He extended her journal, but when she tried to accept it, his fingers tightened. “I, ah...I was really drunk that first night. I know that’s not—I’m sorry.”
That rough voice cracked her. “Hey.” Her hand slid far enough over the journal to graze the inside of his wrist. Just a hint of his texture, soft and hot and vulnerable there at the inside of that strong wrist. His skin felt like his voice. “Look, there’s no point agonizing over it. I get that you didn’t mean it. I didn’t make anything of it.”
He frowned in visible confusion. “Make anything of it?”
“I know you didn’t really fall in love with me at first sight or anything. Don’t be silly.”
All that color flooded back up under his bronze skin. “Of course I didn’t…I…that is…I—fuck,” he said between his teeth, turning his head away.
She pulled back a step, tugging hard on her journal to get him to release it. “I’m not going to start asking you to marry me and have my babies,” she said dryly.
His jaw dropped. He stared at her in pure horror.
Man, he was easy to mess with. Full of herself, she stole an opportunity and patted his biceps. “You’re okay,” she told him. “Don’t worry about me.”
Wow, that was a nice tingle to carry away in her palm.
Chapter 7
“Did you like how we sent her your way for the directions?” Tristan asked cheerfully. “That was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
Matt grunted from under the conveyor belt, trying to ignore his cousin. Damn belt. What a time to break down, the first day of the harvest. Could anything else go wrong with his awesome thirty-first year?
Yes, probably. It could start to rain.
“Just think of what you could have done with that,” Tristan said, putting a thrilling ring into his voice. It echoed in the high-roofed space of their extraction plant, that building on the edge of the fields to which all the fresh roses were carried. “Sent her to Timbuktu, even. Where did you send her, by the way? I haven’t seen her car come back.”
Yeah, Matt was getting pretty worried about that. She’d left before lunch, and it was four in the afternoon. Sure, she’d probably stopped for lunch or something herself, but still…between the state of that damn car and her visible confusion about what was north and what was south, anything could have happened. He’d called Madame Grenier earlier—after making sure none of his cousins were in earshot, of course—but Mme Grenier couldn’t even remember how long it had been since Bouclettes had come by. Apparently Bouclettes was a “young woman who knew her music”, though, “not like some kids her age”. Also, Madame Grenier approved of her manners, particularly toward cats that lay in the middle of the road.
“I sent her to the damn store,” Matt snapped at Tristan.
A huff of breath as Tristan threw one of the sacks of roses up to Raoul on the upper platform. They had to get those roses processed tonight, and Cédric, their extraction plant manager, had had to leave for some play his daughter was doing. Until Matt could get this damned conveyor belt fixed, they were going to be transferring that last truckload of roses up to the vats above the hard way. It would have been a pure, slogging pain to have to transfer the last load bag by bag alone, but his cousins had, of course, joined in and turned it into a game.
Nice to have people who were happy to hit you in the face but always had your back. Even if they were a damn pain in the ass.
“I knew I should have been the one to give her directions.” Tristan sighed. “Poor girl.”
Matt banged his wrench unnecessarily against the nearest solid metal. Better than Tristan’s ankle. “My directions were perfect.”
“Now, see, Matt, what’s wrong with you? Why were your directions perfect? Aren’t you supposed to be getting that land back somehow? Pépé said so.”
Matt pressed his teeth together hard to contain a frustrated growl. He didn’t like to let his cousins visibly get to him, but damn it, how the hell was he supposed to get that land back? How was he supposed to fight a woman that small? She spent too long getting back from the grocery store, and he was about to beat something in worry over what might have happened to her. If anything did, it would be his fault.
Anything that went wrong in this valley was his fault.
“I mean, I thought sending the enemy invader over the Alps or something would have been the perfect way to discourage her,” Tristan said. “Look what it did to Hannibal.”
Yeah, right. Matt rolled his eyes and banged some more things. As if any of his cousins would have actually done that.