Once Upon a Rose (10 page)

They hadn’t wrestled like that in a long time. After Raoul and Lucien left, all their games and wrestling matches had lost their savor.

Matt did his best to act grumpy and not just relaxed and happy as he gazed out over the disaster of roses spilled across the concrete floor. The place looked like the old
ateliers
used to, back before they had their own processing facility, when they used to spread the roses to protect them from rot and wilt, tossing them every once in a while before they bagged them up again to haul them off to Grasse.

“Now we’re going to have to clean this mess up and get these roses into that vat.” He made his voice extra growly to make sure his cousins didn’t start thinking he was getting soft or anything. “We are not wasting this much of the harvest.”

His cousins, roses still falling out of their hair, grinned, already reaching for rakes on the wall of the plant. “Go fix the conveyor belt, you big grump,” Tristan said. And winked. “I’ll take care of handling your curly-haired female problems.”

So Matt had to dive for him all over again.

Well, what? It was very relaxing.

***

Damn country. Layla puffed as she hauled the too-heavy groceries through the door, tired and pissed off. She needed a new phone. Did they make ones anymore that didn’t allow producers to text or email?

Getting to the grocery store had worked just fine, Matt’s directions clear and easy to follow—and she’d had a nice little chat with Madame Grenier, too, after she’d handed the older woman her cat. It turned out Madame Grenier had one of the old pink and yellow Isle of Wight posters signed by half the performers—Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Joan Baez. She’d let Layla
touch
it. Layla’s fingertips still tingled.

Between touching Matt the Grumpy Bear and touching that poster, her fingertips were having quite a day. They’d actually danced on the steering wheel on the drive to the store, testing out chord progressions that were lively and rhythmic, not ones so whiny and tired she had to rip the notes in half and throw them in the trash.

But then, post grocery shopping, she had had the brilliant idea of trying to find Antoine Vallier’s office in Grasse without Google Maps and also maybe a store where she could buy a new phone, and she had gotten so hopelessly lost that dusk was falling now, and the cheese she had bought had stunk up the whole car.

And it was official—she hated spaghetti-thin, twisty cliff roads. Especially the fourth time she crept down the same one, in a cycle of lostness.

Her chocolate had probably all melted, too. After she’d bought half the aisle. (Well, what? A well-traveled woman knew when to take advantage of her host culture. A whole aisle of chocolate bars was not something one found in a supermarket in the U.S.)

God, she was glad to be back home. That was…back in the quiet and roses of the valley. Obviously not her
home
home.

Stepping into the old farmhouse kitchen, she started to set the ten-pound bag of chocolate bars on the worn old table.

And then saw the body sprawled across her kitchen floor.

She screamed, jerking backward, sack in hand. The sack dragged at her arm, and she hefted it, ready to do battle with chocolate if she had to, as the body came to life.

There was a thump, a curse, another curse, and then a huge form lunged upright in the kitchen, giant wrench raised high to—

She screamed bloody murder.

“What?” a deep voice boomed over her. “What?
What?
Merde, what’s wrong?
” He lunged for her.

She swung the bag with all her might, and ten pounds of chocolate collided with a broad shoulder and unfortunately only glanced against the head. The bag split, and Matt staggered against the counter under the rain of chocolate bars, dropping the wrench.

It hit the floor and maybe something else because he cursed again, jerking one foot up. “
Bordel de merde.
”

“What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?” she yelled, grabbing for the next grocery sack. Cheeses. She should have chosen stinkier ones.

“I—the kitchen sink was leaking!” Matt yelled, rubbing his head. “
Aïe!
Damn it.”

“
How did you know that?
”

“It’s my valley!” he roared so loudly she fell back against the counter.

She took a deep breath and stared at him—and then abruptly dropped the cheese and pressed her hands to her face. “Oh, holy
crap
, you scared me to death.”

“I told you I was going to fix it! And I fixed your
putain de fusible
!” His arms folded across his chest.

