Crown of Bitter Orange

by Laura Florand

  “Tristan, I know you think you’re the only one of us to understand women,” Damien said.

  Ha. Tristan was the only one of them to understand any people period. His cousins just bumbled along like blindfolded wolves.

  “But allow me to let you know one thing about business people. We really don’t like that kind of surprise.”

  Chapter 13

  Malorie was so pissed off by the time she had gotten home that she could hardly stand it. Once she escaped the thrall of Tristan’s hot body, annoyance was a conscious choice. She could be pissed off or she could be desperate, and she had not gone through hell, fire, and New York to come back to this town desperate.

  Her annoyance with Tristan was even more exacerbated by the sneaking suspicion that Damien had played her somehow. Why the hell had she said treasure?

  Well, she knew whose fault it was.

  Tristan Charm-Your-Pants-Off Rosier had gone really over the line this time. Wrapping his hand around her calf, sending heat climbing straight up to her head and flushing every part of her body on its way there, then following after that heat with that slow, slow rub of calluses. How dare he?

  That man would do anything to disturb her focus, to demand her attention. He treated her body just as he’d treated his damn boxes of crayons back when they were kids. And it worked, too. She felt spilled out, a fascinating sprawl of colors.

  She had had it with him. What did he think she was, an actress? A model? Used to his bullshit?

  You’d better hope I don’t stay at Abbaye. I’d strip your next perfume down to something sensible.

  And then he’d die, and then she’d dance on his grave.

  Kicking up clods into the faces of all those other women prostrate with grief, sobbing their eyes out, their perfect bosoms heaving in their beautiful, sexy party dresses.

  So there.

  Tristan’s specter rose up out of the imagined grave like some movie version of a perfume escaping a bottle, thumbed its nose at her with a grin, and proceeded to curl around her shoulders and whisper flirting, sexy promises to haunt her for the rest of her life.

  Grrrr. She growled at him and strode out under the bitter orange trees. And a deep slow breath moved through her body.

  The sun was setting. The light was soft and rosy to the west, flushing southward over the Mediterranean. The scent from the orange blossoms was warmer than the night, sensuous and fresh and sweet all at once.

  Romantic. Hopeful.

  She slipped off her shoes and stood barefoot on one of the drop cloths. She’d found a little distillery that could handle her small quantities of orange blossom from the few trees she could harvest a morning. It had been the same one her grandmother had used, and the older man who ran it had been surprised and pleased to see her, reminiscing about her grandmother, while from time to time one of the handful of other people in the region who had small bitter orange groves showed up with their burlap sacks of orange blossom, too.

  Some white flowers scattered on the cloth, fallen during the day. She stirred them with her toes. Tristan would love it here.

  Yeah. He would.

  But a vision flashed through her mind of Damien’s amusement, of Tristan’s blasé attitude. Oh, you caught me with my hand up a woman’s skirt again? Nothing new to see here.

  Sexual attraction? Yeah, that happens to him a lot.

  Tristan’s fatal flaw, at least where women who fantasized about him were concerned. Every other woman fantasized about him, too, and he was never going to settle for only a few sensations when he could have all of them.

  He’d still love it here, though. She sat down on the cloth, picking up one of the fallen flowers and wrapping her arms around her knees. On a night like this, surrounded by scents and flowers, with his own body and hers to enjoy, Tristan would turn the night into a one-couple orgy.

  She could imagine it in far too vivid detail. Tristan’s eyes black in the night, his hair falling over his forehead, the way that lean, muscled body would move, the way he would react to every touch, every sensation, craving all of them.

  The way she would react to him. To his hands on her skin, to her hands on his, to the texture of his hair and shoulders under her fingers, to the scent of his skin.

