A second’s silence, and then the sheet ripped straight off her body. “Sarah, get up before this gets ugly. If I have to resort to ice cubes, you’re going to hate me all fucking day.”
It took her a second to realize that the reason she was so cold without the sheet was because she was stark naked.
Oh,
God.
She shot up off the bed, grabbing for it. Patrick held it out of her reach. “
Vas-y
, Sarah. Get in the shower. Hurry up.”
Since it was either that or stand there naked fighting with him while he was completely dressed, she almost ran to the shower, not even waiting for it to warm up. But it was warm anyway as she thrust herself under it. Of course. Patrick had just stepped out of it two minutes before. He had just used her soap, had just stood under that water naked, sluicing the scent of her off him.
He
was all ready to go. Casual, together. Waking up in the intern’s bedroom just another thing to handle with amused ease. How many times had he done this before in his life? With how many so easily seduced women?
It would have been a nice day for makeup. A nice day to at least try to look sexy and cute, for the five minutes Patrick would see it, before she covered it all up with chef’s gear and her face started glowing with the heat and effort. But she only had time to scrape her wet hair back into a ponytail, her face pure and plain and stark.
Oh, God, red prickle marks trailed all down her throat. And she didn’t have any clothes to put on.
She came out in a towel. Patrick’s gaze flashed over her whole body once, then lingered on her throat, and he ran a hand over his jaw. “I should have shaved. I’m sorry. The collar of your jacket will hide it, don’t worry.” He tried to put a cup of coffee into her hand.
She turned away from it, looking for clothes, battling tears with everything in her. How was she going to handle this day? How was she going to handle the next month? What was she going to
do
?
“I’m not going,” she said. “I’ll call in sick.”
“I’ll throw your phone out the window first. You’re not sick. You’re tired. Get moving.”
She flashed him one bitter look over her shoulder as she pulled on jeans and panties, wishing idiotically that she had done laundry recently because
today
, of course, the one day he would actually
know
what panties she was wearing under her marshmallow-snowman workday clothes, all that was left in her drawer was a white cotton bikini.
Tired. He thought she didn’t want to go to work just because she was tired?
She
was
tired. She had gotten almost no sleep, but then neither had he. Patrick was an incredible lover, but she had always known he would be. Indefatigable, determined, and almost glitteringly focused on making her come. He had turned her limp from how incredible he was. And she knew perfectly well that she had made almost no mark on him at all, just a not particularly memorable lay.
If they had been on that beach on which she always imagined him, he would already be eyeing the next gorgeous island girl to stroll by.
Oh, God. She wanted to crawl into a hole and die rather than spend the day working with him. An ache of anguish as she remembered falling asleep with her face smashed into her pillow in limp bliss, his arm heavy over her back, his breath tickling her shoulder. Everything feeling so utterly, perfectly right.
“Sarah.” His fingers touched suddenly against her back, doing up the catch of her bra. “You quit your career for this. You moved to another country, where you didn’t know a soul. You went into debt. You worked at Culinaire and at the Leucé until you fell facedown on your bed in your clothes the instant you got home and never moved again until morning. There were probably nights you fell asleep in the Métro and missed your stop and didn’t know where the hell you were when you woke up.
I know
what you did to get this dream. And you are not losing Luc’s respect by calling in sick when you’re not.”
Easygoing Patrick. Who, for as long as Sarah had worked there, had never missed a day, had never once even showed up five minutes late. In fact, he usually showed up two hours early and worked well past any official shift.
“I don’t have Luc’s respect in the first place,” Sarah mumbled, pulling on a shirt. Patrick was so serious this morning. It was weird.
Also, it felt extremely rude to call Chef Leroi
Luc
out loud like that instead of
Chef
, and the fact that it didn’t feel weird to Patrick was yet another blatant proof of their different positions.
“You’re the best intern we’ve ever had. He has an absolute respect for you. Why do you think he spends so much time on you?”
Chef Leroi spent any particular amount of time on her? She looked at Patrick blankly. He grabbed her and spun her to the tiny kitchenette counter. “Yogurt’s ready. You need more food in your apartment. And here’s your coffee. Hurry.”
