Once Upon a Rose(68)

Stopping before every view of arches of stone and warm golden lamplight. Breathing in deep when they passed walls covered with jasmine, her head tilting back and her eyes closing. Grabbing his hand to pull him after her as she ducked down little side alleys that he knew by heart, but which to her were some magical labyrinth.

It was astonishing how many good spots there were to kiss a woman in this town, when every time she looked up at him her eyes were wide with wonder and delight. His arms stopped folding across his chest. They started folding her in close to it instead. Come in here where I can keep you safe and warm, too. God, your mouth tastes so good.

Pressing her into jasmine, kissing her, her body pliant and responding and drawing him deeper and deeper into her until…footsteps sounded as some other couple passed by, or once even Tante Colette, out for an evening walk, clicked her tongue at him.

So he would walk on, until they came to another dark sheltered corner where jasmine grew or a lamp glowed in just the right way over her face as she turned it up to him, and he’d start kissing her again. Yeah.

Hell, yeah.

Life sang from the old stones, and he couldn’t remember the last time it had done that for him. The last time those thousand-year-old walls had played a thousand years of hope to him and not a thousand years of expectations.

The last time the soft, age-dusted colors of the shutters against stone had hit him so vividly and richly, the last time he had breathed in the scents of jasmine and stone blending in the night and taken that second to love it, to really love it. The last time all the old, colored doors and their knockers had offered a hundred possibilities of adventure and not a hundred paths closed against him.

When they came out onto the old town’s terrace and stopped beside the pétanque courts, the Côte d’Azur stretched out before them, its sparkles crowding toward the sea and spilling over onto the darkness of the water that reached toward Africa.

“I love this view,” Layla said wonderingly, squeezing his hand. “You’ve got all this history and time all around you, and yet it’s infinite with possibilities. You could go anywhere, be anyone. Sail to Africa, cross the Atlantic, head into the Orient.”

He studied the view for a long moment before he looked down at her. His heart squeezed tight and hard. “I can’t,” he said. They used to play at that kind of thing as kids—Saracens, or Normans invading England, or Vikings invading France, Marco Polo, Columbus, Resistance heroes like their grandfather. But while his cousins had been able to keep playing, Matt hadn’t.

Layla turned her head to smile up at him, this sweet, soft smile of affection that confused his heart so much. It made it feel so damn vulnerable. “Because you’re a valley, right,” she said, and reached up to touch his jaw.

He might have to start shaving more often, if he was going to get this much petting as his reward.

“Matt,” she said. “You can go on vacation, can’t you? That’s how most people who want to travel and see the world do it. You’re not the only person held down day to day by responsibilities and obligations.”

He stared down at her a moment. “So I should tough it up, right? No whining.” He nodded once, firmly. He hadn’t meant to let that weakness slip out to her, and he wouldn’t let it happen again. It had just been a stupid moment of vulnerability and intimacy, the effect of the damn evening.

Her eyebrows drew faintly together. Then she smiled almost…tenderly and stroked her hand a little against his jaw. “Matthieu.” Merde but he loved the sound of his full name from her. “That’s not what I just said at all.”

Sure, right. He tightened his muscles a little, hardening himself against that stupid mushy inside of his. No more weaknesses. Tough it up.

She slipped her hand under his tux jacket and pressed it over his heart. His heart thumped once hard in panicked surprised, like a rabbit that had been holding so still it had thought no hawk could ever spot it. “Besides, I like this part of you.” Her hand rubbed once, massaging against his chest as if to reach even deeper. “I think I like it a lot,” she murmured very softly.





Chapter 14


By the time they headed back to the valley, Matt’s heart was baffled and starting to panic. Why is this happening to me? What is she doing?

But then…she fell asleep.

Quietly, as if she trusted him to get her home.

As her lashes slowly fell and finally stayed down, as her head tucked into her seat with a little sigh, her body still angled toward him, his nerves eased.

The road became his again, the car his to control, everything about him strong, sure, reliable, carrying her back to her home.