Once Upon a Rose(34)

She studied him as her fingers closed around the container, intrigued by that gruffness. Maybe under that aggressive growling of his, under that cocky, close-her-in-a-doorway confidence, he too had a…tenderness, a soft vulnerable spot that he preferred not to reveal to anyone who could abuse it.

Smart guy. She’d gotten up on a thousand stages and shown all her vulnerable spots to the world, and the world had said, Ooh, yummy. Give us some more. But not the same more and not a different more and have you noticed you use a lot of sensitive female chord progressions? Not that there’s anything wrong with being female of course, you must be misinterpreting our tone.

Yeah. Matt was probably the smart one—not showing his heart at all. Keeping it here tucked up in a valley.

“It’s just something my cousin Gabe made for my birthday. Not those idiots—” Matt jerked his thumb toward the field in a way that was presumably indicative of the cousins she had seen the day before. “A more distant cousin. Gabriel Delange. The chef.” He eyed her as if he expected her to know the name, but, as often happened at the worst moment possible on the music circuit, she didn’t. It was hard to get so famous that everyone recognized you.

Especially if you’re nothing more than a one-hit wonder, a little voice reminded her.

Damn it, shut up, she told it.

Who wanted to be famous, anyway? Even having a reputation was unnerving. People expected things of you. And those expectations seemed to reach right into the heart of who you were and take it over, try to keep it for themselves.

“Three-star chef?” Matt tried. “Famous pâtissier?”

Contrary to popular opinion, it took quite a while for a musician to make enough money to indulge regularly in three-star restaurants. A long time after you first got picked up by Pandora, that was for sure. Bar food was more her style. She opened her free hand to show ignorance.

“Anyway, I thought you might like it.” He cleared his throat and nudged the container in her hand again, making her realize she was still staring at his face.

“Thank you,” she said, confused, looking down. And then she saw what was in the clear plastic container—a delicate chocolate rose, perfectly formed to look not like a classic tea rose but like the ruffled ones that grew in these fields. “Oh. Thank you. This is beautiful.”

“To eat his famous rose, you have to go to his restaurant. It melts. This is just something he made as a joke for me.” Matt shrugged big shoulders as if they didn’t quite fit on his body just then. “Since you said you liked chocolate…”

She smiled. Her heart had just turned to mush. “That is—really, really sweet.”

Color tinged his cheekbones. “No, it isn’t.”

Her eyebrows went up a little.

A bit of growl entered his voice. “I’m not sweet. I didn’t even make that.”

Damn, that was such a hot growl. “I was talking about the chocolate,” she reassured him. “Obviously not you.” She smiled.

He gazed at her suspiciously a moment. And then he pulled his other hand from behind his back and offered her a real pink rose. Definite color streaked his cheekbones as he handed it to her. “I made this one.”

She couldn’t help it. That just lit her heart up. She snatched the rose out of his hand and took a step back, before that crazy heart could shine right out of her chest so brightly that he spotted it in all its vulnerability and then did something careless with it. Like break it.

“Aïe.” He lifted a finger to his mouth to suck where a thorn had raked his skin when she grabbed the rose.

“Sorry.”

He shook his head and shrugged, watching her.

“Excuse me. I think I need to—” Go cradle a rose and act all mushy and ridiculous over it for a while. It’s probably best if I do that in private.

Write a song, maybe. Something soft and sweet and silky as roses. No, but with this gruff, rough undertone. How to do that?

“Do you want to come help?” Matt asked abruptly.

She blinked her way out of the beginnings of a song, confused.

“With the harvest. Just for a little while,” he added quickly. “Just as long as it’s fun. You don’t have to stay.”

She took a step back toward him, angling her head to study his eyes. “Do a lot of people only stick around you as long as it’s fun?” she asked quietly. “And leave you to handle the job when it gets boring, and hot, and dirty?”

“They come when they know I need help,” he corrected firmly. “Yesterday, they were there all day and they’re coming out this morning, too. And yes, when it’s fun. They like the harvest. But on a day-to-day basis…this valley is my job. Not theirs. They don’t have to spend their whole lives here.”