The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand Page A

French?”
    “Mmm. Partly. My mother died when I was ten, and my father didn’t want to come back here after that. But I guess my sister and I always had a—tie to Paris, because of her. We both studied French in school, and my sister just recently moved here. But most of my practice is from development work in French-speaking countries. That’s what I”—she seemed to hesitate a long time over her verb tenses—“I’ve been doing.”
    Bon Dieu . An infinitely better person than he was, then. “How long have you been doing that?”
    “Since college.”
    College. So she had about ten years more education than he did, too.
    “But I did summer internships even during college, so I guess you could say longer.”
    He massaged the back of his neck and didn’t say anything. It was as he suspected. He didn’t have much to offer her but great chocolate and great sex. Why she kept sitting in his salon acting as if she could absorb something more from him was a mystery.
    Well, no, it wasn’t a mystery. It was a testament to his own ability to construct illusions. She had never suggested she wanted anything else.
    The best he could do was delay her realizing her mistake as long as he could. Or was that how his father had gotten his mother? By hiding his real self just long enough? “Odd,” he said without meaning to. “I lost my mother when I was ten, too.”
    Her fingers squeezed over the hand that still held hers. He instantly dropped his hand from his neck to recoup her other hand. If there was squeezing going on, both his hands wanted some. “It’s tough,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. Was it an accident or did she get sick?”
    He shouldn’t have brought this up. “A boyfriend,” he said dryly. Dryness was about the best tone he could manage about this event, and that had taken a lot of practice.
    Her eyes widened, shocked. “A boyfriend killed her?”
    He flinched. “No.” Well, God, now that she suggested it, he realized he couldn’t know. They said women repeated cycles, so she might very well have run off with someone who treated her the same way his father had. “She ran off with him. Would you like a red wine, do you think? This Médoc is supposed to be good.”
    Was his mother all right? He had bitterly hated her for so long, and now suddenly he felt a desperate urge to track her down and make sure she was hale and happy. Something she had never made sure of about him.
    His Still Nameless Date was staring at him with her lips parted, her eyes uncomprehending. See, and her parents had loved her, too. The knowledge squeezed his heart with anguish. He didn’t deserve her. He shouldn’t be sitting here, luring her into his clutches.
    “Whatever you want,” she said absently of the wine, blinking, trying without success to stop staring.
    He flicked a hand at Axel, the waiter, and ordered her a glass. She raised her eyebrows when she realized hers was the only one being poured. “I said whatever you want.”
    Here it came. “I don’t drink.”
    She blinked a couple of times, and then burst out laughing.
    Well, that hadn’t hurt as much as he’d thought. He raised one eyebrow, waiting, while her laugh twisted and tumbled in his middle, doing all kinds of unethical things to him.
    “You really don’t? But—you’re French!” she burbled. “Oh, I love it. You must love saying that to people.”
    He hadn’t, actually, ever loved saying it before. People looked at him as if he had grown two heads, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to explain the reason. But—he found himself smiling, his thumbs gently stroking the back of her hands.
    “Is chocolate your only vice?” she suggested cheerfully.
    “Well—not my only,” he had to admit.
    She looked down at their joined hands, and her mouth curved in a way that made that tsunami of warmth and arousal beat through him. She could have been looking right through the table, straight at his currently most pressing vice, which was surging at the