She drank a few sips of the coffee but just couldn’t stomach the yogurt, her nerves already shot through the roof.
“Sarah, eat that yogurt before I feed it to you like a baby,” Patrick said, coming right into her body, his hand reaching for the spoon. She twisted away from him, forcing a spoonful into her mouth. He didn’t move away. In fact, he braced one hand on the little counter and the other on the frame of the window against which the kitchenette was tucked, holding her prisoner until she finished. She could feel the heat of him just behind her. Just like in the kitchens. Irrationally, her stomach eased at the familiarity of their positions, and she managed to swallow another spoonful of yogurt.
The heat of him was even more embracing, not shielded by two chef’s jackets. As if he was enveloping her in his care, in his bossiness, in his warmth. As if she could
believe
in it.
God. What the hell had she just done to herself?
Patrick put her coat on and wrapped a scarf around her throat, his fingers so damn
fast
she didn’t even have time to organize her own efforts to button it instead of him. And all she could think of was the night before, when his fingers had gone so…damn…
slow.
“We’ll have to take the Métro, it’s the quickest,” Patrick said, hurrying them down the street toward the nearest station. A shock of cold as they stepped outside, everything a deep, heavy gray, the winter sun rising later than most people did. The streets were already stirring with those who went to work early, Paris blinking slowly awake.
They made it down the Métro stairs just in time to hear the train sound its horn. Patrick grabbed her hand and ran, blocking the door onto the train with his body and yanking her through before he let it close.
In the half-empty car, neither sat. Patrick grabbed her pole, gazing at her as the Métro shook its way down the track. Sarah looked at the other passengers, trying not to be too obvious about not facing him directly.
To her surprise, a big, warm, callused hand curved around her cheek and jaw. Her gaze flew to his. “I’m sorry,” Patrick said, smiling ruefully into her eyes. His looked…gentle. His thumb stroked her cheekbone ever so subtly. “I tried to let you sleep as late as I could. You’re going to be dead on your feet the whole day. I’m sorry.”
Maybe fatigue did make everything worse, but she didn’t think so. Sarah often stressed herself out of most of a night’s sleep. Spending it wrapped up in his body instead should have left her one mass of bliss. She should have
floated
through the day and the rest of the week, too.
Except that she would have to see him, flirting with everyone as easily as breathing. She would have to work under him, be corrected by him, have him come in close behind her, knowing how little it meant to him. Knowing she could have just as well been Summer or a pretty receptionist; maybe he had even fantasized about one or both of them while he was using her.
Nausea rose up in her.
She turned her head away from his hand, and something flashed in Patrick’s eyes. He straightened and let go of their shared pole, standing without a hold, keeping his balance against the rocks and turns of the car effortlessly, while she had to hold on tight. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
She couldn’t conceive of anything she might wish for that Patrick would actually be capable of. Like, thinking she was his sun and moon and stars or something. Yeah, right. Her lungs squeezed. This was going to be so
hard.
“Should I keep acting like we’re just colleagues?” he asked.
Colleagues. She was an
intern
, the lowliest person on the totem pole. She wasn’t a
colleague
with Patrick Chevalier, Luc Leroi’s second-in-command, one of the youngest MOFs in the country, and poised to become one of the world’s next great superstar chefs whenever it struck his fancy. “People can’t know,” she said, on a shock of horror.
Patrick, you wouldn’t!
He watched her, his eyes very dark blue, his own body so still that when the car jerked to a stop, he lost his balance, bumping his shoulder against the wall. Which was surreal; Patrick didn’t lose his balance.
“So you want me to act like we’re not sleeping together,” he verified.
Like we’re
– “Sleep
ing
?” She pressed a hand to her aching forehead. “Like we’re going to do it
again
?”
Patrick’s eyes started to glitter. She had never seen any of this morning’s expressions on his face before, and she didn’t understand a single one. “I can keep the
again
a surprise, if you prefer.” The thread of icy anger in his voice was new, too.
