Blame It on Chocolate

“Honestly, I would if I could get any rest at home. But he didn’t go into work today, so I know he’s still there….”

Nick hesitated just outside the door. He didn’t want to eavesdrop, but he also didn’t want to interrupt some personal, traumatic conversation. His pulse gave an unexpected buck at the idea of some man living in Lucy’s house—someone keeping her up all night, somehow making her afraid to go home.

“You don’t think he had an affair?” Reiko questioned.

“No, no. He’d never do that.” Lucy’s voice sounded wearier than a lead weight bell. “I just couldn’t sleep all night. He was up every hour, needing something—”

“You can’t work all day and take care of him all night, Luce.”

“I know. But I couldn’t turn him away in the middle of the night! And I don’t know whether to try to help the two of them. Or stay out of their problems. Whether to let him stay, or insist he find another place. So far it’s only been the one night, so I just can’t see doing anything until he gets his head on straighter.”

“You stayed with them forever.” The cadence of Reiko’s voice had a hint of her Japanese mother’s. There was a musical softness, a rhythm and gentleness—with steel behind it. “Where my father grew up, a child was responsible for his or her parents their entire lives. But this is America. There should only be two people in a marriage.”

“Yeah, well, as soon as I finally felt I could leave home, they almost immediately started fighting again.”

“But that’s not your fault. It’s theirs.”

“I know, I know. But that doesn’t help me figure out what to do about the situation now. I mean, would you have turned your own dad away—”

Nick had been becoming more and more confused until he heard the word dad. Finally it clicked. She’d been talking about her father. Not a man. Not a lover who may or may not have been having an affair, who was wearing her out at night with his demands, with…Nick swallowed hard. Ridiculous, to realize how high and hard his blood pressure was pounding over something that was none of his business to begin with. Reiko spotted him.

“Hey, Mr. Nick, how’s it going?”

“Fine, fine. How’s the little one?” he asked, referring to her little boy, but at that moment Lucy spun around and spotted him, too. She promptly turned peach-pink and dropped her porcelain mug…which, of course, promptly shattered in a half-dozen pieces, coffee spilling everywhere.

Talk about immediate chaos. Both women immediately yelped, and then both talked ten for a dozen as they ran around for paper towels or rags. Nick just scooped up the porcelain shards and carried them to the closest wastebasket, both women fussing the whole time.

“You’ll cut yourself, Nick—”

“Let me clean that. It was all my fault. Neither of you have to help—”

Okay. Once they recovered from that minor debacle, he managed to finally slip in a word. “I know I’m early, Lucy. But I just need a few minutes with you—” That wasn’t strictly true, but he figured if they started out with a productive, short meeting, they’d have a better shot working out the hairier issues the next time.

“Sure, sure, of course. But unless we need to be sitting at a desk, let’s walk toward the greenhouses, okay?”

He definitely liked the idea. It was always easier to walk and talk than to be stuck sitting still. Besides which, they had to go through the labs to get to the greenhouse area, and he always loved wandering through the lab. Bernard’s major manufacturing kitchens had similar equipment—conchers, winnowing machines and all. But everything was in smaller size here, with more done by hand. And the best part, of course, was getting to sample some cacao nibs or the latest experimental chocolates, or just poke a finger in whatever liquid concoction the staff was stirring up next—at least if someone didn’t slap his hand.

“Don’t touch,” Lucy scolded.

“The last I noticed, I own the place,” he reminded her.

“I know, I know. But every process in here is a serious secret. And touching anything could monkey with an experiment’s results.”

“Nothing’s supposed to be a secret from me,” he said, his eyes narrowing on a fresh batch of roasted shelled cacao beans in a tray on the far counter.

She steered him firmly toward the door to the greenhouse marked BLISS, saying patiently, “I know you’re the boss. But you’re just a teeny bit dumb, Nick, as much as we all love you. Your gramps has the touch. The understanding. The instinct. You don’t.”

“Hey,” he said, in his most injured voice, but he wasn’t offended—even remotely. It was always like this. Lucy was a wreck around him outside, or in the offices, or up at the house. But the closer she got to her own venue, the more comfortable and bossy she got—and the more fun. It was like watching the transformation from an obedient, boring Cinderella into a fine, confident, sassy wicked witch.

