All for You (34 page)
She held out both hands. “Okay, that looks kind of … excessive.”
Joss frowned at the cheap ring. But … it still did look kind of pretty on her hand. Way, way better than leaving that hand bare. He rubbed it, an almost wistful affection brushing him, as if he was honoring a fallen, difficult comrade.
“I’m going to have a jeweler frame it in gold,” she decided. “So that it makes a pendant, the ring in its little frame. And wear it here.” She placed her hand over her breast, right near her heart.
Because she valued everything about him. His accomplishments and his failures. Who he was and who he had been.
“You really have always loved me,” he said low. “And I’ve always wanted to be good enough for that love.”
“And you always have been good enough, Joss. Always.”
He petted the wisps of hair on her forehead and stroked down her cheeks. “You make my life light up, you know.”
She linked her hands behind his head. “You, too.”
He shook his head, a little bemused. “Hard to imagine myself as lighting things up.”
“It’s all those sparkles off you,” she teased gently. “Now that I’m wearing your ring.”
A slow smile seemed to grow deep down in his belly and blush all the way through his body. He thought this might be what happiness felt like. Just this utter, blissful security of accepting and believing in love. “Think I should get us costumes made out of sequins?”
She shook her head, nestling into him. “It would be redundant.”
Joss snuggled her in more closely. A deep, profound wonder filled him, a warmth and surety he never could have believed possible, once upon a time.
“You know, you were right all along,” he said softly. “Together is a really good way to be.”
***
FIN
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed Célie and Joss’s story. And don’t miss Vi’s story, coming up next! Sign up
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Working on Célie’s story inspired me to write a short story about Dom and Jaime (it involves sandcastles and courage) that I want to offer free to readers who love those two. Sign up
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(If you’re new to my books and would love to read Dom and Jaime’s full story, it is in
The Chocolate Touch
.
)
All for You
is the first in the Paris Hearts series. If you enjoyed the Paris and chocolate of the setting, you can find more of it in the Amour et Chocolat series. Or head south to a world of sun and flowers with the Vie en Roses series. (Keep reading for glimpses.)
Thank you so much for sharing this world with me! For some behind-the-scenes glimpses of the research with top chefs and chocolatiers, check out my
website
and
Facebook
. I hope to meet up with you there!
And this book is lendable, so if you enjoyed it, feel free to loan it to a friend. Anything that encourages discussions around books makes the world a richer place. Kind of like love and chocolate!
Thank you and all the best,
Laura Florand
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Paris Hearts Series
All for You
Amour et Chocolat Series
All’s Fair in Love and Chocolate
, a novella in
Kiss the Bride
The Chocolate Rose
(also a prequel to La Vie en Roses series)
Sun-Kissed
(also a sequel to
Snow-Kissed
)
Shadowed Heart
(a sequel to
The Chocolate Heart
)
La Vie en Roses Series
Turning Up the Heat
(a novella prequel)
The Chocolate Rose
(also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
A Rose in Winter
, a novella in
No Place Like Home
Snow Queen Duology
Snow-Kissed
(a novella)
Sun-Kissed
(also part of the Amour et Chocolat series)
Memoir
Book 1 in La Vie en Roses series: Excerpt
Burlap slid against Matt’s shoulder, rough and clinging to the dampness of his skin as he dumped the sack onto the truck bed. The rose scent puffed up thickly, like a silk sheet thrown over his face. He took a step back from the truck, flexing, trying to clear his pounding head and sick stomach.
The sounds of the workers and of his cousins and grandfather rode against his skin, easing him. Raoul was back. That meant they were all here but Lucien, and Pépé was still stubborn and strong enough to insist on overseeing part of the harvest himself before he went to sit under a tree. Meaning Matt still had a few more years before he had to be the family patriarch all by himself, thank God. He’d copied every technique in his grandfather’s book, then layered on his own when those failed him, but that whole job of taking charge of his cousins and getting them to listen to him was
still
not working out for him.
But his grandfather was still here for now. His cousins were here, held by Pépé and this valley at their heart, and not scattered to the four winds as they might be one day soon, when Matt became the heart and that heart just couldn’t hold them.
All that loss was for later. Today was a good day. It could be. Matt had a hangover, and he had made an utter fool of himself the night before, but this could still be a good day. The rose harvest. The valley spreading around him.
J’y suis. J’y reste.
I am here and here I’ll stay.
He stretched, easing his body into the good of this day, and even though it wasn’t that hot yet, went ahead and reached for the hem of his shirt, so he could feel the scent of roses all over his skin.
“Show-off,” Allegra’s voice said, teasingly, and he grinned into the shirt as it passed his head, flexing his muscles a little more, because it would be pretty damn fun if Allegra was ogling him enough to piss Raoul off.
He turned so he could see the expression on Raoul’s face as he bundled the T-shirt, half-tempted to toss it to Allegra and see what Raoul did—
And looked straight into the leaf-green eyes of Bouclettes.
Oh, shit. He jerked the T-shirt back over his head, tangling himself in the bundle of it as the holes proved impossible to find, and then he stuck his arm through the neck hole and his head didn’t fit and he wrenched it around and tried to get himself straight and dressed somehow and—oh,
fuck.
He stared at her, all the blood cells in his body rushing to his cheeks.
Damn you, stop, stop, stop
, he tried to tell the blood cells, but as usual they ignored him. Thank God for dark Mediterranean skin. It had to help hide some of the color, right? Right? As he remembered carrying her around the party the night before, heat beat in his cheeks until he felt sunburned from the inside out.
