But of course, Patrick would be at ease, wouldn’t he? The whole gastronomic world knew that the only thing standing between Patrick and being one of these world-famous star chefs himself was his choice. That choice no one could quite understand.
Because what if it was just a choice of love and loyalty over fame?
Sarah tucked her hand in his big, warm one as they left the Lyonnais shop, thinking about how much love and loyalty Patrick held in him, that love and loyalty he gave to Luc.
“So do you think you could work with him?” Patrick asked.
Sarah slanted him a shocked glance. “Philippe Lyonnais?”
“Sarah. What did you think being interned in one of the top kitchens on the planet meant? You have job opportunities, Sarabelle. Did you like the kitchen atmosphere? It’s a lot calmer than a restaurant kitchen, isn’t it?”
“Patrick.” Her stomach tightened into that old knot. “I – California.”
His hand hardened on hers. “You need more training.”
“Patrick. I’m
never
going to get good enough to do what you do.”
He keyed in the code to his apartment building. “That would be up to you, obviously.” It was that kitchen tone he sometimes had to use on the team, the one that said
Buck up
without ever needing to actually state it. “You can make the choice to give up and not get that good, just like anyone else can.”
“Patrick. I don’t even want that. I want my own little place.”
“In California,” he said stiffly as they climbed the stairs.
“Well, it’s not like I could succeed in Paris!” It could cost a million euros even to “buy the walls” of a place in Paris. She could never raise that kind of capital. She didn’t have that kind of gastronomic street cred. It would take her years and years to earn it, if ever.
Patrick pushed open the door of his apartment and watched her as he held it for her. “I could,” he said with a little quirk of a smile.
Oh. That hurt, all out of the blue. She hadn’t been expecting him to one-up her. Her talent was so far beneath his, why grind her under further? “I know you could.” Her fingers curled into her palms, away from his. She took a step back, seeking space.
Space from him.
Space for her.
His face froze a tiny second, his eyes searching hers. Then it relaxed again, lazy, easy, and he pushed the door closed. Shutting her in. “I take it you’re one of those people who think a couple running a restaurant together would kill each other,” he said lightly, as if he discussed nothing of any importance at all.
Her brain did a little jerk. Wait, what? Had he just hinted at opening a shop with her? Lightly? As if it was half a joke? As if they were talking about nothing that mattered?
Nothing that mattered, only to
take over her dream.
“Couples?” she said dumbly.
His smile went entirely out. He just looked at her for a moment. “Or whatever you like to call them in America. What was that delightful term you used yesterday?” Anger lashed through him, so wicked his lips actually formed the sound F, before he pressed them hard together and looked away, his jaw set.
She took a step back toward him, that space suddenly too much, too cold. “I’m sorry for that,” she said quietly. “I just don’t understand any of this.”
“Don’t you?” His anger seemed to subside, but the memory of it remained, that rare red glimpse into a volcano she hadn’t realized was active. His hands stroked up her forearms. “Funny, I think I understand myself in this far too well.” The easy, soothing stroke of callused palms, stirring the fine hairs on her arms. “What don’t you understand, Sarah?”
“You make me feel exactly right,” she said low, her throat closing. It confused her no end. She had never, never once in her life, felt exactly right.
His mouth softened first. And then a glow grew in his eyes, brighter and brighter, until she felt silhouetted in the light from him. “Sarah.” She could have sworn his own throat was closing. He pulled her into him, holding her.
“I should go,” she sighed into his chest, and his hold tightened. All her weight just wanted to sink into him. It always did. “I can’t keep this up.”
His hands eased, stroking. “Can’t keep what up, Sarah?”
“This.” She touched his chest and then her own. “You make it seem so easy, but I always know I’m going to screw something up.” Shatter those sugar slippers.
“Sarah. I’ve told you this before. You can’t get me wrong.”
Of course
he
would think that. He didn’t know what it was like to get something wrong. But his hands felt so soothing. The heat of his body against hers welcomed her weight so well.
