LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      The signal didn’t work. From beneath a branch she tried to hand him another hose—then peered out with an impatient glance when he didn’t take it. How was he supposed to take it? He already his hands full. “Forget the hose. But hold onto that one pod, okay? I want it separated from the others. Anyway. We had two problems—first to find a way to grow fabulous cacao beans from a plant that would thrive in a non-rain-forest climate. A regular climate. And then…”

      She hopped down from the forest level, looking like a kid who’d been playing touch football after a rain. Smiling. Knees and hands and shoes filthy. A swipe of dirt on her chin. “…and our second problem was to produce a superior bean. A bean better than anyone had ever seen before. And further, to produce several new varieties of superior beans—because you always need a blend to make different kinds of chocolates…”

      He gave up. Put down the hose. Carried the sacred pod around as he ambled to the front work center, where there was always a thermos of fresh coffee and mugs. He poured himself half a cup, ambled back. Undoubtedly she wouldn’t notice his absence. She’d forgotten him—which was a lot better than her being weird and jumpy and flushing whenever he looked at her sideways—but it was also a major comedown. Women had chased him on three continents. He knew his way around women.

      Hell, he could usually find a way to cope with Lucy, too, but not when she was near her chocolate. No man could conceivably compete for her attention compared to chocolate. Ever. And she was really winding up now, her tone as breathy and excited as a woman near orgasm.

      “…So the thing is, the revolutionary thing is, the experiments I’ve been doing for your grandfather truly broke totally new ground. We weren’t just blending beans. We’ve been blending trees. Marrying a little Trinidad with a little Jamaica. Seeing if the delicate ‘Arriba’ bean from Ecuador would dance with the Rolls Royce criolla from Venezuela. And from there, if we could find those offspring willing to reproduce in a midwest climate…”

      “Lucy.” He really doubted he’d manage to successfully interrupt her, but she’d climbed into another group of trees and tarnation, the day was wasting.

      “…. So that’s what’s so exciting, Nick. That’s the thing. You want six more greenhouses, that’s great—but I need to get the seedlings and root stock and stuff started. I mean I’ve got my own rootstock established now. I can fill a couple. But we need to repeat some of the experiments as well, because…”

      Her voice dropped off. Which was impossible. Lucy never quit talking, not about chocolate, and when she was in that mid-orgasmic-beyond-excited stage, tornados could rumble and she’d never notice. He said immediately, “Where are you? What’s wrong?”

      When she didn’t promptly answer, he plunked his coffee mug on the ground, set down the sacred cacao pod with it, and started jogging up and down the aisles.

      “Where are you?” He was just about to get seriously testy when he finally located her. She was hunched over at the end of an aisle, leaning against the work counter by the coffee, holding her stomach and looking pea-green. “You’re sick?” he asked.

      “No. No. I’m just a little tired today—” She suddenly gulped, then whirled around and ran.

      Completely confused, he chased after her. She stabbed in the code numbers by the door, and then tore out. He realized in two shakes that she was obviously headed for a restroom, but she was in such an all-fired hurry she never closed the door, just made it to the sink before hurling.

      Nick had always been one to run a two-minute mile away from someone being sick that way, but Lucy…maybe she was slight, but normally she was stronger than an ox. He’d never heard of her taking a day off work. She had an exhausting amount of energy, never lost the whole bouncy bubble thing, always cheerleading even the lowest of the crew. So seeing her face look like pea soup shook him.

      “What is it, you’ve got a flu, a bug, what? Could you have some kind of food poisoning?”

      “Oh God, Nick. Go away.”

      But he didn’t go away, couldn’t. She was through being sick, but now she was cupping cold water to take away the taste, splashing cold water on her face, and just hanging over that sink like she barely had the strength to stand.

      “How long have you been sick this way?”

      “Actually for more than a week. It comes and goes. I was going to call a doctor, but that seemed so dumb. I feel fine. And I kept thinking it’d go away. And besides that—”

      “What?”

      “Besides that, my dad’s a doctor. Practically every family friend is a doctor. They all work at Mayo. So trying to see a doctor without my family finding out and worrying and prying—” And then she repeated, “I’m fine now. Just go away. Give me a minute.”

      “You’ve been hurling for more than a week? And still trying to come to work besides?” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Women. “I’ll take care of this.”

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