You should have thought of the consequences of that little trip up to Lucien’s apartment in Italy before you chose to make it.
She stroked the heart. Lucien would be all right, probably. He hadn’t looked all right, when she’d left to find Antoine, but surely his family could handle it now. They’d all wrapped around him so fast, so happy, he couldn’t fail to understand how much he was welcomed back.
So she sat there, absolutely not brooding at all, for a long time, until a foot shifted on stone.
She startled as a big body filled the opening of the lavoir.
Then startled even more, all the way upright, when she realized who it was.
Lucien Rosier himself. Big and tough and brown all over, except for those blue-gray eyes and the T-shirt that didn’t exactly add a splash of color. Fine lines of fatigue showed around his eyes, but his body radiated a tight-reined energy. Power in reserve. I may be holding myself in check, but I can go from 0 to 100 in 0.5 seconds if there’s a need.
She grabbed for composure. Tightened her stomach muscles a little and made sure her shoulders were straight and down, that her head was up, that her hair swung over her shoulders. Quit posing. But she did like to look pretty for him. Far too much.
“Are you okay?” she said. “Managing? You’re not going to try to run away again, are you?”
She had known kids and teenagers who ran away, usually in some counterproductive hope to find somewhere they belonged. So she didn’t blame him for doing it when he was nineteen. Well…kind of she didn’t. She tried not to.
He gave her the kind of hard, rejecting look she’d fled from in Italy. “What do you care?”
Oh. Her thumb rubbed over one of the chips in her lionheart. Sometimes you paid a price for risking your heart.
Most times.
“I just thought it might be kind of tough coming back,” she said. She wouldn’t know, exactly. From the outside it looked pretty awesome.
He folded his arms, the biceps straining against the sleeves of his T-shirt. “Oh, you did, did you? Is that why you chose to interfere in my life like I was some damn doll you needed to put back in the right dollhouse?”
First Antoine, now him. “I do not play with dolls,” she said with dignity.
She’d never really been able to keep a dollhouse, although some of her foster families had had ones for the kids to play with. You had to share, and the boys in the family were guaranteed to have ripped off the dolls’ limbs at some point. Not Antoine, but plenty of the kids with whom she’d shared foster situations had had much harder times adjusting to their childhoods than she and Antoine had had.
“No, you play with humans,” Lucien said.
Okay, but she was retiring from that. From now on, she only sought out lost objects, not lost people. She was even going to see a therapist next month to help her wean herself off the human-dollhouse habit.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “This from a man who directs human beings where to place themselves in battle while the rest of us content ourselves with a chessboard?”
He pulled back.
She winced. She probably shouldn’t have said that. He…merde, following his orders, some of his men during his fifteen-year career might even have been killed.
You are a terrible person. Don’t strike out wildly like that, just to protect yourself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling horrible.
Blue eyes fixed her grimly. Green-brown water flowed beside them, quiet and steady.
“For saying that. Not for finding you. You’re welcome for finding you.”
And he had been literally welcomed. His family had been so damn happy to have him back.
“Do you think this is easy?” Strain roughened his voice.
“No. I just acknowledged it might be tough.” She tried to stop herself, but then it just burst out: “Although I don’t see what’s so hard about it. Prodigal son returns. Family welcomes him with open arms. Everyone lives happily ever after.” She brushed her hands together. A job well done. Be happy now, Lucien.
“You’re unbelievable,” he said.
She fell back on the most effective defense she’d ever developed to deal with the male half of the world—sexy mockery. “That’s what all you guys say.” She gave him a slanted smile.
“Are there a lot of us?” he said coolly.
Okay, so sometimes her attempts at sexy self-defense could still come off clumsy, and it probably wasn’t a surprise that all her old thirteen-year-old awkwardness should leak through around him. But still. She’d been trying to be witty, and he was just being cruel. Blaming her, essentially, for having breasts and curves the same way she’d been blamed over and over ever since she first started developing them.
