Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(76)
He stretched, easing his body into the good of this day, and even though it wasn’t that hot yet, went ahead and reached for the hem of his shirt, so he could feel the scent of roses all over his skin.
“Show-off,” Allegra’s voice said, teasingly, and he grinned into the shirt as it passed his head, flexing his muscles a little more, because it would be pretty damn fun if Allegra was ogling him enough to piss Raoul off.
He turned so he could see the expression on Raoul’s face as he bundled the T-shirt, half-tempted to toss it to Allegra and see what Raoul did—
And looked straight into the leaf-green eyes of Bouclettes.
Oh, shit. He jerked the T-shirt back over his head, tangling himself in the bundle of it as the holes proved impossible to find, and then he stuck his arm through the neck hole and his head didn’t fit and he wrenched it around and tried to get himself straight and dressed somehow and—oh, f*ck.
He stared at her, all the blood cells in his body rushing to his cheeks.
Damn you, stop, stop, stop, he tried to tell the blood cells, but as usual they ignored him. Thank God for dark Mediterranean skin. It had to help hide some of the color, right? Right? As he remembered carrying her around the party the night before, heat beat in his cheeks until he felt sunburned from the inside out.
Bouclettes was staring at him, mouth open as if he had punched her. Or as if he needed to kiss her again and—behave! She was probably thinking what a total jerk he was, first slobbering all over her drunk and now so full of himself he was stripping for her. And getting stuck in his own damn T-shirt.
Somewhere beyond her, between the rows of pink, Raoul had a fist stuffed into his mouth and was trying so hard not to laugh out loud that his body was bending into it, going into convulsions. Tristan was grinning, all right with his world. And Damien had his eyebrows up, making him look all controlled and princely, like someone who would never make a fool of himself in front of a woman.
Damn T-shirt. Matt yanked it off his head and threw it. But, of course, the air friction stopped it, so that instead of sailing gloriously across the field, it fell across the rose bush not too far from Bouclettes, a humiliated flag of surrender.
Could his introduction to this woman conceivably get any worse?
He glared at her, about ready to hit one of his damn cousins.
She stared back, her eyes enormous.
“Well, what?” he growled. “What do you want now? Why are you still here?” I was drunk. I’m sorry. Just shoot me now, all right?
She blinked and took a step back, frowning.
“Matt,” Allegra said reproachfully, but with a ripple disturbing his name, as if she was trying not to laugh. “She was curious about the rose harvest. And she needs directions.”
Directions. Hey, really? He was good with directions. He could get an ant across this valley and tell it the best route, too. He could crouch down with bunnies and have conversations about the best way to get their petits through the hills for a little day at the beach.
Of course, all his cousins could, too. He got ready to leap in first before his cousins grabbed the moment from him, like they were always trying to do. “Where do you need to go?” His voice came out rougher than the damn burlap. He struggled to smooth it without audibly clearing his throat. God, he felt naked. Would it look too stupid if he sidled up to that T-shirt and tried getting it over his head again?
“It’s this house I inherited here,” Bouclettes said. She had the cutest little accent. It made him want to squoosh all her curls in his big fists again and kiss that accent straight on her mouth, as if it was his, when he had so ruined that chance. “113, rue des Rosiers.”
The valley did one great beat, a giant heart that had just faltered in its rhythm, and every Rosier in earshot focused on her. His grandfather barely moved, but then he’d probably barely moved back in the war when he’d spotted a swastika up in the maquis either. Just gently squeezed the trigger.
That finger-on-the-trigger alertness ran through every one of his cousins now.
Matt was the one who felt clumsy.
“Rue des Rosiers?” he said dumbly. Another beat, harder this time, adrenaline surging. “113, rue des Rosiers?” He looked up at a stone house, on the fourth terrace rising into the hills, where it got too steep to be practical to grow roses for harvest at their current market value. “Wait, inherited?”
Bouclettes looked at him warily.
“How could you inherit it?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said slowly. “I had a letter from Antoine Vallier.”
Tante Colette’s lawyer. Oh, hell. An ominous feeling grew in the pit of Matt’s stomach.
“On behalf of a Colette Delatour. He said he was tracking down the descendants of élise Dubois.”
What? Matt twisted toward his grandfather. Pépé stood very still, with this strange, tense blazing look of a fighter who’d just been struck on the face and couldn’t strike back without drawing retaliation down on his entire village.
Matt turned back to the curly-haired enemy invader who had sprung up out of the blue. Looking so damn cute and innocent like that, too. He’d kissed her. “You can’t—Tante Colette gave that house to you?”
Bouclettes took a step back.
Had he roared that last word? His voice echoed back at him, as if the valley held it, would squeeze it in a tight fist and never let it free. The air constricted, merciless bands around his sick head and stomach.