Read Online The Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand - Free Book Online

on her hopelessly. That pissed him off. He was supposed to be far too old and too mature and too self-controlled, damn it to fall so pathetically anymore.
    Summer glanced his way. Just for a second that young girl’s radiance was still in her face, reaching out as if it was for him, and then she saw who it was and jumped, the wide-eyed delight disappearing as if he had snuffed it out like a candle. He wanted to force it back somehow, grab her throat and make her look at him as if he was a damned box of cereal.
    The wide-eyed delight came back without need for those measures, even brighter than before. But fake now. Like he wasn’t worth showing any part of her that mattered. “Isn’t this wonderful ? I never even knew hotels had these. It’s like a treasure trove. Aladdin’s Cave. The code to the door should be ‘open sesame.’ ”
    He wanted to stroke his thumb over her mouth until that smile faded and she really saw him, bend his head, say “open sesame” . . .
    â€œDoes it make you . . . hungry?” he asked tautly.
    With a glimmering smile she swooped to pick up a package of some damned miniature Corey bars, ghastly sour-flavored milk chocolate they kept on hand because some of their idiotic American clients were so damned attached to the things. You would think if he could overcome the scars of his own childhood they could get over that one, honestly. “That’s all right, I found something,” Summer said brightly.
    His jaw set. He put a hand on the shelves to either side of them, deliberately, hot joy shooting through him as he caged her with his body. “I thought you didn’t eat sweets.”
    â€œWell . . . I’m very particular.” Her apologetic smile made the words a triple slap.
    His grip tightened on the shelves. He pulled them in, squeezing their space, caging her tighter. “Too particular for me ?”
    She patted one of his tense hands as if it was a dying grandmother’s. “Surely you, of all people, can understand someone being particular. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though. It was only a dessert. In your case.”
    Only a dessert. Only. “Is that why you refused?” he asked between his teeth. “Payback because I was too particular to be your gigolo?”
    Her eyes flared at the word, just a second when he thought he had wounded her or at least gotten something past her smile. She brought one finger up to worry sexily at her lower lip. “Well . . . you’re not the only one who can turn offers down thoughtlessly, you know,” she said, all silk and sugar and a tiny, rough grain of sand.
    The shelves started to cut into his palms. “Oh, were your offer and mine supposed to be even?” He leaned in on her, took all her space. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize having sex with strangers was your life’s work.”
    The smile went entirely out. And then shimmered back into place, like the silk on her body the night before. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” She pressed that lower lip down. And then suddenly—he didn’t even know how she managed it—she was on the other side of him, free of his cage, waving her bag of chocolates like she had just won a game of capture the flag. “I suppose I should have dedicated my life to making things out of sugar instead?”
    It slapped him white. While he was still rigid from the shock she slipped away.
    Â 
    So His Majesty had thought she would be that easy? Summer thought as she swam and swam and swam around the hotel pool. That he could reject her out of hand and still expect to yank her back and make her beg for him any time he cared to pull her strings? She frowned as she showered and dried off and discovered the hotel director was waiting to talk to her. He thought he could control her with desserts, that bastard? Oh, had he underestimated her. Nobody, nobody controlled her that way anymore.
    Summer gave