Yes, a light was on in the kitchen. The refrigerator was humming again. Little things she should have noticed before she even came into the kitchen, except she was so tired. And he
had
mentioned the kitchen sink that morning, hadn’t he? She’d been too busy thinking about his shoulders and what they would do if she touched them to pay much attention.

She took another deep breath, her skin still jittery from the shock of it. “
Shit
,” she said, heartfelt.

Matt glowered, his arms tightening. “Where the hell have you been anyway? The store is only twenty minutes away!”

“I got lost!” she snapped, the whole day of frustration piling up on her.

“You did not get lost with my directions!” he said, affronted.

“I decided to risk going farther afield.” She glared back at him. Tears stung ridiculously, trying to turn the glare into something else. She’d had a hard day. She’d actually been having a hard few months, full of this endless cycle of pressures and expectations she couldn’t meet, like twisting forever on those damn cliff roads and never getting anywhere she could rest.

And her whole body wanted to collapse now in relief, nestling itself against a big, strong man in gratitude for him saving her from an axe murderer. A wrench murderer. Whatever. Saving her, in this case, just by not being the axe murderer in question, nor a dead body, nor all the things that had flashed through her mind as she’d reacted instinctively.

“You went somewhere else? Why the hell did you do something like that without checking with me?” Matt demanded.

She gaped at him. “Excuse me,” she said dangerously. “I’ve traveled by myself all over Europe and the United States, and you, some random stranger with a temper problem, want me to
check with you
before I go anywhere?”

“That’s not what I meant!” He looked ready to pound his head against something. “Check with me for directions! And how the hell did you manage to travel all over Europe if you can’t even get from here to Grasse? What happened on your last trip, you got lost trying to get from London to Paris and ended up wandering through Istanbul and Prague before you could figure out where you were?”

“Okay, you know what…” She folded her arms and glared at him. “You can go now.” She’d used train passes back then, for God’s sake. Only on this trip had she had the brilliant idea to buy the little blue van off a friend in Berlin and use it to get around. Much easier to carry her instruments that way, right? Plus, it reminded her of the old days, when she’d driven that old beat-up van her mother had helped her buy all over the U.S., chasing festival opportunities in the summers between school terms. Music had just flowed out of her, back in those days. That had been who she
was.

“Not if you want to be able to use your kitchen sink, I can’t.” He dropped back down to the floor and stretched out, scowling at her one last time before his head disappeared into the cabinet. From under the sink came a muttering stream of curses, like a bear grumbling in his cave.

She stared down at him. Now that she knew it was alive and didn’t belong to an axe murderer, that was one really nice body to have stretched out there on those worn tiles. Big, half-filling the kitchen. A very reassuring strength to have around, to fight the lingering ghosts of axe murderers. He couldn’t even see her ogling it either. As long as he kept working on that sink, she could ogle it a long time.

One knee drawn up, jeans hugging lean hips, a T-shirt clinging softly to stomach muscles drawn in extra tight with the work he was doing. Wide shoulders, the undersides of muscled arms visible as he used the wrench. “I see you got your T-shirt on,” she said regretfully.

Then clapped her hand to her mouth. Oops. That regretful tone must be due to the shock of the moment.

He made a low, growling noise, clearly still grumpy.

Damn
, she loved the growling noise. It just hummed through the air and through her bones. Her hands actually curved, fingers shifting to press down strings and strum, as if she could capture the sound, caress it, play it.

Be one hell of an instrument that could capture
that
sound. Her fingers flexed into the air, in frustration over all the moments that her music could never capture. And her gaze scanned the real instrument of that sound, that broad chest and that stretch of tan throat, and her fingers—all by themselves, she
swore
her brain knew better—thought about ways they could play more growls out of him. The tickling way they could run up his ribs right this second, get him to growl in protest, then maybe test the resilience of those chest muscles and see what other sounds he made when he was…

She curled her fingertips tightly into her palms and tucked them behind her, locking them between her butt and the counter to make them behave.

