Page 43 of You Had Me at Chocolate

“I bet they did.”

“I did the same from then on at all the schools if the teachers were interested. I started ordering origami paper by the truckload to come in with supply deliveries.” He smiled remembering all the happy faces when their creation finally came together.

“Sounds like you enjoyed teaching?”

“I enjoyed all of it. More than that I think I… needed it.” He glanced across at Clementine who was angled slightly toward him in her seat. “I needed to get out of my own head. My own ass, for sure.” He smiled ruefully. “The whole experience was humbling and enriching. Transformative, I guess. I knew I couldn’t go back to the way things had been. Living there for a year, with people who had so little—by western standards anyway—taught me I didn’t need any of the stuff I thought I did and seeing how tight-knit these communities were, despite their struggles, made me realize how… disconnected I’d been. I just hadn’t figured out what I was going to do to change that in my life before my time was up.”

“Which is how you ended up in Marietta on bended knee.”

Jude gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Yeah, I was kinda panicked when I left Africa without a specific direction considering how much clarity I’d gained there. Apparently knowing what you don’t want is the easy part. Knowing what you do want is a lot harder.”

“Gosh,” she said, one eyebrow lifted, laughter in her voice. “Who knew?”

“Yeah, yeah, smart-ass. I made a wild leap.” It didn’t make any sense looking at it now but it had seemed logical enough at the time. “But, I reckon the universe must have known something that I didn’t, because the timing’s been good as far as your mom’s stroke goes. And I love the town, the area. I love how far away it is from New York. I love tinkering away at the Graff.”

“Yeah.” Her cheek rested against the headrest and a smile warmed her face. She looked happy and relaxed and Jude itched to slide his hand on her knee. Not anything sexual, just… companionable. “Everything’s fallen in place, hasn’t it?”

“It has.”

“I’m pleased you came.”

“Oh really?” He laughed because it suddenly felt very warm and intimate inside the car. His body aware of hers in ways that weren’t remotely companionable.

“I missed you.”

Jude’s hands tightened around the wheel and he forced himself not to look at her. Not now when her voice was streaked with nostalgia and she was looking at him and talking to him like he was that boy he’d once been, not the man he now was.

The man who’d seen her naked. Who, as much as he knew there wasn’t going to be a repeat, would very much like to see her naked again.

He’d been a fool to ever let their relationship flounder. Okay, it might not have grown into a sexual thing and it might still have fallen by the wayside as he’d risen to fame—or infamy, as the case might be—but if nothing else, he could have done with her pragmatism. Her counsel.

He swallowed. “I missed you, too.”

“Let’s not do that again,” she said. “Let’s not drift apart, again.”

He nodded, still keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the road ahead. “Deal.”

*

Clem couldn’t believe what a difference twenty-four hours could make. Her porch had been transformed. It looked like the Halloween fairy had thrown up but, hey, that was the way she liked it. There were pumpkins everywhere—both on the steps and the floor and also, thanks to her art skills with old, about-to-be-tossed-from-the-library-system books, paper ones sprouting from the pages of said books, hung upside down from the exposed rafters.

Thick layers of spray cobwebs adorned the front door and the windows as did chains of paper cranes they’d folded together in front of the TV last night while they’d watched Jumanji. A big, black, plastic cauldron sat on the welcome mat and, the piece-de-résistance, the jack-o’-lantern she and Jude had carved together this morning, sat glowing a warm, welcoming orange on top of the cauldron.

But the real magic had happened in the kitchen. Clem had bought the usual packaged, individually wrapped candy to give out to the trick or treaters but Jude was having none of it. He insisted on doing something unique and after buying an armload of good quality plain cooking chocolate from Delish—the new shop that had caused such a stir last year when it had been set up in direct competition to Sage’s beloved Copper Mountain chocolate shop—he set about creating the most amazing individual chocolate treats.

Three dimensional trees made out of chocolate, their branches bare, with just a wisp of spray cobweb and a fondant spider or ghost hanging down. Little chocolate baskets for the individual wrapped candies. He’d even managed to fashion headless skeletons out of chocolate. It was Clem’s job to wrap them in the clear cellophane bags he’d purchased and tie them off with ribbon but she’d stopped so often to admire his handiwork, she was way behind on the production line by the time Jude had finished.

“You’d have never made it in a Parisian kitchen,” he said good-naturedly.

“I could have told you that before all this.”

“You would have had your pay docked.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Hell, yes. Being an apprentice chef in Paris where every wannabe chef in the world wants to get their start? Restaurants know there are plenty of others willing to take your place if you don’t work out, so you gotta work fast and fit in or you’re gone.”

“That sounds like an awful lot of pressure.”

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