Her hands clenched slowly in her pockets. The image he had conveyed of strength and self-containment had called to every craving she had. And yes, she had fallen victim to that craving before. And been hurt. Her nails dug into her palms. “I can guarantee that you’ve slept with more women than I have men. I’d take odds that sometimes you didn’t even know a woman’s name. So if you’re wanting to form a judgment, you look in your own fucking mirror.”
She jerked her hands free of their hiding place in her pockets and strode past him.
“Elena.” He reached for her wrist—not a grab, really, just a loose clasp of callused index finger and thumb to try to catch her attention.
She jerked away, so hard she bumped back against the stone post on the other side of the lavoir entrance. “Don’t touch me!”
His eyebrows drew together. He looked from her wrist to her face. A deep, startled anger flared in his eyes. “Has someone hurt you?”
“You just hurt me.” She ran up the stone steps.
Smack dab into Antoine.
She bounced off his hard chest, and he grabbed her so she didn’t fall back down the steps. Green eyes swept over her face and then cut past her, below. “‘Hurt you’?” he said, in a voice like a knife blade.
Elena caught her balance, looking from him to Lucien, who had stepped out from under the shade of the lavoir to gaze up at them. “Not like that,” she hissed. “Antoine, you know he—it’s Lucien!”
“Men change a lot in fifteen years in a military branch known for being utter assholes to women,” Antoine said flatly. He hadn’t looked away from Lucien.
“I knew you fifteen years ago?” Lucien’s gaze flickered over her, completely failing to recognize her, and went back to Antoine. Who did seem to inspire a flicker of recognition. Or more than a flicker. Lucien’s whole manner was sharpening.
Elena shoved Antoine. “No!” And under her breath, “Shut up, Antoine.”
“I did know you,” Lucien realized. But still his attention seemed torn between her and Antoine.
Nice to know she was so riveting here. “I grew up around here,” she said impatiently. Mostly. “I was six years behind you in school, so no, you wouldn’t remember me.” If Antoine didn’t jog his memory. She gave Antoine a filthy warning look.
“Oh.” Lucien looked a little confused. “You would have been a kid, then.”
“Exactly.” She nodded firmly.
He ran that long, searching gaze over her, the one that made her feel as if he could analyze her body for data like a futuristic robot, but didn’t seem to come up with any face match results. Antoine, though…Lucien looked back at him, blue-gray eyes gaining a dangerous look that she realized she had never seen turned on her. Not even when he was furious. “Who the hell are you?” he said.
“No one you would know.” Antoine held his eyes coolly. “Antoine Vallier.”
“How old are you?” Lucien said inexplicably.
“Why?” Antoine said, edged.
“A year older than me,” Elena said. “Why are you guys fighting?” She tugged on Antoine’s arm, and Lucien’s gaze went to where Antoine held her and her hand covered his.
“Merde, look in a damn mirror sometime, Elena,” Antoine said abruptly, sounding frustrated b
eyond belief.
Elena faltered, looking up at him uncertainly. Wasn’t Antoine kind of like her brother? When her body started changing and all the world of men grew so very dangerous for her, when she never knew if a foster brother or foster father might try to corner her as soon as she got alone, Antoine had always been safe. Always.
Like Lucien, only closer. Less like a safe crush and more like a safe brother.
She looked from one to the other.
Lucien held out a hand, palm up. What? She felt as if she’d become a toy in a tug of war. Especially as those blue eyes held hers and…gentled in a way that pulled her so strongly. “I need to talk to you privately,” Lucien said. His voice had changed, quieter, more soothing than it had been a moment ago when he’d been upset.
She hesitated, cursing herself for wanting to go right back down and put her hand in his. Seriously, what are you, a dog? A little petting and it doesn’t matter he just kicked you?
“No.” Antoine tightened his grip on her arm.
She looked up at him incredulously. “How the hell is that your decision? Merde, Antoine. What’s wrong with you?”