She key-coded herself—and him—into the greenhouse, then motioned him in first. “Now, Nick, I totally realize that you’re the brilliant one from the business side of the fence. Orson has told me a zillion times how Bernard’s was just a small-potatoes family chocolatier until you were a teenager and started nudging him with marketing ideas. And then taking the whole thing over. So I know you’re brilliant. But you need people like me to do the dirty-hands stuff—”

“You’re just saying that so I’ll stay out of the chocolate samples.”

“True.”

“I’m kind of offended that you think I’d mind getting my hands dirty. It’s not true. As a kid, I played in mud nonstop.”

“That’s nice,” she said as she smacked his hand one more time—he’d almost reached another sampling plate right before they entered the greenhouse wing. After slapping him, twice now, she just went on doing the miniature wicked witch thing—albeit in sneakers. “You just don’t understand how delicate the process is. You have no reason to. It’s not your problem. But everything has to be right.”

“You think I didn’t realize that?”

“Oh cripes. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Of course you know all that, but in your job, you need all that knowledge at an intellectual level. Where in mine…well, I just don’t know how anyone could do my job well if they weren’t an obsessively fussy perfectionist.” She said it tactfully, as if she felt sorry for him that he couldn’t have that character trait. “You also have to be messy. And those two things usually don’t go together. Which is why it’s so darn hard to create really good chocolate.”

He found it fascinating that she had the arrogance to think he needed a lecture on the chocolate business. But damn. She always saw things so differently from him that his curiosity was invariably aroused. “Say what? What does messiness have to do with creating good chocolate?”

“Well, maybe messiness isn’t the right word. But you can’t do everything by the book. You can’t just tidily follow a recipe and hope it’ll turn out. Because each cacao bean is different, every batch of chocolate has the potential to turn out differently. So to make the best stuff, you have to be flexible. Sensitive to the smells, the tastes, the textures. The nitty gritty of it all.”

“I get it now. You have to be a hard-core sensualist. Like you.”

Her jaw dropped. “No, I didn’t mean that. I’m no sensualist.”

“The hell you aren’t,” he murmured. And lightning suddenly crackled in the air. Not outside. Inside.

The Night of the Chocolate was suddenly between them, the memory in her eyes, in her arrested posture. The doors were closed behind them, locking them into the greenhouse environment. The climate wasn’t hothouse here, but it was a world different from a freezing Minnesota March morning. A tangly jungle of cacao trees of all shapes and sizes looked exotic and wild. The air was warm and moist, every breath flavored with pungent, earthy smells.

But this morning, he couldn’t enjoy it. He wanted to kick himself. Sometimes he got on so well with Lucy—he really liked being with her—when she was naturally herself. And he’d blown it up by bringing up that night, a memory that was obviously awkward and miserable for her.

Hell. He couldn’t bat a run today to save his life. He tried pitching from a different stadium. “You know why I wanted to meet with you. We don’t have to pin down everything this instant but we do need to talk about plans. How to work together. A time frame.”

“I know. Orson filled me in that you were going to be stuck working with me.”

“Not stuck.” Damn, the woman started disappearing from sight the minute they got in her Bliss greenhouse. She wasn’t being evasive. It’s just that she checked the temperature on something and the water level on something else, and suddenly she was off.

He trailed after her. “The building of the greenhouses—I’ll take care of that. Won’t take that long if I get a crew on it. But I need your input on the details. You want this set up to be a model for all the new ones, or do you want variations? How many kitchen-labs do you want attached to the new project. All that kind of thing.”

“No sweat. I’d love to work all that out for you—in fact, I could map out a drawing of the ideal layout—have it for you by tomorrow, if you want. One thing we need to immediately discuss, though, is trees.”

“What about trees, specifically?”

“Well, for starters, cost. What exactly is my budget?”

“Hmm. As much as we love you, Luce,” he said wryly, mimicking her own phrase from earlier, “I tend to think you’ve got the same money sense as my grandfather. Not that you’re dumb. Just that you’re a ton stronger at the creative, vision end than figuring out how we’re going to pay for it. So how about if you just tell me what you need, put it on paper, and then let me worry about the budget side of things.”

“Um, are you insulting me?”

“Definitely, yes. You and Orson are two peas in a pod about money.”

“That was a really nice compliment. Comparing me to your grandfather. You know I love him.”