Once Upon a Rose (28 page)

“It involves a lot of alcohol,” Allegra said. “Whenever a few of them get together and get a little drunk, they like to try to solve the problems of the one who’s missing. I believe Damien was starting to consider assassination as a possible method of solving Nathalie.”

“She made Matt out to be the bad guy,” Jolie said. “As a publicity stunt. To the whole freaking world.”

“Before
that
, she would try to make him jealous for the slightest thing,” Allegra said. “I was here researching while all this was going on. Like, say he relaxed enough at one of her fashion industry parties to actually have a conversation with someone, and in the group of people he was talking to, there was a female…in the next week, she’d make sure photographs of her with another man were all over the media, with captions like, ‘Is Nat tired of slumming? Looking for a new man?’”

“Slumming?” Layla asked incredulously.

“Oh, yeah, she’d play up the farmer-peasant to her fragile, exquisite princess role all the time. And then, when he called it quits—broke it off with her—she started confronting him in public, and whatever photo the paparazzi caught that showed him looking the most frustrated or angry—that would be the photo they published. With her hinting at abuse like you wouldn’t believe. It drove his family
livid.
And Matt, too, of course, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The angrier it made him, the more it would play into media hands. You know how growly he is, how easy it would be to catch photos of him looking all big and out of temper.”

“Rosier SA nearly lost the contracts for his roses over it,” Colette said. “Since that spoiled brat is the face of the main Abbaye perfume that uses the absolute from those roses. That contract accounts for half the revenue those roses bring in.”

“What a
bitch
,” Layla said, furiously.

“And it hit him close to home here in terms of what people thought of him, too,” Jolie said. “I mean, most people around here know him too well, you know? And they know the perfume industry, too, and how anything is good for a media blitz. But there are still people who look at him suspiciously, wondering if anything she hinted at might be true. It did
wonderful
things for her, of course—her name was everywhere, beautiful and brave, exactly the way she likes it. But Matt was always one of the pillars of the community here, the next Rosier patriarch, and it shook that.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Colette said. “Matthieu has always tried to play the tough, growling man and make sure nobody, most particularly not his cousins, tries to mess with him. But now he tries even harder to keep his heart covered.”

Allegra smiled. “Until you. Of course, I guess you’re not famous enough to draw more media down on him.”

Layla pressed her fingers over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’ve got to tell him.”

***

“You know, of all your cousins, you’re the last one I would have thought would choose the seduction method,” Pépé said thoughtfully as Matt paused to flex his shoulders, toward the end of the afternoon. Pépé was back, refreshed from the nap he didn’t like admitting he took after lunch. “But as long as it’s working for you…”

This was one of those times when Matt liked to fold his arms across his chest when dealing with his family, but for some reason, his arms didn’t want to cooperate. It was as if his muscles had gone all floppy. Or as if his heart was taking over, and that insane suicidal organ didn’t
want
to hide behind a strong line of defenses.

It wanted to come out and play.

“I’m not trying to seduce that property out of her, Pépé.” They stood near the truck by the fields, watching the field workers, the trailer bed filling with the sacks from the harvest. It was a good harvest this year. A harvest that a family could have depended on, back in the old days, when this valley was truly the center of the family wealth and power and not just the symbol of it.

“It backfires, you know,” Pépé warned. “If you seduce a woman and something goes wrong and she gets mad, she’ll do the thing that will hurt you the most.”

Matt thought about those slim, strong arms of hers trying to hold her weight off his, in case she was applying pressure to his wound. He looked down at the line of stitches that she’d insisted on re-wrapping with gauze even though, twenty-four hours out, there was really no need to keep them covered. “No, she won’t.”

“You don’t think so?” That assessing blue gaze.

“She won’t,” Matt said quietly. It wasn’t a question of his opinion. She just wouldn’t.

His grandfather gave him a disgusted look. “So you didn’t learn any lessons about women from that last girlfriend of yours?”

“Not any lessons that apply to Layla.”

