All for You (Paris Nights #1)(3)

And she sank down on her butt, right there in the cooling room, between the trolleys full of chocolate and the marble island, in the slanting light from the casement window, and cried.

Just cried and cried and cried.

It sure as hell put a damper on chocolate production for a while, but for as long as she needed it, people did leave her alone.





Chapter 2


Les Tarterets, five years before

“Always smiling,” said Louis, the old, gray-haired baker who had taken Célie on as an apprentice three years ago, at fifteen, when she had first made the choice to pursue a practical career instead of the university track. Girls like her, with no father, a sometimes-there mother, and a brother and cousins who made their money off drugs and dog fights, well … university in the distant future seemed a very tenuous way of giving her life possibilities. Baking and pastry, though—a fifteen-year-old girl could start that career, could give herself something that mattered. That had value. That she could count on, when she could count on nothing else.

Plus she loved it. As she opened the oven to slide out fresh croissants, the vivid, happy smell of that fresh flakiness washed over her, and she grinned at Louis. Outside, the world might weigh heavy and gray, but a baker could always gather all these scents around her, sink her hands into dough, and stick her tongue out at that nasty world. You can’t get me. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Louis shook his head at her. “I suppose that boyfriend of yours is waiting out there?”

Célie checked, and yes, Joss was. That big rugby body of his leaning against the wall up there a little to the right, on the opposite side of the street, where he always waited, his brown hair a little tousled. He held something in his hand that was too small to see, his hand fisting over it and relaxing, then fisting tight again, his expression somber, his head bent.

She bounced on her toes and had to flip her braid back off her shoulder. The thing was a pure pain in baking—she should really cut her hair off—but Joss liked to tug it sometimes. Recently, she’d dyed it burgundy, just to make it catch the eye more. More tugs that way, maybe.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she forced herself to say.

Because … he wasn’t.

Never had been.

Never shown the slightest interest in taking on that role.

Louis rolled his eyes.

“He’s just … a friend,” she said. She’d almost said “a friend of my brother,” but nobody liked her brother anymore.

“He’s a good friend,” Louis said dryly.

“I know,” Célie said smugly. It wasn’t every girl in their banlieue of graffiti and concrete and burned cars who had a good friend, a guy she could trust, a guy she could count on. Célie was lucky. Or Joss was just that good a guy. Or maybe she was even … worth it, a little bit? The friendship of a good guy? Maybe there was something about her that was likable and good and deserved it?

Of course there was. She stuck her chin up, determined to believe it.

“You’d better go,” Louis said with half-pretend exasperation. “You don’t want to keep him waiting.”


“He’ll wait,” Célie said confidently. Steady and patient, he would wait as long as it took for her to get off. But she was already unbuttoning her chef’s jacket.

Because no matter how bad the world outside this bakery, when Joss showed up, Célie couldn’t wait to get off work.

She boxed up her favorite thing she had done that day, a fig tart with balsamic caramel gleaming so prettily over its brown-red fruit and pale custard cream, and ran across the street to him with it.

Joss shoved whatever he’d had in his hand into his pocket as soon as he saw her and straightened from the wall as she got closer to him, so that he was so big, and she was so small, and a girl definitely felt protected. Safe. She loved it when she could walk home with him. No one ever messed with her at all. Maybe it was the size of him, or maybe it was the way he carried himself, or maybe it was the way that stubborn jaw made your fist feel fragile, as if it would break if you tried to punch it.

She grinned at him and bounced up on her toes for kisses on each cheek. Damn. He didn’t smell of motor oil again today. Meaning still no new job after association with her brother had gotten him fired from his last one. That probably explained the tension in him, too.

A kiss on each cheek and a tug of her braid. “Célie.”

Just her name. He had a way of saying it that made her come true.

“Hey, Joss,” she said sassily, so he would know that she was just the kid sister who teased and taunted him. So he wouldn’t know how those steady hazel green eyes of his caught at her heart every time and how she had to keep squashing her unruly crush down into the bottom of her stomach where it wiggled nonstop whenever he was around. All her friends had crushes on him, too, it wasn’t like she was weird. But he was her brother’s friend, so she got to keep him. Even if not in a crush way.

“Hungry?” She held up her box to him. She liked to keep the reward system going: If you stop by when I’m getting off work, I’ll feed you something yummy. So … stop by.

He smiled a little. “I’m always hungry when you’re around, Célie.”

She grinned in triumph. Pavlov had nothing on her. “Wait until you see this!” She opened the box.