Malorie gestured even harder. “This is his way. Happy family, everyone together and laughing. Oh, why do I even bother with you people. You’re utter idiots.” She dropped her hands back to her sides, found no pockets to shove them into in this silky dress, and gripped them again behind her, glaring out at the fields.
“I’m an idiot?” the old war hero said mildly.
Malorie slanted him a glance and very, very carefully made sure she didn’t let herself answer that one.
“You think you’re more perceptive about my own grandson than I am, do you?”
Malorie flung up a hand again. “He’s got all this.” She gestured to the valley, to the happy family gathering. “And what does he do? He tries to bottle it, to share it with the whole world, so they can have it, too. And when he likes someone specially he…he…he tries to capture some beautiful thing that person loves, some moment, something important, and hold it for them in a bottle so they can always have it.” That warm dust-in-light perfume, that wish that time could wake up and all its old promise come true. He’d made that for her. She snuck a glance at the difficult war hero. “Has he ever done that for you?”
Jean-Jacques Rosier looked out across the fields. “Yes,” he said, so quietly that Malorie’s irritation grew quiet, too. She wondered how many scents had filled that man’s life and how many, by now, carried loss in their fragrance.
He’d lost his wife. He’d lost a son. He’d had two other sons go to far countries after their own losses and rarely come back. Most of his lifelong friends were gone by now, and one of his grandsons still fought in the Foreign Legion.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, and bent her head. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Monsieur Rosier studied her thoughtfully. She made herself lift her head and meet his eyes.
“You’ve got your grandmother’s bones,” he said after a moment. Since she didn’t look that much like her grandmother, she thought he meant something other than literal bone structure.
“Good,” she said firmly, making sure he knew she would not stand for any aspersions on her grandmother. “She had strong bones.”
The old man smiled very faintly, as if all those wrinkles on his face were time-scars that didn’t let his face stretch into a full laugh anymore. “That’s what I just said.”
***
Tristan eyed his grandfather sidelong as the old man came to stand beside him while he opened three fresh bottles of wine out of the cave. People liked to plan to live long in his family. They laid choice harvests down and set them by for birthdays ten years in advance. In the belief that if worse came to worst and they weren’t there to drink them, the rest of the family would drink them in their honor.
So far, they had not yet had to drink his grandfather’s bottles in his honor without being able to hand him a glass of his own.
Tristan handed his grandfather a glass. “It’s the 2006.”
His grandfather cupped the glass and turned it to let the wine stir, took a breath of it just the way he’d taught his grandons to do, his eyes closing a moment, and then tasted it. “It aged well,” he said, satisfied.
Tristan glanced across at Malorie, who was now talking to Léa and Daniel. Having helped run a restaurant and served as its hostess since she was a teenager, Léa was very good at putting almost anyone at ease and making them feel welcome. Tristan was, too, but he liked letting his family do it here—letting Malorie’s welcome expand more and more, so that she realized she could be welcomed here in Grasse by more people than just him.
Malorie valued independence. Had a deep-rooted need to prove to herself that she didn’t need anyone but herself. So he figured it was a long-term game. Instead of helping her deal with his family, which would make her feel as if she needed that help and therefore trigger her profound rejection of any possibility of needing someone, he would let her handle this party mostly on her own. Once she proved to herself she could do it, she wouldn’t brace against the fear that she needed him anymore, and the next party, he’d get to hang out with her more and wrap his arm around that silky, maddening dress that kept sliding over her hips every time she moved. Once she’d proven she could stand on her own and didn’t need him, she’d relax more and just enjoy his company.
He hoped.
“Did you try to scare her off?” he said.
“Yes,” his grandfather answered imperturbably.
Tristan smiled just a little and tried the wine himself. His grandfather was right—it had aged well. Some vintages were like that. They needed time to grow. They were fuller and richer if you waited and came back to them later. “And how’d that work out for you?”
