“You seemed to have trouble with the family motto.” A glint of dry, warm humor in his aunt’s eyes. “So I thought I’d give you a reminder.”
J’y suis, j’y reste.
I am here and here I’ll stay.
He rubbed the back of his head, the familiar short military cut. “Tante Colette. It’s not my family motto.”
“Lucien Rosier.” Tante Colette locked eyes with him, her voice gone stern. “That’s enough.”
It was the voice that had cut through five squabbling boys and got them to sit their butts down and behave. He blinked and kept silent. When Tante Colette got fed up with someone’s behavior, the boy in question had always known better than to backtalk.
It was the way he spoke to his men when he needed to cut through chuff, he realized. One of the skills that had helped him rise to command. In those early days, he’d mimicked her and his grandfather.
“Fifteen years. Is that any way to behave? Never calling, never writing. Even your parents raised you better than that.”
His parents had been pretty embroiled in their own problems with each other. Lucien remembered spending much more of his time running around with his cousins and seeking out his grandfather or grandmother or Tante Colette when he needed the help of someone with age and experience. But of course whatever aunt or uncle or grandparent who happened to discover their latest outrageous exploit was expected by the other adults to lay down the law. And the cousins had been expected to listen, too.
Well. Expected.
Might be more accurate to say that there were stern repercussions if they didn’t. Mostly involving hard work that might keep them out of trouble.
“You’re worse than your grandfather when it comes to stubborn.”
Colette knew very well that he had not inherited any genetic traits from Jean-Jacques Rosier. “Tante Colette…”
A stern, wrinkled finger jabbed straight at him. “You be quiet. I’m the step-sibling. If you want to tell me your story that only blood family can be real family, well…I don’t want to listen.”
Fair enough. Nobody who was in the same situation liked to listen to another man whining. Deal with it and keep going.
If his parents hadn’t divorced at the same time, if his father had said it didn’t matter and that, in all the ways that counted, Lucien was still his son…who knew? Maybe he could have dealt with it better. But that hadn’t happened. And in the destruction of his own place in life, Lucien had gone ahead and destroyed everything else so that he could start over.
Only here they were. Not destroyed.
Still absurdly willing to stretch out a hand to him.
He got up abruptly, at the suspicion Raoul was eyeing him and about to head over with an extra glass of wine in his hand. Instead he headed toward what was simple.
Elena Lyon, dancing with a pure joy in her body that he would absolutely love to share.
***
Elena stiffened when Lucien’s big body slipped into the spot Antoine had just abandoned to fit next to hers on the dance floor, but she didn’t have it in her to shut out a dancer trying to overcome his sense of not belonging and join in the fun, so she gave him a big smile and angled her body to give him room in the circle. He danced better than she had expected. Who knew those lean hips could relax and twist?
He also danced with a kind of focus. On her.
She lifted the hair from her nape, feeling heat rising. At least with the dance floor lighting and the exertion, nobody could tell if she blushed on top of it. What was he doing over here still paying attention to her when he had his whole family to deal with?
A big hand scooped her hair up for her and slipped a ponytail holder around it. Badly. Her hair immediately slipped straight down again. But it was a thoughtful gesture, and she’d had two or three glasses of wine so far, so she laughed and redid it with enough twists to actually hold her slippery hair.
Lucien looked satisfied. The music shifted to a swing dance, and Elena started to head off the floor, to get a drink and enjoy the show provided by whichever couples were bound to hit the floor. Swing dance showdowns happened every wedding. And she should know, because she went to every wedding she could—she loved weddings.
A hand snaked out and closed firmly around her wrist. Lucien laughed, wicked, and pulled her right back to him, taking both her hands.
Oh, he could dance. He could really dance. He could dance way the hell better than she could, but he was so good at leading, he made up for the gaps in her knowledge, spinning her firmly, catching her, dipping her almost to the floor, his eyes vivid blue as he looked down at her. He knew how to move.
