Once Upon a Rose(22)
Big Matt stopped still and looked from her to his cousins and back to her again. If anything, his sunburn darkened. He folded his arms over his bare chest, which was just...God. That should be criminally liable, to look so good half-naked and be such a jerk at the same time. Dark curls of hair scattered across a broad chest, biceps bulged under tension, and broad shoulders narrowed down to taut abs. All of it just faintly, barely gleaming from the work in the morning sun.
“Or instead of sunscreen, you could put on a shirt,” Tristan supplied helpfully. “Oh, wait—” He grinned. “You’re still learning how to dress yourself.”
Matt glared at him.
Tristan put a hand up to his mouth and turned partly away, coughing. Damien patted him hard on the back, pressing his lips resolutely together as the corners kept twitching.
I could help you put that T-shirt on, you know, Layla thought. You’re just not patient enough. It needs to be slowly...slowly...stroked down over that—
Hey! What are you doing? she shouted at her imagination.
“What do you want now?” Matt growled at her, tightening his arms around himself.
“I only need directions!” Layla snapped back at him. “I can’t believe how unhelpful you people are being!”
Matt blinked. He slid the oddest glance toward the other men, almost—vulnerable? “They couldn’t give you directions?”
Tristan shook his head woefully. “Even Damien,” he said sadly, “proved unequal to the task.”
Matt stared at them for a moment. And then his sunburn seemed to get worse than ever, and he rubbed his chest, as if it felt strange to him. Clearing his throat, a rough growl of sound, he took her map from her. “Where do you need to go?”
“I’ve been lost enough around here, thank you,” Layla said. “I don’t need you to get me lost some more, just to punish me for inheriting a house.”
Matt scowled at the map. “Where do you need to go?” he growled again.
Tristan coughed a little into his hand. “Ahem, Matt. People skills!” he stage-whispered.
Matt glared at him.
“He’s really a nice guy,” Tristan told her out loud, cheerfully, as if Matt wasn’t even listening. “No, I swear.”
Matt transferred his glare back to the map.
Again, Layla fought the urge to just lay her hand against his chest. It was a really hot chest, that probably explained it. She kept imagining all that growly tension relaxing away from him in surprise. And then what would he be like? That cute, enthusiastic, uncontained man he had been drunk?
“Where?” Matt insisted. He cleared his throat again. And then managed to get words out that were still rough, but considerably quieter. “Where do you need to go?” he repeated, carefully.
“I don’t even know where I am.”
“You’re in the Rosier valley,” Matt said blankly and put a callused finger to her map. “Here.”
Layla peered around his big hand and tried to figure out where Nice and Grasse were in relationship. What direction were they facing? She cast a quick look at the sun. Okay, she was pretty sure it rose in the east, even in France, so now she had to re-adjust her whole compass. Last night she had thought that was west.
Matt started to speak and paused long enough to clear his throat again. “Where do you need to go?” Again, the growl was kept low, more an underlying roughness than an open rumble. It felt gentler this way, like being rubbed with something textured. The map left almost no distance between them. Was that his skin that smelled of roses, or the roses all around him? Mixed in with the rose scent was something warm and male that made her want to press her face close against hard muscles and take a deep breath.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I need to get my electricity fixed. Since it went out last night.” She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.
“Why are you looking at me?” he asked as indignantly as if he’d been acting like a perfectly sane person since she met him. “I’m the reason the electricity in that house works in the first place.”
“I knew it! I knew you would know how to cut it off. Trying to scare me away?”
He gave her a look of deep aggravation. “It’s probably a fusible.”
Her face scrunched as she tried to figure out the word. When most of your French came from your mother and an occasional random encounter with your father, you were really dependent on their vocabulary, and her parents’ certainly hadn’t included words that involved home repair. Fusible. Must be fuse.
“The—” He held up one of those tanned hands and moved his thumb back and forth as if over a switch. The scent of roses on his hands was so strong she had a sudden, flashing vision—more a sensation than a vision—of two paths of scent, the size of big hands, being drawn all down her body.