Once Upon a Rose (34 page)

She tightened her hug enough to rest her head against his chest. So maybe this was the way he made up with her. Not a punch on the arm or a rough joke, but a touch of her hair or a kiss of the top of her head.

Well, then. He could definitely do that, too.

It made him feel a lot more vulnerable than punching somebody’s arm, but he was going to try to handle it.

“Tante Colette had it all this time. She gave it to me.”

“Well, I’m glad she finally did the right thing,” Layla said approvingly. “It’s your valley.” She stroked his chest. Look at that, she was already petting him. She was
lousy
at grudges. “You are here and here you’ll stay.”

He took a breath. “Turn it over.”

She did, with the care of someone who had never touched a piece of jewelry four hundred years old in her life, and stilled at the gold seal revealed on the other side. Her finger felt the shape of the gold very carefully. The roses growing up out of the ground. The gold bloom at the top. The words…her finger hesitated over them. “I thought you said the motto was…”

“I guess we changed it, over time,” he said. “Apparently what Niccolò said was ‘It all starts here’.”

“I like that. Not a resting place, but a starting place. A place to help you bloom.” She stroked it again, her face wondering and a little wistful. “That’s incredible, roots like that.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I thought you might like it.” What an idiot he’d been in the church.

“It’s amazing. It’s even a rose. It’s perfect for you.”

He took the chain and slipped it over her head, settling the seal over her breastbone. “It’s perfect for you.”

Her hand covered it. “
What?
”

“I want you to have it.”

“Matt, you can’t—”

He put his hand over her mouth before she could throw his heart back at him again. “Because I thought,” he said carefully, “that it didn’t have to be an either/or choice. That maybe you could stay here
and
bloom. And pursue your career. Maybe you, you know…needed me. And…I can give you that. Me.”

“Your valley is not you, Matt. I mean—”

“It is,” he finished for her. “It really is. And I want you to keep that, too. But I also meant…me. I can give you me.”

“
Oh.
” Her loose fist rose to her lips, and she bit into the side of her index finger, staring at him.

“Don’t give it back,” he said anxiously, gesturing to himself.

“But—but—” She looked from him down to her chest and back. “You can’t give me something so
old.
”

A little smile ghosted through him. “It’s a bit younger than the valley.”

She gave a tiny, indignant shove to his chest. “I was trying to give that back! And anyway, someone else gave it to me. You know what I mean. This should stay in the family.”

His smile grew inside him, even while his cheeks heated a little. It felt good, though, that heat in his cheeks. Like warmth escaping his heart to expand all through him. “I know.” He rubbed his thumb over the seal, resting the heel of his palm against the swell of her breasts. “But I bet if you let me, I could figure out a way to fix that problem.”

Her breath caught. She stared at him, her eyes such a beautiful green. Just like rose leaves in the early gray morning.

“I, ah…” He touched his chest, his cheeks heating more to try to say these words. He
meant
them, that wasn’t the problem. They just sounded so untough, so soft-hearted, so exposed. “You know I’m crazy about you.”

There. He could say that. It wasn’t so…raw. It wasn’t so open.

And she liked it. Her cheeks flushed a little, and she bit her lip, staring up at him in pleasure.

But…yeah. She deserved the rawness. The openness. He bent his head to slide his face into her curls until his lips were by the lobe of her ear. “I love you,” he said, and his cheeks flamed like fire. Because it was true, and saying something so true could sometimes take all a man’s courage. “
Moi aussi, je t’aime.
”

It was worth the courage, though, for the way she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, as if she would never let go.

She fit in his arms just right.

“She’s really good, isn’t she?” Tristan said, stopping beside him at the side of the stage, their shoulders brushing.

Matt beamed with pride, his arms folded to try to contain his chest before it swelled so much it exploded. “She’s fantastic.”

Layla was chatting with her audience, teasing them by playing bars of “La Vie en Rose.”

She had ended up calling her producers and stating flat out that she needed to delay the album. Her producers had said, “Better a delay than crappy music.”

