“
Bonjour
, Sarabelle.” He smiled at her, his whole heart bursting with delight, took her hand as if he was going to kiss it, and as her eyes widened and fixed on his face, just glided his cheek right by her knuckles and pressed that kiss straight and deep on her mouth.
Mmm. How had he never noticed that freshly brushed teeth could taste so damn good? “I missed you,” he said hotly, into her mouth, sliding his arm around her and pressing her into his body. He found pretty much everyone easy to manipulate, when it was a question of getting what he wanted, but her…manipulating her slender, strong body, that serious, shy intensity of her, so easily, that was more pleasure than he knew what to do with in a public street. He felt as if he had been given a great gift.
Which was odd, since she wasn’t a gift. She was something he had tricked and twisted and gone all out for to get, using his humor as a decoy for his ruthless will to get what he wanted. He had stolen, she had not given.
Sarah’s hands rose to his shoulders, and for just one painful second, he felt her start to push him away. But he angled his mouth, and her fingers curled over him instead. Such strong, patient, perfectionist fingers. He loved them.
When he lifted his head, the fog didn’t feel so cold anymore. In fact, he kind of liked it. Wrapping them up, intimate lovers, turning the streetlamps into romantic poetry. “You look beautiful.” He shaped her face with his hands, not quite able to believe he finally had the right to kiss her under a streetlamp on a foggy winter morning.
Well, except he didn’t have the right. He was just taking. And hoping he could keep her unsettled enough that she would never coalesce her response to him into a
No
.
“I like these.” He touched her pearl earrings, giving her a compliment to process instead of the word
no
. He could buy her delicate, dangly earrings, he realized, on a rush of possessive joy. They worked in the heart of the most luxurious part of Paris. He could walk out during his break that same afternoon and buy her something precious and expensive that would caress the lobes of her ears and brush the upper limit of her jaw and make him smile every time he saw it, knowing it was from him.
I will buy you jewels so you know that everything beautiful comes from me.
Everything beautiful besides you.
Her mouth softened. Her eyes searched his face, wonderingly, with all kinds of questions she was too careful to ask aloud.
Good. There were all kinds of questions he was too careful to answer. “I got us something.” He handed her his phone, setting them walking toward the hotel. A half-hour walk, he figured they had time. He didn’t want another Métro ride, not on this beautiful veiled morning. Yesterday’s had not been his favorite moment of the week.
Sarah looked at the email:
Tiens, les voilà. You promise, right? You’ve got a table for me next Friday at eight?
Under it was the call number for two tickets to
Swan Lake
at the Opéra Garnier for that evening, and the email signature of the director of the theater.
“They were sold out,” Patrick said. “I had to bargain.”
Sarah looked back up at him. Would he ever be able to read her expression? Her eyes were so dark and searching, and the streetlamps just seemed to fill them with stars. Not a major talker, his Sarabelle. Even though he knew her brain was going and going all the time, coming up with all these thoughts she didn’t share. He wanted her to share them so badly, and he was a little afraid of what they might actually be. Especially where he was concerned.
“If you need a pretty dress, why don’t we go to one of the boutiques, Dior, whatever you like, during the break this afternoon, and I’ll get you something.”
Everything that’s beautiful comes from me.
He smiled.
And then saw Sarah’s expression. “Are you worried I won’t get it right, if you let me take care of dressing myself on my own?” she asked stiffly.
His own eyebrows slanted together in puzzlement. “I want to see what you choose, when you’re going somewhere special. I don’t care so much what your style is, Sarah, I just…want to see it. But I thought – I mean, I remember what I earned when I was an apprentice. The rent on your apartment here probably uses up all of it. I assume you didn’t bring your whole wardrobe here when you moved, plus you said you weren’t used to going to the ballet, so I thought if you needed a new dress, I might–” He broke off as her eyes started to glitter.
“What is this,
Pretty Woman
?”
He had never watched
Pretty Woman
, because it sounded like the kind of film someone would chain him up and torture him with in hell, but he knew the gist of it, and he might as well have just slammed into a wall. “Like a
prostitute
?”
“I can clothe myself, Patrick.” Her chin was up, her voice flat. “You don’t own me.”