  Tristan’s scent was fun. You never knew what he might have been skin-testing on his arms that day, which made his natural scent elusive, like a game of tricks and mirrors. Only a woman who had the right to bury her nose regularly against his bare skin would ever learn his naked scent. On a lazy Sunday morning, late enough for the scents of the shower and his toothpaste to have calmed down, only Tristan left, warm, inviting all the exploration a woman could ever want.

  She curled her fingers into her palms. And finally stretched out on the drop cloth, staring at the stars. He’d really had a crush on her?

  Of course, he’d probably had a crush on half the girls in school. Discovering sex and eager to have as much of it as he could.

  Whereas she’d been walled off. Like her grandmother. Creating a barrier all around herself, a safe space. When she’d set off on that hike, maybe it had felt so incredibly freeing not only because she was escaping Grasse but because she was escaping the confines she had created for herself.

  Stepping out.

  She pulled the drop cloth over herself, wrapping herself in flowers and the thought of Tristan—the imagined Tristan, who was hers—and fell asleep.

  ***

  The parquet flooring gleamed in the afternoon light. It made her throat tighten and her chest hurt, how beautiful it was. A few dust motes lingering from all they had stirred up still danced in the rays of light, luring her back into another time, when her family was strong and glorious.

  “Got any old flapper dresses in an attic somewhere?” Tristan murmured, as if he saw the vision, too. He’d had to haul all the plywood that had been under the carpet outside to reveal the floor, and his chest and shoulders gleamed faintly with a hint of perspiration.

  It was probably why he had left an arm’s stretch of personal space between them instead of standing with his shoulder brushing hers like he usually did, but it made her want to touch one finger to his biceps to see what that hint of moisture felt like on his skin.

  Hell, she just wanted to sink her fingers into those biceps completely and test what his muscles felt like. Pumped from the labor right now, his eyes glowing with his own satisfaction.

  “I guess we should paint next before we move the furniture up here,” he said, a little regretfully, a man who had a vision of this room he wanted realize faster than paint dried.

  “Why are you doing this, Tristan?” Seeing that beautiful parquet flooring revealed made everything seem so possible.

  Or was it having Tristan here to help with the work, to share his energy and enthusiasm, that made things seem so possible?

  So desirable.

  He shrugged one powerful shoulder. “I want to see this place restored. It’s beautiful.” He slanted her a somehow indulgent glance. As if he had come to terms with some aspect of who she was and was giving it understanding and acceptance. “Plus, as I’ve mentioned, Malorie, we’ve been friends since grade school.”

  Yeah, he did keep mentioning that. She’d had friends in high school, and in Paris and New York, too, but sometimes, the way he talked about it, she wondered if she understood what friendship was. Like maybe she’d been missing something, all this time.

  A narcissistic father could really do a number on a girl. Her therapist in New York had taught her all the ways she compensated for that in her relationships with others—distrust being her primary one, an unwillingness to let down her guard and let people in—but knowing what caused that wariness didn’t mean Malorie found it easy to let those survival instincts go. They were a part of her, older even than her relationship with Tristan.

  “Well, I just want you to know I really appreciate it. If there’s ever anything I can do for you in return…” Besides sell this place to him at a discount, which he’d
better not be maneuvering for.

  Tristan sighed dramatically. “You could grab me and kiss me in gratitude any time. Break that twenty-five year streak of shutting me out.”

  She rolled her eyes. And tried not to remember his fingers, stroking up her thigh, while he kneeled at her feet.

  Instead, she focused on remembering both his and Damien’s easy amusement when he was discovered in the act.

  “Twenty-five years and never even kissed,” Tristan said sadly. “The dearth of physical affection in this relationship is stunning.”

  The man made flirting with him so damn enticing. She bit the inside of her lip. “You don’t remember, do you?” she said, taking his sadness and upping it a quotient of woefully wounded.

  “Kissing you? Unless you drugged me first, I can promise I’d remember that.”

  “In a tunnel on the playground. We were five.”

  Tristan gave her a blank look.

  “My first kiss.” She clasped her hands to her chest and gazed heavenward romantically.