His grandfather smiled very faintly, that little compression of his lips that was like being brushed by the sun. “She’ll do.”
Chapter 17
“The purple paint doesn’t faze you?” a woman’s voice asked wryly, and Malorie looked around to see a chic, competent, dark-haired woman stop beside her. Tristan’s mom. Malorie might once have stood off to the side awkwardly at Grasse parties, but at this party, any moment by herself seemed to be an open invitation to every single one of Tristan’s family members to isolate her and interrogate her. She couldn’t even make a trip to the bathroom without someone seizing the opportunity.
You’d think the man had never brought a woman home before.
“At least he didn’t pour the paint all over me, too, that time,” she said, amused. “You forget, we went to school together.”
Annick Rosier shot her a quick, searching glance. “Oh, you’re the girl who—” She broke off. “Malorie,” she repeated. “That Malorie. Of course you are. No wonder he never told me your last name back then.”
Malorie looked away across the fields.
Annick winced. “I mean—” She brushed the faux pas away briskly, her wedding ring glinting on her hand in the lights strung through the trees, and fell silent for a moment. Her expression softened, reminiscent. “He had such a crush on you back then,” she said fondly, turning to spot her son’s head, where he was filling his grandfather’s wine glass.
Malorie folded her arms, not so much to defend herself but to keep the fuddled, happy feeling in her middle nice and warm. Like it was a newborn kitten.
“And now he’s finally got you to go out with him.” Annick gave a low laugh of pure maternal wonder. “There’s persistent, and then there’s Tristan. He smiles at you like he’s the most laid-back person in the world, and underneath he doesn’t let go of what he wants ever. If he mentions he’d like to hike all the way to Grasse, you’d better not blink just because he looks as if he’s happily distracted onto other toys.”
As far as Malorie could tell, Tristan had been distracted onto plenty of other toys. Not that he treated other women like toys exactly, or not any more so than they did him, but still. Malorie gave his mother a dry look. “No offense, but Tristan has hardly been brooding over me all his adult life.”
“Well, he’s very…physical,” his mother said, flushing slightly and looking up at the stars as if asking them why she was having to discuss her son’s sexuality with anyone.
Hey, you started it, Malorie thought. What, I wasn’t supposed to fight my corner?
Annick hesitated, searching for words. “You know how his cousins are all like emotional bears tumbling blindfolded over a cliff?”
Malorie didn’t know that, but she snorted at the image. Particularly in regards to elegant, lethal, controlled Damien, it was one to be cherished.
“Tristan’s not like that. He…roots. He likes everybody, but the people he loves…he’s grown that love for them for a really long time. It’s very…stubborn.” Annick flexed her fingers in the air, as if that stubbornness was so strong it had a texture. Then she spread her arms up high above her head like the arms of a spreading tree, making Malorie savor how much more vibrant conversations were on this side of the Atlantic, where people spoke like their bodies were part of the conversation. “And it’s very big.” Annick’s fi
ngers spread at the uppermost limits of their stretch, a star shining just at the edge of her wedding ring like a diamond.
Malorie turned to look at Tristan, who was grinning at his cousin, dramatic, expansive chef Gabe Delange.
Now she couldn’t identify the emotion surging in her middle. Inside it, at its heart, there was still that fuddly golden warmth, like a dream curled up tiny and purring. But that gold nestled in the heart of something as rushing and enormous and scary as that hurricane that had hit New York.
“I think you probably shouldn’t give yourself ideas,” she said carefully to Tristan’s mother.
Annick gave her an odd look. “You do remember he’s my son, right? I know him pretty well.”
Malorie held a fair degree of skepticism about parents, but she inclined her head politely.
“I wasn’t giving myself ideas,” Annick said. “I was giving you a few.”
Malorie met her eyes. The older woman’s were searching and, underneath, wary. As if she thought Malorie could hurt her son.
