“Acting like a complete idiot over a guy I met three days ago?” Layla asked dryly. “That’s safe?”
Allegra shrugged. “I hooked up with Raoul in less than an hour. I just had an instinct with him. I felt just right. And I went with it. And the two of them are kind of alike, you know. I mean, Matt’s more a big grouchy bear while Raoul’s a feral wolf, but they both have that big wannabe-the-strongest-toughest-most-invulnerable thing going on, and are all mushy inside it.”
“I’m very fond of Matthieu,” Colette agreed.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Layla blurted out.
Everyone in the kitchen froze for a tiny second. Oops. Probably she wasn’t supposed to challenge the ninety-six-year-old Resistance war hero.
“You gave part of his valley away,” Layla said. “That’s the most important thing in the world to him.”
“It was my land,” Colette said coolly and firmly, “given to me by my father. And I gave it to my great-granddaughter. Jacky might have a vision of family that excludes those of us who are step-children or adopted, but I don’t.”
Layla blinked a moment. The old woman had a way of speaking that made her want to shut her mouth and nod obediently.
“I get that,” she finally said. Colette and Jean-Jacques Rosier must have had one hell of a fight once upon a time. “But…you hurt him.”
“Nobody ever said life was painless,” Colette said, faintly exasperated, as if the Greatest Generation was having a hard time with the later ones, yet again. But then a very faint smile curved Colette’s lips. “Besides, I think I did him good.”
Layla was beginning to see why Matt got that tear-his-hair-out look around the elders in this family sometimes.
“I really am very fond of Matthieu,” Colette repeated. “He’s got a very tender heart.”
“I noticed.” Layla smiled a little, with a hint of wistfulness. “That’s why he keeps it covered all the time.” She wished she knew how to keep her heart covered like that. When he let her put her head on his chest and closed his arms around her, she felt sheltered from all the fame in all the world. He hadn’t said anything, when she whispered that she was falling for him. But his arms had tightened so strongly that a woman really felt he’d catch her before she got hurt.
“Well, you know. Four rough-and-tumble cousins and his grandfather and his crew to impress with his strength all the time,” Allegra said, chopping chocolate into bits with a big butcher knife. She chattered on, apparently eager to distract the conversation from the head-butting between Colette and Layla: “And then he got really burned by that Nathalie Leclair. But—”
“Who’s Nathalie Leclair?” Layla asked, sitting up.
“He dated her last year. Don’t worry, it’s been over for a while, but—”
“What, was she named after a supermodel?” Layla demanded, feeling just a tad acidic toward the other, unknown woman.
Allegra hesitated, searching her face. As if she was starting to realize she should have kept her mouth shut. “Nooo. The actual supermodel.”
Layla gaped at her.
“It’s the perfume industry,” Allegra said. “These guys meet all kinds of famously beautiful and profoundly narcissistic people. It’s very bad for them.”
“Holy crap.” Layla put a hand to her forehead, the guitar going silent in her lap. “Nathalie Leclair?”
Allegra grimaced apologetically.
“I’ve been throwing myself at a man who can have Nathalie Leclair?” All smugly confident, as if she could wind him around her little finger?
Oh, hell, and she’d felt so damn beautiful last night. Like the most beautiful woman in his world.
God, she’d told him she was falling for him. She’d petted his heart like it was hers.
“He didn’t want Nathalie Leclair,” Allegra said hastily. “He’s the one who broke up with her.”
“She was bad news,” Jolie explained. “Gabe hated her. She wouldn’t eat his desserts.”
Allegra and Colette gave Jolie ironic looks.
“What?” Jolie flung out her hands. “It shows a very unhealthy attitude toward life!”
Allegra and Colette gave that some thought and then nodded judiciously, acknowledging Jolie’s wisdom.
“Jesus.” Layla dropped her hand from her forehead to press the fist of it against her mouth. "He could take her or leave her? Nathalie Leclair?”
She touched her own uncontrollably curly hair, and a vision of herself in her publicity photos flashed through her—that quirky face and the funky clothes that did just fine on the indie folk rock scene, but could hardly be called beautiful, except by her mother.