Shadowed Heart by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online

made her that a man had to be grateful the length of his chef’s jacket hid his reaction to that eager mouth.
    And yet somehow, the drips on the marble counter below it grew and grew, until he turned back from some issue to catch her swiping one of his sous-chef’s towels to clean it up, the tip of the ice popping right back into her mouth when he looked at her, as she made an eager yum sound. She was letting it melt whenever his back was turned. And pretending to like it.
    Damn it, he was never trusting her when they had sex again. He was going to keep his fingers right where he would know she wasn’t faking anything.
    He drew a breath and let it slowly out. “What flavor did you want?” he asked, not between his teeth at all. “For your ice pop?”
    “Lime,” she said wistfully. And quickly, “But this is wonderful. You know I love mangoes. It’s so sweet of you to make my favorite.”
    And she didn’t,last time he had checked, particularly like lime. “I’ll make you some lime.”
    “You know what would be delicious?” she asked longingly.
    No, but his whole body pricked awake, ready to give it. Aroused to give it.
    “Pickles.”
    His whole body felt as if it had just taken one to the groin. “ Pickles?”
    She nodded eagerly.
    His shoulders slumped. He shifted into his chef de cuisine’s side of the kitchens and sent the first commis he encountered running for some of Nicolas’s pickles. Not jealous in the least that his chef de cuisine got to feed her and not him.
    No. Because jealousy like that would be crazy.
    His chef de cuisine, Nico, who was all about living from the land and using all nature’s resources, had pickled watermelon rinds, pickled pears, pickled peppers, pickled beets, pickled figs, and pickled corn. Probably gleaned from local fields post harvest. The man liked to stroll through farmers’ land, picking up all the leftovers that would otherwise rot. Luc would probably get arrested if he ever tried that kind of thing—not to mention that his whole childhood flinched inside him in desperate panic when he even thought about it—but somehow people let Nicolas do anything.
    Summer picked at every single type of pickle, biting her lip in a clear battle with revulsion. Kind of nice to know he wasn’t the only man failing her right now.
    Except—shit. He had to manage to feed her. He had to.
    Summer tried a watermelon rind and sagged a little, pushing it away. “Just regular pickles,” she said. “Like—” She glanced around to make sure Nicolas wasn’t in earshot and lowered her voice so even Luc could barely pick it up. “From the store.”
    It was a good thing he could count on Summer’s manners in all situations. If she’d said that loudly enough for Nico to hear it, he might be hiring a new chef right now.
    Unfortunately, he couldn’t hire a new self, no matter how hard he tried; he could only deal with the self he had. The insane self that kept trying to get out of its padded cell.
    He slipped one of his apprentices some money. “Enzo. Run down to the épicerie and get me a jar of pickles, all right? Don’t let Nicolas see.”
    But when he slid Summer a tiny bowl of the miniature cornichons Enzo brought, she took one bite and grimaced, visibly trying to control a gag. “American pickles,” she said, shoving the cornichons as far away from her as she could. “You know, with dill?”
    Luc went and found Nicolas, breaking it as gently as he could that Summer had refused every single one of his special pickles and only wanted this dill stuff. Nico took it oddly well. He even seemed amused. Sometimes the guy was disconcertingly rough-and-ready, take-it-as-they-come, compared to Paris chefs. “Sure, I can make them. But, Luc,” the burly, brown-haired farmer of a chef said with that kind of callused-hand gentleness of his, as if he was taking care of a newborn lamb, “they take several weeks.”
    Luc stared at him. He knew that. He’d never actually made a pickle, but