16. Gold-Leafed Chocolate Truffles #2
“Ambassador Rousseau.” Lucas extended his hand for a handshake, though the other remained at my back. “May I present my friend, Marie Zola. Marie, Ambassador Rousseau serves as France’s representative here in Brazil. He’s also the devil who talked me into coming here tonight.”
“My table needed some better company,” the ambassador admonished. “And Lyons Corp needs to close that contract with the Brazilians tomorrow morning, no? The French want their peace too. No reason we can’t do it with some decent steak as well, eh, Marie? Enchanté, ma chérie .”
I couldn’t help but smile at the man’s jovial personality. “ Le plaisir est pour moi, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur .”
The ambassador’s eyebrows rose with obvious delight. “Ah! Vous parlez francais! Vous avez vécu en France ?”
“Marie just returned from studying in Paris,” Lucas cut in, clearly bemused by the sudden shift in conversation.
I nodded. “At L’Institut Culinaire de Paris .”
“She’s a chef,” Lucas added. “A damn good one.”
The ambassador’s eyes popped open. “ Magnifique ! And what do you think of the Brazilian cuisine compared to French?”
I thought about that for a moment. “To me…French cuisine is about technique. It’s all about the perfect cut of meat, the exact crumb of bread, the subtle art of a sauce.
Brazilian ingredients are more spontaneous and unexpected, I think, with their flavors.
Together, they create something beautiful. ”
As the ambassador and I launched into a discussion of Brazilian and French culinary traditions, I was vaguely aware of Lucas watching me.
The conversation flowed easily, touching on everything from the influence of Portuguese colonization on Brazilian food to the evolution of nouvelle cuisine in France.
This certainly had nothing to do with Lucas’s intentions for the evening.
But he remained, listening like it was the most fascinating discussion he’d ever heard.
“Your friend is very charming,” Ambassador Rousseau told Lucas when we were called to take our seats. “You’re a lucky man.”
“Indeed.” Lucas’s hand found mine and squeezed. “I am.”
The dinner progressed through multiple courses, each more elaborate than the last. I found myself in conversation with a Brazilian senator’s wife about the art scene in S?o Paulo, then with a German trade attaché about the challenges of sustainable agriculture.
Each interaction boosted my confidence a little more until I almost forgot to be nervous.
Almost.
After the meat course, an orchestra began playing, and couples started moving toward a dance floor that had been cleared near the pool.
“Shall we?” Lucas rose from his seat.
It wasn’t a crazy request. Many people were dancing now, and we had already watched the guests of honor, together with the Brazilian president and his wife, take to the floor. The music playing was a simple two-step, which I thought I could manage.
Even so, the request surprised me. “This isn’t the conservatory. You want to dance with your cook in front of all these people?”
“I want to dance with you . Especially in front of all these people.” He offered his hand, just as he had among the roses. “Unless you’d prefer to discuss monetary policy with the Minister of Finance.”
I laughed and allowed him to pull me up and escort me to the floor.
“I should warn you,” I said as the soothing notes of “Corvocado” floated from the bandstand. “Joni’s the dancer. I can probably avoid your toes, but the only other time I’ve danced with anyone since I was maybe ten was that night of your parents’ anniversary party.”
“I don’t remember many other times myself,” he admitted, though he negotiated a perfect turn that left me no option but to follow. “But I do remember how you move.”
We turned again, his broad palm warm against my back, his other hand cradling mine like piece of china. Precious. His grip wasn’t possessive, but it anchored me all the same. He kept me from drifting somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.
“I knew you were the person to come with me.” His breath warmed my temple. “Speaking French like a native, charming diplomats, looking like you were born to wear diamonds.”
“Well, the diamond is yours,” I reminded him.
“Technically, it’s Harry Winston’s. But it looks better on you than in any showcase.” His eyes met mine. “Everything looks better on you.”
We were moving closer together now, the formal distance shrinking until I could feel the warmth of his body through his tuxedo. Not indecently, but just there. Present. Steady.
The hand at my back pressed a little harder, urging me closer, and I found myself following that lead too.
I had a feeling I might follow Lucas Lyons almost anywhere.
“Lucas,” I started, though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.
“I didn’t mean it, you know.” He swept me through another turn, one that made him pull me completely to his broad chest.
“Mean what?”
“That night.” His voice was so quiet, only I could hear it. “When I said it was a message.”
I blinked. And then the things I had momentarily forgotten sprang back into my cloudy vision. Things like home. My job.
Daniel.
Whom I hadn’t even spoken to in over a week.
“Some of it was,” Lucas continued. “I was sent to tell you where he’d gone. But he didn’t ask you to dance, Marie. And he didn’t ask me to kiss you, either.”
His meaning washed through me like a wave. “Lucas?—”
We had stopped moving, though the music carried on around us. Couples swept past us in elegant lines, laughter and diplomacy floating just beneath the tunes. But Lucas didn’t let go.
His gaze fixed me in place as securely as his hands had held me this morning, quiet and consuming, as if the noise and silk and glitter around us didn’t exist. As if this were a moment he intended to memorize and undo in the same breath.
Maybe it was the wine or the whiskey being imbibed freely throughout the crowd, though neither of us had had a drop.
Maybe it was the music that seemed to have infected the whole place with romance.
But no one seemed to care as Lucas pulled me too close for polite company, close enough that I could feel the hard lines of his body through my taffeta and the long line of his thigh pressing through my skirt.
