“You have very thin skin.” She could wound him so easily.
He gave a little laugh into her chest. “No one has ever accused me of that before.”
She petted him, enjoying that silky texture of his hair, the line of his back bent over her breasts. “Maybe it’s only thin in this one spot.”
“Right here,” he agreed, sliding his arms around her.
“I could have called, to.” Except that she’d needed that time to think and process just as much as he had. “But it was easier for me to make perfumes. Even though some of those perfumes—”
“Took all your heart and courage?” He kissed her collarbone.
Yes. They had. To make a baby star like her father—to offer it to Damien. To make a wish. To slip herself into his own fragrance, like its heart. That had taken every drop of courage she had.
And yet it had filled her with dreaming, with pride, with conviction, the more and more she did. She was as strong as every risk she took.
He lifted his head. “Jasmin. About the business help—I won’t take over. I won’t try to change what you do. You tell me what kind of business you want—a little shop where you customize perfumes for individual clients and mix your own ingredients by hand or a niche perfume company that sells all around the world—and I’ll enhance that. I’ll make sure it can work. That’s what I do.”
Right. And it was as important to him to give that to her as it was to her to give him baby stars caught in a bottle. She nodded, and he let his head relax back against her breasts. The last drop of tension eased from his body.
“I’m not just trying to strip you of all you have,” he said, muffled. “No matter what that bastard Vallier says. I’m trying to give you something, too.”
“You give me everything,” she said quietly. It almost hurt to say it, he gave her so much. She’d had to work so hard to keep any light shining in her life until she met him—and then it was as if he had ignited her, filling her up with so much light she radiated out to the edges of the universe.
Like he was turning her into the star. I love you. “You make me feel like I…shine.”
He lifted his head at that, for a quick search of her face. Then he kissed her quick and fierce and pressed his face back into her breasts again.
“Damien.” She ran her hands down his back. “I think somewhere deep down I must have decided to try for you again the day I bought a ticket for Grasse. Or hoped to try again and just never admitted it to myself. And I have tried. I haven’t backed away from one single challenge you’ve thrown at me—not scents and not riverbanks. But it never even crossed my mind that I could keep you. Maybe a memory of you”—she touched a vial holding one of his trials—“but not you.”
Against her throat, she could feel his eyebrows crinkling.
“I can reach for you,” she said. “If I’m lucky and I stretch far enough, I can actually touch you for a while. But it’s never even occurred to me that I can hold on. So many things have slipped through my fingers.”
For a moment, he said nothing, still breathing her skin. Then he straightened slowly, gazing at her very seriously.
“But I’m going to try anyway,” she said firmly. “I like trying for you. It’s just believing I can get you that’s the hard part. You have to be tolerant with me about that.”
“Would this help?” He pulled a small box out of his pocket and held it out to her, opening the lid.
Shock ran through her. For a second she could neither think nor feel. Then her heart started to beat very hard. In the box was a diamond ring, the diamond large and absolutely flawless, catching the light even in that dim shop and radiating it back at her.
“It’s not a star,” Damien said regretfully. Like he still believed he should be able to catch actual stars for the people he loved. “But it’s the best I could do.”
Oh, Damien. She pressed her hands to her face. Her eyes stung.
“To show you that I know how to hold on.” Damien took one hand from her cheek, linking his fingers with hers while he still held the box, tightening until their knuckles pressed together. “Hard.”
She was shivering inside, this growing vibration that was going to show in a minute, crumple her to the ground like a building in an earthquake. She stared at the ring. The platinum band imitated a jasmine vine, lifting up that diamond star like a white flower.
Oh.
“If I put a ring on your finger, you can turn your hand any way you like, but you can’t drop it. It’s going to stay,” Damien said.
Her voice shook. “I would never deliberately drop you again, Damien. Not now that I know you. That was a very bad time.”
But that ring scared the freaking hell out of her. Like if she reached out and took it, his car would go off a cliff tomorrow and she’d take cyanide and die. Oh, God.
“But if you’re not ready for that,” he said, “I got this.” He set a businessman’s leather satchel on the counter and pulled out a long box, opening it.
A delicate diamond bracelet, with the same jasmine motif.
What? What in the world?
But…it did seem kind of…safer than the ring. Was it safer to him, too? Was that why he had bought both?
“Or this.” He set the bracelet on the counter and proffered another box. This time an exquisite necklace, the jasmine its pendant.
What? Her heart felt like it was about to strangle her—beating in her throat like it wanted to leap out of her body. It pounded in her head. What was he doing?
“A handful of wildflowers isn’t what you need, is it?”
“I love flowers.” She was a perfumer!
“But they die. You love them, but they die. And you have a hard time believing something beautiful can last.”
“I’m trying,” she said immediately. “It’s not you, it’s—”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Right. Just like the first time, I took it personally, but I really should have been paying attention to you.”
“You mean you didn’t sacrifice yourself enough?” She shook her head. “Damien—”
“These don’t die.” He took the bracelet out of its box, so that the diamonds glinted, delicate and flawless, able to shine even in the dim light in the workroom. “Diamonds are forever.”
