Once Upon a Rose

by Laura Florand

  He shook his head again. “Groupies? You think I have groupies?”

  She looked him over, up and down the hot, muscled length of him. “Oh, yeah.” She glowered a bit herself. What had she been thinking? Flirting with someone like that? As if she didn’t know already how men acted when they could have half the women in a room for a wink?

  He started to smile, that slow, deep smile, all his brooding fading away. His body angled in over hers, until his good arm braced against the door above her head. That smile, from that position, made hot sensations twirl all through her body. “And what do you have, Bouclettes?” His free hand came up to catch the tip of one curl and tug it gently outward, his gaze following it, fascinated. “How many men am I going to have to fight for you?”

  Her scowl disintegrated in pure delight at the flattery. And his words—as if he was willing and ready to fight for her. God, his eyes from this close were gorgeous. They reached deep inside her and melted her middle out. Her breath shortened from his proximity, the angle of his body over hers. “Nobody,” she said. “I’ve been out there on my own for a while.”

  A ghost of self-pity swept through her, a powerful hold me, wrap me up so I’m not alone anymore.

  “You must like it, then.” He let her curl relax back into its shape and cupped a handful more, squeezing them gently. “Being on your own. If you haven’t let someone grab you.”

  Her self-pity broke under the force of her pleasure. Damn, but he was flattering.

  “It’s hard to find the person you…you fit with.” She pushed one hand into the other to try to illustrate.

  After she’d figured out relationships that got started on the tour circuit tended to be very bad for her—too loose, too easy, too fueled by loneliness and performance highs—she’d stopped forming them. But her music career had sucked her in and swallowed her whole, so that it wasn’t as if she’d had the emotional energy or even time in one place to find someone outside the industry either.

  “Tell me about it,” he murmured, sinking his hand more deeply into her curls, fisting them and then releasing them, then fisting again, as if savoring their texture.

  The scent of roses reached her from his hand, mixed with the apples of her shampoo, and she closed her eyes against a wave of hunger. It didn’t help. Closing her eyes meant that all she could do was feel—his hand shifting in her hair, his breath brushing over her lips, the cool shade of the street after the sun of the fields, and the press of a knocker against her back. The silence of the stone seemed to hold her safe in it. A gentle echo sounded of someone walking down another cobblestone street below. She wanted him to talk again, into her darkness.

  “Are you going to kiss me?” she whispered.

  “Yes.” Just that one deep vibration of his voice through her, while his hand sank deep enough to cup her skull at last, cushioning it from the hard door as his mouth closed over hers.

  Pleasure curled like a smile through her body, this sensual happiness that relaxed her lips to his. His mouth was just right. Not too hard, not too grabby. Not too soft, not hesitant. His fingers tightened gently against her skull as he fit himself to her, the silk slide of his lips taking hers, exploring hers. The heat of her own body overwhelmed her so fast, melting her everywhere just at a kiss. Her hands rose up to sink into his hair—oh, yes, those half curls were so silky, exactly like they looked, and her fingers slid through them and found purchase against his head, down over his neck and muscled shoulders, back up to that glossy hair. Every part of him was so enticingly touchable that her hands kept moving up and down, sinking into him, trying to get more of his textures, as their lips met and slid, as the kiss grew deeper and deeper.

  She discovered she was climbing up him, pulling herself up and into his body, and finally fell back, breaking the kiss. “Oh, wow,” she whispered. Her heart beat so hard it almost scared her, and she ducked her body in against his chest to find refuge there, her head tucked down so they couldn’t start that bewilderingly overwhelming kissing again. “Oh, wow.” She pressed her cheek against his heart, which thundered against her ear. The gorgeous rhythm of a strong heart beating hard and deep just for her.

  One arm still bracing against the door to hold his body off her, he wrapped the wounded arm around her and pulled her in close. His hunger for her pressed against her belly, and she bit her lip against the need to wiggle until it fit into a much better spot. “You’ll hurt your arm,” she managed.

  His arm just tightened around her. “The cut’s on the outside of it, Bouclettes.” His voice had turned so rough. He squeezed her against him again, and again that pressure of his muscles, that compression of her body, swept arousal all through her. “Besides, a little bit of pain can sometimes help a man keep his head.”

  What would help her keep her head?

