When Chocolate Is Not Enough...

Then she looked into his eyes.

Okay. Perhaps not such a good boy after all.

In fact those eyes were sparkling with excitement, and an interest which seemed to be aimed at her.

A frisson of more than professional interest lit like a fuse inside her poor heart—before she dumped a large bucket of icy water over it.

This was a married man with a child, whose mother was still sitting in the retaurant! The sooner she remembered that and let him get back to his coffee and his elegant and stunningly beautiful wife the better.

Handsome people who had won first prize in the gene pool lottery belonged together—not in kitchens with the hired help.

Daisy lifted her chin. She had waved goodbye to being second best the day she’d packed her bags and left Paris and her cheating former boyfriend Pascal behind. Not even this Greek-god-handsome face and body were going to sway her down that rocky path again. She had learnt the hard way that good things did not always come in beautifully wrapped packages.

This man looked like a praline wrapped in gold foil, but for all she knew that tempting cover might well conceal a bitter lemon boiled sweet. All promises. No delivery. Been there, done that, and hadn’t even come back with the T-shirt to show for it.

‘Did you need something, Mr Ormandy?’ she asked in as sweet a voice as she could manage—but the tone seemed to emerge as a sort of a squeak.

‘I was hoping that you might spare me a few minutes to talk about a business proposition, Ms Flynn. And please call me Max, as all my friends do,’ he murmured, and flashed her the full-on charming smile which, aimed at any other woman, would instantly have had her on her knees.

The cheek of the man! His wife was still in the same room, chatting to the head chef. She didn’t know what kind of business proposition he had to offer her, but she knew she didn’t want anything to do with it.

Even so, she had to rally her defences before replying.

‘A business proposition? What kind of business could we possibly have in common? Unless, of course, you happen to be in the chocolate trade? That is the only way you could tempt me to take you seriously.’

She had intended him to take her question as a joke. After all, she wasn’t interested in the least in whatever he had to offer.

This was why his reply hit Daisy right between the eyes and rendered her completely speechless.

‘Actually, I am in the chocolate trade. I happen to own an organic cocoa plantation in St Lucia. The Treveleyn Estate grows some of the finest organic cocoa beans in the world, and I’m looking for a dessert chef who is as passionate about chocolate as I am. Tempted now?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘HAVE you ever heard of the Federation of Organic Cocoa Growers?’

Daisy looked at Max over the rim of her coffee cup and gave a quick nod of affirmation. They had escaped to a quiet corner of the restaurant while the waiting staff cleared the room after the end of the lunch service, but she was pleased that she was not alone with Max—especially since his lovely wife had already waved him goodbye and headed off towards the shops, leaving them to talk chocolate.

Chocolate. That was what she had to focus on. Not the way his blue eyes looked at her with such intensity that they seemed to glow.

He wanted to talk to her about chocolate. She could do that all day.

‘I buy most of my chocolate from a small Belgian company who source their raw cocoa paste from federation members.’ She put down her coffee cup, but wrapped her fingers around the delicate china before speaking again. ‘Why do you ask?’

Max shuffled forward in his seat and rested his elbows on the table as he stretched his arms out towards her, closing the gap between them and making her wriggle a little on her chair.

‘Simply this,’ he said. ‘I’ve just flown back from St Lucia so that I can attend their annual conference. It’s being hosted this year by a hotel chain who specialise in boutique eco-hotels in luxurious settings. Think Bali, Malaysia, Costa Rica and a few unspoilt sites across Europe. Their hotel in Cornwall was a working abbey until a few years ago—they were virtually self-contained. And organic.’

Daisy smiled and took another sip of coffee. ‘Any conference about cocoa sounds wonderful to me. I do struggle to keep up with the latest news sometimes—especially at this time of the year. In fact Tara is expecting me back in the office to get ready for two hen parties and a wedding rehearsal buffet lunch. I wasn’t joking about the wedding season, and there’s lots of extra cooking to do.’ She licked her lips and put down her cup. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I am not passionate about chocolate. I’m just busy.’

Max laid his hand over hers just as she started to stand, startling her with the gentleness of his touch and the pressure of unfamiliar skin against hers.

‘That’s good to hear,’ he said. ‘Because I haven’t got to the really good bit yet. This is a conference with a difference.’ He slid his hand away before she had a chance to say anything.

Daisy breathed out in exasperation and frowned at him, only to be met with a smile of such total confidence that she finally surrendered to her curiosity and slid back into her chair.

‘Five minutes,’ she replied, and made a thing of looking at her watch.

