All for You (Paris Nights #1)(19)

What could he say? What could he possibly write that meant something and was true?

“Célie” he finally wrote. Okay, there, that was true. That meant something. He stared at it a long time and then finally put a comma after it. Then sat there twisting and twisting the pen between his big fingers. Clearly not fingers meant to wield a damn pen.

The waiter came back and hovered.

Joss lifted his head and gave him a long, narrow look, and the waiter found another table to take care of. The waiter also sent a quick look up to the top of those stairs, like a soldier going into battle and making sure someone was ready to lay down covering fire.

Joss followed the glance. Yes, Célie’s personal hero, that big, black-haired guy Dominique Richard, was back in that corner where he could glare down at him.

Joss held the other man’s eyes a second, all his muscles firing for battle. Then he bent his head to the card again and wrote, in his slow, deliberate letters that always meant in school that the teachers were yanking his exams away from him before he finished: I would wait more than five years for you.

He stared at it a moment more. And then he added a little heart over the I in her name.

He shoved it at the waiter before he could crumple it in his fist. “If this doesn’t get to her, I’m coming back and killing you.” Best sometimes to leave things clear.

The waiter blinked and backed up a step. “Dom won’t let you do that,” he said hastily.

“Yeah, right,” Joss said. “Him and whose army?”

He walked out of that beautiful, elegant, rough-and-romantic shop and went to find a much less comfortable wall to wait against.






Chapter 8


“If she wanted him to actually leave her alone, I think she would be handling this a little differently,” Jaime said.

Ha! She knew it! Knew those two were talking about her. Célie pressed herself against the rolling wire shelves full of giant plastic containers of pistachios and almonds and raisins and every other possible chocolate ingredient that could be stored at room temperature in plastic containers, containers that currently shielded her eavesdropping on Jaime and Dom in Dom’s office.

Dom rumbled something. Damn. She’d missed it.

“Well, yes, probably she is confused, but what’s that have to do with anything? Caring about people is confusing.”

“If he hurts her, I’m going to beat his damn brains out.” Well, that one boomed clear enough.

A soft sound from Jaime. “You are such a sweetheart.”

Célie rolled her eyes to heaven. Really, there was no reasoning with Jaime’s insane idealization of Dom.

“I’m glad you’re trying to take care of your people, but if you get in a fight with him, I’m going to be seriously pissed,” Jaime said. “So just bear that in mind.”

Dom grumbled something much lower and more wary.

“No, not pissed enough to dump you, you idiot. Dominique.”

A brief silence. Célie stood on tiptoe to peek over the top of a container. Through the window in his office wall, she could see that Dom had pulled Jaime into his arms.

Oh, for crying out loud. If those two were going to get all mushy-faced again … Célie started to turn away and get some actual work done this afternoon.

“You know she’s always had a crush on you,” Jaime said, and Célie froze.

Hey! Was that nice? To just tell Célie’s boss about a perfectly private crush like that and embarrass the hell out of her for the rest of her career? What had happened to female solidarity and all that?

“What?” Dom said. “I’ve never—I swear—”

“Not a crush like that,” Jaime said. “More like a safe-keeping crush, you know? A safe place to put her feelings while she’s waiting for the proper place. Kind of like I used to crush on actors and rock stars before I met you. You know?”

Célie peeked again. Dom was shaking his head.

“You never did that?” Jaime said blankly. “Everybody does that.”

“I think the only safe place I ever found for my feelings was you,” Dom said, so quietly and with so little extra rumble to it that Célie could hear it very clearly.

It pierced her heart with this sweet tenderness for the two of them, this deep, precious gladness that the man who had been the big brother and refuge she had always needed and who had never believed he had the right to love himself had finally found that love. Finally found that place he felt safe.

Now if he didn’t hurry up and set the date for a wedding, Célie would personally start hitting him over the head with something. Maybe buy one of those foam sledgehammers so she could bonk him with it every day he walked in still a coward.

She went back to her work while Jaime and Dom did the mushy-face stuff, and maybe she might have peeked out the window to see if any clouds had rolled in.

Joss looked up at her movement in it, but he didn’t lift a hand and wave or anything. He just waited.

She looked at the card she’d propped in the corner of the marble counter, tucked under the wall of frames in all different sizes. She had it propped face forward, so no one could see what was written on the back, and because she liked the way Dom’s eyebrow rose and the ironic, challenging glance he slanted at her when he saw his own name crossed out and replaced with hers. Ha! Take that. Because she didn’t want the responsibility of running a business like this in Paris, and she didn’t want the financial pressure, but she poured her life into these beautiful chocolates just like he did, and she did like getting some of the credit.