Crown of Bitter Orange

by Laura Florand

  “And they almost all start out like this.” He rubbed his hand up to her lower thigh, pushing her skirt up, watching her face. “Your legs are the first spot on your body I touch, in almost every single one.”

  “I had—I had no idea you had such a fertile imagination,” Malorie said, struggling visibly to pull together her ironic, repressive tone.

  That made him laugh softly, low in his throat. He scraped the calluses of his fingertips very, very lightly against her inner thigh. “No? And yet you’re the one who always likes to call me an artiste.” He let his fingers drift in little circles up her inner thigh, wielding the calluses deliberately. Sensation. Oh, yeah, that was something he knew all about. “I think it’s safe to say that I like to get…creative.” He smiled, a wicked, rich heat rising in him. “If you think touching your legs is imaginative, just wait.”

  How long was she going to let him keep letting his fingers climb in slow, teasing circles up her thigh? He was so pissed at himself for respecting her boundaries all this time, if all he had ever had to do was transgress them like this.

  But shit…her boundaries were her boundaries. That was what he was supposed to do—respect and protect them.

  She took a quick, deep breath. “Tristan—”

  He fisted his other hand around her skirt before she could martial her forces to shut him down and pulled. “That’s how you say my name in my fantasies, too. The first time you say it. The fun is getting that tone to change.”

  He must have weakened her at the knees, he thought triumphantly. Because her knees started to buckle at the pressure of his pull, and he was just adjusting his position to catch her when every single muscle in her body stiffened right back up.

  Damn it.

  She jerked back from him, tripping over her own shoes, flushing dark as she stared over his head.

  Tristan turned, coming to his feet.

  Oh, shit. Damien. With a lilt of gleeful amusement around the corners of the usually so controlled line of his lips. He was already turning away, Tristan would give him that, trying to retreat before he interrupted, but it was too late.

  Tristan glared at him. That was the problem with having so many cousins. Ubiquity. Fifteen years of fantasizing about those legs and you show up just as soon as I get to touch them.

  “Pardon,” Damien said urbanely, recovering control over his expression with the skill he always had. Only those gray-green eyes promised Tristan that this was going to be a hilarious subject of teasing for his cousins for some time to come.

  Realizing his mistake, Tristan immediately dropped the glare for a casual raised eyebrow, as if he got caught half-naked kneeling at a woman’s feet seducing her all the time and what was wrong with his cousins that they didn’t? He didn’t reach for his shirt either, just tightened all his muscles subtly, in a way that he hoped made Damien want to hit a gym competitively.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” Damien said, with the urbane confidence of a man who knew he hadn’t been caught kneeling at a woman’s feet trying to get his hand up her skirt. “I saw the doors open and thought I’d check in.”

  Meaning Damien hadn’t been able to stand glimpsing work being done on such an essential element in Grasse as La Maison de Monsard without finding out what was going on. You’d think having a wedding in less than three weeks would give him enough things to keep track of, but no.

  “Bonjour, Malorie.” Damien crossed the great room to kiss her cheeks.

  Malorie was trying to slip her feet into her shoes without making it too obvious they weren’t already on, her face flushed, and she stumbled when she had to look up for the kisses. Damien caught her arm smoothly and braced her while she got her shoes on.

  From Damien’s manner, helping women get dressed again after they’d been around his youngest cousin was so familiar it didn’t even merit a reaction. Only that little glint of glee when he met Tristan’s eyes over her head proved how much he was enjoying the anticipation of teasing Tristan to death.

  Malorie gave Tristan a fulminating glance.

  Oh, great. Now she was going to blame him for his own behavior. He offered her his quirkiest, most charming how-can-you-be-mad-at-me-really smile, which he had been perfecting ever since his crayon spilling days.

  Malorie, who had seen that smile progress through all its stages of mastery, looked the polar opposite of impressed.

  Damn it, Damien. You have lousy timing.

