All for You (Paris Nights #1)(2)

“He didn’t say.”

And Guillemette hadn’t asked? Maybe there had been several customers at once or something.

“I’ll be down in a second,” Célie said, and Guillemette headed back while Célie loaded up a couple of the metal flats they used in the display cases with the Arabica, with its subtle texture, no prints on this one. Dark and exotic and touched with coffee.

She ran down the spiral metal stairs with her usual happy energy, and halfway down, the face of the big man waiting with his hands in his pockets by the pastry display counter came into view, and she—

Tripped.

The trays flew out of her hands as her foot caught on one of the metal steps, and she grabbed after them even as they sailed away. Her knuckles knocked against one tray, and chocolates shot off it, raining down everywhere just as she started to realize she was falling, too.

Oh, f*ck, that instant flashing realization of how much this was going to hurt and how much too late it was to save herself, even as she tried to grab the banister, and—

Hard hands caught her, and she oofed into them and right up against a big body, caught like a rugby ball, except it was raining chocolates during this game, and—

She gasped for breath, post impact, and pulled herself upright, staring up at the person who still held her in steadying hands.

Wary, hard, intense hazel green eyes stared back down at her. He looked caught, instead of her, his lips parted, as if maybe he had meant to say something. But, looking down at her, he didn’t say anything at all.

Strong eyebrows, strong stubborn forehead and cheekbones and chin—every single damn bone in his body stubborn—and skin so much more tanned and weathered than when she had last seen it. Brown hair cropped military-close to his head and sanded by sun.

Célie wrenched back out of his hands, her own flying to her face as she burst into tears.

Just—burst. Right there in public, with all her colleagues and their customers around her. She backed up a step and then another, tears flooding down her cheeks, chocolate crushing under her feet.

“Célie,” he said, and even his voice sounded rougher and tougher. And wary.

She turned and ran back up the staircase, dashing at her eyes to try to see the steps through the tears, and burst back up through the glass doors into the laboratoire. Dom looked up immediately, and then straightened. “Célie? What’s wrong?”

Big, bad Dom, yeah, right, with the heart of gold. He came forward while she shook her head, having nothing she could tell him, scrubbing at her eyes in vain.

The glass door behind her opened. “Célie,” that rough, half-familiar voice said. “I—”

She darted toward the other end of the laboratoire and her ganache cooling room.

“Get the f*ck out of my kitchen,” Dom said behind her, flat, and she paused, half turning.

Dom Richard, big and dark, stood blocking the other man in the glass doorway. Joss locked eyes with him, these two big dangerous men, one who wanted in and one who wasn’t about to let him. Célie bit a finger, on sudden fear, and started back toward them.

Joss Castel looked past Dom to her. Their eyes held.

“Célie, go in the other room,” Dom said without turning around. And to Joss: “You. Get out.”

Joss thrust his hands in his pockets. Out of combat. Sheathing his weapons. He nodded once, a jerk of his head at Célie, and turned and made his way down the stairs.

Dom followed. Célie went to the casement window above the store’s entrance and watched as Joss left the store, crossed the street, and turned to look up at the window. She started crying again, just at that look, and when she lifted her hand to swipe her eyes, he must have caught the movement through the reflection off the glass, because his gaze focused on her.


“What was that all about?” Dom asked behind her. She turned, but she couldn’t quite get herself to leave the window. She couldn’t quite get herself to walk out of sight. “Célie, who is that guy and what did he do?”

She shook her head.

“Célie.”

She slashed a hand through the air, wishing she could shut things down like a man could, make her hand say, This subject is closed. When Dom slashed a subject closed with one move of his hand like that, no one messed with him. Well, except for her, of course. “Just someone I knew before. Years ago. Before I worked here.”

“When you lived in Tarterets?” Their old, bad banlieue. “And he was bad? Did he hit you? Was he dealing? What was it?”

She gazed at Dom uneasily. For all that he was so big and bad and dark, always seeming to have that threat of violence in him, it was the first time she had ever seen him about to commit violence.

“No,” she said quickly. “No. He didn’t.”

“Célie.”

“No, he really didn’t, damn it, Dom! Merde. Do you think I would let him?”

“You couldn’t have been over eighteen.”

“Yeah, well—he didn’t.”

Dom’s teeth showed, like a man who didn’t believe her and was about to reach out and rip the truth out of her. “Then what—”

“He left me! That’s all. He f*cking left me there, so that he could go make himself into a better person. Yeah. So f*ck you, Dom. Go marry your girlfriend instead of playing around with this I-need-to-be-good-enough shit and leave me alone!”