Once Upon a Rose (6 page)

Somebody had given this to her?

Somewhere back in her history, this had been part of her family?

Her ears prickled for noise and finally, through this great absence of clamor, started to pick up bees buzzing from roses toward their hives somewhere, a stir of a breeze in the pines rising up the hill, some deep male call across the fields below. Probably Grumpy Jerk’s deep male call, so she shouldn’t appreciate it, but that bass note to the quiet made the fingers of her left hand itch and stroke across the fabric of her jeans.

There wasn’t even the sound of a text here, dinging her for all the things she was supposed to be giving of herself to everyone else. The hills circled around and shut her off from that hungry world.

Just herself.

Her.

She ran her left hand over rose petals as she walked toward the door, and all the muscles in that hand seemed to release their tension, the relaxation washing up her arm and on through her body. She stared at her hand a second, almost not recognizing it with its muscles relaxed.

The key that had come with the letter five months ago was old and heavy iron, like something out of a fairy tale. A musty scent released from the house when she got the door open, the odor mixing with the herbs and stone and roses.

She picked her way into the shadows inside. More quiet, so intense and so old that it begged her to let her voice ring out through it. To remind the old stone of what it had felt like when children clattered through here laughing.

Heavy, dark brown beams bore the weight of much stone above her head, some cobwebs gathering in their corners. Narrow, twisting stone stairs led upward from the main room, looking as if they had once been covered with a soft ochre wash to complement the colors of the tiles, but that had been worn off by years of feet, so that it remained on the bare stone like traces of make-up after a grande dame of the theater wiped her face clean at the end of a long performance.

It was lovely with age, this place that had anchored itself here before the Internet ever existed, when even a performer might have been able to go hours sometimes, probably days, without ever knowing what someone else thought of her or needed of her.

Hadn’t Edith Piaf lived around here part of the time? Maybe this was why she had come.

Layla pulled a window open, then forced the shutter wide, white paint coming off in her hands. Light fell in on this quiet, aged place. She leaned out a moment, staring at the roses below. Hills climbed all around the valley, keeping it safe. In contrast to the crowded coast, which in theory should be nearby—not that she knew how to find it again—this valley seemed only gently populated. On the hills opposite her, climbing past the road, she could spot a sparse scattering of houses here and there, high up against a dark green tree line. On a high slope there, someone had planted a vineyard. Those silvery trees must be olives. Another square patch must be lavender, not yet in bloom. But all of those things were on the hills.

The sea of roses held sway over the bottom of the valley, making it seem like a fairy tale in which a woman could curl up and go to sleep, dreaming her dreams.

She leaned against the window frame, watching the harvesters leave strips of green in their wake, the pink retreating as if the green was an inexorable tide. Out of so many dark heads below, it was probably her imagination that she recognized one moving among them, taking charge.

Jerk. She went out to her little van to bring in her suitcase.

Tante Colette never
had
any descendants.

She gave that house to
you?

What did that mean?

But Layla had had her own lawyer check out the letter and accompanying documents, of course. The house had been well and truly deeded over to her. And her grandfather
had
been born in France, way back before the war. It made some kind of sense, didn’t it, that some heritage might one day find its way to her?

She went back to her little van and stood gazing a moment at her favored guitar, sitting there staring at her accusingly, the most obvious and reachable thing in the van, blaming her for not reaching for it.

It’s a guitar, Layla. It does not have eyes, and it can only speak if you make it.

Preferably in a non-repetitive way that does not make that damn critic at
Entertainment Weekly
say ironic things about sensitive female chord progressions and repetitive ideation, but which
also
pleases your fans, who clearly like “senstive female” chord progressions and the things you’ve had to say so far.

A bee buzzed past, and in the quiet, she could taste its vibrations on her tongue, feel them tingle faintly in her fingertips, like the strings of a guitar that she had barely touched but which she had not yet allowed to make sound. That deep voice called again below.

It was going to be very dark and lonely here tonight, without even a guitar to keep the shadows at bay.

She reached for it, and for the first time in months, it felt oddly reassuring to her hand.