I told you so,
Matt had said. Layla had gotten indignant with him about that, but her relief had been enormous. She’d actually gone out on a blanket on the hillside and slept the whole morning in the shadow of the pines after that phone conversation, her face so relaxed and peaceful. Her joy in her music grew back from that point like a plant taken out of a dark closet and given some sun, her energy and pleasure more and more vibrant. He’d loved it, how excited she grew to share with him something she’d been working on, when they met for lunch, or she came down to the fields to sit on the back of the truck and play a while, or in the evening. When she was no longer under pressure, when she was in the shelter of his valley, when she had all kinds of things that gave her life and worth besides her music, it was amazing how attached she was to that guitar.

But then, of course, the Rose Festival committee, half of whom were related to Matt and all of whom had seen the photos, came down on him like a ton of bricks to try to get Belle Woods to perform at the festival.

Matt didn’t give a crap about the committee pressure, of course—would-be-dominant other family members were the main reason he’d had to grow up so growly and tough in the first place—but Layla laughed and said, “Sure. No problem.”

Which was pretty damn annoying, actually. No wonder she was so stressed and overworked if she didn’t know how to say no.

Of course, the only consequence
he’d
gotten for pointing that out and arguing with her over her acceptance had been this incredibly maddening and yet intimately delicious evening in which Layla teased him with all the ways and times she could say
no.

So here she was, on stage in Grasse, across from the great fountain with its huge, stylized jasmine and rose flowers.

One side of the stage reached nearly to the wall of the esplanade, the valleys below Grasse spilling below it. Once those valleys, too, would have been full of flowers, the entire region so dense with them you breathed perfume. These days, all the land he could see from here was full of houses and buildings, all the way to the sea.

One day, the Rosier valley would be the last valley of flowers in France. The land’s production would no longer suffice to justify its existence, and it would become just a show-piece of the larger Rosier SA. Kept for sentimental value, because they could afford it.

The great, underlying grief of his position as patriarch was that it was probably going to be in his lifetime, actually, if he lived to be as old as his grandfather.

His grandfather stopped beside him. Matt waited for some comment on the need to not let a rock star get a chunk of their valley.

But his grandfather was quiet.

Il me dit des mots d’amour
, Layla sang on stage, that beautiful, rose and burlap voice of hers caught by the microphone and carried out to the whole crowd.
He speaks words of love to me.

Rose and burlap.
That’s
what her voice sounded like. The rough and the silk. The sweet and the tough.

His grandfather gave a soft sigh.

Matt slid a glance at him, braced.

“I remember,” Pépé said softly. “Hiding in the shadows with Colette, listening to that song.”

After all these years, Matt knew the rare, precious tone of a war memory. He went quiet, focusing, one ear for Layla, one for his grandfather.

“She had a song order that would let us know if she had information she needed to pass on. And if she did, she’d take her break after this song. The Germans loved her so much she could get away with anything. A couple of times, she’d give a concert just to keep them occupied on a certain evening and less likely to notice what we were up to.”

“Edith Piaf?” Matt guessed.

“Of course,” his grandfather said. “This was her home, too.”

Matt nodded. His grandfather, and others, had shared memories of Edith Piaf with him many times before this. But still, it was always something of a wonder to Matt to hear some of these stories.

“You can tell a lot about a woman by the way she sings,” Pépé said quietly. Hands crossed behind his back, he walked that aged but still straight walk of his over to one of the tables set up under the trees at the edge of the esplanade. Tante Colette sat there watching the performance.

Pépé sat down in the shade across from her and leaned back in his chair, not speaking, as far as Matt could tell from here.

They rarely spoke to each other these days except to bicker. But there were other tables Pépé could have sat at.

Matt looked back at Layla.

She looked quite radiant, completely in her element.

Funny how well she and he fit together, when she was so different from him. There was no way in hell anyone would get him up on a stage like that, in front of this mass of people, half of whom already liked to remind him of seeing him in diapers.

“Damn, she’s good,” Raoul said, stopping beside him with Damien.