Malorie frowned a little, automatically seeking Tristan’s dark head. She had at various times in her life wanted to strangle him, break a perfume bottle over his head, or throw him out a skyscraper. But she’d never wanted to hurt him.
It had never occurred to her that she could.
Annick was overprotective that was all. Maternal instinct. Malorie tried a reassuring smile. “Tristan’s not as vulnerable as you think.”
Annick looked worried.
“Trust me,” Malorie said dryly, “where Tristan and women are concerned, there are always plenty more fish in the sea.”
Now Annick looked exasperated. “No, there aren’t. There are plenty of women Tristan can have sex with.” His mom was annoyed enough she even said it without wincing. “But there aren’t plenty of women he can fall in love with. He doesn’t know how to do that—change, let go. I know he seems very distractible on the surface. But emotionally he’s very constant. I just told you.”
Malorie was silent, not sure what to respond. Not even sure what to think. She felt as if Tristan’s mother had just given her one universe-size idea to chew on.
“He’s not really distractible,” she said after a moment. “You’re thinking of what his teachers said. He can’t sit still, I agree about that. But it’s more because his focus is too big. He focuses on everything. Now that he can work in the way that suits him, it’s almost like he is himself a distillery. He pulls everything about the world into him and then gives the essence of it back out.”
Annick’s face softened into a smile. Her gaze lingered on Malorie, thoughtful. Assessing.
Malorie looked back across the party, not sure what to do about that gaze except to let Annick assess. It seemed a reasonable thing to want to do before you let someone closer to what mattered to you.
Across the way, under the great plane tree, Tristan joked with his cousins and fragrance chemist father, an interestingly geeky older version of Tristan with gray wings in his hair and glasses. A little kid was trying to climb up Tristan’s pants, and without missing a beat in his conversation, he picked the girl up automatically and set her feet on his shoulders, bracing her so that she could stand on them and proudly wave.
“Did he drive you crazy in school?” his mother asked quietly. “When he was little I mean. I know he got in a lot of…trouble.”
Malorie heard the faint note of anxiety, even all these years later, of a mother who had not known how to help her son. He’d had to figure out how to help himself. But that one was an easy one to reassure her about.
“He was fun,” Malorie said. All those spilled crayons and finger paints. As she watched, he flipped the little girl forward over his head and down in front of his chest, holding her with strong, sure hands and grinning at her before he set her down on her feet and ruffled her hair. “He was the life of the place,” she said softly.
***
“Don’t tell me,” Tristan said a little while later, putting his arm around his mother’s waist as she came up to him and hugging her to his side. “She’ll do.”
“Maybe,” his mother said. “She might.”
Tristan gave his mother a rueful look.
His mother held up her hands. “I’m still judging.”
He laughed and kissed her head. “Right, Maman.”
Little Lexie Delange had stopped in front of Malorie under the almond trees and was gazing at her solemnly. Malorie squatted down in front of her, her knees tight together in her little sheath as it pulled up her thighs and made Tristan’s head go blurry hot. He took a slow breath, focusing on Malorie’s face like women were always trying to get men to do. Her manner was a little over-careful, as if she hadn’t been around many kids but was respectful enough of a little girl to give her attention just the same. Lexie handed Malorie a broken twig with a few white almond blooms still clinging to it. Malorie’s face softened into pleasure.
Four-year-olds had such an unfair advantage, when it came to charming women.
“I wonder who vets for Malorie,” Tristan said suddenly. “Makes sure the man who’s interested in her is worthy of her.”
His mother raised a maternal eyebrow—clearly Malorie would be damn lucky to get him, in her mind.
“I guess that’s why she has to do such a careful job of it,” he realized. The same reason she fought her own corner. If she let her guard down to the wrong person, then she thought no one in this world would help defend her when that wrong person tried to strike her down.
He would defend her, but…it was really hard for her to understand that. It had taken him a long time to start to guess how hard, and now it wrenched at his heart.
