The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) by Florand Laura

Author:Florand, Laura [Florand, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
Publisher: AOS Publishing
Published: 2014-01-14T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

In the early hours before dawn, Patrick lay on his side, facing the window, his body warming her whole back, and Sarah kept drifting toward sleep, except that his hand would stir in a soft stroke of her belly, and that would wake her again a little, this alien presence that made no sense in her dreams.

Strange instincts swirled in her when that happened, tangled with the almost-dream – the desire to curl into him and tell him she loved him, but of course she could not do that. They were not equals. She didn’t have the right to fall in love with him. This wasn’t in her hands.

If they had worked down the hall from each other in some big engineering firm, the handsome man who managed to keep them all functioning as a team and the brainy, serious colleague determined to get everything right – and even succeeding – would she have had the confidence to tell him? Would she ever have been sure enough of herself for him, even with the solid strength of a successful and respected position behind her?

She liked him taking over, to be honest, but it left her in a very strange place.

Patrick slid his hand from her belly to her forearm and down it to one of her hands. He seemed completely incapable of sleeping, even though it was nearly dawn again and he had to go into work. Her day off, not his. “Where’s the Asian from?” he asked quietly. His thumb touched the base of her index finger and traced slowly to its tip. Then shifted to her middle finger, repeating the gesture one finger by one. “You were born in America, right?”

Her hand curled up suddenly and hid inside his, catching his hand by surprise for a second before it obligingly curved around hers to help it hide. “My mother immigrated from Korea. My older – sister was born there.” Her voice faltered, but – no, I can’t talk about that. “North Korea,” she added after a moment, though, because maybe, maybe – he might see. Without her needing to tell him.

But he didn’t seem to peg to that. A lot of people, she had realized growing up, had no real idea of the difference between South Korea and North Korea. Some vague impressions of a nuclear threat and a mad leader were the most she could expect, even from the people who read the news.

“I thought Lin was a Chinese name,” he said, and she blinked, surprised he knew that. She hadn’t even known it herself until a genealogy project in fourth grade.

“It probably came from China at some point, generations back. I don’t really know.” Her mom didn’t like to talk about Korea or her family.

Patrick made a soft sound to indicate he was listening, his fingers entirely fascinated with their stroking of her arm. “And after she got to America she had you? Did she marry an American?”

“Eventually. Not my biological father, that didn’t work out, but I’m not sure if she ever really had any expectation that it would.

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