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.”