The thick wood door thudded behind Matt as he stepped into the room. Antoine Vallier glanced up, looking far too tan and satisfied with himself for a lawyer. Pale, geeky, and cringing before his doom, that was what Matt was looking for right about now. Because Tante Colette might be protected from his rage by all the teas and soups she’d fed him all his life, and Bouclettes might be…well, she thought he was hot…but
someone
had to pay.

Antoine didn’t exactly cringe, but he stood quickly as Matt strode toward his desk. “Antoine Vallier,” Matt said grimly, grabbing onto the edge of the desk to lean in. Fortunately, the heavy, old desk could support a little aggression. “You’re not looking for a long career around here, are you?”

The blond, younger man braced himself, lit by the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the narrow streets of Grasse into his office. “Damien has already been by.”

Matt did a quick search of Antoine’s body, but he didn’t see any precise, lethal cuts starting to bleed out. “You must have talked fast. Go ahead. Just tell me every single thing you told him, and we’ll compare notes.”

Antoine attempted to lift an eyebrow in a sardonic way. “Nothing, in other words.”

Unfortunately for Antoine, Damien’s lifted eyebrow made the younger man’s look like a kid’s attempt to play at being a grown-up. Since Matt had been enduring the way Damien raised an eyebrow ever since his younger cousin turned thirteen, he could just see how the previous encounter between Antoine and Damien had gone—the great eyebrow-raising face-off, as Damien’s oh-so-sardonically decimated the younger Antoine’s.
Merde
. Now he was feeling sorry for the lawyer. How did you strangle a man you felt sorry for?

“And I didn’t tell Raoul anything either,” Antoine Vallier said. “He was here an hour ago.”

Damn it, everyone got first chance at strangling Vallier while Matt was tied up with the harvest. His cousins
always
got to have all the fun while he handled the responsibilities. Raoul got fourteen years in Africa, for God’s sake, while Matt was harvesting flowers and plowing dirt, fixing machines that went wrong, and only getting to break up a knife fight between harvesters once every year or so for adventure. Okay, fine, Raoul had gotten shot in Africa, but clearly if he hadn’t been enjoying himself, he would have come back sooner, right?

“You’re still alive. So why don’t you quit pretending you didn’t talk?”

Antoine added a second lifted eyebrow, in his efforts to keep acting superior. Amateur. “Despite your family’s pretense at being some kind of perfume Mafia, we both know none of you want to go to jail.”

“Exactly,” Matt said. “That’s why we offer so many scholarships to bright, shining young people on paths to become local judges around here. We’ve been doing that for quite a few decades, in fact.” He let Antoine see the edge of his teeth and pretended it was a smile. “Lots of good will. All perfectly legal.”

Antoine Vallier gave him a sharp smile right back. “I paid for my own education.”

Damn it. If France would only make its universities more expensive, the Rosiers would have a lot more leverage in some of these cases. Matt pressed his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned in. “Vallier, explain to me in small words so that I can understand. What exactly did you have in mind for your long-term career here when you decided to align with a ninety-six-year-old woman against, well…me?”

Antoine very delicately snorted. “Colette Delatour is going to live to be one hundred twenty-three, just to beat the Provençal record. I wouldn’t count her out yet.”

That anxious squeeze around Matt’s heart whenever he had to think about his great aunt’s age eased a little, at Antoine’s conviction. Naturally he didn’t tell the idiot that.

“I think your own life expectancy needs to be what you’re worrying about right now, Vallier.” He flexed his hands in a show of size and power. “You’ve dug yourself a very deep hole, and this would be a good time to start digging yourself out of it. Talk. Who is this woman, and why did Tante Colette give her that land? And are there any more surprises waiting for us? Any other descendants of someone I’ve never heard of that you’re tracking down on her behalf?”

Antoine gave him a thin smile that was mostly designed to show off how tightly his lips were sealed.

“Vallier. I know you’re fresh out of your internship and you probably have a lot of ideals. Do yourself a favor. Break them.”

