“See?” Célie flung out her hands in self-justification and accidentally spattered chocolate off her spoon across the stove. She cursed and wiped it up. “Anybody could be driven to it, in these circumstances!”
“
I
could knock some sense into him,” Dom said hopefully.
Jaime put her hands on her hips and frowned at him.
“Except that I believe in a nonviolent approach to life,” Dom corrected hastily. “Definitely. I definitely believe in that.”
Célie banged pans in lieu of people’s heads.
***
Joss pulled out his little metal box of chocolates and studied the last one. Perfect and sweet and tucked up into the corner, just waiting for him.
Kind of the way he thought
Célie
would be, but okay. He should have known better than to underestimate her that way. Good for her.
It made him smile, to think of how happy she must be making these chocolates, and he resigned himself to it: Tahiti was out. Who ever heard of making top chocolates in the tropics? He’d have to get an apartment in Paris.
But just for a moment, before he got to work on the hunt, he stretched his arms out along the back of the bench, fascinated by this wide-openness of his body, this stretch of it that seemed to say to any possible sniper,
Here, let me just paint a target on my chest to go with it.
And yet there
were
no snipers. He could just lounge here, watching the passersby.
Time to start looking for work, too. It felt weird to have nothing to do today, no end to his leave in sight. The last time he’d been unemployed, he’d ended up joining the Legion.
Seemed like a better thing to do than turn into a loser.
But employment wasn’t
urgent
. He did have most of his salary for the past five years saved up. He’d always sought out the opportunities for greater certifications and advancement, done the corporal training and the sergeant’s training, so his base salary had increased commensurately, and he’d earned two and a half times that base whenever he was deployed. Which had been a lot. The Legion had a lot of hot spots to jump into, these days.
The Legion had covered lodging, uniform, and food, and didn’t allow recruits cars or even phones for that first contract. So there wasn’t a lot to spend money on. He’d never really seen the point of gambling it or drinking it all away.
He didn’t want to waste it now, after five years of economizing toward his and Célie’s future, but a day off wouldn’t
kill
him. Interestingly, he was pretty sure that nothing in this city could really kill him. Or, better yet, would even try. Oddly relaxing, that.
And he was almost giddily tempted by the idea of taking a day off. Of just wandering around this city, with no orders as to how he should spend his time, no constraints, no hostiles. It was
Paris
. It was incredible to be sitting on this green bench, watching the people pass, and not thinking bitter thoughts about Parisian wealth and privilege and the contrast with the
banlieue
but to be thinking,
Hell, this is as much my city as anyone else’s. If Célie could make it hers, I can make it mine, too.
Paris. Right there, like his own personal world in an oyster.
He might not wander along the Seine in his explorations, though, because walking along that lovely and romantic stretch of the city might actually hurt in weird parts of his body, like the hand Célie wouldn’t be holding, and the heart she wouldn’t be eagerly welcoming, and his butt where her hand wouldn’t be slipping possessively into the back pocket of his jeans, like girlfriends
did
. There was a woman doing it in a couple walking past right now.
Célie would be possessive, if she decided to possess him. She’d do it in a funny way, mostly, teasingly minatory if he happened to glance at a nice ass passing by, but she’d very definitely make sure everyone, including him, knew he was hers.
The fantasy of it returned so easily, and he grimaced wistfully, rubbing the bench.
“Hello,” a female voice said, and he looked around in surprise.
A woman with reddish hair stood a couple of meters away from him, kind of a big distance for a greeting, but maybe he looked dangerous.
Which he was, but not to women or children. Not even to men unless they were dangerous to him.
Except possibly that damn boss of Célie’s.
“Hi,” he said briefly so as not to encourage her, sitting up straight and dropping his arms from the back of the bench. It was true what he’d quite stupidly told Célie before, that he’d never had much trouble attracting women, but after five years in a rough, wild world of men, he’d lost even the most basic skills and now felt awkward about how to politely show a strange woman that he was unavailable.
