All for You (Paris Nights #1)(17)

“I told you I was a bad bet,” Dom said.

Célie slammed her big metal bowl of ganache against the steel counter. Chocolate fountained out of it, splattering up over her face and black chef’s jacket. “Damn it, Dom. Look what you made me do!”

She swiped a hand across her face. Since her work in chocolate wasn’t “hot” work, involving few things likely to burn her severely, unlike Amand, she was able to wear a short-sleeved chef’s jacket, and a lightweight one at that. But that left her nothing to wipe with. She hunted around for a towel, growling under her breath. “Stupid bad bet thing. Men who ruin women’s lives … because they’re stupid idiots …” She sent Dom a venomous glance as she dragged a white kitchen towel across her face and chocolate-sloshed arms.

He gave her a bemused look back, both eyebrows lifting a little. Jaime nodded at her in firm approval of all that grumbling.

Célie threw her towel down on the counter. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Dom’s eyebrows slashed together. “I don’t think so. If he’s stalking you, I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s Joss, Dom! Don’t be an idiot!” Célie stomped across the laboratoire. “As if he would ever—damn it, I hate you stupid men!”

The glass doors didn’t slam worth a damn, probably just as well right then or she would have left glass shards all around her. She stomped down the spiral stairs with clangs of metal and glared at Joss.

He sat against the backdrop of the white rosebud-embossed wall. His little table looked oddly bereft in that salon. No one had served him yet, and he was such a big guy who had spent five years in war zones with the damn Foreign Legion and, and … someone should be spoiling him. With all the delicious melts-in-a-desert food the stomach of a big guy like that could hold.

She stalked over to him. His gaze flicked over her face, and his eyes dilated visibly. “Hell, Célie, you know how much I like chocolate.”

What?

“You’ve got it all—over—” His hand lifted toward her face as he drew his lip just a little under his teeth as if tasting something.

She jerked back a step, thrown completely off balance. Something started to fizz disturbingly in her stomach as she stared back at him. His hand dropped, and he swallowed.

Oh, hell. She tried to pull herself together. “Joss. What are you doing here?”

He just looked up at her with those gorgeous eyes and that stillness he had, emphasized by five years of military discipline. “Would you rather I wait outside?”

It was all she could do not to just shove the table aside and climb into his lap, bury her head in his chest and hold on tight. Why did you leave me, you bastard? Oh, thank God you’re home.

Yeah, and that would be insane.

Plus she’d already done it once.

“Joss, you know I love you—”

A little jerk ran through his body. And hers, as the echo of her own words ran through her.

“Like a brother,” she hastened to add.

“Fuck, Célie.” He turned his head away, his jaw setting. “Like Ludo?”

Okay, well, maybe not like her actual brother. Or like any other male she’d ever known. But, but … “But I’m not your person to come home to here.” Oh, hell, had she just said that? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. “I’ve moved on.”

“Moved on from what?” Joss asked.

She stared at him.

“We never dated, Célie. I wasn’t Sophie’s boyfriend, but I was never your boyfriend either. I was saving you for later.”

Her jaw dropped. Fury sizzled once deep in her stomach and then just flared all through her. “You son of a bitch.”


“For when you were older.” He tried to regroup. “And I deserved you.”

“I’m going to f*cking kill you!” Célie pressed her hands into his table and her weight into them as she leaned her body over his.

“Okay,” Joss said, and just lifted the table to the side to expose his body to her, shifting the table as if neither it nor her pressure on it weighed anything. “You can do that.”

Oh, that bastard. It was now so easy to climb into his lap and bury herself there while she started crying again that her eyes prickled from it.

She turned away in dramatic temper before she could let him see that and stomped back across the room and up the stairs.

Dom and Jaime met her at the top of them, shifting from that spot in the glass walls where they must have watched the whole thing. Jaime shook her head with some bemusement. “It’s fascinating how little you guys care about what your customers think.”

Oh, yeah, Célie had kind of forgotten about all the customers watching that scene.

Dom gave that sharp, tear-someone’s-throat-out grin of his. “They’ll come back.” He pressed his hand to his chest and gave Célie a hopeful look. “My turn?”

“Dom, I told you to leave him alone!” Célie stomped past him and grabbed a plated éclair off the counter in front of Thierry, whose job it was to both plate and descend the pastries and hot chocolate to the half dozen tables below. “Give me that.”

“Hey!” Thierry protested. “That was for the woman at table three.”

“Dom can make her another one.” Because it wasn’t as if she would have been able to talk him into making one for Joss. Célie stuck her tongue out at her boss and stamped her way into the ganache room with the plate. This room, on the opposite side of the laboratoire from the room with all the stoves and the variations in temperature and humidity that using them caused, also held the wire shelves scattered with metal trays of finished chocolates ready to be taken downstairs as the display cases needed replenishing.