  “I’m scared,” she confessed into his chest. Oh, I love this thump of your heart.

  “What?” His arm loosened, and he started to push himself away from her.

  She grabbed onto his waist and buried herself tight against him again. “I actually came here to get my life more under control. To find my feet. Not get swept up like a piece of flotsam in a flash flood.”

  Both his arms closed around her now, one hand rubbing gently through her hair. “You want me to build us a raft?” he finally asked.

  She laughed a little and tilted her head back. “I want you to kiss me again. That’s all I really want.”

  He brought a hand to her face, his thumb tugging gently at her lip. His mouth was…tender. Curving gently, as his fingers petted again through that bane of her existence, those corkscrew curls. She wanted to kiss the scar on his chin. No, she wanted to nibble on it. Bite and lick. “It’s not all I want. But yeah—let’s do it some more.”

  Oh, yes, that hungry, thorough heat of him as he kissed her again. The energy and gorgeousness of it. The way his mouth shaped and took and gave. That rose-brushed scent of sun-warmed human man. She gasped and fell back again, bringing up her hand to touch her damp lips. “I think I could kiss you like this forever.”

  An intense kick of pleasure ran through his body and leapt in his eyes. “I couldn’t,” he admitted, half-laughing. “I’ll have to go get in a fight with one of my cousins soon.”

  That much energy to vent? She petted one of those straining arms, loving that arousal so much. It made her feel hot. Hungry. Happy to be her. Vibrating like her own guitar, as if she’d been turned into pure, eager music.

  “But let’s not stop yet,” he breathed, lowering his head. Tongues tangled, her hands digging into big shoulders, and her body lifting, his hands gripping her butt to help her up, pull her in, and—

  The door opened behind her and she fall backward, franticly clutching him as he fell with her.

  Matt managed to catch them both, a hand grabbing the doorjamb and the other arm yanking her in tight, before they fell all the way. He righted her in a flustered tangle.

  “Tante Colette,” he said reproachfully. “You picked a fine time to start answering your door.”

  Tante Colette? Meaning—? Layla twisted to see an old woman standing straight and tall, in a long skirt, her white hair neatly pinned on the back of her head. She gave no indication that two hot-blooded young people had nearly fallen into her home. This woman was ninety-six? Holy crap, this family had good genes.

  “It was making unusual noises,” the old woman said coolly, even as her eyes flicked over Layla, intense and searching. “After they didn’t stop for some time, I thought I should perhaps check on it.”

  Layla flushed. Her body against the door knocker must have occasionally sent a sound echoing through the house that she hadn’t even noticed.

  “We were polishing your door knocker.” Matt grinned at his aunt, entirely full of himself. “Tante Colette, may I introduce the woman to whom you gave part of my valley?” A little flash of his eyes on that last, a press of his lips together.

  For a moment, the old woman just stared at her, eyes widening and se
arching. Layla held out a hand tentatively. “Layla Dubois.”

  She felt shy suddenly, before this old Resistance hero who had given her a house, and she found herself easing back toward Matt, so that her free hand grazed the back of his. A little brush of reassurance came with the contact, a kiss of warmth.

  Without looking down at her, Matt turned his hand and simply engulfed hers. One big hand. Callused and warm. Fingers linking. Here. You need my hand? It’s right here.

  She looked up at him, on a sparkle of happiness.

  “Well, you’re certainly in a better mood than the last time I saw you,” Colette Delatour told Matt coolly. “Are you resigning yourself to your new neighbor or trying to seduce the property from her?”

  Wait, what? Layla turned her head fast to look up at him.

  For one second, he just stared at his aunt. Then he dropped Layla’s hand and folded his arms across his chest, his jaw thrusting. “Whatever you think the most asshole thing to do is, that’s probably what I’m doing. Of course.” His arms tightened over his chest, and he angled his head away, his scowl firmly back in place.

  “Stop being so touchy,” his aunt said, turning to lead the way down the hall to the kitchen, and Layla looked curiously from her as she disappeared to Matt again, as his scowl grew even fiercer and his biceps bulged with the frustration he was compressing. Did people in his family often do that to him? Slap him with something they said, then blame him for being hurt by it?

  “Hey,” she whispered, wiggling her fingers under his good arm, trying to fit between it and his chest.