“I’m Jaime Corey.” She held out her hand, coming toward him, kind of in an odd way, as if she knew that some men were best not approached suddenly and needed to see you weren’t carrying any weapons. “A friend of Célie’s.”
Oh. Joss shook her hand, intrigued now. Wow, she looked
really
different from the friends Célie had had before. More—together. Nice clothes but casual, not skintight, and her nails weren’t even polished, let alone two centimeters long and covered with patterns. It reminded him that the last time he’d really known Célie, all her friends had been teenagers whose main hope for the future had been catching some
banlieue
version of Prince Charming.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “Did I see you yesterday?”
He’d been focused on that black-haired boss of Célie’s, as the person he might have to fight, and on Célie herself, but there might have been hair that color in his peripheral vision.
“In passing. I believe you were choosing not to fight my fiancé at the time.”
Her fiancé?
“Dominique Richard. You know, black hair? Scowling? Big?” She did a thing with her arms that was apparently supposed to indicate bulky muscles and was kind of cute on such a slim form. Joss found himself starting to smile, despite the man they were currently talking about.
“The two of you are engaged?” That completely changed Joss’s perception of the man’s relationship with Célie. He immediately wanted to ask if the man had ever cheated on Jaime with his employee, or maybe had a thing with that employee before he ended up with Jaime, but had the sense to bite both those questions back.
Jaime nodded. “Good choice, by the way. The choice not to fight.”
Self-control was an absolute necessity for any man in the Legion. Men of action, yes—men who could control that action. Always. In every situation. “I didn’t come here to ruin her life. She’s made a good one for herself.”
A smile broke out on Jaime’s face as if he’d said something she deeply approved of. “Tell me a little bit more about being in the Foreign Legion.” She actually sat down on the bench beside him.
Joss rubbed his thumb over his jeans, schooling himself not to let his eyebrows raise. “That fiancé of yours going to come out here looking for a fight if I do?”
Because
that
would be okay, right? If the man came looking for it out here, outside Célie’s place of work? Or could Richard still conceivably take it out on Célie if Joss broke his nose?
Also, would the two of them even be able to fight and it stop with nothing more than a broken nose? The man looked kind of hardwired to keep fighting even if he was at the bottom of a heap of enemies, and Joss was kind of hardwired that way, too.
“I’ll talk to him if he does,” Jaime said, shrugging.
Yeah, right. That was going to work, all right. Maybe she could try throwing her slim body between two freight trains next, as an encore. And Célie would be super pissed.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll stand,” Joss said, and did so, leaving her the bench.
Jaime smiled. “Why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee?” She waved a hand to indicate the multiple terraces with café tables within sight of the great
place
.
Joss’s eyebrows drew slightly together. He searched her face. “You’re a friend of Célie’s,” he repeated. “And you’re engaged.”
Jaime’s blue eyes widened a fraction, and then she smiled and shook her head, standing. “I’m not hitting on you. I’m being nosy. And I, ah, work with a company with a very high interest in effectively managing security issues in countries in upheaval. It sounds as if you might have some experience with that.” She gestured with her head toward the nearest café. “So come on. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I like him,” Jaime said that afternoon around four thirty, having come back by the shop after her afternoon of meetings with undoubtedly more of the one percent of the world.
Dom, who’d only just gotten a chance to return to work on his sculpture for a bit, stared at his fiancée from his bent position over the lioness’s claws. “How do you know that?”
“I had coffee with him this morning.” Jaime shrugged.
Dom straightened slowly, his brow lowering. “You did … what?” His voice went deep into a growl.
“I wanted to get to know him better.”
“You had coffee with a dangerous stranger who’s acting like a damn stalker?” Dom’s growl vibrated so down deep and low that the hairs on Célie’s nape stood on end.
“He’s just very intently goal-focused and used to having to pursue those goals through an incredible number of obstacles. I think I might try to hire him to consult with us on security issues.”
