He looked down at her, so startled his scowl almost faded.
She wiggled her fingers more, trying to get to his hand. “Let’s talk about all the ways you can seduce that property out of me later, all right?” She winked up at him.
The frown disappeared. He stared at her a second, and then a smile grew slowly in his eyes, sheltered by those long lashes of his. “That could be a long conversation.” He unfolded his arms to take her insistent hand. And then laughed, a wicked little gleam in his eye. “Or a short one, depending on exactly how much you like my ideas.”
Layla grinned, feeling wicked herself and deliciously naughty. “There’s nothing wrong with multiple discussions of this issue. Sometimes you have to get things ironed out.”
Matt used his hold on her hand to pull her in closer to his body, warmth and arousal and delighted intent filling those brown eyes as he lifted his other hand to her face. “I’d hate to be one of those men who refuse to communicate.”
She laughed out loud, starting to go up on tiptoe to kiss him.
“It’s a big house,” Colette Delatour said sardonically, poking her head back out from the kitchen. “If you need a room.”
Matt sighed, dropping his hand from her face and turning to follow his aunt. He had the resigned look of a man who had been putting up with his elders all his life and would just as soon have to keep putting up with them for a long time to come, all things considered.
“You’re not going to claim Jean-Jacques didn’t tell you to use any means necessary to get that land back?” Colette Delatour challenged, as they stepped into the kitchen and Matt braced big shoulders against the wall by the door…but didn’t let go of Layla’s hand.
“Maybe,” Matt said. “But sometimes, when a man is caught in a war between two people who have been fighting for the past ninety years, he has to use his own judgment about the best way to handle things. Hurting someone who didn’t have anything to do with any of this and finds herself in the middle of it by accident doesn’t seem like the right choice.”
I really like you a lot, Layla thought, squeezing his hand again involuntarily. They hurt you, but you won’t pass that hurt on to me?
He looked down at her hand, and that firm upper lip eased as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.
“You always were a good kid,” Colette Delatour said quietly.
From the way Matt’s head jerked up, this was the first he’d heard of it. “I thought I was trouble, too stubborn, determined to get my own way, hot-tempered, bossy…”
His aunt’s gray eyebrows went up faintly. “I never said any of those things were faults, did I?”
Matt laughed a little. “I guess I misinterpreted your tone at the time.”
“You did,” his aunt said, with the calm of a woman quite sure who was right in any discussion—herself. “And I never once used the word too about any of you kids. Except, sometimes, about how sensitive you are.” A firm, chiding look.
Matt tried to fold his arms across his chest again, and Layla’s hand got in the way.
It threw him completely off. He couldn’t even get his glower right, all fractured, his left arm folding lamely across his chest with nothing to grip, and he finally just ran that hand across his face and through his hair instead, looking lost. But he didn’t let go of her hand.
He snuck a glance down at Layla.
You are adorable, she thought up at him.
Color tinged his cheeks.
She brought her other hand to his big one, so that she could squeeze it between hers in its own little hug.
Because her whole body wanted to squeeze him. Her thigh muscles, her inner muscles, everything wanted to squeeze him as tight as she could. Maybe she should tell him that, she thought on a surge of mischief. See how the information hit him.
Weren’t you going to behave at some point? she reminded herself.
Her ability to forget an audience was really not standing her in good stead here. She focused apologetically on Colette Delatour.
She found the old woman studying her intently, as if a strong enough look could see through to her bones. Layla was pretty sure her bones didn’t have the proper density to impress a ninety-six-year-old war hero, and her hand tightened on Matt’s for moral support. “I, uh…thank you,” she finally remembered to say. “For such an extraordinary gift.” Why did you give it to me? I don’t know you.
“You don’t look very much like her,” Colette Delatour said quietly. “Your great-grandmother.”
“I think I mostly take after my mother.” Her mother’s hair was even more tightly curly, so her father’s genes had had some effect, but it wasn’t obvious.