Of course, all his cousins could, too. He got ready to leap in first before his cousins grabbed the moment from him, like they were always trying to do. “Where do you need to go?” His voice came out rougher than the damn burlap. He struggled to smooth it without audibly clearing his throat. God, he felt naked. Would it look too stupid if he sidled up to that T-shirt and tried getting it over his head again?
“It’s this house I inherited here,” Bouclettes said. She had the cutest little accent. It made him want to squoosh all her curls in his big fists again and kiss that accent straight on her mouth, as if it was his, when he had so ruined that chance. “113, rue des Rosiers.”
The valley did one great beat, a giant heart that had just faltered in its rhythm, and every Rosier in earshot focused on her. His grandfather barely moved, but then he’d probably barely moved back in the war when he’d spotted a swastika up in the maquis either. Just gently squeezed the trigger.
That finger-on-the-trigger alertness ran through every one of his cousins now.
Matt was the one who felt clumsy.
“Rue des Rosiers?” he said dumbly. Another beat, harder this time, adrenaline surging. “113, rue des Rosiers?” He looked up at a stone house, on the fourth terrace rising into the hills, where it got too steep to be practical to grow roses for harvest at their current market value. “Wait, inherited?”
Bouclettes looked at him warily.
“How could you inherit it?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said slowly. “I had a letter from Antoine Vallier.”
Tante Colette’s lawyer. Oh, hell. An ominous feeling grew in the pit of Matt’s stomach.
“On behalf of a Colette Delatour. He said he was tracking down the descendants of Élise Dubois.”
What? Matt twisted toward his grandfather. Pépé stood very still, with this strange, tense blazing look of a fighter who’d just been struck on the face and couldn’t strike back without drawing retaliation down on his entire village.
Matt turned back to the curly-haired enemy invader who had sprung up out of the blue. Looking so damn cute and innocent like that, too. He’d kissed her. “You can’t—Tante Colette gave that house to you?”
Bouclettes took a step back.
Had he roared that last word? His voice echoed back at him, as if the valley held it, would squeeze it in a tight fist and never let it free. The air constricted, merciless bands around his sick head and stomach.
“After all that?” He’d just spent the last five months working on that house. Five months. Oh, could you fix the plumbing, Matthieu? Matthieu, that garden wall needs mending. Matthieu, I think the septic tank might need to be replaced. Because she was ninety-six and putting her life in order, and she was planning to pass it on to him, right? Because she understood that it was part of his valley and meant to leave this valley whole. Wasn’t that the tacit promise there, when she asked him to take care of it? “You? Colette gave it to you?”
Bouclettes stared at him, a flash of hurt across her face, and then her arms tightened, and her chin went up. “Look, I don’t know much more than you. My grandfather didn’t stick around for my father’s childhood, apparently. All we knew was that he came from France. We never knew we had any heritage here.”
Could Tante Colette have had a child they didn’t even know about? He twisted to look at his grandfather again, the one man still alive today who would surely have noticed a burgeoning belly on his stepsister. Pépé was frowning, not saying a word.
So—“To you?” Tante Colette knew it was his valley. You didn’t just rip a chunk out of a man’s heart and give it to, to…to whom exactly?
“To you?” Definitely he had roared that, he could hear his own voice booming back at him, see the way she braced herself. But—who the hell was she? And what the hell was he supposed to do about this? Fight a girl half his size? Strangle his ninety-six-year-old aunt? How did he crush his enemies and defend this valley? His enemy was…she was so cute. He didn’t want her for an enemy, he wanted to figure out how to overcome last night’s handicap and get her to think he was cute, too. Damn it, he hadn’t even found out yet what those curls felt like against his palms.
And it was his valley.
Bouclettes’ chin angled high, her arms tight. “You seemed to like me last night.”
Oh, God. Embarrassment, a hangover, and being knifed in the back by his own aunt made for a perfectly horrible combination. “I was drunk.”
Her mouth set, this stubborn, defiant rosebud. “I never thought I’d say this to a man, but I think I actually liked you better drunk.” Turning on her heel, she stalked back to her car.