It wasn’t a wall, it was a boulder that shifted under him, that plunged down the hill and took him and an avalanche of gravel with it. “I–”
“Why did you have four condoms in your pocket?” she interrupted harshly.
Damn it, they should have taken the Métro. You couldn’t have these kinds of conversations in the Métro. And was there anything at all perverse about him, that he loved the way her tongue struggled with all the R’s in that blunt word
préservatifs
?
“Just in case I messed one up?”
“Why did you have any at all!”
“Well, you know a man can’t go around without protection, Sarah, that would be irresponsi–”
“Patrick. Were you
planning
to sleep with an intern?”
Shit, he should not have fallen so hard for a woman who had gone to Caltech. She was going to
figure him out
. And he almost craved it. He gave her a lazy smile. “Now, Sarabelle, you
know
I’ve been in love with you for months. You can’t blame a man for cracking eventually.”
“I can, actually,” she said coolly. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“You could have said no, Sarah.” A sudden, horrifying idea: “Did you think you
had
to sleep with me?”
She bent her head and flushed such a deep crimson he wanted to take the words back. He didn’t want to put her in as painful a spot as the one in which she was putting him. “No,” she said, muffled. “No, you’re too…nice. I know you would never make my life miserable just because I turned you down.”
Of course he wouldn’t. Making someone in your power miserable was a pathetic tactic for getting what you wanted. Not to mention that he might as well lay his hand of cards flat up on the table and show her every single mismatched deuce, three, and four he had in it.
He was too nice? He might at last understand why men could commit hari-kari from shame. Because that disemboweling sword felt like a
relief
in comparison to the other feelings writhing inside. “I told you I would handle our work situation any way you preferred. And yes, it was – premeditated.”
***
As they came out onto the Place de l’Opéra, the grand old Garnier dreamed wistfully of days when women descended from carriages in yards and yards of silk, the majestic building pulling the fog in close to it, stubbornly refusing to wake up from that dream just yet, even if dawn had come.
Excited pleasure swirled through Sarah like one of those sweeping satin gowns, to think of herself on Patrick’s arm, all dressed up, going into this theater. She looked up at him – completely relaxed, eyes squinting a little at the fog, as if he was trying to penetrate through it to the approach of his next wave, ready to spring up lithely, grab his surfboard, and leave her as his little fangirl on the sand while he rode it in.
Premeditated.
She looked down at the phone again. Patrick had gone to effort here. He had caught at something she had told him the other night, while he stood there massaging her hands with such lazy friendliness –
seducing her, premeditated, four condoms in his pocket
– and then pulled strings and traded favors to give her something he knew she really wanted.
“Premeditated since when?”
He stopped holding her hand and shifted his own hands into his jacket pockets. Again, he squinted just faintly into the distance, as if he was hoping that wave would hurry up. His brown leather jacket was open, as usual, as if he didn’t feel the cold, which, of course, he wouldn’t.
Or maybe he just wouldn’t seem to?
She reached out and zipped his jacket up. Patrick actually gasped, a soft, hard sound, and looked down at her, stunned.
She didn’t think it was
that
weird a gesture. He would have buttoned hers without a second’s hesitation, and probably knotted her scarf, loosened her hair from it, pulled on her gloves, and pretended to kiss her knuckles through them, all within the space of that second where she would have still been hesitating. “Premeditated since when?” she repeated.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then: “You’re so determined.” His voice was a soft stroke of respect. “Stubborn. Focused.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she pointed out. Stubbornly.
“And you’re not going to let me get away with ducking it, are you?” He took her hand again, but she had the oddest impression that this time he did it for his own sake, as she might want to grab his hand if they were going into a noisy room full of clashing noises and…actually, exactly as she would have loved to grab someone’s hand when she first had to step over the threshold into Luc Leroi’s kitchens. She remembered, still, Patrick appearing with a quick wink and a smile for her, holding out her new hotel-logo chef’s jacket with a friendly “Looking for this?”
Breaking all the ice. Easing her in.
She kind of thought he would have done it for anybody, but in her particular case, he was the only person in the kitchen she had met before, in that workshop at Culinaire. That workshop when he had suggested she should apply at the Leucé.
