“A little chocolate and some flowers never hurts, Matt.”
Matt folded his arms over his chest, struggling to get his cheeks to cool down. “That sounds like something you would do, Tristan. Talk about a damn cliché.”
Unless that gift of a flower was a test. Unless deep down, what a man was really trying to do, was see what a woman who messed with him so easily did when given a tiny piece of his actual heart.
She’d acted…wow. As if he’d given her something miraculously precious. And he hadn’t been able to think straight since.
Sometimes the corners of Tristan’s lips curled up in this contained way that reminded Matt remarkably of Pépé biting back his inappropriate sense of humor. It wasn’t in the least promising for what Tristan was going to be like in old age. “Because you take the afternoon off to reluctantly drag your feet around after a girl you have no interest in just so she doesn’t get lost, then. How about that?”
That did sound better, actually. “But somebody has to make sure the harvest goes right.”
“It’s the harvest, Matt, not rocket science. I think we could probably handle it.”
Yes, he knew it wasn’t rocket science. He knew Tristan and Damien and Raoul had all gone on to far more glamorous jobs while he was a farmer and a mechanic, tied to earth and growing seasons and the grease of the machines he had to fix to keep things running. He knew that his own attempt to become the glamorous adventurer himself had proven how badly that role fit him. But farmer’s job or not, it was still his to handle.
Because the rose fields weren’t his cousins’. They were his. It made everything about him become untrue, if they weren’t his. Matt took a tight breath, that breath that felt as if he was wearing plate armor two sizes too small. He had never, in his whole life, figured out exactly how to deal with this issue—the fact that his very existence was the wedge that split his cousins from this valley and the fact that if they could have his life, they wouldn’t actually want it.
Tristan laughed, releasing the tension. “Why don’t I put it this way? You can either let one of us help the girl while you handle the harvest, or you can help the girl while we handle the harvest. Which one is it going to be?”
Matt stared at his younger cousin a moment. “Have I hit you recently?”
“Not since we were kids, but the weirder thing is, it’s been at least that long since I’ve hit you.” Tristan grinned, grabbed his shoulder, and shoved him back toward the table. “Too bad I can’t start now, what with you being gravely wounded and all.”
Matt felt Layla’s green eyes watching him the whole walk back across the gravel. It made him feel as if his feet crunched too loudly, so big and solid compared to that butterfly playfulness of hers.
When a man spent a lifetime struggling to assert for himself a large, dominant space amid four big cousins, his uncles, and his grandfather, he just grew up as big as he could. Matt hadn’t realized how much too big that was for the average person until he’d spent those months in Paris, and felt as if he was trying to cram himself into a box that was too small. God, Nathalie, the model he had dated, had wanted him so small she could take him out to wear as jewelry from time to time, when she was in the mood for him as an accessory. She’d wanted him so small that he’d ditch his own valley, his entire family heritage, just to date her. And he hadn’t been able to shrink.
I can’t try to fit in that box again. He looked at Layla helplessly. I think this is just the size I am.
She looked back at him solemnly, making him miss that sparkle in her eyes when she messed with him.
Damn, but he liked it when she messed with him. As if she was a kid and he was this glittery something she couldn’t resist reaching for. It made him feel so befuddled, and it didn’t help with his size problem at all…because it made him feel three meters tall. No boxes big enough.
And when she didn’t mess with him—when he handed her one of his roses, this symbol of his whole life and heart, the symbol of the very thing her presence in this valley threatened, and she clutched it to her chest and her eyes got damp with how much it meant to her—he didn’t even know quite what to feel. So many unidentifiable emotions kept pressing up through the wariness and fascination, fighting for room.
Her eyes were serious now and a little anxious. When he sat down beside her, her hand slipped to curl over the side of his palm.
He looked down at that small hand against his big one, this great stillness invading him again, as if he was poised on that precipice Tristan had mentioned. “Would you mind going with me to meet your aunt Colette?” she asked, low. “So I don’t get lost?”