“If you were lucky, Tante Colette might have even stitched you one of those pretty lavender sprigs she likes to put on pillowcases,” Tristan said helpfully, exactly as if he hadn’t been the one to insist on the doctor in the first place.
“Or maybe a bird,” Raoul agreed. “She does really pretty birds.”
Matt bit back a grin. It felt like the old days—Raoul helping his younger cousins ride him. It felt…good.
Layla was watching him from across the table, eyes rather solemn now as she looked from his face to his arm. He tried to school his expression into an appropriate one for a man who was having, to be honest, a fairly ordinary day. Should he look solemn himself? Casual? Smile? Pretend he was in agony and needed someone to cuddle him? When he was a kid, his grandfather and cousins told him to tough it up when he tried that one, but maybe there might be some potential with Layla…?
“Could you tell me how to get to your aunt Colette’s house?” Layla asked Matt.
Oh. She wasn’t even thinking about him.
“I should go see her.” She sounded unnerved by the idea.
“Sure,” Matt began. Damn it, why did his voice always sound so rough? Forced too often to carry across fields and rise above all his cousins. He tried subtly to clear his throat. “I—”
“Getting to Sainte-Mère is very complicated,” Tristan spoke over him. See? That was what Matt got for trying to soften his voice. “One of us should go with you.”
Matt whipped his head around. Oh, no, one of his cousins sure as hell should not. Tristan? Damien? Raoul possibly, as long as Allegra went with them, but—
“Matt probably,” Tristan said casually. “He can’t possibly work the rest of the afternoon with that.” He gestured to Matt’s arm, as if that would in any way affect his ability to do anything whatsoever, except possibly wash his hair.
“What are you talking about?” Matt demanded. “Someone’s got to be here to handle the harvest.”
Raoul turned over his fork in a big hand, pressed the tines down into the tablecloth, and lifted his amber gaze suddenly to hold Matt’s. “I’m here.”
Matt stared back at him. And now neither of them could look away, gazes locked, neither willing to be the first to yield, until—
Fingers touched Matt’s arm and Raoul shattered from his brain as Layla eased up the edge of the gauze to peek under for herself. She had surprisingly callused fingertips, the toughened spots rough and delicate against his skin.
The delicacy, that was what was so strange. As if his wounds deserved caution and care. And they didn’t, obviously, because he was far too tough for that, so his brain got trapped in the cognitive dissonance. He had no idea what to think about it, but it felt good—strong hands that were tender. With him.
It felt weird.
Merde but it felt sweet.
Layla dropped the gauze as soon as she realized he was watching her. Then smoothed it down, that little rough delicacy shimmering from that one spot all through his body. He took a slow, deep breath and then another, and then brought up one finger to graze the back of her hand, near a red spot on her knuckle. “Did a bee get you?”
She nodded. His thumb stroked around the red bump without touching it. The one tiny circle of his thumb, like magic, seemed to draw a circle around both their bodies, making everyone else fall away outside it. “Did someone get you some spray?”
She lifted her gaze from their hands to his face, staring at him, her eyes so damn green. No, but they weren’t a bright green, were they? It was more like early morning in the rose fields, when the soft gray light sifted over the leaves and they were touched with dew…
“You have a knife wound in your arm,” she said, with this kind of über-insistent tone, as if she was using small words to penetrate his brain. “And you’re worried about my bee sting?”
Well…yeah. He kind of felt as if he should have been around to suck on it for her. Just draw her knuckle into his mouth and…
He realized every single person at the table was staring at them, some of them with pretty open glee on their faces, and that little magic circle shattered as he braced himself.
Layla, however, was the one who deflected all teasing by starting her own. “Well, it’s a much neater job than I could have done,” she told Pépé, indicating his stitches.
Pépé sighed. “Kids these days. Am I the only one who bothered to teach anyone in your generation any proper skills?”
Layla rested her chin on her hand and narrowed her eyes at the old man. “You taught your grandsons how to embroider?” she challenged sweetly.