Her eyebrows drew together. “Premeditated since
when
?”
Another silence. “I guess since you said you hated me, Sarah.” A flick of his grin, amused, not as if they were talking about anything that mattered. “It’s such a strong word.”
“Being hated turns you on?”
“
Enfin
…let’s call it motivation.”
“So you just couldn’t stand not to have every single person worship you?” she asked bitterly. “You had to flip it?”
Another little silence. They had reached the Champs-Elysées, broad and brooding. Traffic rushed harshly through its foggy width, ignoring the boulevard’s sullen glamour like a worn-out hook-up, exciting enough the night before but it was high time she slipped her high heels back on and did the walk of shame home. “I did have to flip it,” he agreed. “You’re right. I had to.”
“Well, congratulations.” Her bitterness grew. “You’ve proven you can seduce an intern. Now leave me the hell alone.”
I hate you.
He cut her a glance that was not like him at all, so vivid and burning and painful to her skin. “Don’t do that, Sarah.” Strange, she realized suddenly: his chest was shifting too quickly, as if he was breathing shallow and fast.
She
wasn’t out of breath from the walk, Patrick could hardly be. “Don’t withhold yourself from me to punish me. Don’t do that. I – don’t.”
“It’s not to
punish
you!” she said, suddenly furious. The vision of herself on his arm, going up the stairs into the Opéra Garnier, swirled its satin around her like Cinderella’s dress at 11:59.
Give me one more minute. Don’t, don’t rip me to rags.
“What, do you think whether I sleep with you or not is all about
you
? How self-absorbed are you? It’s about me, too! Things
matter
to me!”
He turned so suddenly she ran into him, and he caught her, pulling her in tight. They were at the narrow median on the grand boulevard, such as that median was: a pedestrian pause made of two lines of white and a minuscule bumper against traffic. Ten lanes of cars swept by on either side, leaving them horribly exposed. Oh, God, any of the hotel staff who drove to work might be driving by them right now.
“Sarah. How much do you need to matter?”
“What?” She blinked up at him. She hated being at that little point in the middle of the Champs-Elysées, a human defenseless against all those racing tons of metal. She wanted to tuck herself up against Patrick. Except he was just as exposed and vulnerable as she was.
“Months of flirting, months of feeding you, months of trying to let you stand on your own two feet and not intervene too much, not save you when you can save yourself, months of
only
slipping in when you are about to crack or I just can’t stand it if Luc cuts you to pieces with a look,
never
when you’re carrying a damn thirty-kilo mixing bowl. Month after masochistic month of seizing every opportunity to stand too close to you, to try to get you to react, when only an absolute bastard would do something like that to a woman working under him. How much do you need to matter to me? Is that enough? Can I shut up now?”
She gaped up at him. The light changed to red, and he turned, guiding her with as much speed and grace as if they were in the kitchens, or waltzing, and ushered her across all those lanes to the broad sidewalk on the other side.
They were almost at the hotel, and people might see them, and suddenly there were too many things she felt they still needed to say. That she needed to dig out of him. “I thought that you were just being…French.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Everyone you work with is French, Sarah. Isn’t that why you came to Paris?”
“Yes, but – you’re good at it.” Halfway down its avenue between the Champs and the Seine, the Leucé came into view, its palatial seventeenth-century façade neatly adorned at every balcony with fir branches.
“I’m good at being French?” Stress eased out of him, and his lips curved. He looked as if he wanted to kiss her again.
But she was still feeling rather frantic to get this straight. “Just – gallant, and a little flirtatious, and a little protective. Wouldn’t you treat any woman who worked under you that way? I thought you would.”
That was what he did: the pressure valve of that kitchen, the one who could needle Luc on their behalf and let the response slide off his shoulders like water off a duck’s back. The one who could intervene, just when someone needed intervention. She wasn’t the only one he helped just at the perfect moment; she had seen him do it even for the experienced sous-chefs like Noë. For God’s sake, she was pretty sure she caught him sometimes doing it for Chef Leroi. At whom he also blew kisses and winked, when he wanted to be particularly provoking.