Once Upon a Rose

by Laura Florand

  He bit back a rumble of protest, trying to behave.

  Oh, to hell with it. He grabbed her hand and brought it to his jaw. Shit, yes, that felt so good. The warmth of her palm against his skin. The way her fingers shifted in a tiny testing of his texture. The way her eyes dilated, black taking over the green. Oh, yeah. That felt just right.

  “You can’t keep doing this to me,” she murmured in a strange, helpless voice.

  He hadn’t done anything, had he? Well, he’d stolen that caress of his jaw, but she hadn’t objected.

  She waved her other hand. “First the no T-shirt thing, and now a tux.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I have a weak nature, you know. There’s only so much I can take.”

  Whoa. His whole body woke up in this hungry wave of delight as he realized what was happening. She liked the way he looked. Liked it as in…hungry liked it. And it made his own hot hunger leap even higher.

  He pressed his weight into his arm above her, leaning in more. God, but he loved this position. Her in a doorway, him closing her in. “Before you do what?”

  “Before I dissolve, I think.” Her fingers flexed against his jaw. “Or possibly attack you.”

  Oh, did he ever like the sound of that. “I’m wide open.” He leaned in closer. “I’m not defending myself.”

  Her eyes widened and ran over him, and she shivered and closed her eyes tight. “No, seriously, you have to stop. You have no idea how sexy you are, do you? You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

  Her words surged through him, a geyser of demanding heat, until he had to lock his other hand against the frame of the door, too, gripping that sharp stone edge with all his might to keep himself in control. “What the hell do you think you’re doing to me?”

  She peeked at him through her lashes, and a little, utterly delighted-in-herself pleasure curled her mouth. All smug and happy to be her and to be driving him crazy.

  It was funny, because he’d been manipulated by a woman who thought she was so sexy that sex was her power over him and she could use that power to do anything she wanted. So he should be offended by that smug delight, or at least wary.

  And instead he just wanted to kiss her. Give her a little bit more to be delighted about.

  Actually, he wished to hell he was standing like this in her doorway back in the valley, instead of out in a sheltered, quiet, but still public street, with neither his bed nor hers anywhere near.

  He bent down and bit that little delighted smile—very gently, just a tiny warning graze of his teeth. You’re messing with me. I might know how to mess with you, too.

  She made a little sound that tightened his hands against the doorframe until he thought he might snap stone. So he had to kiss her again, right? Had to show her how he could mess with her with his tongue, too. How he could slip himself into her body. How he could take her over, make her his. Get her to melt and yield and…

  One of his hands loosed its hold on the stone to sweep down her body to her butt and pull her into him. He rubbed his hand down to her thigh to lift it to his hip, so his hips could fit better between hers. The bareness of her thigh in her shorts shocked through him, in contrast to his tux. Made her seem practically naked and yielding to all his darkest demands.

  Oh, merde, yeah, he would like to lay her back on a bed naked to his clothed body. Oh, yeah, he would. Just lay her out there and say, You are in my bed now, and you are all mine.

  Footsteps sounded against stone, and a child’s chattering, and he wrenched his mouth away and locked both hands against the stone again, this time on the walls to either side of her. Layla clutched fistfuls of his white shirt, breathing hard, looking dazed and…oh, yeah, if only he had a bed nearby right this second…

  He kept her body framed and as hidden as possible with his, trying not to look at the mother and child who passed, but of course he knew the woman who was discreetly turning her head away, a little smile on her mouth. He knew everyone in Sainte-Mère. Hell, he knew everyone around Grasse. In this case, she owned the inn across from Gabe and Raphaël’s place.

  “Maman.” The child’s clear voice sounded back down the stairs. “Why did he have his hand on her bottom?”

  “Shh,” the mother whispered. “I’ll explain later.”

  Always fun to know he was going to be the prime example in an early lesson on the birds and the bees.

  “This is so not a good place for this,” he managed, gazing down at Layla, who still looked so dazed and soft, her lips so damp and reddened and her eyes so dark and heavy, that it about killed him.

