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That’s the real too-good-to-be-true. “You were right?” I repeat slowly because I can’t quite believe it. Except I want to believe it so badly.
Kenji hoots. “He doesn’t make his own chocolate like he claims. He’s not only not bean to bar, he’s not even chocolate to confection.”
The day I met him at the chocolate show, he went on and on about his bean-to-bar creations, with his subtle implication that his small-batch style made him better than my approach as a chocolatier, who sources chocolate to use for her confections.
When he’s neither.
He’s not a chocolate-maker, nor a chocolatier. He’s simply a copycat.
Margo grins sagely. “Apparently, he’s the grocery-store-to-Chocolate Connoisseur.”
“For real?” I whisper, tingles spreading across my skin. This is too delicious. Too wonderful. I’m holding my breath.
Amanda swipes her thumb across the screen, showing me damning photo after damning photo. Wrappers from bulk-size store-bought brands fill the dumpsters at the factory where The Chocolate Connoisseur produces its cheap chocolate knockoffs that it claims it makes from Ecuadorian cocoa.
More like candy-aisle cocoa.
But…what’s next? “So, now what?”
Kenji preens, blowing on his nails. “This is where the hacker comes in. I maybe, possibly hooked them up with Silver. I thought she might want to know about how Mister I Make My Own Chocolate From The Very Best Beans is actually not making his own chocolate.”
“And I brought them to meet with Silver this morning,” Margo puts in. “Hence, the getaway driver.”
“And what’s Silver doing?” I ask.
“Making another video,” Eliza says with utter glee in her voice.
As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s Silver, dressed in black with her signature silver eye shadow bright on her glowy skin. She waltzes into the store. “Hey, besties. I posted it,” she says, waving her phone as she comes over to join us at the table. She sits down with a certain charismatic panache. “If you’re gonna imitate me, I’m gonna call you out.”
Take that.
“Already, the video’s at more than five thousand views and I posted it a few minutes ago. Pretty soon, word will get out that he’s using the cheap chocolate we all use at home.”
Kenji parks his hands behind his head. “And that, my friends, is what you call karma.”
I sit back, still amazed at this turn of events. But not entirely surprised. A man who’d threaten me the way he did is exactly the type of person who’d lie to all his customers in forty shops across the country.
Then, a dark cloud passes over me. I can’t revel in his hoodwinkery.
We lied too.
But lying to customers and the world about the product you sell them is entirely different than lying about who you go home with at night.
I glance at Gage. He looks relaxed, content, and happy. He’s running a hand along my back, and enjoying the company of all of us—this ragtag crew. I think about our secret dates. The roses, the lattes, the ferry ride, the art museum. The beautiful care this not almost romantic man—this most romantic man—took in recreating our fictional dates and turning them so very real. I think, too, about Friday’s snow day for my sister. Our girls. The joy they found in it. The joy he put into making it happen for them.
My heart stutters then speeds up. It’s racing inside me, beating in overtime as it rushes headlong toward this man.
Nothing between us is a lie. And I suppose our romance has never truly been a lie either.
There’s just one little issue. “But Sebastian might still be working next door to me,” I say.
“He won’t last,” Gage reassures me, then snaps his gaze to the door. Samira is rapping on it while checking her watch, then glancing back down the street, urging me to come closer.
“Give me a second,” I say, then hurry over and step outside.
“I’m sorry to go cliffhanger on you,” she begins. “Like I was saying, that was my new tenant, and I didn’t want to leave her hanging.”
“About that. I’d really like the chance to match…” My brain replays the last pronoun. “Wait, did you say her?”