  Although Tristan supposed Malorie would have been even more pissed if Damien had shown up one minute later, when he’d just gotten her rolled under him on the carpet.

  He might have been more pissed at Damien at that point, too.

  “So you’re ripping up the carpet,” Damien said, politely redirecting his focus away from Malorie’s flushed face. “Starting restoration work?”

  “A few touch-ups,” Malorie said noncommittally. She was getting control of herself, her manner returning to that cool, proud, ironic style of hers that had always gotten under Tristan’s skin when he was arguing with her about perfumes. She wasn’t going to give Damien one iota more information than she felt he needed to have.

  Watching the two face off against each other, Tristan wondered if Malorie, too, would have been the right-hand man—woman—of an international company by now if she’d been born a few rungs higher on the ladder the way he and Damien had.

  “To make it more sellable or thinking of re-launching the company in some version?” Damien probed.

  Malorie glanced at Tristan. “I’m considering options. Did you text him about the banks as soon as you dropped me off, Tristan?”

  “No,” Tristan said, although that was a reasonable question. Where had his loyalties lain there? Usually he would have told Damien immediately of any shift in the Grasse socioeconomic system that he thought would affect Rosier decisions.

  “Banks?” Damien said.

  “Just looking at my financing options,” Malorie said dismissively, as if it was no consequence. Nice to know Tristan wasn’t the only Rosier she distrusted. Meanwhile, that distrust made her about the lousiest networker in history.

  “It’s not a bad idea. Re-opening this place. It’s got a perfect location and beautiful bones.” Damien didn’t glance at his cousin when he said it, not that Tristan had ever had any fears that he might. Tristan was the only person who could read straight through Damien’s poker face. Like Malorie, Damien walked through a business world where people were constantly trying to stab him in the back.

  Although, unlike Malorie, he had a whole family to watch his back. It was amazing the kind of rumors Tristan, for example, picked up just hanging out and being friendly at perfume launch parties. And because people sometimes confused his dislike of business with an incomprehension of it, they often had no inkling he understood some subtle reference. As did the models whom top executives treated like deaf and brainless arm candy, but whom Tristan took the time to treat like real people.

  “And all that history,” Damien said.

  Malorie stiffened.

  Tristan gave Damien a quick, warning glance.

  Damien’s black eyebrows went up a little in confusion and then he realized. “I mean the glamorous history. There are plenty of great houses that have something to be ashamed of from the war.”

  True enough. Some of the greatest Paris fashion houses had been accused of being far too friendly with their Nazi occupiers. The fact that none of their heads had suffered une dégradation nationale spoke more to their power and contacts than to innocence.

  “Not yours,” Malorie said.

  Damien chose his words carefully. “For two people who risked their lives to save children, they could have perhaps shown more mercy,” said the man who had such a reputation for being merciless, “to the young child left with nothing to believe in, after her father fell from his heights.”

  Malorie’s grandmother. Tristan looked at Damien with deep approval.

  “I’m not saying they were deliberately hard on
your grandmother, too. I just think that when they pursued vengeance against your great-grandfather they forgot that his daughter would suffer so much as a consequence. And you always have to think about the consequences of your actions,” said the Rosier shark, who took over businesses for them, who weakened rivals.

  Tristan gazed at him thoughtfully. It was surprising the insights you could gain into the hearts even of the people you were closest to, at the oddest moments.

  People were utterly fascinating.

  “So.” Damien looked at the corner of plywood revealed and at the great expanse of floor, and his fingers went to his cufflinks. “Need some help?”

  Chapter 12

  If anyone six months ago had tried to tell Malorie that she would soon be back in Grasse and the Rosiers would be down on their hands and knees helping her restore La Maison de Monsard, she would have recommended that person for rehab.

  But there they were. And merde but it was a hot view. She undid a couple of buttons on her shirt and went to work so she’d have an excuse to keep stopping to fan herself.