He pulled them so that he sat on the edge of the bed, holding her between his legs so that her face was just a little higher than his. “It’s like the sugar, Sarah,” he said, and she blinked at finding him in her own metaphor. As if, well – they shared the same world. “If you mess up a piece, or shatter it, we can always try again.”
If she broke her sugar slippers, it wasn’t something wrong with her feet? They would just make a pair that suited her better the next time?
“It’s not the MOF contest,” Patrick said, “where you work your butt off for a dream and then one wrong move ruins everything. You’re not on trial.”
MOF. She lifted a finger and traced his collarbone, the strong throat. “Why don’t you wear your MOF collar?”
He shrugged immediately, her finger riding the ripple of movement, his smile turning the whole idea of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France trials into a joke.
Because it matters to him
, she realized suddenly.
Nobody becomes a Meilleur Ouvrier de France unless it matters. Not even Patrick.
“It’s the stripes,” he said with a vague wave of his hand. “
Bleu, blanc, rouge.
It makes me look like a damned flag.”
“Why did you go after it in the first place?” She smiled a little. “Nothing better to do that weekend?”
His lips closed as if she’d stolen his next words right off the tip of his tongue. His gaze flicked to hers, and then he angled his head enough to squint for his next wave. Except, of course, that the only thing over there was an empty apartment wall. She traced his collarbone, just gentle, not asking again. And waited.
“Luc couldn’t,” he said suddenly, low.
Her eyebrows went up.
“He was too busy, and then he was just too famous. Too good. He started winning those junior world pastry contests by the time he was twenty, and then it was the regular division, and before he had time to even think about the MOF, people were already calling him a god of his field. He could judge others, and, in fact, they had asked him to judge last year, but a god of his field can’t submit himself to the judgment of his peers. Of course he’d
get
it, if he tried; that’s obvious to everybody. But he can’t try out
for their approval. He just can’t. If you know him at all, you’ll see why he can’t. But I could. Kind of like, I don’t know–”
“His knight?” she suggested. “The king’s champion?”
A flush rose on his cheekbones. “Sarabelle, sometimes you have the weirdest ideas about me.”
“His first champion?” she said. “A prince?”
His flush deepened. He stared up at her, caught. “Sarabelle…”
“And that’s why you don’t wear it, isn’t it?” She stroked his throat, around which that ultra-rare, ultra-proud badge of honor would go. “Because if you have it, and you wear it, when he can’t, it makes him look bad. But if you have it, and you dismiss it, it means it doesn’t matter. That the title means nothing, compared to what a chef actually does.”
He could only stare at her, so awkward and vulnerable, shoulders trying to shrug and getting the movement all funny.
“You get more wonderful all the time,” she said incredulously. “My God.” Her hand shifted to press against the left side of his chest. “What do you hide under there?”
“Sarah.” The protest came from a voice compressed to the point of anguish.
She bent forward and kissed him. The very first time she had ever been the one to start the kiss. Not that she had any sudden surge of confidence that she might deserve him, but she just couldn’t
help
it. He was so special.
His breath caught. His mouth yielded instantly to the kiss, shaped to hers, and gave her that kiss back, his hands sliding up her body to cup her head. When she straightened, his eyes were brilliant. “Sarah. Stay,” he coaxed. “Let me make you dinner. Spend the night. Stand me just a little bit more.”
“It’s not you, it’s–” She shrugged, helpless to say what it was exactly. She had always needed time in her own space. Where she could pad around barefoot in old pajamas and just be herself. Not completely overwhelmed.
“You know what you should do?” Patrick kissed her palms. “Go take a long, long bath. Use those bath things I got you.” A little wicked glimmer. “Lock the door.” He laughed, and kissed her palm again. “No, really. Lock the door. I promise not to make you come again for at least twelve more hours.” An innocent look. “I wouldn’t want to invade your space.”
Wait. She wasn’t sure she had wanted that
kind of space.
He laughed again and kissed her one more time as he rose. “Take as long as you like. And I…I’ll go get some groceries for dinner.”
Chapter 26
Patrick woke with a cold jerk, his arm flinging out automatically to the empty space in the bed beside him even as he processed the soft sounds of Sarah moving around in the apartment.
