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.
Chapter 5
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.”