She almost smiled at that, but then he fastened the bracelet around her right wrist. It took her breath away, more beautiful than anything she had ever imagined gracing her body. Except maybe a twining vine of actual jasmine as his fingers locked with hers and his body moved inside her.
“I know I’m just using money, when you’re in here pouring your heart into your art. But…I’m good at that. Money.” He took the necklace out of the box. Calluses brushed her nape as he fastened it, stroking down the chain to settle the diamond jasmine flower halfway between the hollow of her throat and the swell of her breasts. She caught the scent of lavender oil on his wrist. “It’s solid. Money. I can give you something that you can be sure you can keep.”
“I want to keep you.” It felt good to say it. Yes. That’s what I want and what I will fight to do.
“But when you aren’t sure you can,” he said. “When you have those fears and doubts, and maybe I’m not around or I’m thinking of something else and not paying attention, you can touch these. Like I can smell your lavender, when I’m up in Paris and I need to remember someone cares.”
The diamond bracelet fell with unfamiliar delicacy against her wrist when she set her hand on his chest. “You’re giving me what you’re best at.”
“Isn’t that what you just gave me? In those bottles you left on my desk? That’s the best present anyone has ever given me in my entire life.”
“I can get better,” she said quickly. “I’m still trying. It never works out in the bottle like it does in my head.”
“I love your trying,” he said fiercely, shifting his weight so that he trapped her against the counter. “I love that you keep trying to get at me, again and again. I want that so much.”
<
br /> “Even if I screw up and doubt and fail?”
“Especially.” His hands tightened too hard on her hips as he buried his face in her hair. “It’s how much it costs you to try that makes the effort so precious.” His arms flexed around her. “Me, too,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m trying, too.”
Yes. He was, wasn’t he? Over and over, even when he screwed up and doubted and failed.
She slipped her arms around him and breathed against his chest as if she could blow ease onto his heart. “Did the lavender help your migraines?”
“It helped more than that.” He tilted her head back and began to work gently at the catch of one earring.
Her eyes flew open. “Damien!”
“They had a full set in the jasmine motif,” he said apologetically. “I liked them all.” He laid her stud on the counter and, with the care of a man who could thread cufflinks deftly but didn’t want to hurt her ear, slipped another post through her lobe, so that a delicate dangle brushed against it. She turned her head to catch sight of the other earring still in the box. A matching jasmine design, a tiny strand of diamonds with a little jasmine at the end.
His fingers moved on her other ear. “When I was in Paris, I saw this set on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and I thought, maybe that’s what she needs. Little…proofs. Everywhere I can put them.”
Jess buried her face in her hands.
“They didn’t have an anklet,” he said after a moment. “But maybe I could commission one.”
She couldn’t speak.
“I guess that’s overkill,” he said finally. “But all together, they’re still not worth as much as that damn watch I gave you, and you didn’t believe in that.”
That watch was worth more than a flawless diamond bracelet, necklace, earrings, and ring? She spread her fingers to gape at him. “How much is the watch worth?”
He told her.
Good lord.
“My father tends to go overboard, too,” he said. “I guess if money is what you’re good at, it’s important to give what you can buy with it to the people you…care about. But nobody ever gets that. They say it’s just money and you’re trying to buy love.”
Her eyebrows drew a little together. “Somebody said that to you?” Who else’s love had he tried to buy?
“My mom says it to my dad. They fought a lot when I was a kid. I told you—she didn’t like what she said he was turning me into.”
“I like it,” she said quietly, and reached up to touch those beautiful cheekbones of his. “What you turned into.”
His lips curled a little, between her palms. His eyes, holding hers, stayed very serious.
“If I liked it a little less, it would be easier,” she said. “Easier to believe that…you know…I could really have you.”
He stroked her back. Of all the “little proofs” that now brushed her body, that touch was the most reassuring of all. She spread her fingers against his chest.
“In their wedding photos, my parents look so happy,” Damien said suddenly. “My father really loves my mother, you know. But she doesn’t understand him. And they stopped being able to reach each other by the time I was old enough to notice that kind of thing.”
Jess kneaded her fingers gently into his chest.
“You make me feel whole,” he said. “I told you. You make my heart beat. It’s as if all that great empty spot inside me…you fill it up with something sweet, just for me.”
Oh. Incredible happiness filled her. And it was funny that he should put it that way, because he made her feel as if all that emptiness outside her, he wrapped himself around her and made it go away.
His breath released against her hair in a sigh. “But if you look at their wedding photos, it looks as if my parents once had the same thing. And everyone says I’m exactly like my father and my grandfather. So…”
“You, too,” she realized softly. “You have a hard time believing your wish can come true, too.” Because he, too, knew he couldn’t catch stars. He knew he could only buy diamonds.
He nodded.
She couldn’t refuse these diamonds. It would be like throwing all his worth and accomplishments back in his face, when he offered her what he thought was the best of himself. But she couldn’t let him think they were what was truly important, either.