He pressed his hand into the warmth she had left on the sheet, keeping his eyes closed as he tried to marshal his thoughts past adrenaline and the shock of disappointment. He quelled his first thought – that she was sneaking out as some vicious little game because he had let her know how much he wanted her to stay.
No.
Not Sarah. And given how unlike Sarah that would be, it would be helpful, damn it, if he could get past that instinctive assumption, one day.
No, she must need space. Desperately enough to go out into the cold at four a.m. And he was so not looking forward to dragging himself out into freezing Paris to escort her home. He sighed heavily, gathering his energy to force himself out of bed and maybe even accompany her without trying to manipulate her into staying, if he could manage to control his instincts to do that, and–
Sarah slipped back under the comforter, scooting in close to his body with a shiver. Damp hands tucked against his chest with a whiff of soap, her legs bare under the hem of his T-shirt, and he realized she had just been going to the bathroom. No intention to leave him at all.
Every muscle in him unclenched all at once in blissful reaction. Keeping his body heavy, a man moving in his sleep, he rolled to wrap his arms around her to fight those shivers off her.
See, Sarah? That’s one good thing about sharing your space, all that warmth waiting for you when you climb back into bed at night.
A shaft of pleasure went through him when she snuggled in closer and pressed a kiss to his chest. The kiss was like the tiny prick of a pin that suddenly just pierced right through him and held him like a butterfly.
Sarah. I think you might love me.
He couldn’t breathe as he tried to face it head on, looking down at her tucked head, so black against his skin, her body so much smaller than his and yet so strong. Straight. True.
What if she did love him? The beauty of the idea didn’t soften with repetition; it still hurt, like being stabbed with starlight.
All quiet and contained and concentrated, looking at him with that brainy, dark gaze of hers, as if all his shields were shreds of sheer cloth, and she could see right through him and still love him, despite how terrifyingly ragged it made him feel. Unable to hide his hope, which just wanted to burst out of him, show itself, dance.
He gave her warmth, savoring the satisfaction as her shivers gentled and regretting the moment when his heat finally got to be too much and she withdrew toward her own space. He wished he could cool himself off, just to keep hold of her. He missed her, over there on her cool sheets, imagining that coolness wistfully, that he could never quite reach, because whenever he touched it, he brought too much heat.
Missed her, when she had only withdrawn a few inches, just because he was afraid of her withdrawing more.
And then fingertips touched him curiously, just there at the join of his shoulder, exploring as delicately as a whisper over muscle and bone, as if she wanted to discover how he was put together.
She had such a beautiful, careful touch, with the little calluses giving it texture, from all the times she had burned herself trying to learn to mold sugar, all the times he had wanted to kiss her fingertips to make it better. All the times he couldn’t, he had to tease her, or slide her a
macaron
as if he wanted a taste test, or pretend not to even notice while he solved some problem that should be more urgent than their intern’s sore fingertips.
Her fingers grazed towards his throat, so lightly it was clear she didn’t want to wake him, and her calluses explored the hollow as if she was utterly fascinated by it. He found it hard to breathe, pins pricking through him everywhere, and even a lifetime of experience in hiding how much he felt was barely enough to keep his body sleep-heavy.
He knew she would stop if she realized he was awake, though. In the end, it wasn’t unlike all the times he kept himself lazy, easy, while he ever-so-subtly herded someone into what he wanted, without pouncing, without driving straight toward that want and showing his hand.
He could do it. He could hold still for this.
Her fingers explored carefully down his chest and rested there, intrigued, her index finger pushing down curl after individual curl of hair, testing its spring. That melted him, how long she could spend fascinated by this tiny element of his body. Her fingers drifted carefully to the right, to the very outer edge of his nipple, and circled around it twice, three times, just grazing the edge of that softer skin. His nipples tightened, and he bit down into the inside of his lip – and her fingers finally, finally–
Retreated, with great lack of daring, down to his ribs, never touching the actual nipple at all, damn it, that
hurt
, that frustration.