It was
hard
to make them behave. Her gaze drifted to where his drawn-up knee pulled the jeans against his crotch, and her impish, idiot fingers all the sudden thought about what sound he might make if she touched him
there
, and—

She smashed her butt harder against her hands, pinching them against the counter.

Probably be one hell of a sound, though
, her brain thought wistfully.

Oh, fine, now her brain was going to turn idiot, too.

Yeah, but…admit you want to hear that sound.

“I’ll just, ah…clean up,” she said, and crouched to start collecting the chocolate bars that were scattered all around his body. A couple of them were even tucked half under his butt. She smiled a little, and then gave her fingertips a little rap against the hard tiles to try to knock some sense into them.

The hard stomach drew in even tighter. She followed that tightness up his torso—and started when she found that, in the shadow of the cabinet, he’d curled his head up enough to gaze at her.

“Nice T-shirt,” she said dreamily. It was, too. This lovely golden-brown, fine cotton that kindly clung to all the definition of the muscles stretched out before her. The scent of roses came off him, mixed erotically with dirt and grease and sweat. “Although not as good as being naked.”

The breath whooshed from him. A small thump as he hit his head on the pipe.

She clapped her hand to her mouth. Oh, good God. She had not just said that, had she?
If this is your newest way of procrastinating on that album, Layla Dubois, you have lost your mind.

“Uh—don’t get any ideas!” She held up a hand hastily, as if that could really ward off someone his size.

“Hard not to, now,” he growled, low and deep.
Oh, yeah. Already a promising sound there.
One that vibrated through her whole body. He pushed himself out from under the cabinet enough to half sit up, one arm looping around his knee and the other hand rubbing his forehead.

She stared, still crouched on the floor close to him, really not wanting him to get any ideas and…really wanting him to. To just reach out and grab her and…show her some of his ideas.

Good lord. This must be where those repairman-housewife stories got started. And she’d always judged those poor women. Hot stranger, in one’s house, fixing things…she could suddenly, utterly see the temptation to turn that into intense, stolen sex.

She slid back a bit, the movement shifting her out of her crouch to her knees. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Dark brown eyes tracked over her body. His voice went so deep the rub of it in her nipples
hurt
. “Want me to see if I can find out?”

“Oh, I—” She pushed herself back more. But in the process, her knees spread just a little. “No.”

His gaze tracked back down over her body and lingered a second at the seam of her jeans, then trailed back up her torso, stopping like a hot stamp on her breasts before it reached her eyes again. As his gaze locked with hers, she flushed suddenly, all through her. “Sure?” His voice burred so deep she wanted to beg for it.

To just
wallow
in that sound, all over her body.

“No,” she said. “I mean—yes! Yes, I’m sure.”

Wait, had she said yes or no now? Those brown eyes caught on hers, clearly not sure either and intently hoping for the best.

She held up both hands. “No.”

He took a long, slow breath, holding onto that upraised knee as if it was his own lifeline, and just watched her. Waiting.

Waiting for her to maybe change her mind, she realized. Or make it up.

Oh,
hell
, the crazy, stupid, intense arousal that pressed through her at his waiting.

“Please don’t,” she said. Because if he did reach for her, if he tested her response at all, she might just…go with it. Be swept away. And then where would she be?

Besides satisfied?
protested her rebellious body.

Matt frowned just a little. “Bouclettes, you already said no. You don’t have to add a ‘please’ to that for me.”

She drew a breath and forced herself to break his gaze, blurrily eyeing instead the scattered chocolate bars.

“You don’t have to add a ‘please’ to a ‘yes’ either.” That deep voice rubbed over her.

She wet her lips.

“Yeah.” A rumble like thunder. “You could just say it like that.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, not daring to look at him. She desperately wanted to do something stupid.

He reached for a rag and very carefully, very thoroughly, wiped his hands clean.

Oh, lord.

“I said no.”

“I’m not touching you, Bouclettes
.
”

Damn. Why was that so
hot
? To not be touched? Why did it make her want to be touched so badly?