Once Upon a Rose (11 page)

“That’s good,” she managed.

The deep vibrations of his voice just wrapped her up and caressed her, easing into a tone so gentle it was all she could do not to curl up in it. “Why is that good,
chérie
?”

She scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub some sense into herself. “Because I don’t know what I’d do if you did,” she confessed.

He drew one hard breath in, his fist clenching on the rag. Their gazes locked and
sizzled.
“That is a hell of a thing to tell a man while you keep asking him to do nothing.”

“I know.”

He shook his head slow and hard. “No. I bet you think you know. You think you can imagine it. But I bet you have no idea how hard it is to not just…
do.
”

She drew another breath and scooted herself to the other side of a table leg. A flimsy, silly barrier for all it was a sturdy old table. But she could hold onto it and stare at him from its pseudo-refuge.

She felt more like a lion caging herself so she wouldn’t attack her prey rather than, say, prey hiding from the lion.

But maybe he misinterpreted, because he frowned and looked down, releasing all that delicious pressure. He took his own deep breath in and let it out now, heavily. “So…you like chocolate,” he said randomly, picking up a few of the bars. And then a few more. A smile started to curl the corners of his lips. “A lot.”

“They had all these flavors!”

Just that hint of amusement did the most amazing things to his mouth—easing the pressure that firm upper lip kept on the full, sensual lower one. Letting a hint escape of how much sensuality was there waiting to be freed. That lower lip, when the upper one relaxed, looked—vulnerable. Erotic. Looked like something a woman could lick and nibble and…

Stop it already.

His smile deepened, and he rose, setting the bars on top of the table. “I think you pierced my eardrums.
Merde
, but you’ve got a voice on you.”

Ah...yes. That had been commented on before.

He reached out a hand for her, and she hesitated one second to gaze at the size and strength of it before she put her hand in his. It closed with just the right firmness, entirely engulfing hers as he pulled her easily to her feet.

She sighed, gazing up at him. He didn’t look the least bit grumpy now. Intrigued, alert, ready. But…there was a gentleness to that alertness, a patience. He didn’t move in on her with that big body. She could tell he wanted to. But he let her keep the corner of the table between them.

“I think you’d better give me your key to this house,” she said regretfully.

Oops. She had meant to say that
firmly.

That smile warmed the brown of his eyes to the most amazing color, rich with gold. “I’ll leave the door unlocked on mine.”

Hey. She started to blush. “That will
not
be necessary.”

He laughed out loud, and pleasure leaped through her, to have made the grumpy bear laugh. “No, it will be something a lot more fun than necessary.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Seriously. Don’t leave your door open. I’m not coming.”

“All right, Bouclettes
.
I got it. You didn’t mean to go that far.” He moved away to turn on the faucet and let it run a moment, checking under the sink. Then he nodded and started packing up his tools. A little color showed on his strong cheekbones and a little smile still curved his mouth while he cleaned up, just this sexy, happy curl.

She liked it.

Of course, she liked the scowl, too. It made her want to poke him and pet him and see how easy it would be to make that scowl disappear.

Men with hot bodies had it
so
easy where women were concerned, she thought with a sigh of despair at herself. They could get away with just about anything as long as they flexed their muscles from time to time. She’d burned herself on a couple of hook-ups like that before, post performance at a festival, when everyone who had been on stage was feeling kind of high with the glory of it, all wide open from having poured their hearts out to the crowd. But then you woke up in the morning wondering what the hell you had done, and why you had been so careless with your own heart. The music circuit was a small world, and you ran into those guys again, and saw them hooking up with some other high-on-performance woman, and…yeah, it felt crappy.

In other words, if starting something with him was her subconscious way of avoiding working on that album, it was a really bad idea. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel as if she was avoiding the album. She actually kind of wanted to sit down and play with bass notes all evening. Drift some silken sweet sounds over them like a fall of petals. Let the breeze from the pines blow through. See what happened to them when night fell…

Matt glanced down at her as he headed out of the kitchen with his toolkit, his step slowing as if he might just stop and not leave. But he kept going. Outside the house, he set the toolkit down and turned to face her in the doorway.