Sometimes his grandfather had a way of looking at him that made him feel as if he had an apple on his head, and his grandfather was deciding whether his aim was good enough to shoot it off to protect his valley. “You’re sure about that?”

“Look, I know better than to get involved with someone famous now, Pépé. Layla…she’s human, you know. Fame hasn’t gotten into her brain and messed with who she is and how she relates to people the way it did Nathalie.”

Pépé gave a frustrated shake of his head. “You’re willing to risk the heart of this valley on some girl you like? How are you going to feel when one of her descendants sells that land to a hotel?”

“Maybe the same as I’d feel if one of my descendants sold some of this land to a hotel.”

Pépé sent him a sharp, searching glance. Matt wished his arm muscles would start working. But instead of locking over his chest against that glance the way they were supposed to, his hands stayed in his back pockets, his chest wide-open and exposed to everyone around him.

It felt—big like that, his chest. It felt broad. It felt as if he could breathe deeply.

“I still say,” Pépé said slowly, eyes keen on Matt, “that the land needs to be kept in the family. Of course, there
is
more than one way of doing that.”

Oh, for God’s sake. That’s what a man got for letting his family get a glimpse of his heart: invasive curiosity and pressure about the most delicate and powerful feelings it held.

“I’ve only known her for four days, Pépé,” Matt growled, turning away as Raoul came up through the fields. After fourteen years of harvests without Raoul, it was still strange to have him there so much. To be able to see how deeply Raoul wanted to be a part of this land again.

To have Matt’s own heart feel open enough to allow him back in.

Matt took a deep breath. “I see you did a decent job without me yesterday,” he allowed.

No sense getting effusive with praise, after all. There was “opening up” and then there was acting like an idiot. He wasn’t some damn oyster on a half shell.

Raoul slanted him a dry glance. All Raoul’s glances had a slightly feral gleam to them, ever since he’d headed off to Africa. A wildness that had gotten in him that could maybe never be entirely appeased, unless Allegra was there. “You don’t know how relieved I am to hear that you approve.”

Matt bit back a grin. See? At least
Raoul
didn’t go forcing a man to expose his soft insides recklessly. He knew how to keep up a tough front. Knew the importance of it.

He sighed in relaxation, oddly reassured. Glad that to this day, all he and his cousins had to do to mend a rift was some version of punching each other on the shoulder.

Damien’s car pulled in from the main road, and he got out and came up to them. Matt knew right away that something was wrong, maybe with some business deal for Rosier SA. Damien had that look on his face that he got whenever he might have to assassinate someone. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

At least, he was pretty sure Damien hadn’t ever literally assassinated anyone.

Damien looked at them all for a moment, squinted briefly at the sky, and then handed Matt his phone.

Raoul made a sudden movement, as if to grab for it, before he stopped himself. “Damn it, Damien,” he snapped. “I
told
you—” The supreme frustration of the eldest cousin whose younger cousins
still
weren’t doing what he told them to do.

Matt looked down at the screen. It showed a celebrity website that was all too familiar to him after his stint with Nathalie Leclair. The photo was of him kissing Layla in jasmine the night before in Sainte-Mère, edited so that it looked as if a tragically beautiful victimized Nathalie was looking on. His mouth tightened. Was his stupidity in dating Nathalie going to taint his life forever? Were those damn sites still obsessed with his private life, even when he was dating a perfectly ordinary girl next door?

He looked at the caption: “Did the Beast find his Belle?”

Bastards. He glanced down at the article despite himself. “Seems as if Belle Woods has replaced Nathalie Leclair in her peasant’s heart. We’ll have to see if she handles the beast better…”

Matt lifted his head. Something began to ring in his ears, all the air in the valley pressing in tight to his head, squeezing his brain. “Who’s Belle Woods?”

Damien sighed sharply, sent a reluctant glance toward Raoul who was frowning at Damien in stern disapproval, and then reached to swipe a thumb across the phone screen. Another web page appeared, this one of Layla in an elegant evening dress, clutching a little purse in front of her, and posing for the camera.
Belle Woods arrives for the Grammys.

The valley was going to crush Matt’s head. What the hell was going on?

