When I’m done, I know I don’t have the time to blow-dry my hair as usual, so I braid it back wet, slip on a clean and simple white summer dress, and head back downstairs.
To my surprise, Blaise has completely cleaned up all the eggs and is drinking orange juice the housekeeper squeezed this morning straight out of the pitcher.
He finishes, wipes his mouth, and puts it right back in the fridge. Boys, I swear.
But wait a minute. This boy is my cousin, and his eyes are taking longer than normal to coast over my body. It’s not like the dress I’m wearing is revealing or anything; it’s just something light and flirty, and yet there’s a look in Blaise’s eyes that I haven’t seen before.
“Your hair,” he says, nodding at me. “It looks different.”
Check out the brains on this one. “It’s back in a braid, dummy.”
“I like it. And you don’t have any makeup on.”
“It came off in the shower.”
“You shouldn’t wear makeup. You don’t need it,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “You’re only fourteen.”
“I know how old I am,” I retort. “And I can wear makeup if I want to.”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself. Just thought you’d want to know why you’re always single.”
“Always single!” I cry out. “Need I remind you what you just reminded me of? I’m fourteen. I don’t have time for boys.”
“But soon they’ll have time for you. You don’t want to mess that up.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever. They can do what they want. I do what I want.”
“You know,” he says slowly, “you’ve changed a lot since I first met you.”
“That was five years ago. I sure hope I’ve changed. You’ve changed too.”
And that’s true. Blaise used to be on the shorter side, but in the last year he’s shot up so he’s even taller than Pascal, who’s older. He’s got to be already over six feet. Plus, he’s got muscles and abs galore out of nowhere. I try not to look, because that’s icky, right? But when we’re swimming down at the river, it’s kind of hard not to.
“I mean, you used to be so quiet and shy. Now we can’t seem to shut you up.”
“Very funny,” I tell him. I’ve never been particularly shy, it’s just that the circumstances I was raised in made me that way, and then there is the fact that it took me forever to learn French. Now that I can speak it fluently, I guess I do have a habit of telling everyone what’s on my mind, whether they like it or not.
His gaze lingers on me, on my lips, just enough to cause a strange butterfly feeling in my stomach, then he says, “Let’s go get you your eggs for your stupid cake.”
I let his comment slide as I follow him out of the villa. It’s late afternoon, and the air is hot and sweet all at once. We’ve been coming to Uncle Gautier’s place in Tuscany, which is not too far from Florence, every first week of August ever since I was adopted. Usually we’re here for a week or two. Olivier told me that in the past, our father and uncle would both come, too, but I guess work has gotten more hectic over the years, so it’s just my mother and aunt.
I close my eyes to the sunshine and sigh, and when I open them, Blaise is standing in the pebbled driveway and staring at me expectantly. “Are you coming or what?”
“I’m coming. Just taking time to enjoy the moment.”
Now he’s rolling his eyes. “Do you want your eggs or not?”
I hurry on after him, shaking a pebble out of my sandals. “So why are you hanging around the house and not with everyone else?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t want to.”
“Lazy.”
He glares at me, the look intensified under the hot sun. “I’m not lazy. I just didn’t want to. I don’t have to hang out with anyone if I don’t want to.”
I guess I’m not floored by this. Blaise is always the black sheep and the odd one out. His brother is either tormenting him or ignoring him, and the same goes for his father. When it comes to the latter, the more his father ignores him, the better.
I sneak a glance up at him as we walk side by side down the narrow road lined with a crumbling stone wall, past sprawling vineyards and sunflowers. He looks and seems so different now. I remember going to his thirteenth birthday party at their house, hiding in the bushes at night because I didn’t feel welcome. That’s when Blaise and his friend came to the gazebo and started drinking alcohol. His father caught them, started hitting Blaise with a force that reminded me of so many of my foster homes gone wrong. It was the first time I saw Blaise even remotely vulnerable, and even though he was a lot nicer to me after that, we never spoke of it again. He kept his distance.
Until now.
I’m wondering if I should bring it up and say something when he glances at me sharply, squinting under the sun. “What are you staring at?”
Such a way with words. “Nothing really. I was just thinking.”
“About me, naturally.”
“Well, actually I was.”
He gives me another odd glance. “Oh yeah? And what were you thinking?”
“About how you’re doing. You know. In terms of your father.”
His eyes narrow just as the road starts to, causing us to walk closer together. “What about him?”
The edge to his voice tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about, but even if I’ve been intimidated by Blaise before, I refuse to be now. “Your thirteenth birthday.”
He tenses up and wiggles his jaw, averting his eyes from me and back to the road. “That was a long time ago.”
“I know. I was just wondering.”
“If my father ever smacked me around like that after?” he asks and then shrugs. “Yeah. Sometimes. But not recently. I’m taller than him already, bigger than him. He wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me. I’d fucking kill him.”
But even as he says that, I can hear a tremor in his voice. Like he’s still afraid of him. I don’t blame him. His father terrifies me, too, and I go out of my way to avoid him.