“You still have the key,” she said.

He braced his hands on the doorjamb, on either side of her above her head.
That
moved him into her space—caging her in with his size, and all his body wide open to her. But of course, she could always take one step back and shut the door. “It’s in my back pocket,” he said. That little smile as he held her eyes, and that deep, deep voice. God, a smile was a gorgeous look on him. She wanted to play with it, run her fingers over it, nurture it. “And I think my hands are dirty.”

His jeans looked as if they’d been through a lot more than dirty hands. And, anyway, he’d just wiped his hands off so carefully she’d been
sure
he was about to touch her with them. But now they gripped the doorjamb above her, not touching her at all.

Meaning she would have to touch him, if she wanted any touching to occur.

His
back
pocket. Her palm itched to slide over the curve of that taut butt. “If I—if I got it out, what would you do?”

The biceps to either side of her face grew more pronounced. He gazed down at her, eyes not grumpy at all, oddly quiet. Intent. “What would you want me to do?” His voice didn’t boom. It slid over her, textured, strong and rich, entirely reassuring.

“N—nothing,” she admitted. Well, that was kind of what she wanted. With, like, the only two neurons that seemed to be functioning in her brain right now, that was what she wanted. The other two hundred billion seemed to want something entirely different.

Evidently a big, hot body that smelled of roses short-circuited all synapses.

His low, deep voice rubbed over her. “Well, I guess I’m going to do nothing, then.”

Oh, really? Would you really do that for me? Hold all that big, aggressive need to
do
still for me?

He tightened his hands on the doorjamb. “I told you, it’s not that easy to do.”

But he waited, quite still except for the flexing of his arm muscles.

She slid her hand into his back pocket slow, slow, slow, afraid of what she was doing but tantalized by it, too, by that firm curve, by the warmth and snugness of the pocket, by the arms framing her that hardened and didn’t move. By his eyes watching her. Intent and pushing his will on her, as if he knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, but with maybe this hint of caution, too, as if he wasn’t quite sure what she might do to
him
.

She came out with the key, iron and warm, but she didn’t step back into the house with it and shut the door. She stared up at him, liking her little space inside the cage of his body so much she could have stayed there for an hour, with that warmth so carefully not touching her.

He took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I promised to do nothing, didn’t I?”

She nodded mutely.

Another huff of a breath, and he shoved himself away from the doorjamb and her. “Well, that was a lot harder than I expected.”

He picked up his toolkit and studied her another long moment, as if she was really hard to figure out. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced yet,” he said slowly and held out his hand. “I’m Matthieu Rosier.”

Her hand disappeared into his, slim and strong but engulfed by his strength and size. “Layla Dubois.”

He didn’t release her hand. “You stole my land,” he said, still studying her as if something here was a complete mystery to him.

“It was a gift.”

“I want it back.”

Anxiety swamped her immediately, the clamor of the world coming back, just outside this valley, drowning out her music. Drowning out that buzz of bees she had been chasing on her guitar that morning, those soft silk petals. The bear in that song might be loud enough to be heard over the clamor, but all the rest would be lost. She had to catch it first. “I can’t…I can’t do that.”

His lips pressed together, emphasizing all that tough, stubborn strength in his face. “How much do you want?”

She had no idea. “A few weeks?” Who was she kidding? She hadn’t managed to write anything worthwhile in the last six months. There was no way she was going to pull fifteen or so solid songs out of her a—hat in a few weeks.

He blinked, visibly confused. “What?”

“What are we talking about?” she asked, confused, too.

“How much do you want for it?” His voice had tightened, like his face. “This house and land. What’s your price?”