Almost instinctively she sensed Max move forward, just enough to make her want to shuffle back, but she fought it to finish off her coffee and lower the cup back into the saucer with a clatter.

‘I don’t want to be rude, but either you’re on commission for the hotel chain or I’m missing something here. Last time I checked St Lucia was a Caribbean island with pretty spectacular scenery and a lovely coastline of its own. Has the wonderful world of the internet not reached your plantation yet? I’m sure it is much more economical to do business over the web these days. I certainly wouldn’t want to waste my time at parties when I could be working.’

‘You’re quite right.’ He nodded in acknowledgement. ‘But I wasn’t joking about having a business proposition. You are clearly just as passionate about your business as I am about mine. That is why I have an idea which could be of benefit to both of us.’

His fingers tapped for a few seconds on the table.

‘Let me start by telling you why I have travelled thousands of miles to be here, Ms Flynn. Firstly, I have my daughter’s birthday coming up—but you already know that.’ He paused for a second to flash a laser beam smile which made her choke slightly on the dregs in her cup. ‘What you may not know is that for the last twenty years or so every sack of cocoa beans leaving the Treveleyn Estate has been snapped up at market prices by one of the largest confectionery companies in Japan.’

He raised one hand and then the other as he spoke, so that each word seemed to be punctuated by the waggle or curve of his fingers.

‘They want top-quality cocoa beans which they roast and process in-house, and they come to me to make that happen—which is good news for them and good news for me … as far as it goes.’

His hands dropped back down to the table. ‘The problem is that even with premium pricing there is still not enough money coming into the estate to give the farmers who work there a decent income and provide a future for their families.’

He sat back and stretched out his long legs, but she could see the tension in the multiple creases on his forehead and in the muscles in his neck.

‘When I bought the estate I made a commitment to the families who work for me that I would make it my business to trade the amazing product we grow for the best price. Since then I’ve been working to make that happen. With something new. And that is why I am back in England.’ Max reached down inside his rucksack and pulled out a zipped plastic bag containing a large white plastic ice cream container. ‘Two years ago we started roasting and processing some of the cocoa on the estate. It has taken a lot of hard work, but I finally think we are there.’

He waved the box and carefully undid the lid a little. The delicious, powerful aroma of freshly ground chocolate filled the space between them.

‘This is only a small sample of the cocoa paste I made last week. My plantation specialises in rare and amazing varieties of cocoa bean—the kind of fine flavour which would give unique characteristics to any chocolate. Now I am looking for new buyers who can truly appreciate what fine chocolate from a single estate in the West Indies can taste like, smell like—feel like on your tongue when you eat it.’

His mouth twisted into a smile of pleasure and delight as he spoke the words, and Daisy sat mesmerised, tempted to take a closer look at the raw chocolate and yet holding back, just in case it truly was as remarkable as Max believed it to be.

‘But there is a problem.’ He bowed slightly in her direction. ‘I want to sell this pure cocoa direct to chefs. And to me the best way of doing that is by showing the master chocolatiers at this conference just how terrific my cocoa can be in the hands of someone who has a passion for chocolate. In short, I need someone like you, Miss Flynn.’

Daisy blinked several times and stared at Max across the table. ‘Why me? There are lots of dessert chefs in London who would love to try your chocolate if it is as good as you say it is.’

‘I have just tasted a sample of your work. Believe me—my cocoa would be perfect for desserts like the one I have just eaten. Silken, perfumed and delicious. With just a hint of spice. I know that my chocolate and your recipes would be an amazing combination. In exchange you would, of course, be the first chef in the world to use artisan single-estate cocoa from the Treveleyn Estate. And all you have to do is agree to use my chocolate. What do you say? Are you willing to give it a try?’

Daisy’s heart started thumping as the impact of what Max was suggesting hit home.

A new organic chocolate supplier from the West Indies was offering her a single-estate fine chocolate. This could be the final magical ingredient she had been looking for—that unique final piece of the huge jigsaw puzzle.

It had taken her three years to recover from her disappointment in Paris, and there was not a day that had gone by without her thinking about how she could take that final step. Her very own signature chocolate. If there was any chance at all of her opening a chocolate shop with her name above the door, then she needed something remarkable to give her a unique edge over the other competitors.

She had worked hard, studied hard, and she had spent month after month working on recipes she knew would succeed. And yet she still had not felt quite ready to make the leap to her own business—not without that very special extra factor that would make her stand out from the crowd.

She had been disappointed before, but this could be it—she had to give him a chance.