Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(9)
On Vi’s desk, she had piled today’s tribute left at the restaurant door—more stuffed animals and drawings, including one where the kitchen staff was lined up like superheroes for a movie ad, with her and Vi leading the charge, holding hands, one blonde stick figure and one black-haired. I wish I could be brave like you, said the drawing.
And Lina didn’t dare admit that she didn’t feel brave anymore. That it was all an act, around a hollow center, and that center felt as if it would always be hollow, always be echoing inside her performance of strength. But she couldn’t tell people that. She couldn’t tell herself that. It was exactly like when she’d first stepped in an all-male, high-powered kitchen at fifteen and nearly been overwhelmed and driven out. Just fake it. Fake confidence and competence and courage until it becomes true.
So she focused on the second sugar globe. She had been experimenting with this idea the day terrorists changed her life as she knew it. If she could get these crème br?lée sugar globes right, well, then…well, that would be something, damn it.
First, and most difficult, fill the delicate blown sugar shell with the custard cream without breaking it. Pose that on the narrow column of very dry lemon-laced biscuit or cookie that formed the base. Then a quick brush of the torch.
Better, no? She considered it a moment. Despite how tricky it was to actually make it, it still didn’t look as special and fancy as it needed to, in order for the dinner guests to understand how precious it was. She wanted them to take a minute, before they plunged their spoons in and destroyed it. Wanted them to think first about how valuable and fragile and beautiful it was. Don’t just wantonly ruin it.
Maybe she needed to scatter a few tiny flecks of gold over the sugar before she took the torch to it. Give it something that added texture, like kisses from the sun.
“Now I can?” the hungry mountain lion asked meekly, that sun-loved hand easing toward the edge of the plate. His skin had a visual texture to it that fascinated her. All those burnt-sugar shadings of freckles and tan. It made all other skin tones look boring. Uniform. No wonder the sun liked to kiss him.
She was going to need to put some stronger locks on that behave yourself box. Those I’d rather be a nympho on top of my bed than hide scared under it ideas kept escaping back out. Hell, she’d nearly invited him to stay last night. Sex with a sexy stranger had sounded so much better than trying to sleep alone.
She held up a hand to make him wait. In a matter of seconds, working as fast as she would when all their tables were ordering desserts at the same time, she added a burst of beautiful golden spun sugar, sprinkled that with a grating of lime peel so that just a hint of green was caught in it, slid it across to him and turned it precisely as it came to a stop, so that he was facing the dessert exactly as he should. Presented.
Beautiful. Because…it was kind of beautiful, wasn’t it? One of the scariest things since the attack was that she seemed to see even her own desserts through gray-tinted glass, so that she could no longer tell.
Jake gazed down at the dessert a long moment, his face tightening. Okay, why? He did the same thing when she brought special treats to Chase and all the guys who liked to fill Chase’s hospital room, and it pissed her off every time. He was supposed to just relax into raptures.
If her desserts really were still worthy of wonder. Had she lost her touch? Or was it something else? He spent most of his life surrounded by violence. Did he have a gray wall, too?
He cleared his throat. “That’s…ah…beautiful,” he said awkwardly. Like someone politely trying to pretend he loved the ugly sweater his nine-year-old niece had knitted him for Christmas. He snuck a sideways glance at the burned, ruined version, as if he would rather have been eating that.
“Oh, just sit down already.” She caught a stool and swung it to him.
He’d damn well better not eat one of her desserts standing at the counter like they did in movies in his heathen country. Energy pricked her at the thought, little golden sparks of annoyance that helped make tiny holes in that foggy gray wall between who she was now and who she had been.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly, that faint curl back to his lips, and sat down.
But as he gazed at the floating crème br?lée, his face tightened again, and he slid a sideways glance at the ruined one as if asking it to rescue him.
Lina reached out and dumped the ruined one in the trash.
“Hey!” He stretched to save it, too late, and frowned at her. “That was wasteful.”
“This one,” she nudged the good plate, “is for you.”
He took a deep breath. Lifted his spoon. Hesitated.
“I’d do it for you, but you seem like a big strong man, and the biggest delight of a crème br?lée is breaking through the sugar for the first time,” Lina said.
A little kick at one corner of his lips, and he glanced at her.
“Go ahead.” God knew, maybe a man who spent half his life eating military rations was afraid of real food. “Be brave.”
He tapped the spoon against the globe.
Hey, it worked. The cream spilled out just as she had meant it to, the sugar cracking in pieces, the cream a warm subtle pale gold, a visual explosion of flavor just before the taste hit his mouth.
And his smile for the first time opened up as if he’d forgotten to keep it a secret. He slipped a spoonful into his mouth.