“I thought—I thought she gave guitar lessons and bartended and played little gigs wherever she could find them.” The words tasted all funny on his tongue, as if he’d been to the dentist and half his mouth was still numb. He’d thought she
needed
him. Hell, when she’d talked about bartending, he’d had to bite his tongue not to rush ahead and say,
I’ll keep a roof over your head for you. I know how to do that.

“Maybe she used to,” Raoul said. “Damn it, Damien, I thought we agreed—”

“Somebody was going to tell him today,” Damien said. “With those photos all over the web. I preferred to control the circumstances.”

“She’s been
lying
to me?” When he had thought she was trusting her whole self to him? That sweet, incredible trust, as if she knew he would be worthy of it?

She hadn’t even thought he was good enough to know who she really was. She’d just been…what? Fooling around with the farmer boy for a few days? Getting her groove back?

“Maybe she’s not mentioning the parts she doesn’t want to talk about,” Raoul said. “That’s not the same as lying.”

“In her defense,” Damien pointed out, “I certainly don’t tell people any truths about me when I’ve known them less than three days. Or thirty years.”

The phone’s screen cracked in Matt’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” Damien said low. His mouth was very grim. “I thought you needed to know, now that the media has found out.”

Matt’s head whipped up. “Wait. You knew before this?”

Damien grimaced, glanced at Raoul again, and looked away.

So Matt had been a fucking idiot, too, and all his cousins had known it.

Betrayal rushed at him, straight at that over-exposed heart, raking claws through that vulnerable organ. Rage soared up in defense, calling for back-up, trying to muster a defense before the betrayal ripped his heart out.

“Isn’t that just like Colette to give a piece of this valley, the heart of this family, to some star as a toy?” Pépé said bitterly. He turned his dry, dark irony on Matt: “Still think you can trust it to a woman who’s lying to you?”

“God damn it.” Matt threw the damn phone across the field and strode off.

Layla slowed her little van as she saw the dark-haired man waiting in front of the door of her little stone house, confused. That wasn’t the right dark-haired man.

She got out and walked slowly toward Damien, lean and long and watching her quite grimly, as if he was gauging the best way to take her out.

“Can I help you?” she asked cautiously.

“I want to buy back this land,” he said abruptly.

Oh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think if I sell it, it needs to be to Matt.”

Damien made a slashing motion of his hand. “It comes to the same thing.”

“I don’t think it does,” Layla said slowly. “I mean, I wish it did, but it sounds as if you all haven’t gotten that worked out yet.”

“Better me than a hotel chain,” Damien said. “Or some actor or rock star.”

Layla frowned at his tone at the word “rock star” and searched his face. He looked back at her, face inscrutable.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Layla said. “I’m…I like Matthieu.”

Gray-green eyes searched her face. “Do you.” He didn’t make it a question, as if he was too cool and acerbic to use the interrogative. He had to know all the answers without asking.

But she nodded anyway.

“The thing about Matt is, he’s got a very soft heart,” Damien said.

Happiness sparked in Layla. “It’s funny how all of you seem to realize that, except for him.”

“I don’t have a soft heart,” Damien said evenly, holding her eyes with his merciless gray-green ones. “I’m the mean one.”

Hunh. Layla tilted her head. He certainly didn’t
look
soft-hearted, all lean and cool and elegant, like some Hollywood embodiment of an assassin. But his lips pressed together exactly like Matt’s did when he denied his own soft heart. “You guys are hilarious,” she decided. “I bet you
all
try to say you’re the mean one.”

Damien’s expression flickered. Just for a second, before he got that cool control over it, he looked completely taken aback. “I
am
,” he insisted.

“No offense, but I’m pretty sure your great-aunt and your grandfather are the mean ones. I mean, they play
hard.
It must have been one hell of a crucible, the war.”

Damien frowned at her.

She smiled at him.

“I know Creed,” he said, of one of her producers.

“Oh, crap.” She took a step back. “You’re not going to tell him where to find me, are you? That
is
mean.” Wait, to mention Creed, he definitely knew her performance name.