Blame It on Chocolate

CHAPTER THREE

EVEN THOUGH Nick drove the satin-black Lotus from the house to the labs, the dogs managed to beat him. He could have walked, but the whole idea of driving was to avoid the slobber and dog hair. He had a business flight at noon, was hoping to stay clean until then.

“But that was silly thinking on my part, wasn’t it, girls?” he murmured when he opened the car door and was immediately assaulted—lavishly, lovingly assaulted—by the two tail-wagging dimwits. Baby was the kisser. Boo Boo was the devil incarnate—trying to climb in the Lotus, nearly killing them both, threatening the soft leather seats, then after kissing him senseless with her long, wet tongue, taking off with his driving glove. Two pawprints the size of footballs showed up on his gray slacks.

“Women,” he muttered, although he really didn’t mean to disparage the gender. Not when the female gender was found in dogs, anyway. Women were another story entirely. Some days it just didn’t pay a guy to get up, you know? Linnie had called that morning.

Their conversation was still sucking the energy out of him. When he first met her, Linnie had seemed every guy’s daydream. She had no morals. No inhibitions. Money of her own. Nothing was too wild for her, in bed or in life. She was fun, crazy, unpredictable. Hell, when she dressed for a party, you never knew if even her critical parts were gonna be covered.

It had been an entertaining, worthless, fun affair—until he’d broken it off. It never occurred to him that she’d care. She’d never hinted at wanting more than an occasional good time. There were other guys in her life, he knew, and that was totally okay with him. He only called it off because he was so damned busy, really didn’t have time to do the planning, the partying, couldn’t just take off and vacation whenever she had the whim. He never thought it’d be a big deal to her. He just thought calling a friendly halt was being honest.

Apart from the ear blistering she’d given him—and that was several months ago—she’d kept calling ever since. She needed an escort for something. Then a favor about something else. This morning was another one of those “something elses.” And when he couldn’t—he honestly couldn’t—she did the ear blistering thing again.

All his life—as of kindergarten anyway—girls had chased him. All his life, he’d liked it.

Only lately, he felt like he was batting a zero. Nothing he did with women was right. “Including you girls.” He crouched down to scrub both Baby and Boo Boo’s heads before straightening again. “You can’t go into the greenhouses. You know that.”

They went up to the door anyway, wagging their tails, expectant. They knew Lucy was in there.

So did Nick.

Not a good idea to see Lucy when he was already having a bad-woman day, but there was no help for it. The new project loomed like a mountain in his mind. They needed to figure out how they could best work together, talk about both the details and the big picture, establish some timetables, put a plan on paper. Possibly Lucy didn’t need every possible t crossed—but he did. Either that or he was going to drive himself bonkers worrying about it.

The truth was, that guilt had chewed on his nerves ever since the night—around seven weeks ago—when she’d called him with the news about her experiment’s success. Until that night, he’d had no measure of how strong her crush on him was. Until that night, she’d never been this awkward around him.

He’d screwed up. Nick took all the blame because it didn’t matter what Lucy had done. What mattered was that he’d been in a far better position, life-wise, to anticipate and cope with certain kinds of awkward problems. She was naive. He wasn’t. It was as simple as that, and although he’d been ultracareful around her ever since, it hadn’t helped. If they got a good working arrangement agreed on, though, he had high hopes they’d click a ton more naturally.

Right?

Right.

He pushed open the door, still mentally coaching himself into an upbeat frame of mind. She wasn’t expecting him for another half hour, but he knew she always got in early. With any luck, they could get this conversation finished before she was really busy—or he had to leave for his flight.

The lobby was empty and silent except for the pitiful moans of the Great Danes left outside the door. The lobby, predictably, was empty, but right after that came the long hall to the offices. Lucy’s was empty, but he heard the sound of her voice from the coffee room down the hall.

Reiko, the young mom of a four-year-old boy, seemed to be counseling her. “I just think you should go home. Get some rest, Lucy. You’re obviously exhausted.”

“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.”

“He thinks the world of you, too. But moving on…”

“Oh. Yeah. About the trees. The thing is—I need to start ordering rootstock now. It’s such a major complicated process to get stock from South America and Africa. And if there’s any chance you can get the greenhouses up and ready to rock and roll over the next few months—I really need to get those orders going pretty promptly.”

“Okay.”

