Once Upon a Rose (29 page)

“And you know that contract Abbaye is negotiating with you to use your Grammy hit for their new perfume? I could change their mind about that.”

Damn it, why did men always try to push the little female around? You’d think she hadn’t been standing up for herself to strangers for pretty much her entire adolescence and adulthood. She channeled Matt and folded her arms. “Well, you
could,
” she said. “If you want to be a bastard. I was a little worried about going too commercial anyway. But I’m still not selling this land to you instead of to Matt.”

“How much do you want for it?”

She sighed. “Why do the money people always think they can put a price on people’s hearts? How
do
your brains work?” She peered at Damien, trying to turn her eyes into an MRI scan and figure out what lobes lit up in his head that didn’t light in hers. Or vice versa.

“I’d rather count on being able to outbid someone than on her heart,” Damien said dryly.

“Oh.” Layla’s mouth drooped for him. “That’s kind of sad.”

Damien frowned at her.

“Well, it
is
. You need to work on that.”

Damien ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair, looking just a little frazzled. Which was kind of a good look on him, to be honest. He should try it more often over the lean, elegant assassin look. “Look,” he snapped. “If you sell this land out from under Matt, you’re going to break his heart.”

“Isn’t that what you’re asking me to do?” she asked, confused.

“I’m his
cousin
. It’s not the same thing at all.”

Layla peered at him. “Because he trusts you with it?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Damien said sardonically. “I’m not sure Matt trusts anyone with his heart. That’s what he gets for having such a damn mushy one.”

“Oh, yeah, right, I was forgetting yours was so adamantine,” Layla said mildly.

Damien raised an eyebrow at her, lethal and saturnine.

“You know, the next time they need a new James Bond, have you thought about trying out?”

His eyes narrowed in exasperation, but the corners of his lips twitched before he could catch them, and a little leap of laughter gleamed green in his eyes.

“Look, don’t worry,” Layla said quietly. “I’m happy here, but…I know I need to give it back to him, okay? I promise it’s safe with me. I know you guys have his back, but I’ll try to take care of his…front.” She rested her hand over her own front, right over her heart, before she realized it.

“Will you?” Damien asked, and for once he let it be an actual question. His eyes searched her face.

Layla nodded solemnly. “I promise,” she said. “I really will.”

“What if the two of you have a fight?” Damien asked. “What if he yells at you, and breaks up with you, and you want to hurt him back?”

Layla hesitated. “You say that as if you’re expecting it to happen.”

Damien grimaced. “You probably should have told him who you were.”

Her arms folded back over her chest, her heart sinking. “I gather you took care of that little oversight for me?”

“Oversight?”

She hunched into her arms, not answering.
Break up with her? Like he’d broken up so easily with his top model when things went wrong?

“He’s pretty pissed off,” Damien said. “He’s not going to handle this well, Layla.”

“All right,” Layla said, but her heart sank more and more. “I don’t expect him to be perfect.” But she’d felt…safe with him. Emotionally. Not like he would
dump
her, even if he got pissed off.

Damien held out his hand to her, handshake style. “You promise you won’t sell it out from under him in a temper?”

Right. Whatever happened, even if it hurt, she did understand at least right this moment that she couldn’t do that. Good idea to commit to it, while her feelings were still unhurt and less likely to lead her off the ethical path. Layla put her hand in his. “I promise.”

Damien shook it once, firmly. “This is important, Layla. Belle.”

“Yes.” Layla looked wistfully at her little house with its roses climbing over the door. Too important for her to play with, no matter how much she liked it here and no matter how much it filled her with song. It sounded as if Matt would never be able to relax, deep down, and trust her, as long as she could steal away his heart like this—sell it to someone else. “I’ve got it.”

When Damien left, she picked up her guitar and walked down the long rows of roses to Matt’s house to wait for him on his doorstep.

***

The later the evening grew, the more anxious Layla grew. How mad was Matt, exactly? Was Damien right, that he might break up with her? Was everything really shattered by her own efforts to be someone other than a fulfillment of expectations?

I think I’m falling really hard for you
. The last words she’d spoken to him, in some kind of blithe, arrogant dream that he must feel the same for her. That this evening was going to be like last evening, and tomorrow was going to be more of the same.

She should have told him the truth.

It hadn’t really felt like telling him a lie, though. It had just felt like…being herself. Taking time away from everything people wanted her to be and…being her.

Her stomach knotted more and more, the longer she had to wait, and she got out her guitar and sat on the stone step in front of his house, playing the guitar the same way a child might hold a silkie for reassurance.

Wish for me

On a falling star

No matter where you are

Look for me

It soothed her a little, to try to make a song out of this. She brooded over the guitar.

Wish for me

On a four leaf clover

Don’t think it over

Just come and find me

Darkness was settling over the valley, shadows creeping toward her like anxieties that had snuck out of holes in the ground and out from behind trees, prowling towards her.

Wish for me

Just blow out your candles

I’m not too much to handle

Be a hero for me

The shadows nibbled at her toes and caressed fingers through her hair.

Wish for me

Toss your coin in the fountain

Come climb the glass mountain

Take three apples from me.

The shadows climbed up her legs, crawled down her arms, and he still hadn’t come.

Wish for me

It’s not too much to ask for

A man who will last for

Ever, dreaming of me

The notes died away. She bent her head.

That was…was that actually a halfway decent song? Did it have potential? She needed to record the rough version before she forgot it. If she had a phone, she could do that right now. If she had a phone, of course, she could have called Matt.

What did it mean, that he still wasn’t here?

***

Matt went rock climbing. Up the limestone cliffs at the end of the valley, where he and his cousins had climbed so many times before, where they went when they needed to get away and needed to burn up a lot of frustration, to strive against a rock face into the blue above.

