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,