Matt grinned. “I know.”

“Her tour schedule is going to be a bitch, though. How are you two going to handle that?”

Matt slowly loosened his arms from his chest and shoved his hands into his pockets. He took a long breath, and that breath felt…just right. Big enough. “I thought I’d ask you.”

Raoul stilled. For a long moment, he didn’t look at Matt at all. Then he turned his head at just enough of an angle to see Matt’s face. “How to handle it?”

Matt cleared his throat. “To help. With the land.” He flexed his fingers in his pockets, keeping hold of the denim so he didn’t cross his arms back over his chest. Tristan had turned and was looking at him, too, alert and astonished. Damien, past Raoul, took a step forward so he could see Matt, too. Matt cleared his throat again. “I’m not in any rush about this, but I wonder sometimes if, eventually, we should set it up as a trust. So that, you know, we can all have it, and…none of us can lose it.”

There was a dead silence. All his cousins were staring at him.

“A trust with me in charge of it, of course,” he said firmly.

A sharp, wry grin from Raoul. “We guessed that part.”

“Hell, Matt,” Tristan said low, wonderingly. And then, “You
really
like her, don’t you?”

Matt flushed hot. That was just rude, to point that out like that. He glared at Tristan.

Tristan grinned and punched him in the shoulder.

“This one’s a new one,” Layla said up on stage. “My producers haven’t got hold of it yet, so I’m testing it out on you all.”

The crowd cheered excitedly.

“I wrote it for somebody here,” Layla said, and Matt got caught by curiosity, focusing on her again.

She was grinning down at him. “Matt, can you come up here?”

Wait, what?

What the hell?

Layla beckoned coaxingly. Her crowd cheered, everyone craning to try to see the man she was talking to.

Hell
, no. He took a step back, and firm hands gripped his arms.

“No!” he growled. “Tristan. Raoul. Let the hell go of me. Don’t you dare.”

Damien ducked behind him and shoved him hard between the shoulders as Tristan and Raoul dragged him forward.

“Damn it! You bastards! I’m going to—”

He tripped over the first step as they shoved him up it. The crowd was cheering more and more as they spotted him, and Layla beamed down at him.

Oh, hell. Now what was he supposed to do? Disappoint that face?

He came on up the stairs.

Below the stage, his cousins were grinning, Allegra and Léa had appeared and were clapping and cheering, and pretty much the entire half of the audience who knew him personally were staring at him with their mouths open.

“Layla,” he tried to hiss, but her mic was on, and he didn’t know how much of his voice it could pick up, so he had to bite back the protest.

She wrapped her arm around him, her guitar bumping against his ribs, and turned toward the crowd. “See?” she said, and everyone cheered again. “Wouldn’t you write a song for this man?”

Oh, hell. He felt like he was on fire. He started to glare at all his relatives in the crowd and then remembered that a glare probably wasn’t the best look on stage.

“He’s pretty cute, isn’t he?” Layla said to the crowd, squeezing his waist affectionately. “I’ll tell you a secret—he’s pretty sweet, too.”

He was going to kill her. It was official. In the crowd, his cousins were laughing their heads off and cheering her louder than anyone. He clenched his fist as tightly as he could to stop himself from at least giving them a little
doigt d’honneur.

“I am not sweet,” he said to her between his teeth. Shit, that seemed to have gotten picked up by the nearest microphone, because the crowd cheered again. He was going to kill the festival sound crew, too, while he was at it. Wasn’t one of his Delange cousins on that crew?

“Here we go,” Layla called to the crowd, stepping away from him to free up her arms to play. And to Matt: “This one’s for you.”

Her first chords were quiet, brooding, this sweet, wistful call:

Lonely

Lost looking and lonely

Doing everything solely

Cause I hadn’t found you

His heart felt so vulnerable and funny, and he wished to hell she wasn’t telling him this in front of the crowd. But…that was so…
sweet.
And, and…well, she was wide open, too, wasn’t she? Just laying herself out there, the way she always did.

Lonely

Wandering lonely