But Layla’s whole face softened. She reached out a hand and grazed her fingers over the backs of his. “You, too.”
Hunh?
He blinked at her. Beyond her, Tante Colette smiled a little and focused on the photo album, stroking the page as if it had gotten unruly on her and tried to wrinkle.
Layla smiled, rested her chin on her hand, and blew him a kiss.
He clapped his hand fast over his heart, but it was too late. He was pretty sure that kiss had gotten to him. He could feel it, the little brush of air from it sinking into his heart, tickling out through the rest of his body. That was a really tricky blow. “Stop that,” he growled.
She gave him a sweet smile that was just designed to mess with him. “Stop what?”
He pressed his feet extra hard into the earth in his efforts not to fold his arms across his chest. “How long are you staying here?” he demanded abruptly. Damn it, had his voice come out all rough and growly again?
She blinked, her smile fading. “I have to go to New York in three weeks.” Her eyes clung to his in a kind of anxious, questioning way—as if he might know the answer to some problem.
“Of course, one of the things I’ve noticed about the south of France,” Tante Colette murmured, “is that people tend to start out with vacation houses and then end up living here.”
Matt stared down at Layla, knowing that he was supposed to be wanting the opposite. He was supposed to want her to get tired of her vacation house quickly and sell it to him.
Not to install herself comfortably here indefinitely. He wasn’t supposed to want that.
But she had this look in her eyes and…damn, but he wanted to hand her just one more rose and see if she thought that one was wonderful, too.
“Three weeks.” He couldn’t help how growly his voice sounded. It rumbled in him, pissed off. He wanted to snatch that phrase three weeks out of the air and snap it in two with his teeth.
“That is the most amazing sound,” Layla said.
What?
“When you growl like that.” She shook her head, her expression strangely dreamy. “It just vibrates that way. How do you do that?” Her fingers itched through the air, as if trying to turn that air into an instrument.
Tante Colette bent her head and smoothed her unwrinkled photo album some more, that curve of amusement on her mouth almost timeless on such an old face.
“Sorry.” Layla glanced at her and flushed a little, curling her fingers in on themselves to get them to behave. But one second later, her fingers escaped out again, stretching a little toward him.
Matt so much didn’t know what to do with himself, he felt explosive. His most powerful instinct, in response to those subtly stretching fingers, was to tackle her, carry her off at a run to some dark cave, and roll over and over with her to see what those hands felt like actually touching his body. It would be a bit like a plunge straight off the edge of a cliff with no hesitation, into the waves, but as anyone who had ever dived off a cliff knew, it was far better to just do it, and not freeze too long on the edge.
But still…he was pretty sure tackling her and hauling her off to a cave was not his best move.
Tristan would definitely not approve.
So he rubbed his hand on the back of his neck and realized abruptly that he was speckled with mortar. Damn it. How did these things happen to him? These were not the clothes for a nice restaurant. “Do you like to eat?” he asked abruptly.
Layla gave him a quizzical look, and then her eyes lit, full of this teasing laughter that just kind of tickled over his whole body. “I sometimes even do it three times a day.”
He shoved his hand through his hair at the back of his head. “I mean…good food.”
“For preference.” Those green eyes kept teasing him, but they were so warm with it. They tickled at every nerve in his body. If she had any idea how badly he wanted to haul her off to a cave and make that tickling stop, she would probably lock her door the next time he knocked on it.
“I mean…would you like some food tonight?”
If his Tante Colette could stop looking so amused, it would be helpful.
“I’m sure I would,” Layla said, with that look still in her eyes, the one that made him so antsy in his skin it was all he could do not to thrust parts of his body against her hand like an animal needing to be petted.
He took a deep breath. “Well, good. That’s settled then.” For some reason, that made Layla’s smile deepen. Maybe she liked having things settled, too. He looked down at himself. “I need to borrow some clothes.”
Fortunately, his cousin Gabe lived in Sainte-Mère, too, not far from here, and he and Matt wore about the same size tux.