Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(20)

He said nothing. When she glanced up, he was studying her as if she’d said something meaningful.

“What?” She puffed at the curl to get it out of her eye.

“Patience.” He reached out and tucked the curl back into her ponytail, the calluses at the tips of his fingers brushing her skin. “One of my skills.”

It was one of her skills, too. It took an incredible amount of patience to make thousands of some impossible dessert turn out exactly right—and to make sure everyone, from a new intern to her temperamental but excellent sous-chef, was as patient and persistent and perfectionist as she wanted them to be. And to be honest it took a great deal of patience to deal with Vi and not kill her. Also a steel will like a quality chef’s blade—you wanted a little bend, but had to hold firm when it counted.

“Be interesting to see if it’s a skill that has a civilian application,” Jake said. He pressed a finger into a chocolate shaving on the counter and sucked it off the tip.

She sat very hard on the lid of that behave yourself box.

“So.” A level gaze. “I hear you like shy, geeky guys.”

“Chase cannot keep his mouth shut for a second, can he?” she said, aggravated.

“Depends on the subject.”

Yeah. He’d been freaking close-mouthed about her terrorist cousin, for example, and if he’d warned her, maybe she could have confronted Abed one last time and somehow changed events. It made her want to hit Chase every time she thought of him laughing in Vi’s apartment even as he pursued a threat of terrorism they knew nothing about and which put their lives on the line.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t hit him, because he was lying in a hospital bed, like Vi, having helped save their lives. Lina had helped save their lives, too, but she hadn’t gotten hurt, and given that the assailant was her cousin, the fact that her friend had paid the price instead of her…yeah.

It cramped in her stomach all night, every night, twisting her and turning her, not letting her sleep.

“So why shy geeks, do you think?” Jake said. “Easier to control?”

“They don’t try to control me.” Or lie about things that were vital to her life and choices, like Chase had done with Vi. At least, the shy geek in her imagination didn’t. She hadn’t actually found the one she wanted in real life.

“Why does that matter? You don’t know how to fight for your own space? Stand up for yourself when someone tries to take you over?”

Okay, you know what…? She put her hands on her hips. “Do you have any idea what it takes to make it to executive pastry chef in a two Michelin star establishment by the age of twenty-six?”

He shook his head. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“I can fight for my own space just fine, thank you.”

“Then that shy, geeky thing is just a vague preference. Not like a hard rule.”

“Célie and Vi and I do have one hard rule. It’s a good one: Just because a woman can handle bullshit doesn’t mean she should.”

Jake looked bemused. “Hell, and Vi still ended up with Chase? So what you’re saying is that your rules are really more like cat posters. Cute quotes, but not anything you actually live by.”

“You can’t blame me for the fact that Vi is an idiot.” It was a tribute to their friendship that Lina felt comfortable saying that even while Vi was in a hospital bed.

“No, I’m pretty sure I can blame Chase for that one,” Jake allowed. “He probably broke her brain.”

That did seem to be what had happened to Vi. Lina thumped her rolling pin against almonds in lieu of her best friend’s head. Which needed some sense knocked into it, where a certain man was concerned.

“Persistent guy, Chase,” Jake said in Vi’s defense, amused.

Yeah, persistent was one word for it. “Not like you,” she said, watching him.

Jake’s expression could best be described as complexly unreadable.

Right.

She’d been reading about U.S. special ops, because a little knowledge might come in handy given that she had drawn U.S. special ops’ attention. She might not really understand in her bones and flesh the kind of things he persisted through, but she’d read some descriptions.

“Or you,” he said.

She scrunched her eyebrows at him.

He gestured. “Twenty-six. Top pastry chef. Back in here only a few days after surviving a major attack. And half a dozen of those sugar shells you were working with yesterday broke while I was watching you and you never even thought about stopping, just made more as if it was automatic. Seems as if there might be a few mild signs of persistence there.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” she said blankly. “Quit?”

His smile warmed his whole face. Warmed his eyes, the hazel more golden. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t so much the quitting itself that was hard to imagine. It was what you did after. How you let go of the need to somehow make it right. How did you teach yourself to just sit on the couch watching television instead of trying?

Watching her expression, Jake’s warmed more and more. Letting her in. “Your brain just clogged, didn’t it? Trying to imagine quitting?”

She gave herself a shake. “Trust me. By midnight, I’m usually dreaming of quitting.” And she loved her television by that hour, too.