“And you still feel the consequences today, don’t you?” she asked quietly. “That’s why you’re the one who has to take care of this valley. Your father would have been the one next in line. And you would have had a chance to do something out in the world before it was time for you to take responsibility for the valley from him, if you wanted.”
He frowned up the stairs as they climbed them, not answering.
“Your cousins…they don’t share in the heritage?”
“French inheritance law requires that all children receive equal parts in a will. Pépé had five sons, and they all had a…son.” He hesitated oddly. “Well, in terms of what counts legally.”
Her eyebrows went up in confusion.
“One of my cousins, whom you haven’t met—I mean, don’t talk about this, all right? We don’t talk about it ever. But it came out about sixteen years ago that Lucien’s real father wasn’t, in fact, one of our grandfather’s sons. His mother had an affair. So that’s a bit...complicated. But legally, you can’t disinherit someone for that. It’s not his fault.”
“Did someone want to?” Layla asked cautiously. It sounded terrible. To think you were part of this big, powerful clan to whom things like inheritance seemed paramount, and then to find out as a teenager that you weren’t.
“No one ever said. My grandfather’s never even mentioned the issue, that I know of.”
Well, damn. She might have to like that obstreperous old man a bit after all.
“But things felt uneasy. After. His mother should never have told. I guess she just lost it during the separation, so she wanted to hurt my uncle and forgot who would pay the price.”
“Will I meet this cousin?” Layla asked, feeling pity for him already.
A downward turn of that sensual lower lip. “He…left. Fourteen years ago. Really left. Joined the Foreign Legion, changed his name, gave us all up, just…left.” He grimaced and shook his head. “We can’t even reach him. The Foreign Legion never gives up information on legionnaires to anyone who might be looking for them. He’s called Raoul a few times.”
Layla tried to thread her fingers through his.
One of those quick, brown glances, rather wondering, before he focused ahead as if the uneven stairs might trip him up if he didn’t. His hand slowly relaxed enough to give her fingers room between his. “There’s a fifteen-year point in the Foreign Legion,” he said low, “when a lot of men get out. They’ve ‘done their fifteen years’, and can retire. So maybe he…but anyway.” Another grimace, his head turning away.
She squeezed his fingers again. After a second, he gently squeezed hers back, and then rubbed his thumb over the callused tips of her fingers.
He stopped on the stairs, and she pivoted toward him, held by his hand, gazing up at that stubborn jaw and high cheekbones, at the sensual mouth his stern upper lip tried so hard to protect, at that black, half-curled hair, at that big, muscled body. He was so much bigger than she was. Despite the strength of her own hand, his engulfed it, his calluses easily outmatching hers. It didn’t seem likely, did it, that such a big, rough-edged, growling man could take good care of a heart?
And yet…he seemed to take good care of everything else. She bet he grumbled at that cat the whole time he was stopping his car, picking it up, carrying it safely to its owner.
She sighed. “Women must fall for you all the time.” He was worse than a damn drummer. He even had dramatic, brooding wounds in his past.
Actually he had a dramatic wound in his present as well—her.
In fact, he was currently gazing at her as if she’d hit him with something right between the eyes. He even gave his head a shake, as if to clear the ringing. “They, ah, you—”
Glumness settled over her. “They do, don’t they?” And now she’d put him on the spot about it and made him all awkward. Obviously he couldn’t tell the latest woman about all the others who had fallen for him before her.
He ran his hand through his hair, tousling those glossy half-curls even more. “I mean, not—well—do we have to talk about this?”
She folded her arms across her chest, resting her back against the great old wooden door behind her. Its knocker dug into her back. Maybe it would help dig some sense into her. “I can take it.” She scowled. “I’m used to men who have groupies.”
He shook his head again. “Groupies? You think I have groupies?”
She looked him over, up and down the hot, muscled length of him. “Oh, yeah.” She glowered a bit herself. What had she been thinking? Flirting with someone like that? As if she didn’t know already how men acted when they could have half the women in a room for a wink?