The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online Page B

going to start judging anyone for getting into trouble.
    Most? “All of mine were as a teenager,” he admitted, feeling a tad out-gunned. Like a reformed addict, ever since he was eighteen he had avoided situations that might lead him back to his addiction, if that was the best way to describe his rapport with violence.
    “Two G-8 summits,” she said, for some reason embarrassed. “I was a spoiled brat.”
    “ Banlieue issues. I was mostly just a troublemaker. But not like them,” he added hastily. Not one who harassed women half his size. “What was the one not as a student?” curiosity compelled him to ask, even though she clearly didn’t want to volunteer the information.
    Her eyebrows crinkled, her expression shifting to something very sober. “That one—I was in Africa,” she said with what had to be deliberate vagueness. If she had actually traveled in Africa, she was surely capable of distinguishing countries within the continent. “And—very naive to join in a protest. There were—there were actually military sharpshooters on the rooftops, shooting people in the crowd in the head. Peaceful protesters in the crowd.”
    Putain. She must be incredibly strong, was the first thing he thought. In fact, he wanted to close his hands around her shoulders and hold her still for him while he took a good long look into the depths and strength of her. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that his heart might have protected itself for so long and then thrown itself so ridiculously after her because it had incredible survival instincts.
    But no, then, surely he wouldn’t feel so helplessly kamikaze.
    “Don’t do that,” he said involuntarily.
    She looked questioning.
    Don’t put yourself in positions where people might shoot you in the head, he wanted to say, lamely. “Don’t join in protests in strange countries where you don’t know how the government might react.” Starting with G8 summits.
    “I don’t anymore. Mostly.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “You’re that familiar with the way French riot police might handle a crowd or what’s likely to make that crowd degenerate into a riot?”
    She looked disgruntled. “I was just there for the dancing.”
    Now he did close his hand around her shoulders. He couldn’t help it. Somebody had to get a grip on her. “Don’t join in protests in strange countries where you don’t know how the government might react. Even for the dancing.” He started to release her, hesitated. “And don’t go to nightclubs by yourself, either. Go find the dance groups on the quays, if you’re looking for dancing.”
    Although he didn’t entirely like the thought of her being there on her own—hit on by all comers—either.
    Merde . This time he did manage to force himself to release her. Before he could start getting jealous of someone whose name he didn’t even know. Wouldn’t that be a chip off the old block. Les chiens ne font pas des chats. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
    She hesitated, flushed a little, but held his eyes as she nodded.

C HAPTER 5
    J aime concentrated on not feeling guilty about Dominique Richard’s chocolates when she sat down across the table from Sylvain Marquis that evening. Her future brother-in-law, named by some as the best chocolatier in the world, would be outraged to learn she was frequenting Dominique Richard’s salon.
    So would the other man at the table, Philippe Lyonnais, come to think of it. And her sister Cade. Probably the only person who wouldn’t mind was Philippe’s fiancée Magalie, who might consider it good for the men to have their arrogance tweaked.
    They were sitting in Hugo Faure and Luc Leroi’s three-star restaurant in the Hôtel de Leucé, full of crystal and gold opulence and the kind of powerful people who could afford three-hundred-euro-per-person dinners. Of course, everyone at their table felt quite at home, or in Magalie’s case, at least pretended. Jaime had a feeling Magalie was good at pretending to feel