  He looked down at her, so startled his scowl almost faded.

  She wiggled her fingers more, trying to get to his hand. “Let’s talk about all the ways you can seduce that property out of me later, all right?” She winked up at him.

  The frown disappeared. He stared at her a second, and then a smile grew slowly in his eyes, sheltered by those long lashes of his. “That could be a long conversation.” He unfolded his arms to take her insistent hand. And then laughed, a wicked little gleam in his eye. “Or a short one, depending on exactly how much you like my ideas.”

  Layla grinned, feeling wicked herself and deliciously naughty. “There’s nothing wrong with multiple discussions of this issue. Sometimes you have to get things ironed out.”

  Matt used his hold on her hand to pull her in closer to his body, warmth and arousal and delighted intent filling those brown eyes as he lifted his other hand to her face. “I’d hate to be one of those men who refuse to communicate.”

  She laughed out loud, starting to go up on tiptoe to kiss him.

  “It’s a big house,” Colette Delatour said sardonically, poking her head back out from the kitchen. “If you need a room.”

  Matt sighed, dropping his hand from her face and turning to follow his aunt. He had the resigned look of a man who had been putting up with his elders all his life and would just as soon have to keep putting up with them for a long time to come, all things considered.

  “You’re not going to claim Jean-Jacques didn’t tell you to use any means necessary to get that land back?” Colette Delatour challenged, as they stepped into the kitchen and Matt braced big shoulders against the wall by the door…but didn’t let go of Layla’s hand.

  “Maybe,” Matt said. “But sometimes, when a man is caught in a war between two people who have been fighting for the past ninety years, he has to use his own judgment about the best way to handle things. Hurting someone who didn’t have anything to do with any of this and finds herself in the middle of it by accident doesn’t seem like the right choice.”

  I really like you a lot, Layla thought, squeezing his hand again involuntarily. They hurt you, but you won’t pass that hurt on to me?

  He looked down at her hand, and that firm upper lip eased as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

  “You always were a good kid,” Colette Delatour said quietly.

  From the way Matt’s head jerked up, this was the first he’d heard of it. “I thought I was trouble, too stubborn, determined to get my own way, hot-tempered, bossy…”

  His aunt’s gray eyebrows went up faintly. “I never said any of those things were faults, did I?”

  Matt laughed a little. “I guess I misinterpreted your tone at the time.”

  “You did,” his aunt said, with the calm of a woman quite sure who was right in any discussion—herself. “And I never once used the word too about any of you kids. Except, sometimes, about how sensitive you are.” A firm, chiding look.

  Matt tried to fold his arms across his chest again, and Layla’s hand got in the way.

  It threw him completely off. He couldn’t even get his glower right, all fractured, his left arm folding lamely across his chest with nothing to grip, and he finally just ran that hand across his face and through his hair instead, looking lost. But he didn’t let go of her hand.

  He snuck a glance down at Layla.

  You are adorable, she thought up at him.

  Color tinged his cheeks.

  She brought her other hand to his big one, so that she could squeeze it between hers in its own little hug.

  Because her whole body wanted to squeeze him. Her thigh muscles, her inner muscles, everything wanted to squeeze him as tight as she could. Maybe she should tell him that, she thought on a surge of mischief. See how the information hit him.

  Weren’t you going to behave at some point? she reminded herself.

  Her ability to forget an audience was really not standing her in good stead here. She focused apologetically on Colette Delatour.

  She found the old woman studying her intently, as if a strong enough look could see through to her bones. Layla was pretty sure her bones didn’t have the proper density to impress a ninety-six-year-old war hero, and her hand tightened on Matt’s for moral support. “I, uh…thank you,” she finally remembered to say. “For such an extraordinary gift.” Why did you give it to me? I don’t know you.

  “You don’t look very much like her,” Colette Delatour said quietly. “Your great-grandmother.”

  “I think I mostly take after my mother.” Her mother’s hair was even more tightly curly, so her father’s genes had had some effect, but it wasn’t obvious.

  “There’s maybe something,” Madame Delatour said. “Around the eyes and the jawline.”

  “You must have known her very well?”

  “She died for me,” the old woman said simply, and Layla gave a gasp of shock, her fingers tightening hard on Matt’s. “Not just for me, but for all of us. To keep what we were doing secret. You don’t forget a woman like that.”

