Where Dreams Continue

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The very first thing that Tony changed was how Vic was making the chocolate itself.

“Only the Criollo beans, buddy. Forastero is for wimps and Trinitario is only for wannabes and second raters.”

“But—”

“Deal with it. Sell your stock off to some other shop. I won’t be using it.”

They had always mixed and ground their own nibs. The process of separating the cocoa solids and the cocoa butter was slow but worth the quality control it provided. Then they remixed them in precise portions with sugar, milk for the milk chocolate, and sometimes other flavorings. Granddad had always taught them to conch the chocolate for a full twenty-four hours. Chocolate was tenaciously gritty until it was ground with metal beads to break it down. Tony jumped the twenty-four hours to three full days—for mouthfeel, a trade secret he’d learned while sleeping with a pretty little Swedish chocolatier named Rosalie.

He forced Vic to buy a second conching machine so that they could run dark and milk chocolate batches at the same time. Vic went totally lame and bought a small machine without consulting him.

Tony dug into his savings and bought a large capacity machine for the dark chocolate. He’d never been a fan of white chocolate, so the small machine that Vic had bought got demoted to that role. Granddad’s old homebuilt could run the milk chocolate.

“It’s Friday, buddy. You ready, mi cugino?” Vic elbowed him sharply enough in the ribs to knock the air out of him.

“Not an i***t, my cousin,” Tony waited until Vic’s guard was down and slipped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. He’d been thinking about the Madonna Lady all week. How was it that his i***t cousin hadn’t even learned her name.

It was a beautiful June day. What would she be wearing on this bright, breezy day by the lake?

The answer once again took his breath away. Parisians so proud of their fashion sense didn’t have an inch of advantage on this woman. She breezed into the shop. A diaphanous lavender skirt that swirled about her knees and a matching leather vest, one of the sleeveless ones never intended to close, simply to enhance—a duty it performed admirably well because after all, it had a lot to work with. The luminous blue of her blouse matched her sapphire eyes.

She was looking at him with a single arched eyebrow, six dollars already in her fine-fingered hands.

Speak! Tony shouted at himself. “Greetings, Madonna Lady. How may I help you?”

“She—”

Tony cut Vic off with a scathing look. He knew what she wanted, that wasn’t the point. The point was to get her talking.

Vic winced. His cousin knew he’d botched the play.

Raquel was smiling at him. Okay, he’d have to kill Vic later for making him look a fool, even if it had been his own fault.

“Two of your dark chocolate ginger caramels.”

He offered her a small sample plate of chocolates, “Would you like to try my granddad’s brandied cherries?”

“No thank you. Just my two dark caramels.”

In moments the door was closing with its cheery bell and six dollars rested beside the register.

“Gone…” he couldn’t believe that she’d slipped away so easily. Not correcting his “Madonna Lady.” Not offering her name in its stead. And turning down the chocolate he’d made especially for her, as good a treat as Granddad had ever concocted.

“Told ya. No slowing her down.” Vic slapped him on the back hard enough to really sting and turned to greet a mother-daughter pair who entered the shop.

Her departing wave had been offhand, too perfectly casual. Tony knew when the gauntlet had been thrown down and he wasn’t a man to leave that challenge unanswered.