“No, no, no,” Allegra agreed with Bouclettes. “We must have fizzy water somewhere. Would a sealed bottle make you feel more comfortable?”
“A little bit, at this point,” Bouclettes said, for no reason Matt could figure out.
But Allegra grinned in wry sympathy, as if women had some secret language concerning sealed bottles of water. Which would just figure, with women. And she indicated the much-diminished cheese platters. “Here, have some cheese. Raoul, can you haul Matt into one of the bathrooms and put him under the shower?”
“It’s my birthday!” Matt protested.
“Hose would be easier,” Raoul said. “But that’s a myth, you know. It won’t really do any good, just make him wet.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Damien, who always had to prove he could fulfill people’s wishes better than anyone else. He grabbed Matt. Matt decided not to hit him, so as not to make a bad impression on Bouclettes. Also, Damien might duck, and then you never knew which of the people packed around him his fist might hit instead. If it was Allegra or Bouclettes, his cousins probably wouldn’t let him live to see his thirty-first year, and who would want to, with that on his conscience?
“Allow me.” His cousin Léa appeared beside them, blonde hair caught back in one of her matter-of-fact ponytails, and Matt looked at her with some relief because she always showed good sense. Actually a second cousin and one of the few girls to play with the five male first cousins growing up, she’d kind of been forced into that sensible role. “Come on, Matt, here.” She took his arm from Damien and slipped it around her own waist.
What was it with the women tonight? Was it because it was his birthday? Léa’s husband Daniel gave him a look of rather steely patience, but also didn’t hit him. Somebody should have told him the guys would let him hug their women on his birthday. He would have been taking greater advantage.
“But—don’t you want to come?” he asked Bouclettes wistfully as he let Léa lead him away. He might not be quite the putty Daniel was in Léa’s hands, but Léa was hard to say no to.
“I’m good right here,” Bouclettes said firmly, holding up a hand. He really wanted to kiss her right in the center of that adamant palm and see what she did with that.
But he let Léa boss him, because it was Léa. And when he got back, Bouclettes was gone.
Gone.
Just plain gone. Like he had imagined her or something.
What the fuck? It was his birthday. He didn’t get to keep her?
That was so damn lousy he had to open up the bottles he had put aside on his twenty-first birthday and which he was supposed to be saving for next year.
Chapter 3
A horde of bears clawed Matt awake, stuffing their furry fat paws down his throat and somehow twisting them around and raking his eyes and head from the inside. One of them kept pounding its fat paw into his ribs, too. Hell.
He rolled over onto his back and managed to pry his eyes open enough to see Raoul standing over him, foot still raised to kick his ribs. Matt himself seemed to be lying on a mattress on the floor, which gave Raoul close to two meters to loom over him, and that was not a good position for the man on the floor. He was not entirely sure he could get up without being sick all over Raoul’s toes, though, and he couldn’t make up his mind about whether that would be more humiliating for him or for Raoul.
“Get up, Matt.” Raoul sounded merciless, and amused about his position of power, too, which just proved he hadn’t changed in the fourteen years since he’d abandoned his family. Raoul was the oldest of the cousins, but Matt, as the son of Jean-Jacques Rosier’s firstborn son, was heir to the valley, which had always made the relationship between Matt and Raoul particularly complex. They both thought they were born to dominate. Matt had been sixteen, just starting to think he might actually get as big as his cousin one day, when Raoul had just up and left him before he could. “Or did you want me to take charge of the rose harvest for you?”
Oh, God, would you? Matt fought to suppress a whimper. For my birthday?
But it was his valley. Raoul got to run off to Africa. Matt stayed here and handled everything this valley could throw at him. That was why it was his valley. Raoul, Lucien, Damien, Tristan—they could all go out to have adventures, live a glamorous life, date actresses and supermodels and live to tell about it. Matt—Matt was the heir. The steward. The man who would always be the valley. When he dated someone glamorous and famous, it was a fucking disaster.
“I’ll run the harvest,” he growled, rolling onto all fours. His stomach lurched. A sledgehammer tried to beat his head down to the floor. Pépé resisted the Gestapo, he reminded himself. This is just a damn hangover. A vision of his grandfather’s blue eyes filled his head, looking his heir over critically. Get up. He got up. Then he had to reach out and grab Raoul’s shoulder to keep himself upright, an instinctive seeking of support from his cousin that seriously pissed him off.