  She blinked up at him in that way that sent every bit of his sex drive into conquering mode. I’ve yielded, that blink said. Pick me up and carry me off somewhere.

  Damn it. The Rosiers had an unused apartment in this town, too, now that Jolie had moved in with Gabe. If only he had the key on him.

  “Okay, I’ve got to pull myself together,” Layla said and covered her face with both arms.

  See? What a damn shame, to have all that fallen apartness of hers get sturdied back up into something sensible. He looked down at those slim, tan forearms, pressed together over her face, and couldn’t help himself. They were just so much smaller than his, so much more vulnerable, such flimsy and endearing self-protection. He ran his thumb gently up the little gap between them. The size of his own hand against her arms sent unexpected pleasure through him. Yeah, he liked being this much bigger than she was. He liked it when he heard her take a soft breath behind that shield of her arms, and he liked it when he bent his head to rub his jaw over her inner wrist and kiss the palm.

  “Please, please stop,” Layla whispered. “You’re too much. It’s too much. I can’t handle it.”

  He hesitated a long second with his face still brushing against her fingertips. Damn it. He closed his eyes. If there was one reason in the world a man didn’t want to stop, it had to be that one—that she liked it too much.

  Shit.

  He wanted to suck one of those fingers into his mouth so damn bad. See how many more things she couldn’t handle without falling apart.

  He used the wall to leverage himself away from her, and yes, fine, maybe he growled in protest as he stepped back.

  She parted her arms just enough to peek out at him from between them. Aww, hell, she was so cute. “This is not a raft, Matthieu.”

  Hell, and her accent around the ieu in his name. The only people who ever called him Matthieu were his aunts and, before she died, his grandmother, when he was in trouble, and Layla’s reproachful tone suggested he was in some kind of trouble right now, too. But all he wanted to do about it was kiss her again and see what that little tongue that couldn’t quite shape the ieu right did with his.

  “A raft,” he said randomly, because she seemed to think he would know what she was talking about.

  “That raft you were going to build to help with that being swept up in a flood situation?”

  Right. Fuck that raft. “I’ll tell you what. You hold onto me as tight as you can, and I’ll get us through it.”

  A little leap of laughter in those eyes peeking at him, and some other emotion, or several more emotions. Fear, maybe, and maybe just a hint of trust. She lowered her arms enough to reveal her whole face. “You will, will you?”

  He shrugged a little. In a real life raging river, he would consider it his job to have his strength get them through. So this was kind of like that, right? It was her damn metaphor.

  Of course, he’d heard that real life raging rivers overwhelmed strong men all the time. He didn’t like to believe it, though. A man had to be strong enough for anything.

  “Matthieu.” Shit, his name again, in that half-laughing, half-reprimanding tone. “Where exactly were you planning to take us tonight—where I can wear shorts while you wear a tux?”

  See? See? There was really only one place that would work. His bedroom, with its big white bed, where just about now the lowering sun would be gently sifting light through the windows…

&
nbsp; He sighed and thunked his head very gently down to rest on hers. “I guess you’ll have to change.” Damn it.

  She laid a hand on his chest. “God, I love that sound.”

  He lifted his head enough to look at her again, confused.

  That utterly warm laughter of hers leaped again. “You were growling.”

  He stared down into that laughter. That look of hers, as if even his defaults of character were part of this one big person that she…liked. Just the way he was.

  That look was so special that it was utterly terrifying.

  His hand lifted, iron to a magnet, to curve over her cheek, one thumb stroking gently over her cheekbone. Yeah, she kept not disappearing, not dissolving back into dreamland, every time he did that. Like she might actually be real or something.

  Shit, yes, terrifying. Someone so real and so enticing who was leaving in three weeks. How had she gotten him to act like an idiot so damn fast?

  Oh, and she was supposed to be his enemy. Hell. He kept forgetting that.

  The enemy who had blithely come into his valley to run off with half its heart as if it was hers by right.