“Her father was a piece of work,” his mother said suddenly.
Tristan slid a glance at her. “You knew him?”
“We went to school together, too. All charm and no heart. The kind of guy who’d talk a girl into making out with him and then ruin her reputation with the rest of the school just so he could brag about it.”
Tristan grimaced. And wondered what it was like to grow up with a man like that for a father, a man whose ego was infinitely more precious to him than another person’s well-being.
“She seems very different from both her parents,” his mom said. “Tougher than her mother. I guess that makes sense, that she’d want to be tougher.”
Tristan was pretty sure that Malorie wanted to be tougher than at least three generations of her family, even perhaps tougher than her grandmother, the woman who had also had to be tough enough to stand alone.
“I’d like to see her in finger paints,” his mom said musingly. “See if the tough woman looks like that little girl in that old photo when you make her laugh.”
“She gave me crayons,” Tristan said, and flushed, even though of all people he should be able to talk about something intimate with his mom.
“Did she?” His mother smiled, watching Malorie tuck the almond blossoms into her hair and pull the orange blossom out to give Lexie instead. “You know, mon chéri…I think she likes you.” And after a moment, “You, I mean. Not that idiot sexy hot shot thing you like to do.”
Oh, hell, not that lecture again. Some people’s moms still asked their adult sons if they’d washed their ears. Tristan’s liked to double-check on a regular basis that he was using condoms. With a slight disapproving moue as if he shouldn’t be needing to use them so often in the first place. It was freaking embarrassing. “Maman.”
His mom shrugged. “But if you’ll take my advice, ma puce—”
“Always,” Tristan said immediately. “Maman, do not start about the cond—”
“—you’ll let her know about those shares.”
Okay, talk about a non sequitur. “It’s a surprise,” Tristan said. Remind him never to organize a surprise birthday party for anyone in his family. They clearly did not get the concept. “I’m waiting for the right moment.”
Chapter 18
In her dreams, a thumb stroked Malorie’s hair
back from where it had caught in her eyelashes and tucked it with the rest of her hair. Sweet. She smiled as the thumb drifted back along her cheek and turned her head just enough to kiss it. It stilled at the kiss, then stroked the shape of her lips. So sweet. She kissed it again, blinking slowly awake, her cheek pressed against the leather passenger seat.
Tristan’s face close to hers, long, black eyelashes shielding his eyes as he gazed at his thumb on her lips.
Tristan. Of course. She smiled at him and kissed his thumb one more time.
His eyelashes lifted and his eyes caught hers. Close and brown and magic.
“Malorie.” His voice was husky. His hand sank into her hair, cradling her head. He lowered his head.
His lips were firm and warm and gentle, too, parting hers, and—
“Wait, you’re real?” She jerked back, startled.
“Now that’s an interesting comment,” Tristan said softly, lifting his head just enough to look at her. “What does that mean, exactly? Do I kiss you sometimes in your dreams?”
Malorie flushed.
Warm brown eyes widened. “Do I?” His fingers kneaded into her nape. “Now how long have I been doing that?”
Ten years at least. She could remember tucking herself into fantasies of Tristan those early, terribly lonely days in Paris and then again after the move to New York. He’d be there the most when loneliness was toughest or she’d had a bad day, and even after a happy, busy day that had finished with a late night dancing with friends, she still sometimes liked to cuddle up into the thought of him as she dozed off. She’d gotten into the habit.
She tried to give him a dirty look, but their faces were so close the look couldn’t get up much power. “The man in my dreams knows far better than to trick me into going to a Rosier family party. Your grandfather’s birthday.”
Tristan smiled just a little. “Oh, yeah, I bet in your dreams I do exactly what you want me to. In real life I’m a lot more fun.”
He kissed her again right on her mouth as she started to argue, sinking in, luxurious and hungry. Far more demanding than any cozy dream.
Crown of Bitter Orange Page 18