  “Probably mine, too, if we were five. Seriously? This really happened?”

  “You said you wanted to marry me.”

  To her astonishment, a light flush climbed up Tristan’s cheeks. He thrust his hand through his hair. “Are you making this up?”

  To be honest, her vague memories mostly involved fragmented images of the bright yellow of the inside of the tunnel and coming face to face with a blurred-by-time Tristan as they were each crawling through it from opposite ends. But she was pretty sure that was how it had played out. “You forgot.” She turned her head away tragically. “I knew it.”

  “I can’t figure out if you’re shitting me,” Tristan said warily.

  “Then later that recess, you married four or five other girls in this big ceremony over by the playhouse set, and I wasn’t even invited to the wedding.”

  “Okay, I remember that. They caught me! And threw weeds at me. My cousins made fun of me for weeks.”

  “I think the weeds were supposed to be flowers. Your cousins were probably just jealous.”

  “That’s what I said, but they kept laughing.”

  Malorie was starting to laugh herself. She knew she was supposed to be stomping on his charm so that he couldn’t get his hand up her skirt again, but Tristan was so damn irresistible it was ridiculous.

  Tristan gazed down at her. As an adult, she was used to facing off against Tristan while wearing heels, but today, having planned ahead to help with the work on the floor, she was in minimalist tennis shoes, and the fifteen centimeters or so he had on her when she wasn’t wearing heels made her feel unfamiliarly small. His gaze was caught on her laughter.

  “So this would actually be our second kiss.” His voice deepened, sensual and hungry, as he lifted his hand.

  She stepped back before his hand could curl around her nape or cup her cheek or…just don’t think about all the ways he could touch you. Don’t think about a “second” kiss. “We’ve kissed cheeks more times than I can count,” she said dismissively. Twice on hello, twice on good-bye, every single encounter. Even in New York. Even when he was so mad at her that his lips pressed against each cheek like the cold points of an exclamation mark at the end of an insult. “What’s so different about lips?”

  Tristan laughed deep and soft. “Malorie.” He took a step forward, following her retreat. “Let me show you.”

  She took another step back, bumping into the wall.

  Tristan stopped. Standing close, but not putting his arms to either side of her on the wall, not using his greater size and strength to close her in. Sometimes it hurt her heart how much she really, really liked Tristan.

  “Do you know how pretty you are?” Tristan said softly. “I mean, really, really beautiful. I don’t even know what it is, exactly. It’s just when I’m up close to you, I feel like I can breathe.” He paused. His lips quirked. “Sometimes much too hard. Like I’m getting ready for something…very physical.”

  Oh. The urge to turn physical ran through her. Tried to turn all her defenses into pliable, yielding things.

  He lifted a hand to pull on a strand of her hair, drawing it gently through his fingers. “I bribed Antoine to blow off our project that time,” he murmured. “So that it would only be me and you. I kept wanting to kiss you, all the time we were working on it. But I knew I was too over the line in how much I hit on you already. That you had to show something, some sign you wanted it, too, before I could try for a kiss.”

  “And I never did?” Malorie said, surprised. And then she flushed and turned her head away, embarrassed by what she’d revealed. “You know damn well you were one of the hottest guys in school,” she muttered.

  A flash of pleasure in Tristan’s eyes at that admission.

  “Well, that’s what I wonder now.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. Pleasure shivered through her. “If maybe I missed a chance because I just didn’t know how to read your interest. You weren’t giggly, like some of the girls. You’ve always been so…strong in yourself, is the best way I can put it. Maybe quiet didn’t mean untouchable, and I just didn’t realize back then. I was pretty insecure.”

  Malorie made an incredulous noise. “You don’t have an insecure bone in your body.”

  “Maybe not now,” Tristan allowed. “But back then I was still going through my growing pains. And you’ve got to admit, Malorie, that during our entire school years, you were the girl who had everything together, and I was the boy teachers kept telling to act more like you.”