  “Have you guys ever thought of doing your own charity calendar?” she said dryly, to get control of those emotions. Damien raised an eyebrow, but Tristan immediately grinned and flexed. Yeah, he knew what he was doing, all right. “The sales would probably fund half the charities in Grasse.”

  “Yeah, but Damien’s pudique,” Tristan said with a wave of his hand. Modest.

  Malorie choked on a laugh and tried to focus on the carpet again.

  “Everyone’s pudique compared to you,” Damien told him.

  “Well, if you’ve got it,” Tristan said humbly. Damien threw a carpet roll at him.

  Tristan caught it and tossed it over to the growing pile, showing off the power of his shoulders. Malorie bit hard on the inside of her cheek and tried not to think about those shoulders bunching as he started to pull her down to him, of what they would have felt like under her fingers when he rolled over her on the carpet.

  “And Matt would blush,” Tristan said regretfully. “He’d probably be one constant blush for the rest of his life if we ever got him drunk enough to get him to pose nude for a calendar.”

  Malorie was pretty sure a picture of big, growling Matt Rosier mostly naked and blushing would only increase sales, but she dropped the subject before it could get out of hand. Tristan was so good at twisting her attempts at ironic self-protection around on her and making her laugh and let down her guard instead.

  Damien’s fiancée, perfumer Jess Bianchi, stopped by, enjoyed the view herself for a few minutes, then left and came back a little later with several cold bottles of water. That was good. Malorie could press her bottle against her cheeks, which flushed hot every single time she thought about getting caught with Tristan’s hand up her skirt. And every single time she sat back on her heels and accidentally watched him work too long and thought about what those strong hands and his thrill in everything physical would have felt like if Damien hadn’t come by and…

  She took a long swallow. Damn Tristan anyway.

  Tristan got a late call from Paris about his beach floral and stepped out into the courtyard to take it. Malorie stood to haul a few rolls of carpet to the main pile, and Damien scooped them up from her and took them with his.

  “You really aren’t dressed for this.” He nodded at her reddened knees. “I know Tristan has already suggested this five times, but why don’t you just let us do it?”

  “I’m fine.” It felt surreal to have him and Tristan helping her at all, let alone to just leave them to it while she took care of something else. Also, being this close to Damien half-naked was making her blush again. Damien was far too cool and controlled for her tastes—none of the easygoing warmth that made Tristan so irresistible—but there was no denying that standing this close to him while he had his shirt off provided for a very enjoyable perspective.

  In high school, girls used to argue cheerfully with their friends about which of the Rosier cousins was the hottest, and the more Tristan matured, the more Malorie had found herself secretly in his camp. He strolled through the high school halls like a human-size sun, spreading warmth and gorgeousness wherever he went. Still, Damien definitely had a sexy dangerous thing going on.

  Damien tossed the rolls of carpet down on the larger pile. “So,” he said thoughtfully, “you and my cousin?”

  Malorie flushed hot all over. “No! Not me and your cousin.” Only three days back in Grasse and already all the Rosiers were assuming she was yet another one of Tristan’s many female friends. Tristan was a…a…plaie. Une vraie plaie. A plague on her existence. “That was just, just—”

  “Ah, just sexual attraction, then?” Damien said, as unreadable as if they were talking about financial reports. He nodded understandingly. “That happens with him a lot.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Malorie growled, foot-shoving a carpet roll back onto the pile.

  “He suffers,” Damien said very blandly. “Only used for his body—”

  “Oh, give me a freaking break, Damien.”

  That quick grin of Damien’s flashed and was brought back into line. “If only some woman could see past the sex to all his other qualities.”

  How a single one of the Rosier cousins had survived this old without being strangled was beyond her. And here she had always thought Damien was the one with sense. “All women can see all his other qualities, Damien. We’re not idiots.”

  Unfortunately. It would be really helpful if at least ninety-nine percent of the rest of the female population were idiots.

  “You can?” Damien glanced, confused, toward the courtyard. “What qualities?”

