Unable to help myself, I closed my eyes and remembered. I could almost feel the frosty air on my face, the subtle glide of my skates. I could nearly hear the clap of my stick on the ice, the way it felt to hit the puck.
My chest clenched. Hard.
Fuck.
Opening my eyes, I went back to kneading, picking up the dough to slap it hard onto the counter. I’d chosen a nice sourdough sandwich bread to make, knowing the dough would require a lot of kneading to get the gluten going.
This was my therapy now. Baking and, to a lesser extent, cooking. The precision and concentration needed to create something truly exceptional crowded my brain and didn’t leave room for all the other dark and twisted thoughts. For a while, at least.
But I couldn’t chase Emma Maron out of my head. Which was a problem. It was my own fault for continuing to engage with her. But what was I supposed to do when I walked into my temporary home and found a fairy princess gazing around with wide blue eyes? I had to get her out of my space. I thought she’d scare easily and run.
Instead she’d called my bluff and left me hard and aching for her. She’d wanted to know if it mattered who saw me naked. As if there was any doubt.
I’d caught sight of her on the little balcony the moment I’d walked up to the pool. It had been a mild shock but not enough to stop me. Knowing she was watching had been a bit of titillation, a small thrill in my otherwise staid life. I even played it up, getting out of the pool in a way I knew would let her see everything. It hadn’t turned me on, exactly. My heart had been too heavy with old memories last night. But it had been something different, something outside the simmering rage and frustration I usually carried.
When I’d looked up to find her gone, I’d been weirdly disappointed. Foolish. Despite our heated exchange, I wasn’t about to try anything with Emma. I just wanted to be alone.
Yeah, a regular Greta Garbo I was. I was also a liar.
The truth had barely crystalized in my head when Sal sauntered in, wearing a purple-and-blue silk caftan that was the same as the one Amalie wore today.
“You gotta stop dressing exactly like Mamie,” I said by way of greeting. “It’s doing my head in.”
He stopped on the other side of the counter. “Don’t tell me you have a problem with men who have fabulous taste in clothes.”
“Please. Who brought you that overpriced banana-yellow drapey dress you just had to have when we were hanging out in Paris five years ago? If it was fabulous is debatable.”
Sal’s look of disgust almost made me smile. “Only you would refer to a gorgeous Tadashi Shoji couture gown as an overpriced banana-yellow drapey dress. Really, Luc, the disrespect.”
“It draped and was yellow.”
“Ugh.” Sal sighed dramatically, then eyed me. “I am not dressing like Amalie.”
“Yes, you are. To a T, as Amalie would say.” I glanced at him before going back to my dough. “You’re even wearing the same shade of lipstick she has on today.”
Sal peered at himself in the reflection of a hanging copper pot and then frowned. “Shit. You’re right. We’re merging.”
“I can’t handle two Mamies right now. One is more than enough.”
His laugh was self-deprecating, because we both knew the power of Mamie; without even trying she had a way of enfolding you into her world. “Fine. I’ll leave the Pucci to Amalie. But I’m not giving up my Dolce or Chanel.”
“Aside from Chanel, I don’t know what any of those things are.”
“But you do know Chanel.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I didn’t bother mentioning that Cassandra loved all things Chanel—not Amalie’s particular perfume, thank Christ—but I’d been on the receiving end of enough bills to know the fashion house and fear it. Cassandra liked to shop. A lot.
It was a relief to realize I didn’t miss her. Not even the idea of her. I slapped the dough on the counter with a satisfying thwap and then looked at Sal. I’d known him half my life by this point, yet while I was becoming a shadow of who I’d once been, he’d come into his own.
My fingers sank into the smooth, springing mass of dough. “You know and like yourself exactly as you are, Sallie. That’s a rare thing.”
As soon as the words were out, I felt exposed. Raw. Biting back a grimace, I focused on my task. But I felt his quiet pity along my skin. It invaded my lungs like the sour stink of scorched milk.
But when I glanced up, I found his eyes were filled with understanding and a solemn affection that made me realize we were more like brothers than either of us had ever acknowledged.
“Luc, did it ever occur to you that I found that confidence, in part, because of you?”
Shocked, I shook my head woodenly.
Sal smiled faintly. “It meant something to this queer boy that a big brute of a hockey player accepted him without question. It meant something that you were ready to throw down if someone so much as looked at me the wrong way.”
I swallowed thickly. “Some people are assholes. I couldn’t stand by and let anyone shit on you.”
“I know. That’s my point, Luc. None of us live in a vacuum. Sometimes we have to accept the support of others.”
Hell.
I stared at the counter, not knowing what to say.
The moment stretched, then broke so cleanly it was as if nothing had been said. Sal went back to humming and watching me work the dough.
“Did you need anything?” I asked, knowing that he and Amalie had decided to tag team me on the topic of Emma.
Proving me right, Sal shrugged, then straightened the sleeves of his caftan. “Thought you might like to know how breakfast went this morning.”
The breakfast Sal had with Emma. Against my will, my heart rate kicked up.
“I don’t.”
Sal gave that lie the respect it deserved. “Your girl didn’t like the pain aux raisins.”
“She’s not my . . . she didn’t like the rolls?” It shouldn’t have upset me. Taste was subjective; people liked different things. But . . . she didn’t like them.
Sal snagged a gouda-and-rosemary cracker from a tray I had cooling. “She doesn’t like raisins. But she devoured the yogurt with a passion that was near orgasmic.”
My lower abs went hot and tight in response. I suddenly resented Sal for being the one who got to see that. It was my own damn fault; I’d sent him off with the breakfast basket instead of delivering it myself.
I concentrated on my dough and the nonorgasmic information Sal had given me. “So no raisins.”
What then? Croissant? Pain aux chocolat? Chaussons aux pommes?
“She loved the fruit as well,” Sal said, cutting into my thoughts. He smirked, munching on the cracker. “Though you can hardly take credit for that.”
Watch me, buddy.
I’d picked that fruit, cleaned it, sliced it at just the right thickness. That was my fruit. Every bite she’d put in her mouth, every moan of pleasure she’d made, had been because of me. And fuck, that turned me on so badly my hands shook.
She liked fruit. I’d try the chaussons aux pommes, then. I’d be shocked if the woman didn’t enjoy apple turnovers.
“Plotting your next form of culinary seduction, are we?” Sal stole another cracker.