“I can’t do that,” the lawyer said regretfully. “You know I’d love to, but…I have to think about my long-term career prospects.”

Matt leaned his weight a little more against the desk, letting big shoulders cross well into the other man’s space. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Vallier.”

Antoine Vallier pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.

Merde.
Matt straightened. He had a very sensitive nose. The Rosiers were, in fact, quite famous for that sensitivity, even if Tristan was the only one of their generation to become a top perfumer himself. Everyone in Grasse knew not to light cigarettes immediately next to the Rosiers.

Even, surely, idiot lawyers fresh out of school?

Antoine Vallier very politely blew his cigarette smoke toward the open window, but the breeze coming up from the sea blew it straight back in, against Matt’s face. Matt tried to make his nostrils pinch together as he held his ground.

“The thing is, Matthieu. May I call you Matt?”

“No,” Matt said incredulously.

“Monsieur Rosier, then,” Antoine Vallier said. “Although that gets a little confusing, considering how many of you answer to that name. Your grandfather, your uncles, the four of you cousins…”

“Five.” Matt didn’t count Lucien out, no matter how long the second eldest of them had been gone.

“Fuck, I have two more of you to deal with before the day is done?”

“Right now, just worry about surviving me
.
”

“
Enfin
.” Antoine Vallier waved his cigarette. The stink of it washed over Matt as if he was back in Paris, stirring up the last lingering hint of nausea and headache from that morning’s hangover. “The thing is…now imagine that I break client confidentiality and tell one of you thugs all you need to know.”

“‘Thugs’?” Matt figured he and Raoul could almost take that as a compliment, but he was kind of offended on Damien’s behalf. Damien didn’t do thug. He did lethal, elegant assassin.

“What do you think will happen to my long-term career here if I do?”

“You’ll live to see it?”

“I’ll never have another Rosier client, or a Delange client, or anyone you Rosiers know as long as I live. And you know a lot of people.” Antoine Vallier gave that thin smile again and tapped his cigarette into the ash tray
right
under Matt’s nose.

Matt brought a hand briefly over his mouth to try to wave the air away, then caught himself revealing the weakness and turned his hand back into a fist on Antoine’s desk.

“But imagine that I stand up to you and keep my client’s confidentiality, no matter how much you threaten to destroy me,” Antoine said. “What do you think will happen then?”

“I’ll destroy you?”

“Maybe,” Antoine Vallier said. “But I bet the next time
you
want something done that needs to remain absolutely confidential no matter how much pressure is brought to bear…you’ll come to me.”

And he oh-so-politely blew his stream of cigarette smoke out the window—right into the breeze that blew it straight back into Matt’s face—and smiled. Without showing a single tooth.

Damn.

Matt drew back, impressed. This guy and Damien might actually deserve each other as enemies. Be fun to watch them in the same room together, that was for damn sure. “Look, I don’t mean to play good cop,” he began.

Antoine Vallier gave that elegant snort again. “Don’t worry, you’re entirely failing to come across as one.”

“But you’d really be much better off telling me everything you know and making this easy on yourself,” Matt added. “All I’m going to do is strangle you if you don’t. Some of my family members, on the other hand…”

Antoine stubbed his cigarette out. Then put it in the ashtray, instead of tossing it through his window to pollute the cobblestone streets of Grasse below. Matt gave him one tiny point for that. He liked Grasse’s streets. “I’ll take my chances,” Antoine Vallier said. “Because there’s no way in hell I’m crossing your aunt Colette. You must agree, or you’d be talking to her and not me.”

Merde
. Matt should have known a ninety-six-year-old Resistance hero who had ferried thirty-six children across the Alps must know how to pick a team that didn’t crack.

***

So then he didn’t really have any choice. Unless he wanted to get arrested for choking the information out of that damn idiot lawyer, he
had
to face his Tante Colette.

Every step up that medieval stair-street, lined with an ancient grape vine thicker than his wrist, brought Matt one step closer to the woman who had always been his refuge. Who had always let him sit in her kitchen or her garden, who had fed him soup or tea until his soul got addicted to the stuff and needed it to re-center.