  “Not you, too.” Malorie said, outraged. “What the hell is wrong with you Rosiers? Are you so freaking spoiled that you can’t see what a treasure you’ve got?” She gestured dramatically toward the courtyard. Her hands were feeling more Gallic with every hour back in this country.

  Damien made a dubious moue. “It’s just Tristan.”

  “Just?” Her fingers itched for Rosier throats. What was it, because he was the youngest? “He makes you guys millions, which you of all people should appreciate, Damien. He makes you laugh instead of walk around with a stick up your ass all the time. He’s the damn joy in the family. And you don’t even appreciate him?”

  She broke off. Why did Damien have a very faint curve to his lips, like he did when he’d just lured a rival CEO into revealing a very important weakness about his company?

  “Treasure is an interesting term,” he said thoughtfully.

  Malorie flushed to the roots of her hair. “Whatever,” she snarled. “I was just trying to, trying to—oh, forget it.” She folded her arms and turned to stare at the revealed plywood. “You know what? I appreciate your help, but I need to close up now and, and, and…meet someone for dinner.”

  ***

  In the courtyard, Tristan finished his call and looked around, startled, as the doors closed behind Damien. “Wait, what?”

  Damien shrugged into his shirt without buttoning it, coming forward. Above them, the colors of the soft ochre and dusky orange buildings had gone softer in the evening light, drying clothes strung between balconies. “I think I got us kicked out.”

  “How the hell did you do that? You didn’t start giving her any more crap about her family history, did you?”

  Damien shook his head. Instead of fastening his cufflinks again, he was rolling up his sleeves. Down the street, Jess waved at him, heading back up from her little perfume shop—which used to be Laurianne’s and which Tristan rather strongly felt should have been kept in the family, but apparently Damien was going to take care of keeping it in the family his way, so that worked out.

  For Damien and his heirs, at least. If Tristan, the only perfumer of his generation, had ever nurtured any secret hope that that invaluable piece of family history should be passed on to him and his heirs, then Tante Colette’s gift of it to someone else entirely had been a slap-in-the-face reminder. He
was the youngest and the youngest was supposed to make his own fortune.

  He wondered again how Malorie had just walked away to make her fortune somewhere else, without feeling that she was cutting her own self off at the ground, slicing the flower off to put in a vase, leaving all roots and life behind.

  “Are you holding something else against her?” Tristan asked warily.

  Damien’s lips held a very faint curve. “Oh, no, I think she’ll do.”

  “Do for what?” Tristan said, a little confused.

  Damien shrugged. His eyes held a little light of…laughter? Supreme satisfaction? “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  “Thanks,” Tristan said sardonically. “I appreciate that.” The last people he wanted to have interfering in anything about his relationships were his cousins.

  Jess reached Damien, the waft of smoked ambergris when Tristan bent to kiss her cheeks making his nose prickle with curiosity to find out what she was testing today. Then she stepped into her place at Damien’s side, and Damien slid his arm around her waist like he was sliding that arm into its home. The place it was always meant to be.

  “Although if you’ll take my advice—”

  Yeah, right. Damien had made a complete cock-up of his relationship with Jess initially, and it had taken considerable discreet intervention on Tristan’s part to get those two to act sane again.

  “Always,” he said dryly.

  “—you’ll let her know how many shares in Monsard you’ve accumulated.”

  Damien might understand strategy in business but apparently in relationships it went right over his head.

  “I’m saving them for a surprise,” Tristan said. Until Malorie realized how much she really wanted them.

  Damien and Jess exchanged one of those couple glances, the ones that said, we know worlds beyond this poor single fool if only we could open his eyes. Which was rich, given how completely nuts the start of their relationship had been. Damien had gone completely off the deep end. How could any man fall so hard for a woman after just a one-night stand? Tristan liked most everybody, and had had plenty of fantastic one-night stands, but the people he loved were all people he had known for most of his life, as if his soul had grown around them and enclosed them inside it.