Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(22)

“I think Chase was thinking more along the lines of Harry Potter.”

Lina laughed involuntarily. That did sound like a book Chase was capable of arguing for, all right.

Jake smiled that secret smile of his at her laugh and focused on his book.

A sense of peace and security brushed over her, like a silk scarf, and she concentrated on her work again, her clutch on that work feeling less desperate somehow. More like her.

His presence pulled on her even as she worked. Strong. Hot. Damn, there was something sexy about a man of action relaxed and focused on a book.

Although, Camus, merde. How relaxing did that get?

She came up to him, his presence drawing her so strongly that it felt not so much as if she chose to approach him but as if he lassoed her with that silk scarf and pulled her to him.

He paused in his book and looked up at her. All she could read in his expression was polite attention.

“Would you like a taste?” She offered him a small spoon of the crèmeux chocolat noir.

“Yes,” Jake said simply and tilted his head back a little. He didn’t reach for the spoon.

Lina slipped it into his mouth, a touch of heat running through her body. His eyes stayed on her face as he sucked the chocolate cream off the spoon she drew slowly from his mouth. The heat in her grew.

“Mmm.” Now that sounded sincere. Deep, as if that spoon had been a kiss and he wanted to keep kissing. The heat flared more insistently in her breasts. Her toes curled against the warmth.

“If you want funny French writers, we should go to the theater,” she said. “A Feydeau production, maybe. Or—well, it’s not literature, but there are some great stand-up comics.”

His expression grew, if possible, even more unreadable. “You want to go to the theater?”

Lina had been the focus of the attack on Au-dessus. Abed had chosen her restaurant because he hated her and Vi.

And what if she was a focus again, in a crowded theater, in…

“No.” She turned away.

She didn’t want to go anywhere there were people, really. She missed her colleagues intensely. But she wanted to be all by herself, where she was the only person who could get hurt. And yet she was utterly grateful to Jake and the police officers that she didn’t have to be alone all by herself and unprotected.

Yeah, she was messed up. But nobody had to know that, right? “It’s August,” she threw over her shoulder briskly. “Theater’s dead right now.”

She didn’t turn around to see if Jake nodded at that or just watched her. Instead she focused on her desserts. Setting the chocolate cream aside to chill. Pistachios and sugar in a pan, stirring them with a wooden spoon until the sugar caramelized, spreading those out to set. Melting chocolate and mixing it with crumbled shortbread and pistachios for the croustillant, packing this into the bottom of six centimeter rings to make the individual desserts.

Next a crème chantilly pistache, cream, mascarpone, pistachio paste, fleur de sel. Jake, his body calm and easy as if he could sit there with his legs stretched out forever, kept reading. He didn’t sink into the book the way she would have, though. His eyes lifted regularly, assessing her and everything around him in one quick flick before he looked back at the text.

Without doing more than turning a page, Jake pulled her back over to him again, this time with a bowl of pistachio whipped cream in her hand. A longing to just curl up in his lap rose in her. He could keep reading if he wanted. She just wanted to be somewhere warm and strong.

Get a grip, Lina. You are strong. You fought them, didn’t you?

Despite her and Vi and the kitchen team’s best efforts, though, she was pretty sure they would all have died if Abed’s gun hadn’t jammed and Chase hadn’t been there with a gun of his own. What could have happened didn’t happen. You all fought it and stopped it. Now stop imagining it. Imagine freckles on a penis instead. At least a penis is productive.

She bit the inside of her lip to stop a smirk. Inherently so.

Jake looked up and raised an eyebrow at her expression.

“Good book?” she asked hurriedly.

That little quirk of a smile. Her fingers itched to press those little creases in his cheeks. What would his freckles feel like? She wouldn’t be able to feel them, would she? They would just be smooth skin, all visual but no sensation. Elusive to the touch. “I’m tempted to skip to the end,” Jake said.

“The end’s the best part. That’s where he talks about the actual myth in the title.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I had to study it in collège when I was thirteen.”

“So I can skip reading it and get you to explain it to me?”

“It’s about the absurd. You know—you keep pushing that rock up the hill, even though you know it’s going to roll right back down again. You keep doing it, and it doesn’t make you trapped in endless torture. It makes you lucid and courageous, knowing your battle is unending but fighting it anyway, happy.”

Like fighting against evil whatever way you knew how. Maybe by going out and hunting terrorists night after night. Maybe by making fragile desserts as if that fragility was in itself what was so beautiful.

Jake looked up at her a long moment. “Mark picked a really good text for us, didn’t he?”

She nodded and held up a spoon of chantilly.