“I’ll do anything physical you want with you now.” He rolled them over, bracing himself above her on the bed.
Such a glorious body to have braced above hers. But that wasn’t what hit her the most. It was this purity in his eyes, this truth and fidelity through everything he had been and seen. “I love you,” she whispered suddenly. “Not … not like a brother.”
He drew a sharp breath. In the slanting late light through her windows, his eyes were gorgeous.
“You’re amazing. And”—her voice dropped very soft, and shy—“you’re my hero.”
That brilliance in his eyes, as if she’d crowned him king after an impossible quest.
“You always have been. And you still are. Even more.” Her hands ran over his arms. “If you asked me to,
I
would wait more than five years for you. I would be
proud
to.”
“Célie,” he breathed, luminous in that light that turned all his hard, sun-darkened body to gold.
“But don’t leave me again.” She wrapped her arms around him abruptly. “Don’t take me up on that. Promise not to.”
“I won’t leave you,” he said, low and final.
The promise vibrated through her, as if a seal had been stamped down on her, of ownership, of home.
“Célie,” he said suddenly, combing his fingers through the tufts of her hair. “You know I love you, don’t you? You figured that out?”
“I—I—” It was too beautiful to believe or even think about straight on, and she almost couldn’t say it. “You seem to.”
“I
seem
to.” He shook his head. “You’re a hard woman to convince.”
Stay with me. Include me. That convinces me.
But she had to take what he offered. She ran her hand over the muscles of his arms, one manifestation of all his efforts.
“Célie. I think you’re my heroine.”
It sounded beautiful, at first, and yet she hesitated. “Like … the heroine tied to the train tracks? Who needs saving? The princess in a tower?”
He ran his thumb over her cheekbone in a delicate stroke of callus. “Like Wonder Woman. The woman I look up to. The woman I think is amazing. I can be what’s-his-name, the Air Force pilot.”
Her nose crinkled against the sting in it. “Really?”
He
looked up to
her
?
“All that life and courage in you, Célie. That way you stick your chin up and challenge the world and tease it. The way you … sparkle. You’re like the Eiffel Tower. You don’t even
notice
all the rain and the cold and the gray skies, you just sparkle away and refuse to let them put you out.”
Her fingers stroked their way to his shoulder, kneading it like a cat might a very hard pillow. “You know, when it’s cold and rainy in Paris,” she murmured, feeling silly and shy again, “it’s just exactly perfect weather for curling up with someone. And, and … maybe making him hot chocolate.”
His face broke into the most brilliant grin. “
God
,
I love you.” He rolled them over so that she was on top of him. “Hell, you make me actually wish it was winter.” He ran his hands up her arms. “Maybe with a fireplace.” A little gleam in his eyes that she couldn’t interpret. “I bet you’d like that.”
Hard to find an apartment with a fireplace these days. She shrugged funnily. “S … summer’s nice, too. You can go skating along the Seine. Stay out late. Maybe … maybe go somewhere on vacation in August and explore a whole new world together.”
“I bet the whole year is nice,” he said softly. “I bet every day of the year, with you in it, would be beautiful.”
Oh.
She wanted to hug herself, to hug the words to her, but their bodies were so close she could only hug him.
He stroked her hair. “Célie. I don’t ‘seem
to’ love you. I really do. I would do anything for you.”
As long as that “anything” demanded he grow bigger, meet hard challenges, and didn’t demand he shrink, she thought, with sudden insight. He had a compulsive need to be better, never lesser.
But that was okay. As long as he included her, as long as he trusted her, she could be that person, who had a big enough heart to let him grow as big as he needed and still fit in it.
“I would, too.” She pushed herself up to hold his eyes. “Do anything for you. Except ask you to be less than you are.”
His face broke into that rare, brilliant smile. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”
“Only one?” She tried to put her chin up. But sometimes she wondered how there could even be that many. She was so quick-tempered, and she flew off the handle. She knew he was amazing, but somehow she beat her head against him anyway, wishing he would be a little less amazing in exchange for letting her in.
His face softened, his eyes so true. “Célie. There are so many reasons I love you. As many sparkles as there are on that Eiffel Tower. But that one, that you won’t ask me to be less for you … that one’s like the whole iron frame that holds those sparkling lights up.”