The hand at my back was bookended us together while his other slipped between us so he could brush his thumb over my bottom lip, then the top, tracing their shapes all the way around.
“So beautiful,” he murmured. “So very sweet.”
I sucked in a breath. His eyes dilated when I tucked my bottom lip between my teeth.
“That’s dangerous,” he warned with a slight growl.
Immediately, I released my lip with a light pop. It only made him growl a little louder.
“I’d like another taste,” he rumbled as he leaned down. “If you’re willing.”
I think I nodded. Maybe. Honestly, I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that his head dipped, and the world narrowed to the space between his mouth and mine. His breath seared my lips.
I wasn’t breathing at all.
The song ended, and my phone buzzed in the clutch hanging from my wrist, interrupting the spell. We broke apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers, not mature adults dancing in the middle of a party.
“Lucas—” I started.
“You should check that.” His voice was hoarse as he pulled at his collar.
With shaking hands, I fumbled for my phone to see Daniel’s name.
Regret flashed across Lucas’s face before he assumed the stoic expression I was coming to learn was a mask. People said Lucas Lyons didn’t have a heart. But I suspected he felt more deeply than most.
“Take it. I have to talk to some people anyway.”
“But I thought you said you wouldn’t leave?—”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence before he was weaving through the crowd.
I sighed and stepped away from the dance floor before I answered the call. “Daniel?”
“Marie!” Daniel’s voice was warm and big, filled with everything I hadn’t seen in Lucas’s eyes. “How’s it going, honey? Is my brother working you to the bone?”
“It’s…no, of course he’s not.” I glanced around the opulent party, seeing that Lucas had just asked another woman to dance. She was a very attractive woman with hair the color of gold rippling down her back.
I turned on my heel and walked out of the tent. My face burned, and for some reason, my chest felt like it was about to explode.
None of this made sense. None of it.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked Daniel. “Where are you?”
“Oh, you know. Out with some friends.” Music and conversation collided in the background, the sounds of a bar or club. “Having a few drinks, playing some pool. Just missing my girl.”
Instinctively, I frowned. A few weeks ago, being referred to as “his girl” would have made my heart skip a beat. Now it just made me suspicious.
Daniel and I had only been on one “date,” if you could even count walking drunkenly around his parents’ property a date, before he kissed me in a boathouse. And then didn’t call me for more than a week.
“Are you okay, Daniel? You sound a little off.”
“I’m fine, honey,” he slurred quickly. “I keep thinking about that night we danced at Mom and Dad’s party. Before Lucas showed up and ruined everything. I keep remembering how much I wanted to kiss you. You gonna let me kiss you again one of these days, gorgeous?”
The words stung, though I wasn’t sure why. “Lucas didn’t ruin anything. You had to leave for the hospital?—”
“Right. The hospital .” Daniel’s laugh was bitter. “With the Hubbards . Never-ending, that ‘hospital trip.’”
I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know who the Hubbards were beyond the fact that one was a senator, or why they were so frustrating to him. “Daniel?—”
“I miss you, Marie. I really do.” His voice slurred again. “Keep thinking about those pretty eyes. Those pretty lips. God, you’re pretty, you know that?”
I wanted to feel something at his words. I really did. I yearned for the rush of attraction that had sustained my crush for years, but all I felt was distance. Like he was speaking to someone else entirely.
“I miss you too,” I heard myself say. But the words were wooden.
“Good. When do you get back, honey? Wanna pick up where we left off?”
“Almost three weeks. Lucas has a lot of meetings?—”
“Of course he does.”
His voice was so full of vitriol that I held the phone away from my ear and looked at the contact photo on my screen. Daniel’s perfect smile, his blue eyes, the golden tan.
The slight redness at the tip of his nose.
I squinted.
It was subtle, but it was there. How had I never noticed it before? The faint flush that came from too much drinking, too many nights like this one.
The same flush that touched every photo of my mother I’d ever seen.
“Marie? You there?”
“Uh, yeah.” I held the phone back to my ear. “Sorry, yes. I’m here. But I should go. The next course is starting.”
He didn’t even ask what the course was for, which would have caught me out on a blatant lie. Still hadn’t even asked about what I was actually doing tonight.
“Sure, of course. Have fun with, I don’t know, your cookie sheets or whatever.” There was an edge to his voice that I didn’t like. “Just don’t forget about us little people back home.”
Before I could answer, the line went dead, leaving me staring at my phone.
I looked back toward the dance floor, where Lucas was still with the blonde. Every so often, he would glance around the party. I didn’t know if he was searching for me or for someone else. The people he was supposed to meet with, or maybe just another dance partner.
I shoved my phone back into my clutch, then turned to find a quiet spot. There was a bench along the wall near the edge of the pool, half in shadow, blessedly isolated.
I sat.
I looked down at my gown, this carefully curated version of myself. The hair, the heels, the clutch all felt like a costume for a story I’d written to survive Paris, brought home like a souvenir I didn’t know how to wear anymore.
Maybe I was never meant to be in the center of things. Obscurity had always been my companion: quiet corners, dim lights, polite silences. Before Paris, that life felt safe, if predictable. I was invisible, yes, but not exposed.
Maybe that’s who I really was. Maybe it’s who I was always meant to be.
The problem was, I didn’t know if I could go back to that life of obscurity.
Not after someone looked at me like I wasn’t invisible. Even if he didn’t really believe it himself.