Bouclettes was staring at him, mouth open as if he had punched her. Or as if he needed to kiss her again and—
behave!
She was probably thinking what a total jerk he was, first slobbering all over her drunk and now so full of himself he was stripping for her. And getting stuck in his own damn T-shirt.
Somewhere beyond her, between the rows of pink, Raoul had a fist stuffed into his mouth and was trying so hard not to laugh out loud that his body was bending into it, going into convulsions. Tristan was grinning, all right with his world. And Damien had his eyebrows up, making him look all controlled and princely, like someone who would
never
make a fool of himself in front of a woman.
Damn T-shirt. Matt yanked it off his head and threw it. But, of course, the air friction stopped it, so that instead of sailing gloriously across the field, it fell across the rose bush not too far from Bouclettes, a humiliated flag of surrender.
Could his introduction to this woman conceivably get any worse?
He glared at her, about ready to hit one of his damn cousins.
She stared back, her eyes enormous.
“Well,
what
?” he growled. “What do you want now? Why are you still here?”
I was drunk. I’m sorry. Just shoot me now, all right?
She blinked and took a step back, frowning.
“Matt,” Allegra said reproachfully, but with a ripple disturbing his name, as if she was trying not to laugh. “She was curious about the rose harvest. And she needs directions.”
Directions.
Hey, really? He was
good
with directions. He could get an ant across this valley and tell it the best route, too. He could crouch down with bunnies and have conversations about the best way to get their
petits
through the hills for a little day at the beach.
Of course, all his cousins could, too. He got ready to leap in first before his cousins grabbed the moment from him, like they were always trying to do. “Where do you need to go?” His voice came out rougher than the damn burlap. He struggled to smooth it without audibly clearing his throat. God, he felt naked. Would it look too stupid if he sidled up to that T-shirt and tried getting it over his head again?
“It’s this house I inherited here,” Bouclettes said. She had the cutest little accent. It made him want to squoosh all her curls in his big fists again and kiss that accent straight on her mouth, as if it was his, when he had so ruined that chance. “113, rue des Rosiers.”
The valley did one great beat, a giant heart that had just faltered in its rhythm, and every Rosier in earshot focused on her. His grandfather barely moved, but then he’d probably barely moved back in the war when he’d spotted a swastika up in the
maquis
either. Just gently squeezed the trigger.
That finger-on-the-trigger alertness ran through every one of his cousins now.
Matt was the one who felt clumsy.
“Rue des Rosiers?” he said dumbly. Another beat, harder this time, adrenaline surging. “113,
rue des Rosiers
?” He looked up at a stone house, on the fourth terrace rising into the hills, where it got too steep to be practical to grow roses for harvest at their current market value. “Wait,
inherited?
”
Bouclettes looked at him warily.
“How could you
inherit
it?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said slowly. “I had a letter from Antoine Vallier.”
Tante Colette’s lawyer. Oh, hell. An ominous feeling grew in the pit of Matt’s stomach.
“On behalf of a Colette Delatour. He said he was tracking down the descendants of Élise Dubois.”
What? Matt twisted toward his grandfather. Pépé stood very still, with this strange, tense blazing look of a fighter who’d just been struck on the face and couldn’t strike back without drawing retaliation down on his entire village.
Matt turned back to the curly-haired enemy invader who had sprung up out of the blue. Looking so damn cute and innocent like that, too. He’d
kissed
her. “You can’t—Tante Colette gave that house to
you
?”
Bouclettes took a step back.
Had he roared that last word? His voice echoed back at him, as if the valley held it, would squeeze it in a tight fist and never let it free. The air constricted, merciless bands around his sick head and stomach.
“After all that?” He’d just spent the last five months working on that house. Five months.
Oh, could you fix the plumbing, Matthieu? Matthieu, that garden wall needs mending. Matthieu, I think the septic tank might need to be replaced.
Because she was ninety-six and putting her life in order, and she was planning to pass it on to him, right? Because she understood that it was part of his valley and meant to leave this valley whole. Wasn’t that the tacit promise there, when she asked him to take care of it? “
You
? Colette gave it to
you
?”
Bouclettes stared at him, a flash of hurt across her face, and then her arms tightened, and her chin went up. “Look, I don’t know much more than you. My grandfather didn’t stick around for my father’s childhood, apparently. All we knew was that he came from France. We never knew we had any heritage here.”
Could Tante Colette have had a child they didn’t even know about? He twisted to look at his grandfather again, the one man still alive today who would surely have noticed a burgeoning belly on his stepsister. Pépé was frowning, not saying a word.
So—“To
you
?” Tante Colette knew it was his valley. You didn’t just rip a chunk out of a man’s heart and give it to, to…to whom exactly?
“To
you
?” Definitely he had roared that, he could hear his own voice booming back at him, see the way she braced herself. But—who the hell was she? And what the
hell
was he supposed to do about this? Fight a girl half his size? Strangle his ninety-six-year-old aunt? How did he crush his enemies and defend this valley? His enemy was…she was so
cute.
He didn’t want her for an enemy, he wanted to figure out how to overcome last night’s handicap and get her to think he was cute, too. Damn it, he hadn’t even found out yet what those curls felt like against his palms.
And it was
his valley.
Bouclettes’ chin angled high, her arms tight. “You seemed to like me last night.”
Oh, God. Embarrassment, a hangover, and being knifed in the back by his own aunt made for a perfectly horrible combination. “I was
drunk
.”