He looked down at her, and there was the tiniest pause as he regrouped behind that cool control he liked to keep over himself. “I need to talk to you, too,” he said. Also quietly. Meeting her eyes.
Oh.
Elena glanced between him and Lucien again, while Lucien’s eyes narrowed on Antoine as if the man had just painted a big, bright target on his chest.
“Okay,” she said slowly. Antoine was Antoine, after all. They’d been sticking by each other for a long time, when no one else was around to do it. “Maybe later?” she said to Lucien doubtfully.
She was not at all sure she was willing to be Lucien’s emotional punching bag, even if she was partly responsible for him being in this situation. “It’s not my fault, though,” she said suddenly, as she started to walk away with Antoine. She turned back. “It’s yours.”
“What?” Lucien stared at her.
“That you’re in this situation. You chose to leave and make no contact for fifteen years. That’s not my fault. That’s yours.”
Lucien’s jaw locked. He glared at her as if she was doing herself no favors in his eyes.
“Come on, Elena,” Antoine said gently and dropped his hand to the small of her back, guiding her away.
Was it her imagination, or did his fingers shift against her back in a particular way? She shot a suspicious glance up at Antoine. “Did you just shoot a bird at him?”
“Who, me?” Antoine said blandly.
Chapter 7
Lucien honest to God didn’t know how to survive this. He kept taking long, deep breaths, trying to use techniques that he’d learned at nineteen to get through basic training. La Ferme was four weeks of fucking mind games from sadistic corporals and adjudants, on top of the type of training that was really physical torture. If he could survive that, he could handle this.
Being home again.
The intensity, the cruelty, the confusion of warmth and guilt and pain that was his reaction to being here. How could his cousins just hug him? Show tears for him? How could his grandfather just snap at him that it was about time he came home, as if he’d always had that home to come to? How could his aunts and uncles rush to grab his shoulders and kiss his cheeks, as if they were in some way still the village that had raised him? The ring that had been handed down from blood descendant to blood descendant for centuries burned against his chest, so much not his.
And God, but he wanted it.
He glowered broodingly at Elena Lyon, over there dancing with a group that included Antoine Vallier. Could she quit fucking laughing up at that asshole every time she did a particularly low jive with her hips or bounced with particular enthusiasm? What were they, partners in crime? Or just…partners? With some kind of open relationship, maybe, where she got to pick up men in Italy?
Or had she genuinely just been softening him up on that terrace in Italy, so she’d have more impact when she dropped her bombshell?
He retreated under the old plane tree, where Tante Colette had retired as the night deepened, and sat on the ground by her chair.
How often had they done that, as kids and teenagers? Seen their grandfather walking alone or their grandmother back then, too, or Tante Colette in her garden, and joined them to talk, one on one, away from all the other cousins and family. Knowing how hard it was to find a private moment with his thoughts now as captain, he wondered wryly how often his elders had needed space, too…and instead always found themselves in the position of wise old counsel every time they tried to get alone.
He glanced up at his aunt to see if she looked desperate for solitude, but she looked profoundly contented.
It made him feel as if he was crouched by a fire, warming his hands and his whole body.
“It’s good to have you back,” Tante Colette said quietly.
Was it? Why did they seem to find it so much easier to welcome him than he did to be welcomed? It hurt so damn bad. He didn’t deserve this generous welcome at all. He’d missed fifteen years of their lives. Just because he couldn’t believe in them.
“My shoulder might be dislocated,” he said wryly, rubbing it. Every time Matt got too choked up over having him back, his burly cousin punched him in the exact same spot. His back was starting to ache a little, too, because Matt was getting increasingly sappy with the flow of good wine and had grabbed Lucien in a bear hug three times in the past hour.
They were good aches.
They were unbearable.
“Why’d you do it?” he said suddenly, roughly. “Send Elena Lyon to find me?”