Yeah. It did kind of feel as if she was trying to grow as strong as the iron of the Eiffel Tower, in order to be strong enough to honor the best that he could be. She took a deep breath, stretching herself, trying to get her heart used to being that big and strong.
It felt kind of … natural, actually. As if that was what her heart had always wanted to be.
“You’re sure it’s not just sex starvation?” She tried to make her voice sound teasing, but a part of her still worried about that.
He grinned, his eyes lighting. “I don’t know.” He checked her clock. “We’d better test it. Let’s see if I still love you in … oh, about an hour.”
Célie was so happy she couldn’t get over it. She felt like walking around with her arms wrapped around her own body in a hug instead of working. Whenever she tried to concentrate on her chocolate, she ended up rocking on her toes, dreamy, and would blink awake at some teasing comment from the rest of the team to discover she’d been drawing hearts in chocolate again.
Then she would try to get back to work and instead find herself rising on tiptoe to see if she could spot Joss in the street below.
Dom sighed. “I suppose this will wear off and you’ll turn back into a halfway decent chocolatier one day.”
He should talk. He
still
mooned over Jaime. Célie stuck her tongue out at him. And then the full impact of his statement hit her. “A—
halfway decent
? Did you just say—” She started for him as Dom grinned and ducked into his office.
Just then, Jaime ran up the stairs and pushed the glass doors of the
laboratoire
open, and Dom reappeared immediately.
Those two were so mushy. Célie smiled a little as she turned away from their kiss to peek out the window again.
Hey! There he was. Coming down the street. Happiness lilted through her, this crazy chirp of it that was like being caught in a hiccup of joy. It was almost too much. It shook her too hard.
And yet she loved it. She hugged herself, watching that long, strong, steady walk. Joss really wasn’t in the least pushy with all that power, politely shifting to one side well before he reached someone coming the other way on the sidewalk, and yet she could see the normally assertive Parisian pedestrians part and flow around him like boats giving a very wide berth to an iceberg.
Jaime leaned in the open window beside her, smiling. “How’s it going?”
Célie shrugged happily and hugged herself.
“You guys are so cute,” Jaime said.
“Hey, we’re not as mushy as you and Dom.”
Over setting some trays of fresh-made chocolates on the wire racks, Zoe made a choked sound of amusement.
“What?” Célie asked indignantly. “Nobody’s as mushy as these two!”
Zoe smothered a grin and turned away.
Hmm. Célie glanced sideways at Jaime, who seemed to be smothering amusement, too. Heat touched her cheeks, but she hugged herself anyway. It was kind of … nice to be mushy.
“Try not to draw hearts and Js over
every
surface while I’m gone,” Dom drawled. “I’m a little worried about you leaving you running the show.”
Célie stuck her tongue out at him, too happy to let him get much of a rise out of her. As
if
she couldn’t run this show. Ha! The only problem was that she was jealous.
She
wanted to go see the cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire with him and Jaime, too. She’d been curious about visiting an actual cocoa farm for ages. But the thought of not having to leave Joss for a week right at that moment made it easier to be left behind this time. Maybe next time she could come.
“You don’t mind me stealing Joss?” Jaime asked.
Hunh?
“I feel bad to do it so soon, but we need him to get started. I could
really
use his insight in West Africa.”
Célie turned her head and stared at Jaime. Her diaphragm hurt suddenly, as if one of those hiccups of joy had frozen right in the middle and wouldn’t release her.
Below, Joss lifted a hand to her, smiling, and glanced up and down all the buildings around him with that quick Legionnaire glance before he started to cross the street.
“What are you talking about?” Célie’s lips felt funny around the words, bee-stung.
Jaime blinked. And straightened from the window, her expression going wary. She glanced toward Dom, who was dipping a finger in the ganache to taste what Célie had come up with, and Dom lifted his eyebrows at the glance and shifted toward them.
“You don’t … know anything about it?” Jaime said. “Didn’t you guys spend the weekend together?” The Sunday–Monday weekend of those in the restaurant business.