Sometimes it makes me wonder how my own father can see the good in him. He never says a bad word against his brother, even though my mother has said plenty. We’ve all seen the way that he treats the boys, his wife—hell, anyone who crosses his path. He’s creepy and manipulative and an outright asshole, but I guess that just means my father is that loyal.
“As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m out of here,” Blaise adds.
“Where are you going?”
“School, maybe. University. Or not. Maybe I’ll go to Greece and live off the land. Or Ibiza and party for months. Who knows. But I’ll be gone.”
I shouldn’t feel that pang of disappointment because he’s leaving. It’s a strange feeling, and I’m not sure I like it.
“You’re not going to follow in the family footsteps?” I ask him.
He sighs, kicking a stone before focusing his eyes on a truck coming toward us on the narrow road. “I’ll probably leave that all to Pascal. He’s the one who wants it, and he’s the one that Father wants.”
The truck slows as it approaches, but the lane is almost too narrow for all of us. Blaise puts his arm across me and pulls me to the side so we’re back against the wall as the truck passes, the driver giving us a friendly wave. My shoulder is against his shoulder, and his arm is across my chest for just a second, but I swear it makes me dizzy, the fresh scent of his body wash or soap invading every cell in my body.
When the truck passes and Blaise keeps walking on—his arm dropping away, no big deal—I’m momentarily stunned. What was that? Why did it feel that way?
He glances back at me curiously and looks amused but doesn’t say anything, just pushes back a dark lock of hair behind his ears. I’ve never noticed how nice and shiny and thick his hair is until now.
Damn it, Seraphine, what is wrong with you?
“It’s just up here,” he says, pointing to a dirt road that snakes off the main road through stunted cypress trees and rosemary.
I hurry to catch up,
but here the driveway forks—one side leading to a stone farmhouse, the other side to a barn with a caved-in roof and a pen and chicken coop beside it. Out in the distance I can see a farmer going through the fields with a mower.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we go knock on the door and ask?”
He just gives me a devilish grin. “I’m a Dumont. I don’t ask for anything.”
Then he strides over to the pen and opens the gate. “You can stay out here if you want.”
Well, shit! He’s going to go in there and steal chicken eggs and hang me out to dry.
“I don’t think so,” I tell him, hurrying along so that the farmer in the field doesn’t see me. Blaise holds open the gate and I step inside, careful not to step in any chicken shit.
It’s a huge space and chickens are everywhere. The chickens are cooing and squawking at us, making me nervous. “I really think we should leave a note or some money,” I tell him.
“That’s your side of the family for you, always so good,” he remarks as he opens the door to the coop. We’re met with darkness and the horrid smell of concentrated chicken shit.
“Why does it always have to be good and bad? Why can’t we just be gray?”
“Speak for yourself,” he says to me. “Would you consider stealing eggs from a poor farmer to be good or bad?”
I cough, trying not to breathe in the stench as he searches the nests for eggs. “Definitely bad.”
“Then color me bad,” he says.
I laugh and reach out, smacking him against his chest. “You’re the worst, you know that?”
“I do. We’re in the middle of discussing it.” Even though it’s dark and shadowy in the coop, I can see a flash of his smile.
“Okay, let’s just hurry up and get out of here.”
He continues searching, pulling out two eggs and handing them to me. “How many do you need?”
“Better make it four to be safe,” I tell him just as we hear the mower in the distance getting closer. “And I think someone is done working in the field. We better get out of here.”
But before we can get out of the coop, there’s the sound of footsteps outside and a man yelling about the gate being open and the chickens being loose.
Shit!
He yells something at the chickens in Italian, shooing them.
I hold my breath and exchange a look with Blaise, a look of fear on both our faces, though I swear he has a mischievous glint along with it. He slowly puts his finger to his mouth, as if I didn’t know to be quiet.
The farmer continues to berate and coax the chickens back inside the pen. For a moment I think maybe he’s going to leave, but then I hear his heavy work-boot footsteps coming toward the coop’s open door.
Even though it’s a massive coop, there’s barely any room in here for us, and Blaise has to slouch or he’ll reach the ceiling. There’s nowhere to hide.
Blaise stands beside me, right next to the door, and we’re hidden in the shadows, unless the farmer happens to search inside the coop or just look in our direction.
I stare up at Blaise, trying to figure out how we’re going to get out of this if we’re caught, while Blaise is gazing down at me. His chest is rising as he tries to control his breath, and he has a wild look in his eyes, a change from the indifference that usually plagues him. His mouth is open slightly, lips full and glossy, and I’m wondering if it’s the adrenaline that’s causing me to look at him in such detail, as if I’m pushing aside the dark to see him clearly, or what’s going on.
“Hey,” a voice says as a shadow falls across the center of the door. “Qual é il problema?” Blaise and I both freeze. If the farmer looks to the right at all, he’ll see us right there!