  She’d seemed like she had everything together? What? Surely not in high school. Right after her father died with another woman in his car, when everything had been falling apart at home and her social support at high school had been, at best, unreliable, and she’d mostly just tried to keep her head down, focus on getting through each day, and definitely not look at the mirror too much and obsess over all the changes happening to her body that would mean she could never feel like a safe child in her grandmother’s garden again.

  “Your grandfather would have killed you if you’d gotten involved with me.”

  “I don’t think my grandfather operates quite the way you think he does. He’s always told me that you judge a man on his own mettle, and that’s the only thing you can judge him on. Family’s just a preliminary indicator that may be entirely off.”

  Malorie searched his face, wondering how true that was. His aunt, Madame Delatour, had tested Malorie’s mettle, but not in a mean way, not—surprisingly—as if she was visiting the sins of her great-grandfather upon her. More as if she tested everyone’s mettle, particularly that of women her nephews brought to meet her.

  Tristan ran his fingers over her head, as if the texture of her hair fascinated him. “I bet he will like you. He loves strength and pride and independence and trying to do the right thing.”

  Malorie fought the sudden sting in her eyes.

  “You didn’t realize?” Tristan’s voice gentled. “That anyone else saw that in you?”

  “Tristan, stop it,” Malorie said frantically, her face twisted away.

  He stepped back. But his gaze stayed on her face. It was unnerving how steadily he studied her.

  Tristan was freaking smart. People forgot that sometimes, because he maintained such a laid-back, humorous persona. But Malorie had spent her life in the perfume industry. She knew he had memorized several thousand molecules that he could identify from the smell, and when he did, their chemical formulae appeared in his brain, and all the ways he could connect that molecule to any of the thousands of others, and whether they would bind well, how long they’d last in the bottle before they broke down.

  She knew that that was just the basics of his career. Tristan was arguably the most brilliant perfumer of his generation. Meaning he was inarguably brilliant.

  Genius-level brilliant. Amused, lounging, windsurfing, rock-climbing, hating to sit still…and a genius.

  And one of the areas on which he had chosen to focus his intellig
ence was people. He enjoyed them, and he liked to understand them.

  And right now, he was focused on her.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked, furious with him for how desperate and confused and wanting he made her feel. How much he made her long not to step away from her guarded keep and head out on a quest for better prospects but to claim the keep and open it wide and let him in. No matter how much opportunity that gave him to hurt her, once he was inside.

  Tristan caught up his T-shirt and toolkit. “I already told you that, Malorie.” He went to the doors, paused, and looked back over his shoulder to capture her eyes one last time. “You.”

  Chapter 14

  You.

  You.

  Seriously, Tristan was indefatigable where women were concerned. He had to experience every damn one of them.

  She wrapped her arms around herself under the bitter orange trees. Of course, what if that woman wanted to experience Tristan?

  That’s how he lured so many of them in. Women knew he would be an incredible, sensual, once in a lifetime experience.

  And she never had experienced him, not once in her life. She’d always kept focused on her goals. Protecting herself from anyone who might require her to abandon those goals in the service of his wants and ego.

  What if your goals and his are the same?

  The flush of enthusiasm and happiness at seeing those parquet floors gleaming, for example. Standing shoulder to shoulder imagining what the showroom would be like painted, the display tables restored to their positions, perfume bottles on display.

  What if they made a team? Him with his perfumes and creative vision and passion and her with the financial sense and drive to make sure those visions could come true.

  Her lips quirked. How they would fight. How many times Tristan would grow impassioned and persuasive and convincing.

  She wouldn’t even be sabotaging her career if she gave in to that passionate persuasion. If she ran Monsard, then as long as profits were good, those profits wouldn’t have to be maximized to the last cent every single time. She could decide where priorities lay, not a higher up executive watching to see if she proved herself worthy of the next promotion.