You couldn’t stay enraged, rock climbing. You had to focus on the rock, on the next grip, on the muscles flexing you up, working that hurt and rage out. It was a good thing to make yourself do, before you faced the person you might lash out at with that rage.

He climbed to the top of the cliff and sat for a long time, gazing down at his valley. A few yards away, invisible from almost every angle, was the gap in the rock where Niccolò Rosario’s heirlooms had once been hidden during the war. Pépé insisted Colette had stolen them, but Matt had a hard time imagining his aunt climbing up that face. Even with all those old photo albums to help him, his brain kept failing to envision her that fit and young.

His hand stroked over the phrase his grandfather had carved into the limestone, Niccolò Rosario’s motto, adopted when Niccolò laid claim to this valley.
J’y suis, j’y reste.

I am here and here I’ll stay.

My valley, Niccolò had said, on behalf of all his descendants. Mine. We will hold this land against all comers: French kings, Italian mercenaries, German soldiers, perfume house accountants, time. We definitely, definitely won’t weaken and give up part of it to some rock star who can’t even tell the truth about who she is and clearly just came here to leave a great gaping hole in a man’s heart when she ran back to New York.

Where he couldn’t follow her to get it back, obviously, because…he was a valley.

I am here and here I’ll stay.

I think I’m falling really hard for you.

With her head pressed against his chest, she had said that, so that nothing protected his heart from the words.

The sun was setting over his valley. He was going to have to have it out with her sometime, wasn’t he? Face her again, with her betrayal like a knife right there where he’d lowered his arms to let her at his heart.

And he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to have this fight. He didn’t want to defend his territory. He didn’t want to drive her back and leave everything that mattered to him safe.

He didn’t want to need to.

He’d wanted her to be a safe person to let in. A person he could trust.

He wished he could stay up here all night, but he couldn’t. From the full moon above, a vague blur of his mother frowned down at him.
Matthieu Michel Laurent Rosier, what are you doing rock climbing in the dark?

He always imagined how his mother would react based on the ways his cousins’ mothers had acted when they got in trouble. He blurred it with memories of his grandmother’s chiding of him to be safer, and with photos, and with a child’s almost-memories of a lap and hugs, to try to come up with an approximation of a mother-in-the-moon. But he’d never really had that—the person who kissed his skinned knees. Who was tender with him.

He looked down at the stitches on his arm, remembering the graze of callused fingers as Layla re-wrapped it in gauze, remembering the strength of her arms around his neck, holding her weight off it to make sure it didn’t hurt.

In the valley below, where his house was, a light clicked on as if someone had made herself at home inside it.

He stared at that light a long time, and then grimaced and reluctantly started to abseil down.

***

In the end, Layla was just a coward. She couldn’t face the dark anymore, or her fear that Matt was going to leave her alone in it. She couldn’t stand it, so she just took what she wanted.

Light and warmth and welcome.

She just went through that door he had left unlocked, to that space where he had said she was welcome to stay, and sought refuge there, locking the door against the dark outside.

Not only was Matt’s own door locked against him—that strange, alien gesture that kind of pierced his heart with how vulnerable and small Layla must feel in this world, compared to him—but an empty bowl of cereal sat in his sink, her guitar leaned against his biggest leather armchair, and she was sleeping in his bed.

Now how the hell was that fair?

He folded his arms over his chest.

That was just—that was outrageous, that was what that was.

She lied to him about who she was, she lured him in under false pretenses, she stole his heart—his
valley’s
heart, he meant. His valley. And now, when a man had spent four hours climbing rocks to try to work his mad out and not yell at her, he came home to find her curled up in his bed, with his light on in his bathroom as if she’d been scared without it, and her arm over his pillow, as if it had substituted for a teddy-bear, and all that curly hair mushed and tangled across her face, and her lips faintly parted in sleep, and…

That was just cheating.

He growled about it, very softly, experimentally, but she didn’t wake up, and he felt instantly guilty for adding any possible fear factors for a woman who had clearly gotten scared of the dark.

He felt guilty for not having
been
there, so she hadn’t been scared of the dark.

She’d told him flat out that she’d been on her own in strange situations for a long time.

He was good at handling the kind of fears that came after a woman when she was alone in the dark. Those were the kind of fears he could punch in the nose. When he got done with those kind of fears, they whimpered back where they came from and never, ever messed with what was his to protect again.

He eased closer to the bed. It was late. She was very obviously sleepy. Maybe he could just skip this whole confrontation-over-lying part and, and…what? His heart winced at the options. Pretend she was telling him the truth? Pretend she was here forever?

She looked really good in his bed, damn it. She looked as if she should be there forever.

A curl had gotten caught against her parted lips. One of his hands worked its own way free of the protective fold of his arms and eased that curl away. Then the other curls, stroking them back, freeing her face. Her hair was so damn intensely curly that it felt a bit like parting the bramble bushes to get to the princess when he did that.

He glanced around, but there was definitely no one to see him be such a complete idiot, and because he
was
an idiot, clearly, he bent and snuck a little kiss of the sleeping princess.

She screamed, coming awake in a clawing, fighting roil.

“It’s me!” He jumped back. Damn it. The whole damn prince thing never did work out for him. “Layla! It’s me!”

“Oh, God.” She stilled, blinking around in confusion. “Oh, I’m—here.”

“Where did you think you were?” He made his voice gentle. Well, what? A man couldn’t yell at a woman for lying to him when he’d just terrified her out of her mind. He was
not
being a softie or a pushover. It could wait one minute, until she calmed down.

“I don’t know.” She pushed a hand across her face as if to clear her vision. “My old room back at my mom’s, maybe. You know how you wake so disoriented when you’re in a new place and your mind still expects to wake up in an old place.”