël. In the other part of the kitchens. Right.” Matt mouthed something at Gabriel that looked suspiciously like
Bonne chance
, Good luck, as he headed off toward Raphaël’s side of things.

Gabriel opened one of the bottles of rosewater and breathed in the scent of it, then profferred it to Jolie so she could do the same. As the scent of roses filled her again, she thought about the way he took pleasure in every scent and texture that entered his world and, at least as important, how his first instinct was to share that pleasure with her. He disappeared again for a second and came back with a white chef’s jacket. “Here. You had better wear this again.”

He slipped her arms in it for her, and little tremors spread through her body from where his hands touched. His movements so quick he could have had a woman’s clothes off in the time it took her to take one heady gasp of his scent—would she
quit
coming up with these ideas?—he buttoned the jacket and tied her apron, tucking the apron strings under the roll he had made at the top of it, in the style every chef wore everywhere. His fingers brushed against her pelvis when he did so, through the thick layers of apron and capri pants.

“I must look like a big marshmallow in this outfit,” she said ruefully, fighting the desire for more of those fingers.