“Do you know, every single good perfume I’ve ever made, it’s scared the hell out of me,” she said. “The more it matters, the harder it is. A couple of those I left on your desk, I was sick with nerves when I forced myself to put the first concepts down on paper. But then I find my strength. While I’m doing it. And I keep going. I almost never believe I can do it. But I can keep trying.”
His arms tightened on her, pulling her in close. “I love you,” he said, very low and deep. The words vibrated through his chest, under her hands.
Oh. Oh. That was the proof. Those words rang so solid even she could believe in them. “That’s better than diamonds,” she whispered. “Better than flowers. And it doesn’t even have a scent. Or a texture.”
He drew a hand through her hair, twining it around his fingers. “It does to me.”
She petted his chest. He was so right. This was the texture and scent of those words. “I fell in love with you on that terrace in New York,” she whispered. “So hard. It was like I fell off the damn building, fifty stories up and plummeting, and you swooped in and caught me and carried me up to the stars.”
He bent his head to her hair. “When I think about how you treated me the week after, when inside you felt like that, I get so pissed off.”
“You have a problem with grudges.”
“Evidently.” He kneaded his fingers into her back. Despite what he said, he didn’t look angry. He looked wondering.
“It was just too dark a time.” Even now her eyes filled remembering it. “I couldn’t believe in that much happiness. I wanted to, I tried to, but I couldn’t. I know we met on a terrace on top of the world, but in real life, I was stuck down in some dark cave.”
His arms tightened on her. “God damn it, I wish I’d been there for you. If you’d told me—” But he broke off, stopping the accusation. That was water they had to let flow under its bridge.
She pressed her hand against his chest, looking up at him. “Your mother tried to tell you this when you were little, but of course little kids never understand. That all she needed for her birthday, as proof you loved her, were hugs and kisses, those were the best of all. You learned the hard way that you couldn’t catch the moon and stars”—she touched the scar on his chin—“but it looks as if you decided that you sure as hell didn’t have to make do with just glitter instead.” She touched the bracelet and the necklace and earrings. “I love them. Thank you. I love that you took everything you were good at, and thought about me, and gave me something that only you could give and which has meaning to both of us.”
He looked pleased, in a reserved way, like she was touching too close to something that mattered to him. Relieved. He looked a little like she had felt, when she asked him if he liked her perfume and he had said yes. Like maybe this was his equivalent of an artist’s gift of self.
“They’re lovely,” she said again, petting his cheek. “But I think you’ve still never absorbed the real message. That you are the actual star.”
He bent his head. Color climbed his cheeks, those hard cheekbones that she had once thought could never possibly blush. He looked heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. “Jasmin,” he said, strangled.
“I was right, what I thought on that terrace. If I’ve caught you, then this whole world is full of magic again.”
His lashes lifted, and his eyes held hers. For a moment, she thought his might have shimmered. “Merde, that’s so true,” he whispered. “You’re my magic. For me. But I’m not magic, Jasmin. I’m the hard, practical one.”
She shook her head. “I told you before. You’re the wish come true.”
His arms tightened so hard. “I love the way you keep wishing,” he murmu
red. “You keep trying. Even when you’re sure you can’t pluck the stars out of the sky, even when you’re seeing them from the bottom of a well, you’ll dream on them anyway. I bet you stretched your hand up, that night in Texas you told me about, and tried to see if your fingertips could brush them. I love you so damn much, Jasmin.”
The words shook through her, precious and beautiful and shivering. Like he’d hung all those diamonds on a tree and set them to vibrating.
“Humans are harder than stars,” she said. “Harder than perfumes. They’re so…human. Things happen to them. They change. They die.”
He covered her hand on his heart. “I can’t promise you forever on the universe’s terms. But I can promise you that while this beats, it beats for you.”
Emotions strangled her. She caught a tear as it leaked from her eye, trying to be surreptitious. But since their fingers were tangled, it was his knuckle that wiped it away.
“You wore one of the scents.” It was here, in the hollow of his throat. “The—”
“—wishing,” he said softly. The sweet jasmine and vanilla and almond, that naïve, delicious wish for happiness like a candle against darkness.
She gasped a breath. “That’s it!” Her whole brain sprang awake, as if she’d been hit by lightning. She pushed back away from him to clap her hands. “That’s it! That’s the concept!” She swung over the counter away from him, grabbing for her notebook. “Your scent. We’ve got the same metallic, right, but there, at the core of it, that wishing, that sweetness, that—” She wrote quickly, until Damien’s hand closed over hers, stopping her pen.
“You’re left-handed,” he said.
“Yes.” She tried to shake his hand loose. “One second, let me just get this down—maybe there should be a little lavender in it, too, I—”
His fingers tightened. “I have a question pending for your left hand.”
She stilled. And lifted her eyes slowly to his. “You were serious about that?”
He stared at her incredulously a second. And then just lifted her up, hauled her back across the counter to him, and thunked his head in despair against hers.
A Wish Upon Jasmine Page 27