Yeah. They’d gone out to Rambouillet on the new bike—Joss driving them out of Paris, just like some teenage fantasy of wrapping her arms around him on a motorcycle while he broke them free of their childhood—and picnicked in the woods and then Joss had rolled her under him on that picnic blanket and…
“Tell me what you’re talking about,” Célie said between her teeth.
“Just the … trip down to Côte d’Ivoire with us tomorrow.”
Célie’s brain buzzed. Joss reached the sidewalk below them and stood with his head tilted back, waiting for her to look at him. “What are you
talking about
?”
“The, the …” Jaime looked from Dom to Joss below. “Did nobody mention to you that I’d
hired
him? That he’s going to be advising Corey on security issues? That he’s going down to Côte d’Ivoire with me tomorrow?”
Breath hissed between Célie’s teeth. She felt as if she’d just been hit in the stomach. Almost as hard a punch as that morning when she’d learned that Joss had gone off without a word to join the Foreign Legion. “No. Nobody mentioned that.”
“Oh.” Jaime put a hand to her lips, glancing worriedly at Dom. “Uh-oh.”
Below, Joss lifted an inquiring palm, asking maybe,
Will you be long?
Or,
Why aren’t you smiling at me?
Célie stared down at him. Her brain hurt, swelling against her skull as if it was trying to get out. That damn clutch in her diaphragm still hadn’t released, the pressure of that interrupted hiccup of joy growing unbearable.
Joss raised his eyebrows at her in smiling inquiry, no clue in his head what might be wrong. Because, yeah, it would never even occur to him to have told her any of this himself.
And all of a sudden, all that pressure burst. “Joss Castel!”
His smile faded at her tone. He searched her eyes from the distance of a floor below.
“You—you—you—” On a surge of pure rage, Célie grabbed up the bowl of ganache Dom had just tasted and dumped its entire contents out the window, down onto his head below.
That would teach him to try to treat her like a princess in a tower who had nothing whatsoever to do but be his object. She knew how to defend her ramparts, if that was the way he wanted to be.
The ganache splattered all over his hair and face in this giant slosh of chocolate. Several customers leaving the shop stopped dead. Then they pulled out their cameras.
Jaime clapped both hands to her mouth, twilight blue eyes enormous.
“Nice shot.” Dom leaned in the window beside her. “That one’s going to be all over the blogs. Good job on the publicity, Célie.” He held up a hand to give her a high five. Célie ignored him, glaring at Joss below.
Joss shook himself, scraping chocolate off his face until he could open his eyes again. “Okay, what the hell?”
“You—
aargh
!” Célie grabbed up the nearest ammunition she could find—chocolates—and threw whole handfuls that bounced off his shoulders and head.
“Hell, Célie.” Dom grabbed her wrists. “Now you’re getting expensive.”
“You go to hell, Joss Castel!” Célie yelled through the window. “I—you—” She pulled her wrists free and grabbed her hair, yanking it as she strangled her scream. One of these days, she was going to take a rowboat out into the middle of the ocean for the pure purpose of being able to scream as loud as she possibly could over Joss Castel.
“Célie,” Joss said, in that firm, warning note that always ran a little jolt of eroticism through her.
You are over the line
, that note said.
And her body responded:
Oh, yeah? What you gonna do about it?
“I—I—” Célie grabbed another chocolate and threw it at him.
“Damn it, Célie!” Dom grabbed for her wrist again.
Joss caught the chocolate and looked at it a second, his eyes narrowing. Then he looked up at her.
A frisson of expectation ran through her body. It was the Legionnaire look. And it was turned on her. Very deliberately, holding her eyes, he ate the chocolate.
She licked her lips.
He launched himself straight toward her—one powerful lunge of his body upward, a catch of some point in the wall she hadn’t even known existed as a possible hold. Involuntarily, she stretched through the window to try to follow what he was doing—and his body surged into her vision, both hands gripping the edge of the window as he pulled himself into it.
Chocolate coated most of his face and shoulders, except for the smeared somewhat-clear spot where he’d wiped it off his eyes and nose. His eyes locked with hers.
She took two steps back before she caught herself and braced her feet, putting her hands on her hips.
“Can I just
push
him?” Dom asked Jaime. “This is
my territory
, damn it.”