  “Matthieu.” That half-laughing, accented name rippled through him. “What am I supposed to change into? What am I supposed to wear?”

  He was pretty sure no woman, ever, in his whole life, had asked his advice on what to wear. He stared at her blankly a moment. You look fine to me was probably not what she would consider a solution to her problem. He cast about rather desperately, past solutions to problems that involved wrenches and grease and machine parts and occasionally hitting someone, to…Tante Colette! She was a woman. She was ninety-six, but Matt had seen photos of her in her twenties. She’d looked like Lauren Bacall or something. “Do you like, you know, those kind of old-fashioned clothes some women like? Like from the thirties or forties?”

  That leap of laughter in her eyes. “Vintage?”

  Right. That was the word for it. He nodded.

  “I love vintage.”

  He gestured upward. “Maybe Tante Colette would let you into her attic.”

  ***

  “I feel like a little kid playing dress-up,” Layla said ruefully, putting her elbows on the table across from Matt.

  Then she remembered the elegance around her and the sudden extreme elegance of the man across from her and shifted her elbows off the table so that only her hands rested there, making sure her back was straight. They sat on the terrace of a restaurant called Aux Anges, the folds of the hills below Sainte-Mère draping in sparkling lights below them to the sea, as if jewels had been sewn carefully into a woman’s skirt. Out in the distance some of the lights bobbed, the yachts on the gentle Mediterranean waves floating like the drifting hem of that skirt. Apparently the restaurant belonged to Matt’s cousins, one of those rare, precious Michelin three-star restaurants.

  Brown eyes smiled at her from what had to be the sexiest face in the world. God, she wanted to seize her chance, just reach across the table and stroke that scar on his chin before it got ward-off-all-comers prickly again. “You also look a little bit like a kid playing dress-up, to tell the truth,” he said.

  That made her laugh, because it was true. Colette Delatour’s attic had been like some treasure trove of wonders for a woman who liked vintage clothes. Alas, Colette Delatour was also six inches taller than Layla herself was. So her dresses from when she was a teenager came down to Layla’s ankles—what would have been mid-calf on Colette—and her dresses from the forties came down to Layla’s mid-calves. Not to mention the bodice issue.

  “Except for that.” Matt allowed his gaze to drift to the neckline of her sea-green gown. Designed for someone with a much longer torso, it dipped too far on her.

  Well, what Layla considered too far. Matt clearly didn’t have any issues with it.

  She touched her little flat-brimmed hat, which didn’t suit her mass of curls at all, but given how badly the clothes themselves really suited her shorter form, she’d decided to just go with what made her happy.

  Hey, she wasn’t an indie musician for nothing.

  Matt’s smile deepened with easy pleasure, as if this whole evening made him happy. “My cousins and I used to love treasure-hunting up in that attic. Some of our family heirlooms disappeared in the war, and Pépé is convinced Tante Colette really stole them, something he believes possibly because he has a guilty conscience. Apparently he said some things about her not being ‘real family’ at one point and they’re both still brooding about it seventy years later.”

  “What were the heirlooms?”

  “Let’s see—there was an old perfume box with a wolf on the lid reaching for a rose, which may have come from Niccolò Rosario’s mother. Niccolò is the ancestor who came out of Italy to found the Rosier dynasty. His mother’s family name was supposed to have been Lupo. There were the gloves his wife Laurianne made for him for their wedding and the ring he gave her. Their old book of perfume recipes—that one about breaks Tristan’s heart. And there’s Niccolò’s seal.” Matt fell silent for a moment.

  “His seal?” Layla prompted, watching his face. This is the heirloom that matters most to him, she thought.

  He hesitated. “He probably would have had two made, one for him and one for Laurianne, since they both would have had to sign off on documents and orders regularly. Or maybe she had them made for them—she must have been quite the savvy businesswoman, perhaps the business brain in their couple. But, if there ever really were two, one of them was lost centuries ago. Only one survived until the war. It’s supposed to be on a chain, with the entrance to the valley in enamel on one side and a rose, or a rose bush, on the other side, with his motto.” Another little pause, and then under his breath he murmured, “J’y suis, j’y reste.”