But the farmer seems to be satisfied with the silence of the coop since all the chickens vacated while we were looking for eggs, and he pulls back, chatting to the hens as he makes his way out, and we hear the click of the gate.
Once we hear the motor start, we both let out a large breath of relief. I start laughing nervously. “I can’t believe you nearly got us caught.”
“Me?” he says, the distance between us getting even smaller somehow. It makes my heart bump against my ribs, the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Just from Blaise moving closer to me, I’m full of anxiety and for different reasons.
Get a grip.
“You’re saying I’m a bad influence?” Blaise says, his voice lower, almost husky sounding. It makes my stomach do backflips in a way it hasn’t before, not even when my crush Pierre Tremaine told me I was cute during math class last year.
I stare back at him, feeling brave and bold, even when he moves closer, so that the toes of his shoes touch the toes of mine. “You definitely are.”
“I could be worse,” he says and then gives me a quick smile, a hint of something wicked flashing in his eyes.
Before I can even say anything he’s leaning down and kissing me. Right on the lips. Right here in this bloody chicken coop.
I’m stunned. Everything inside me freezes. His lips press against mine, soft and warm and wrong. So damn wrong!
What are you doing? Make him stop!
And yet I don’t.
Because . . . I think I like this.
And I kiss him back, even though my lips are unsure of what to do.
This is my first kiss.
And it’s with my cousin.
The realization of that reality is enough to put my hand on Blaise’s chest and push him back.
“What the hell was that?” I ask him, my face flushed with embarrassment, my heart and nerves dancing all over the place, butterflies in my tummy taking flight.
“Felt like kissing you,” he says, and his voice sounds so calm and collected, I have to wonder if that even meant anything to him, if he’s mocking me somehow.
“You’re my cousin, Blaise,” I tell him sternly, trying to take a step back, but I’m cornered in the coop.
“Most definitely not by blood,” he says, reaching across and brushing my bangs away from my eyes. “But, hey, now I know.”
“Now you know what?” I ask, keeping so still, my skin tingling from the contact of his fingers brushing against my forehead.
“What you taste like,” he says.
The way he says it hits me deep in the gut, in a way I’d never felt before.
In a way that scares me to death.
I clear my throat. “Well, now you know. So you better not try that again.”
“I won’t,” he says with a shrug, as if it doesn’t bother him. He looks toward the door. “We should get going if you want to start on that cake.”
With our eyes peeled for the farmer and the eggs cradled in our arms, we leave the coop and the farm. We leave it completely different people from the ones who first stepped in.
At least, it feels like my entire world has changed. I’m not too sure about Blaise. As we walk back down the narrow road, he seems so at ease and casual about what happened, about kissing me like that, out of the blue.
Me, I’m just a mess. Of feelings and emotions and hormones, I guess. A deadly cocktail.
I can’t believe that just happened.
I just had my first kiss, with Blaise.
And I don’t know how anything will ever be the same again.
But when we get back to the villa, and I’m a nervous, blubbering mess inside, he says he’ll leave me to work on the cake, and then he’s off, joining the others at the river.
I might not ever be the same again, but it’s obvious in his eyes it’s like the kiss never even happened.
Maybe it’s for the best.
God, I hope I find a way to pretend that it never happened too.
CHAPTER SIX
SERAPHINE
“What are your plans for tonight?”
It takes me a few moments to register that those words are not only being spoken but being spoken to me by my cousin.
I glance up at Blaise. We’re in the boardroom along with three interns G
autier hired yesterday, going over posters and images of past ad campaigns and comparing them with the sales data.
I look to the employees, but they aren’t paying us much attention; they’re totally engrossed in their work, as marketing and advertising students usually are when they have to fight for survival.
Still, I can’t answer like I normally would—a.k.a. “None of your fucking business.”
“I’m having an exciting evening at home with a glass of wine,” I tell him with a fake smile pasted on my lips. “And you?”
He stares at me for a moment, his dark eyes flickering with unknown thoughts, and for that moment I’m brought back in time to when we were teenagers. In some ways, he’s barely changed. He’s still a smart-ass, still quietly observing one moment and cutting the next. Always so calm and composed, unless you really got under his skin. And how I wanted to get under his skin.
He never let me.
But so much time has passed since then, and we are different people now. He still has that height and the broad shoulders and cutting jawline and the dark hair that he often swoops off his forehead with fancy hair products. I swear his lips have gotten even fuller. But when I look into his eyes, I don’t see the person that I knew, which tells me that perhaps I never knew him at all.
“Probably going to see a movie,” he says. “Alone.”
My brows come together. “Is this your way of inviting me to a movie?”
He grins at me but there’s no warmth in it. “I wasn’t inviting you anywhere. Just making small talk so that the interns here don’t think we’re all unsociable monsters at this company.”
At that, the students all look our way, and I know they’ve been listening this entire time.
Blaise probably has a point, too, but I’m not about to tell him that. Besides, it’s almost time to go home, and I actually do have plans, quite the opposite from what I told Blaise.
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