Tante Colette gave him one of those looks, an eyebrow raised. “First of all, your grandfather was the one who said that as long as I was having her find all Léo Dubois’s descendants, maybe I could have her do something useful and find you, too.”
Really? Lucien hugged his upraised knee, hard, trying to hold himself together.
“Which is about like him,” Tante Colette said grumpily. “Put his oar in when I’m already planning to do something, so he can claim credit.”
Some odd part of Lucien relaxed a little. So those two hadn’t changed. “Good to see you two speaking to each other these days.”
Tante Colette snorted. “You might call it good.”
Lucien actually smiled. His younger cousins had grown into men without him. But Tante Colette and his grandfather were still Tante Colette and his…oh. Yeah.
That fierce, angry pain again. The one that he had closed off from himself so long ago. Julien Fontaine, Captain in the Foreign Legion, had no past and no family but the Legion, like every other man around him. He was whole.
He’d amputated his old identity from himself as if the words Lucien Rosier were full of gangrene. And now that old limb was aching in an absurd wish to grow back.
You know, this is, too, your fault, Elena Lyon. I was perfectly fine until you found me.
Or at least doing an excellent job of pretending to be perfectly fine.
“Your father still acting like a bastard?”
Lucien said nothing for a moment. Then, his jaw hard, “Well, as he’s pointed out, he’s not my father.” Even though, what the fuck else was Lucien supposed to call him? Michel?
The two had come face to face, but it had been nothing like the greeting from Raoul, Matt, Damien, and Tristan. Michel Rosier had been stiff and glared at everyone else in the family, clearly persuaded that they had tricked him by not warning him Lucien would be at the wedding. Apparently Lucien’s former father spent most of his time in Paris now and had only come home for the wedding because it would have been such an unforgivable lapse in family feeling if he hadn’t.
Michel hadn’t even been happy to see that the man who had loved him as a father for eighteen damn years was still alive. As if Lucien’s continued existence was just a reminder of Michel’s waste of those same eighteen years on a fraud.
Michel Rosier had
aged badly into sixty since he’d last rejected Lucien and looked now like one of those stereotypes of the bloated businessman, and Lucien wished he could get a more vindictive satisfaction out of it, but he mostly just wished he could escape back to Corsica.
He focused on Elena. She was easy to focus on. So easy, compared to everything else. Those generous breasts and slim waist and the way her hips kept twisting to the music, the way that auburn hair slid across her back and made his palms itch. She twisted it up to the top of her head as he watched, laughing, holding it there a moment as she danced to let her nape cool.
Yeah, she was easy to watch. Easy to think about. Desire and the possibility of pleasure, so very, very simple in the midst of all these impossible emotions. He wanted to just walk over to her, pull her to him, and walk off into the night. And think about nothing but her body, until dawn.
Plus, she was right. It wasn’t her fault. Her willingness to interfere in his life and overturn it had at least been meant well. So had his running away, in fact—an attempt to erase his own wrongness—but he was responsible for his own decisions. God, he’d grown so much better at making decisions since he was nineteen years old. His chest expanded with a kind of relief at his own strength now, and his so much greater ability to handle things. Yes, even this. He knew he’d done a wrong thing to run away back then, and yet…thank God for the Legion and the man it had helped him become.
“Got a hair clasp?” he asked his aunt.
“Layla is bound to have something.” Tante Colette beckoned to Matt’s fiancée, who left the dance floor cheerfully and smiled down at Lucien.
He found himself smiling back. Dealing with his cousins might bring a surge of far too many emotions, but their fiancées seemed fairly straightforward. Friendly, unknown, happy to welcome him. Insane to think that some of his cousins were getting married now.
His cousins. His cousins.
He touched his dog tags and the ring as Layla left again, an extra elastic off her wrist now in his hand.
“You know you shouldn’t have given me Niccolò’s ring,” he said, very softly, making sure no one near them could possibly overhear and try to grab it from him. It burned against his chest.
A Kiss in Lavender Page 5