Oh, God, she was really, really bad with money. It was a family curse. Her mother was an art professor, she herself was a musician. And her mother had
supported
her in that career. She hadn’t even told her daughter to become an accountant or anything instead. Layla had even turned down major recording contracts in favor of the indie route because she preferred the artistic control. She wasn’t sure she had the genes for practical decisions. “I don’t want to sell it,” she protested. “I don’t even know why it came to me yet. And I like it here.”

I was writing a song this morning! Do you realize what that means? That I’m not some zombie up there on the stage playing a guitar anymore. That I can still
create.

She expected another flare of grouchiness on his part at her refusal, but her last sentence seemed to distract him. A little light came into his eyes, even, as if she had paid him a compliment. “Do you?”

She gestured out over the roses with her free hand. “It’s beautiful.”
It’s quiet. It teases the music right out of me, lures it into the open. It’s like the old days, when I wasn’t trying to
think
the music out, I could just
feel
it.

The light in his eyes grew brighter. “You really think so?”

She nodded.

His hand didn’t seem to know how to let go of hers. But then, she didn’t try to wiggle free either. It was such a nice, strong, warm hold.

“I’ll try to take good care of it,” she offered. “I won’t sell it to the highest bidder or anything.”

A hint of brooding snuck back into his expression. “The highest bidder is likely to be one of my cousins. They have more liquid assets.”

Not having ever had an extended family, she had no idea how to address that. Well, she had one. “How about if I promise to sell it to you if I ever do sell it?” What was her little chunk of this valley even worth? It was right off the Côte d’Azur, but clearly agricultural.

His face tightened again. “Layla. This valley is supposed to stay in the family. It’s
mine.
”

“I’m pretty sure this part never was yours, or it wouldn’t have come to me,” she pointed out.

He scowled, temper flaring in his eyes.

Since she shouldn’t let herself stroke his chest and smooth his T-shirt down, she offered him something else: “You can keep picking my roses.”

That made his head rear back. “Of course I can keep picking those roses! We just planted those bushes three years ago, they—” He broke off as she put her free hand over his lips.

“Or you
could
say, ‘Thank you very much for being so cooperative,’” she suggested sternly.

He studied her, one eyebrow going up. Then he leaned a tad into her, pressing his will onto her as if seeing how she held up to it. “I could say that. But they are
my
roses.”

Ha, as if he was the first man who’d ever tried to get her to bend to his sheer force of male will. Busking around Europe and then dealing with the music industry had brought her into contact with plenty of men who wanted the little female to cooperate. Little females who couldn’t afford a personal bodyguard had to learn how to look out for themselves in the world. So she only raised her eyebrows, amused. “Every single last petal?”

“Every single one.”

“You’re very possessive, aren’t you?”

He nodded unhesitatingly, as if she had just affirmed one of his more admirable qualities.

She locked eyes with him. “I’m not good with possessive people.” The words were so inherently true to who she was, that it was odd they seemed to rub her throat wrong coming out, as if she was telling a lie. A little frisson of loneliness ran inexplicably across her skin.

He met her locked gaze easily, as if he liked that meeting of wills. “Anyone ever try to possess you?”

“Oh, all the time,” she said wryly. They bought her on a CD or downloaded her onto their phones and thought they owned her forever after. Sometimes she felt they owned her, too.

His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand, this sweetest stroke of a callus. “How’d that work out for them?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m pretty hard to hold.”
I’m still me. Free. And I can write this damn album without worrying about what all those people who bought me last time are going to think when they buy me again.

He looked down at his hand, currently holding hers so easily and surely, and made the slightest moue of disagreement.

For some reason, that made a tingle run through her. “I don’t like to be owned,” she said firmly.

Matt’s hand squeezed once, strong and gentle both, around hers. “‘Holding’ and ‘owning’ aren’t the same thing.” He released her hand. “
Bonne nuit,
Layla.”

“
Bonne nuit.
”

He got maybe ten paces before he glanced back over his shoulder. “I meant it, by the way. This valley is mine.” A faint smile. “And my door’s unlocked.”