She stopped carrying around hoses and a dirt-crusted fork and peered up at him. Those soft hazel eyes looked bruised-tired. Almost golden in color. Cat’s eyes, he always thought. Sometimes sleepy cat’s eyes, sometimes sensual as a kitten in the sunlight. Usually sensuality and innocence didn’t naturally go together, but that was just it, in Lucy’s case…

“Nick?”

“Sorry, didn’t hear you.”

“I said, do you understand how Bliss was created?”

She was getting formal and bossy and pedantic again. The way she got when she was nervous. What the hell’d he do wrong this time? “Sure I know how Bliss was made. Did you forget I’ve been part of Bernard Chocolates since I got out of diapers?”

“You’ve been part of the family business…but from everything you’ve ever said, I understand you were always part of the manufacturing and business side of the chocolate fence. All the parts involved in getting from the cacao beans to the candy. But I wasn’t sure if you were familiar with the first part—how you get to the cacao beans to start with.”

“I know the basics. The names of the beans. Where they come from. Where we get them. What they cost.”

For some unknown reason, she handed him a hose—a dripping hose with a little mud on it—while she rambled down another aisle and ducked her head under some more plants. “But all those basics are really complex. In fact, I really believe the reason Bernard’s chocolate is so fabulous is because we’re meticulous about every single step in the process. Like in the roasting process, we’re fussy right down to the seconds on timing. And we use way more cocoa butter than lecithin. And we don’t just buy the best beans, we work really hard to discover unique blends.” She surfaced for air, before ducking under another plant. “In fact, that’s always been one of my favorite jobs. Experimenting with different blends…”

“Um, Luce, could we stay on target?”

“I am. This is the whole point. That we’re meticulous about everything. The winnowing. The grinding, the dutching, the conching. The tempering…hold this for me for a second, would you?”

Out of nowhere she handed him a football-sized purple pod. Purple, as in ripe. Granted, he wasn’t wearing a suit, just dress slacks and a decent shirt. His jacket was already hanging in the jet. But his intention was definitely to fly directly to a meeting in short order, which meant that holding onto a dripping hose and a prize-ripe cacao pod wasn’t precisely an ideal situation.

“Lucy,” he started to say—in his most patient, understanding voice. But she was still ranting on.

“Because that’s the thing, Nick. All those parts of the process are like pieces of a puzzle. Every truly great chocolatier has its secrets that no one else has. Anybody could end up with an edible chocolate bar or a nice-tasting truffle. But Bernard’s has always gone the long mile to find the better secrets, the better process, to do the work…”

He’d lost her. She’d disappeared somewhere where the pods looked the ripest. That was the whole problem with working with a perfectionist. She had to get every detail said and when she got on the subject of chocolate, she was like a windup toy with an ever-ready battery.

From the beginning, Nick had wished he’d had Lucy on the sales force. Hell, he’d have hired her to be the sales force—if he could pin her down for two seconds when she was cleaned up. Almost the whole time he’d known her, though, she was invariably up to her knees in smells and water. Worse yet, she was even fussy about her mud.

He mentally snoozed as she kept talking. There was no point in trying to cut her off. Lucy was always going to dot every i. But time was dipping by. In principle he’d hoped to take off by ll:45—and he’d figured that the initial talk with Lucy wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. There were only a couple of things they absolutely had to get straight this minute. Only she was still talking. They hadn’t settled anything. And he’d already been here a good hour.

Worse yet, as if she couldn’t pause long enough to have a discussion about a project worth millions, she kept working. Moving. Bending. Lifting. Pinching. Turning on water. Turning off water. At the corner of one aisle, she was swiftly collecting a good-sized heap of purply-red pods.

“But the important issue, Nick, is that all chocolatiers concentrate on the same processes. What that really means is that the best are always competing with the best. All the great chocolate makers buy the best cacao, hire the best chemists, discover their own blend of the best beans. So there’s been nothing to really…revolutionize the industry, you know? Until now, when…”

Momentarily he couldn’t hear her, because her voice became muffled and indistinct when she disappeared deeper under the trees. But she emerged eventually with two more ripe pods.

“…What really mattered was when your gramps got into the rain-forest crisis. Experimenting with ways to raise and breed cacao trees in an environment that didn’t require that rain forest climate. Which has been tried before, of course. But not successfully in a way that produced great beans. Much less unbelievably revolutionary great beans—”

“Yawn,” he said aloud, trying to tactfully send her a signal that he knew all this. And whatever he knew or didn’t knew, he couldn’t listen to her ranting all day.