“Renaissance treasure?” She might have sidled closer to Matt. Well, what? He probably wouldn’t let his grandfather shoot her, would he?
“Just remember that the ethical thing to do would be to return that treasure to its proper family.”
“Pépé, will you let me handle this?” Matt grumbled.
“Of course, that would be the ethical thing to do with that property she gave you, too.” Blue eyes fixed on her.
“Look,” Layla began, not at all sure how to handle the entanglement of family heritage issues when she had no idea what they were. Plus, family heritage had never been an issue for her. Her grandparents on her mother’s side had pretty much lost everything to bombardments in Beirut—it was how they’d ended up immigrating to the U.S.—and her grandfather on her father’s side had come to the U.S. as a teenage refugee, so up until the letter from Antoine Vallier, family heritage hadn’t been on the table. “I—”
And just then a scream split the air.
“Oh, fuck,” Matt said and shoved past her.
Layla stumbled out of his way and then spun, trying to figure out what was going on, while around the field, four male cousins and one grandfather changed from relaxed males to lunging, lethal action.
One of the male harvesters had a knife drawn—a woman was screaming at him, but Layla couldn’t make out even what language she spoke. French? Arabic? Another man was backing away warily, fists ready but no weapon to defend himself.
Oh, shit. Layla had seen a few fights break out at festivals, and this couldn’t possibly end well. Her hands flew to her mouth—and then Matt’s big body burst straight through a row of rose bushes and rammed into the knife-wielder from the side.
The man went down, crashing through more roses, and Layla ran forward, straight through bushes herself, unable to see. Thorns ripped at her, and she reached the scene to find Matt on the ground grappling for the other man’s wrist, slamming the knife hand into the ground as he drove his other fist into the man’s face.
Blood spurted everywhere, on Matt and on the man he was fighting to hold down. The woman was screaming, Matt was shouting, something like, “You fucking idiot!” and some other men were shouting, and then—
All the sudden the man on the ground went limp, all the fight leaving him.
Knocked unconscious?
No. It was more as if the sense had been knocked into him. Blood streaming from his nose, he gave his head a slight shake and stared at the woman, who had stopped screaming and had her hands to her mouth, staring back at him. Suddenly, the female harvester started to sob. The man closed his eyes a second, obviously realizing what he had just done.
Then Raoul and Damien were on them, Raoul kicking the knife away and each locking up one of the man’s arms as they dragged him to his feet. Matt stood up and back, blood running down his arm.
Oh, God.
“Matt, you’re bleeding,” Raoul said.
“Yeah, the roses. I went straight through them.” Matt wiped absently at his arm without looking down. “You have to move fast or else Pépé still tries to handle these things all by himself.” He sent a dark look at his grandfather, who was moving in on the scene with what was still a remarkable pace for his age, and turned toward the man who had drawn the knife.
“That’s a pretty big thorn scratch,” Raoul said dryly.
Matt glanced down. His eyebrows went up at the blood running over his arm, and then he swore and turned to the man he had hit. “Couldn’t you have started a fistfight? Did you have to pull a knife? What the fuck? What’s going to happen to your kids if you go to jail?”
Tristan grabbed Matt’s wrist to lift his arm up and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Damn it. I hope we’re not in the waiting room as long as last time.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s the rose harvest. I don’t have time to go to the doctor.”
“Sorry,” Tristan said, his voice careless even while he managed to sound completely firm. “It’s not deep, but he got you up half your forearm, Matt. You need stitches.”
Layla crept closer, horrified by the violence and deeply anxious over the blood on his arm. How deep was that slice running up the outside of his forearm? Matt caught sight of her and winced, trying to turn his body so that she couldn’t see it.
“Can’t one of the women do it?” his grandfather asked. “What’s the matter with this generation, didn’t you learn any proper skills?” He shot Layla a sharp, impatient glance.
Layla gaped at him.
“You didn’t learn how to embroider?” Pépé asked, exasperated.