The new shop is right next door to Lunardi's Market in the Kings Court shopping center on Blossom Hill Road. Owner Holly Westbrook has spent the past eight months remodeling the space occupied for 42 years by the Barber Shop of Los Gatos, whose owner, Frank Hibbits, moved down the boulevard to the Nob Hill Grocery center.

On a recent day devoted to getting the shop finished in time for a Valentine's opening, Holly's brother, Bryant Westbrook, touched up with a roller some move-in marks on the freshly painted walls. "He's my jack-of-all-trades," Holly Westbrook says admiringly, pushing up the sleeves of her paint-smeared sweatshirt. "Otherwise I'd be in this all alone."

For more than a decade, Westbrook operated from a cramped 280-square-foot space next to the Bank of America on N. Santa Cruz Avenue. "We just ran out of room," she says. Her new place is 950 square feet of golden travertine tile floors, set off by vintage gold and muted plum walls. The showcases are a light pine wood, an appealing backdrop for the trays of milk and dark chocolates that come with fillings in 40 flavors. The new space is large enough for Westbrook to have a kitchen where she will be making confections from her own recipes, adding to the line of Belgian chocolates she has always featured by the venerable chocolate-maker Leonidas in Brussels.

"There are no sugars or preservatives in any of my recipes," she says, "just chocolate, butter and cream," shaped into rounds, squares and ovals filled with fresh ingredients like passion fruit and strawberries. "It's the cream that makes for a shorter shelf life, but they taste so much better!"

Among Westbrook's original recipes is one for a Macallan Scotch truffle that she taste-tested on C.B. Hannegan's bartender Tom Ovens. Ovens, who is regarded by some locals as a Scotch whiskey expert, describes Macallan's Scotch as one that is aged 100 percent in sherry casks where it picks up the color and sweetness of the sherry from the wood. And did the truffles pick up that flavor? "It was delicious," he says.

Westbrook also has truffles filled with liquors such as rum and Courvoisier. A box with 16 different flavors runs $24. Most chocolates run $32 a pound.

Westbrook hopes to run off several batches of her truffles and some chocolate-dipped strawberries in time for Valentine's Day, but last-minute inspections by the county may slow things up. However, the extensive Leonidas chocolate collection will be available.

Eventually, she'll provide hunks of chocolate from which home cooks may carve a slice. By this summer, she hopes to provide gelato and desserts.

Westbrook, 45, grew up in Los Gatos and is a graduate of Saratoga High School. She spent many years running a construction business with her former husband, was a production manager for an electronics firm and "made teeth in a dental lab," she says with a chuckle.

The taste of the chocolate that came over candy counters never impressed her. It wasn't until she tasted Leonidas that she understood why so many people become chocoholics. When she realized there was no local outlet for the Belgian chocolates, she decided to start her own shop in 1996.

"It's always been fun," she says. "People are always looking for chocolate to help celebrate something."

Chocolate Dream Box, 710 Blossom Hill Road in Los Gatos, is now open. Call 408.395.4343 for new hours, or visit chocolatedreambox.com.