  I am here and here I’ll stay. It sounded lovely. Oddly, intensely lovely, for someone who had never sought to stay anywhere, who had always been wandering the world in pursuit of the next audience and the next song.

  Matt made a little grimace of regret. “We never found any sign of the heirlooms, of course. Probably someone stole them during the war and sold them or traded them to the Germans to get someone released from prison. Those were hard times. And, of course, these days we realize Tante Colette would never have let us ‘sneak’ up in the attic in the first place all the time if she’d hidden them up there. But we certainly had fun looking. I never realized until now how much more fun some girl cousins would have had, with all those trunks of clothes.”

  “No girls in your family?”

  He waved a hand. “Pépé had all boys who had boys. There are some more distant female cousins like Léa and some on my mother’s side. The lack of girls is one of the reasons the aunts are always after my cousins and me to get mar—” He broke off suddenly, clearing his throat and turning his head to stare out over the edge of the terrace. “Nice view,” he said abruptly, randomly.

  She could have teased him about that broken off M word, but honestly, who needed to talk about scary words like that over the kind of dinner during which a man might actually court a woman seriously? Over the kind of dinner where a man might actually propose. So she helped him out.

  “I can’t believe you have a cousin who has a fountain built for him in honor of his cooking,” Layla said, looking down into the place below where the stylized angel fountain played.

  Matt made a little sound of amusement, seizing on the new subject with relief. “You get used to that kind of thing, in this family. My grandfather and Tante Colette are featured in museum exhibits on the Resistance, and there are far too many Delange and Rosier names on those plaques in all the churches honoring the soldiers and nurses and Resistants who died in the wars. And the Rosiers founded the most important museum in Grasse, which is the most important museum on the history of fragrance in the world. There are a lot of Rosiers featured there. Hell, Tristan’s probably going to be in some history books himself, for his work on perfume. He already has two perfumes in the top twenty and he’
s not even thirty yet.”

  “Tristan?” Layla blinked. He seemed so…laidback. As if all of life was to be played with.

  “Yeah, I know. He fools around more productively than anyone I know.” Matt shrugged. Once again, the coat failed to split when he did that.

  He’d introduced her to the big, buoyant chef of this restaurant from whom he’d borrowed the tux, Gabriel Delange, and so Layla could see why the tux actually fit his shoulders. Both men were big. But she still kept expecting one of Matt’s shrugs to break through the intimidating elegance of that black coat and reveal again the man who got stuck in a T-shirt when she was watching, the man who made her feel as if she could wrap him around her little finger.

  This man made her feel as if he could wrap her around his little finger. As if he could scoop her up in one palm, eat her up for a midnight snack, and go find someone substantially sexier for breakfast.

  As when her music career brought her into contact with the truly famous, the glitzy, glossy über-successes, it made her uneasy. Like maybe she couldn’t play in this territory after all. Maybe she needed to go back to her dreaming-of-the-big-time musician friends, the jeans-clad fellow indies who’d worn their jeans out and their fingers, too, strumming their guitars for every bit they climbed. How was she supposed to fulfill the expectations for her next album, when she still felt, and looked like, a bronze-haired Orphan Annie playing dress-up among the millionaires?

  She looked down at Matt’s hand on the table. Darkly tanned, Mediterranean skin that had been out in a lot of sun. The dark curls of hair, the nicks of a few scars, the kind acquired by a man who worked with his hands. Or occasionally fought with them. She reached across and turned it over, before she could remind herself that hand didn’t really belong to her, to do what she wanted with it when she wanted.

  Work-toughened palm, calluses all along the fingers and thumb and on the pads of his hand. A little tension of nerves eased out of her, such a sweet release that it raised the hairs on the back of her neck as it ran through her, like coming into warmth out of the cold. It was still the same hand. He was still the same Matthieu Rosier.