Keep it a surprise? Like whether they slept together was a party he could choose to throw for her or not? “I think it’s up to me,” she said coldly, crossing her arms.
Something bleak flashed across his face. “Like it was last night?” he asked very dryly. He reached out and caught her shoulder to keep her upright as the next stop threw her off balance without the brace of the pole.
What did that even mean? “It was up to me last night,” she said, confused and a little offended. Did he think she didn’t know how to say no?
She didn’t, and she hadn’t, or she wouldn’t be in this situation this morning, but it wasn’t like he had drugged her.
The horn sounded. “This is our stop,” he realized suddenly, grabbing her and hauling her out of the car with him just before the doors could close. His hand shifted automatically from her arm to her lower back as he hustled them through the station, and she realized belatedly that he had her backpack of chef’s attire and wallet and other essentials, all forgotten by her, slung over his shoulder. There was no sign of that flash of anger in the casual firmness of his hand on her back. Even through her winter coat, that pressure eased her, as if she was being taken care of. She wanted to be back in her apartment, where that hand could rest on her through only a knit shirt. Or maybe slide under the shirt, rub it upward lazily until he was teasing her bare skin…
“Please, don’t tell them,” she whispered.
But he heard her, even in the hustle of the Métro. He tucked her up in front of him on the escalator and stood a step below her, shielding her from the people who pushed past them as he gazed at her, the lack of humor stripping his face down until it seemed almost…naked. Stark. “What do you want me to do, then? How do you want me to act with you today?”
“Can’t you just be professional?” she cried. For once. And not gentle and not funny, not winking at her or making her feel so special when she wasn’t.
His face closed entirely. “Professional. With you.”
Yes.
She glared at him.
He nudged her around to make sure she didn’t trip over the end of the escalator and steadied her as she tripped a little anyway. Then he took her backpack off his shoulder and slid it over hers as they headed toward the exit. “Go ahead.” He fell behind. “I’ll come in five minutes later. So no one will see us together.”
Chapter 13
Patrick’s skin itched. It wasn’t supposed to keep itching that way, damn it.
I made love all night. Doesn’t that give me a day off this damn itching? I get to be satiated and content today. I’m pretty sure that’s in the rulebook.
But he looked at her bent head as she focused so fiercely on coating tiny apple-caramel-centered chocolates with gold, and his palm crawled with the need to curl over that nape, to give it a gentle rub.
Hey, Sarah, it’s okay. It’s just me. Come on, Sarabelle.
He watched her carry a tray of little cakes to the elevator to transfer it to the hotel
bistrot
, and his whole body itched with the need to follow her, wrap itself around her in a hug during the elevator ride.
There you go, Sarah. Does that feel good? Shh. Relax.
“What did you do?” Luc asked, quiet and dangerously cool, in the semi-privacy of his office.
“Let’s see.” Patrick ticked deeds off his fingers. “The Phénix molds, those damn orbits of sugar you thought would be such a good idea and that no one else can get right, and I showed Grégory how to manage that Pomme d’Amour you just invented so he would quit screwing up half of them, oh, and I ran into Summer in the hall and–”
“To our intern,” Luc said between his teeth.
Patrick adopted a confused look. “Did you need me to work on something with her? I was going to put her on the sugar slipp–”
“Patrick. I could swear she’s nearly burst into tears three times this morning, and as we already established,
she doesn’t cry.
”
Patrick’s stomach tightened, until he almost knew why Sarah never ate. He fought not to turn around and check her expression. “Don’t you have a girlfriend or something to attend to? Because I was really counting on Summer to–”
“Patrick.”
“It’s not your business, Luc.”
“It’s
my kitchen.
”
“Well,
of course
it is,” Patrick said kindly. “You’re sleeping with the boss.”
Their eyes locked. Luc’s glittered. Patrick smiled, but he was pretty sure his were glittering, too. “I was head of this kitchen before I ever met Summer,” Luc said icily. “It’s not the same damn thing at all. Patrick. She’s our
intern.
You’re supposed to be
helping
her. Not taking advantage of her.”