“In her defense,” Damien pointed out, “I certainly don’t tell people any truths about me when I’ve known them less than three days. Or thirty years.”
The phone’s screen cracked in Matt’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Damien said low. His mouth was very grim. “I thought you needed to know, now that the media has found out.”
Matt’s head whipped up. “Wait. You knew before this?”
Damien grimaced, glanced at Raoul again, and looked away.
So Matt had been a fucking idiot, too, and all his cousins had known it.
Betrayal rushed at him, straight at that over-exposed heart, raking claws through that vulnerable organ. Rage soared up in defense, calling for back-up, trying to muster a defense before the betrayal ripped his heart out.
“Isn’t that just like Colette to give a piece of this valley, the heart of this family, to some star as a toy?” Pépé said bitterly. He turned his dry, dark irony on Matt: “Still think you can trust it to a woman who’s lying to you?”
“God damn it.” Matt threw the damn phone across the field and strode off.
Chapter 18
Layla slowed her little van as she saw the dark-haired man waiting in front of the door of her little stone house, confused. That wasn’t the right dark-haired man.
She got out and walked slowly toward Damien, lean and long and watching her quite grimly, as if he was gauging the best way to take her out.
“Can I help you?” she asked cautiously.
“I want to buy back this land,” he said abruptly.
Oh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think if I sell it, it needs to be to Matt.”
Damien made a slashing motion of his hand. “It comes to the same thing.”
“I don’t think it does,” Layla said slowly. “I mean, I wish it did, but it sounds as if you all haven’t gotten that worked out yet.”
“Better me than a hotel chain,” Damien said. “Or some actor or rock star.”
Layla frowned at his tone at the word “rock star” and searched his face. He looked back at her, face inscrutable.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Layla said. “I’m…I like Matthieu.”
Gray-green eyes searched her face. “Do you.” He didn’t make it a question, as if he was too cool and acerbic to use the interrogative. He had to know all the answers without asking.
But she nodded anyway.
“The thing about Matt is, he’s got a very soft heart,” Damien said.
Happiness sparked in Layla. “It’s funny how all of you seem to realize that, except for him.”
“I don’t have a soft heart,” Damien said evenly, holding her eyes with his merciless gray-green ones. “I’m the mean one.”
Hunh. Layla tilted her head. He certainly didn’t look soft-hearted, all lean and cool and elegant, like some Hollywood embodiment of an assassin. But his lips pressed together exactly like Matt’s did when he denied his own soft heart. “You guys are hilarious,” she decided. “I bet you all try to say you’re the mean one.”
Damien’s expression flickered. Just for a second, before he got that cool control over it, he looked completely taken aback. “I am,” he insisted.
“No offense, but I’m pretty sure your great-aunt and your grandfather are the mean ones. I mean, they play hard. It must have been one hell of a crucible, the war.”
Damien frowned at her.
She smiled at him.
“I know Creed,” he said, of one of her producers.
“Oh, crap.” She took a step back. “You’re not going to tell him where to find me, are you? That is mean.” Wait, to mention Creed, he definitely knew her performance name.
“And you know that contract Abbaye is negotiating with you to use your Grammy hit for their new perfume? I could change their mind about that.”
Damn it, why did men always try to push the little female around? You’d think she hadn’t been standing up for herself to strangers for pretty much her entire adolescence and adulthood. She channeled Matt and folded her arms. “Well, you could,” she said. “If you want to be a bastard. I was a little worried about going too commercial anyway. But I’m still not selling this land to you instead of to Matt.”
“How much do you want for it?”
She sighed. “Why do the money people always think they can put a price on people’s hearts? How do your brains work?” She peered at Damien, trying to turn her eyes into an MRI scan and figure out what lobes lit up in his head that didn’t light in hers. Or vice versa.
“I’d rather count on being able to outbid someone than on her heart,” Damien said dryly.