Dom’s lips pressed together in visible anger. He started to speak, stopped himself with an effort, and abruptly reached for the buttons on his chef’s jacket. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Jaime’s eyebrows went up a little as she took in his expression, but she went with him without question, not forcing any imminent issue in front of his employees.
“Although I do sympathize,” she added on her way out to Célie, who was still standing stock-still, trying to figure out what she thought about Jaime inviting Joss for coffee. “I mean, I like your Joss, but I’d be pissed at him in your shoes, too.”
Célie hurried to the casement window, watching, her stomach knotting anxiously. The last thing she wanted was for the world’s mushiest couple to get in a fight over her—her—her—
Not
boyfriend.
Not
friend.
Her … Joss.
On the street below, when the couple came into her range of vision, Dom had his hands shoved in his pockets, every line of his body hard. She could tell that the two of them were arguing as they walked, that Dom was seriously pissed off and Jaime was standing her ground, fighting back, her gestures growing increasingly exasperated. Célie’s gut knotted. They were, like, the magic couple. They made her believe happy endings were possible. She didn’t want her problems to hurt the magic couple.
Dom’s steps slowed as they reached the end of the block. He turned toward Jaime. Jaime lifted her hand to cup his cheek.
Dom’s eyes closed a moment, and he angled his head to kiss Jaime’s wrist.
Oh, for God’s sake.
Célie grabbed some more chocolate to break up, brooding over how easy those two found it to make up when her own anger and betrayal and pain lodged deep in her where she couldn’t let it go.
***
“This one’s a really dark chocolate,” Célie said. “Bitter.”
In Joss’s big hands, that bitterness looked fragile and insignificant, all too ready to melt at his heat. He treated it with respect, though, studying the nine chocolates in their little metal box, the adamant rippling pattern stamped on their surfaces instead of any color or stylized motif. “Can I eat them? Or am I supposed to take my time, let them last?”
He hadn’t come inside the shop that day, nor spent his day waiting for her outside it, but when she left it, he was leaning against a nearby wall. Shades of when she was eighteen, when he often showed up a few minutes before she got off and waited for her. His shoulders were straighter now, almost no ability to slouch in his stance, his face sterner even in repose. But he still picked the same position—not directly across from the door but a little up the street to the right, where her gaze went to him automatically. He still straightened immediately, exactly as he once had, and came toward her without any pretense that he had been there for any reason other than her.
They stood now in the Parc de Belleville, Célie’s favorite park in Paris. Close to her little apartment, it was built on a hill in the old immigrants’ quarter of Paris where a little patch of a vineyard could still be found and children played in waterfalls built into the slope, and a view of Paris spread out below it, as if the city belonged to her. It was rare for tourists to find their way to it. No, this park was for Parisians, a spatial feast for children and parents and all the people from the quarter who sought this park for the same reasons she did. Peace. Play. Dreaming.
Trees lined the gravel path. A woman sat on a bench some way up it, reading. Shadows and sunlight dappled them.
“I don’t know,” Célie said uneasily, her gaze going from those dark chocolates in his callused palm up the muscled arm to the mouth that would close around them, in which they would melt. At twenty-six, he had lines already at the corners of his eyes from squinting into the sun and sand, and his lips had a firmness to them from being so long pressed into a stern line. Her lips and her eyes didn’t have any of that. Full, wide lips, generally laughing eyes. Even despite the pain he’d left in her middle when he left her.
He’d counted on her resilience. And, well … she’d had resilience. She had, in fact, bounced up, blossomed without him, lived a life she still wanted to hug to her for how vivid and delicious it was.
“I can try one now?” Joss eased it out of the box with a blunt-tipped finger.
“That’s … that’s kind of the point,” Célie said. To let him eat that bitter darkness up.
Was
that, in fact, her point?
She stared at his fingers bringing her helpless chocolate to his lips. Stern lips that softened for it, eyes that brightened at the rush of flavor in his mouth, the subtle shifting of his facial muscles that indicated how he savored it. Heat climbed up her back, making everything in its path shiver.