  Tears stung Layla’s eyes suddenly. She didn’t even know what her great-grandmother looked like. And yet Colette Delatour’s words shook her heart.

  “Hey.” Matt loosed her hand to lay his arm across her shoulders, a heavy, reassuring warmth. “You okay?”

  Layla nodded, leaning into him as she blinked, trying not to act ridiculous. “My great-grandmother died?” Well, obviously she knew that her great-grandmother had died at some point. But…“For somebody? Like…on purpose?”

  “Come,” Colette Delatour said quietly. “Let me show you a picture of her.”

  ***

  Matthieu sat warm and quiet by Layla’s side in the kitchen while Colette Delatour showed her the photos. Red pots hung on the walls, brightening the dark wood. A handful of fresh herbs lay on a cutting board on the counter. Colette stood briefly to toss them into a simmering pot, releasing the scents of thyme and rosemary into the air. Taking a copper teakettle off the stove, she poured them both a tea rich with mint. Tea seemed an odd drink for someone as big and grumpily masculine as Matt, but he took his without comment, his hands curling around the cup like a solace.

  “Here she is.” An old hand pressed an age-browned page open and turned it to Layla. Layla stared at the black and white photo of a woman in a slim skirt, her hair twisted at the nape of her neck, smiling for the camera. “That was taken just a few months befo
re Pétain and his like split our country in two and pretended the southern part was free, when he was really a German puppet.”

  Layla touched the edge of the photo carefully. “How did she die?”

  “She was part of our cell.”

  “The Resistance,” Matt murmured to clarify. “They used to ferry kids across the Alps into Switzerland. Among other things.”

  “But she was always afraid she might not be able to handle the pain if she got caught, so she had cyanide ready. When the SS stormed her house, she managed to take it, so they wouldn’t be able to make her reveal the rest of us.”

  The story was told so simply, and Layla could only stare at its teller with her mouth open in shock. Sometimes her grandparents on her mother’s side, who had left Beirut when her mother was a child to escape the war, would mention little, casual things about ducking through streets to avoid snipers, about bombs falling on a house across the street from theirs. They would even laugh over the memory of the whole wedding party dashing madly through the open to get to the church for their wedding, then dashing madly back post ceremony and dancing all night with the music turned up loud while bombs fell. Little revelations of a world nothing like any Layla had ever known.

  This was like that. Worse, even. Élise Dubois had taken cyanide and died in order to protect herself from torture and her friends from what she might reveal.

  That meant she’d had the cyanide ready, in full knowledge that her actions and choices might some day force her to use it. And yet she’d still taken those actions.

  Layla’s eyes filled, her nose starting to sting, as she stared at the photo of the woman who was her great-grandmother. Tears trembled past her lashes, and she pressed her face into her hands suddenly as she started to cry.

  A big, warm arm wrapped around her and pulled her in close, in silence.

  “Élise was a schoolteacher,” Colette Delatour said. “The first in her family. Her father was a perfume factory worker and her mother picked flowers for us, so it was a big deal at the time for her to have become a teacher. Her husband was one of those who died in the first onslaught, before the surrender, but she had her own child, who was only eight. And there was one child in her class she knew hadn’t really left Paris to stay with her grandparents. She knew the child was really a Jewish girl in hiding. So when the Milice started sniffing around and challenging the girl’s identity papers, Élise had to do something. She couldn’t stand by, not knowing the girl. One of her own son’s little friends. That’s how Élise first got involved, and it grew from there. Your grandfather and I, we always thought in big, dramatic terms—to save all the kids, to drive the Germans out of the valley, to drive them out of France. But a lot of people helped the individual person. They didn’t believe in their ability to change their whole world, the way Jacky and I did, so mostly they wanted to hunker down and ride out the war, and hope someone else would do something about it. They didn’t believe in themselves, in their ability to do big things, but they couldn’t turn away from a child who needed help. It was hard for Jacky and me to understand people like that at first—people who could feel so small against such a great evil that they could only do tiny things. But tiny things grow and grow. Most people don’t set out to save the world, they just can’t stand to see one child’s tears. Élise was like that. And after she helped one, she had to help all the others.”