As she relaxed into his authority on the floor and learned to trust his lead, she got better and better, too, until she was having the best damn time. She had to give him all her focus to follow, but she had the vague sense of his cousins and family around the fringes, clapping and grinning, too, as they watched.
“Ready?” Lucien mouthed to her.
Ready for what?
He rolled her up to his body and flipped her right over his shoulder.
Elena landed with a gasp, laughing with delight. She had never had so much fun dancing in her life. Lucien roped her back into him and dipped her, and the music ended. His face was alive with laughter, as if he had forgotten all his troubles, and it was all from dancing with her.
His cousins were laughing and cheering, his aunts and uncles looking at him with a kind of warm approval, as if they’d recognized him again, and the savvy DJ started right into something else that Elena recognized vaguely as another music trend from the World War II dance halls, or, here, the bals clandestins.
“He’s always been the best dancer,” Tristan told her, coming up as he pulled Malorie onto the floor. “You picked a good one.” His eyes flicked over her once, in intrigued assessment, and flicked to Lucien, and then he shifted on to give himself space to dance with Malorie. Tristan loved to dance, too.
“Didn’t you spend fifteen years in the Legion?” Elena asked Lucien suspiciously. “Where did you learn how to dance like that?”
“You’d be surprised what restless legionnaires get up to.” Lucien pulled her back into him, his hand on her back. It took her a second to pick up the new steps, but his hand was firm and confident, and he gave her the time.
“You guys dance together?”
“I’ve seen it happen. Especially when they’re drunk around Christmas. But no, I learned…hell, I can’t even remember when I learned the first steps. You just kind of grow up dancing in this family. And my grandparents always loved swing and jitterbugs, and paso doble and waltzes and all that, too. So of course every wedding or party of any kind, we had some, for them.”
Elena looked around in astonished delight at this new vision of Jean-Jacques Rosier and the wife she hadn’t really known, and presumably Colette Delatour. She’d seen old photos of them. Colette Delatour could totally have killed it during the Occupation in those secret balls out in groves in the woods, or on the top floors of attics, with someone on the accordion and a hat passed around to pay him.
And there Layla was, pulling at Jean-Jacques Rosier’s hands, laughing up at him until she got him on the dance floor. Matt was taking Colette, the big, growly guy careful with her old bones, but not so careful he’d insult her. He hit it just right, not the twists and dips, but the steps and some slow spins of the jitterbug, doing most of the turning and twisting himself around her, rather than spinning her. Layla danced out to arm’s length from Monsieur Rosier, laughing, curls flying, and spun back gently. The old hero wasn’t moving all that much himself, but he still knew how to lead, apparently, and he looked down at Layla with that kind of compressed-lip indulgence of his, as if she was perhaps a young interloper but he liked her anyway.
Damien and Jess hit the floor, and Raoul and Allegra, and that was Damien’s father Louis Rosier with his wife Véronique. Tristan’s parents, Laurent and Annick. A few more couples, she didn’t know all of them. A glimpse
of Antoine, standing with his hands in his pockets by the pavilion entrance. Lucien’s cousins blocked him from view, forming a loose circle around Lucien and Elena, catching Lucien’s eyes occasionally and grinning as they danced.
Dancing with Lucien was fun. He could catch her even when she stumbled, even when she went into the move wrong. He could lift her, he could dip her, he could throw her, and he could make sure she found her feet. He made sure she had a good time. And from that wicked, laughing expression on his face, he enjoyed every minute of it.
The DJ finally let them have a slow dance break, and Lucien cocked an eyebrow at her, but at least Elena was still too smart for that, and she headed off the floor to get some water. His cousins were laughing and talking to him, and even Lucien looked relaxed with them, still laughing, so much ice broken. Everybody looked so happy, as if their world was all whole again, and Elena grinned at them over the glass she had discovered empty and looked around for a waiter with another bottle.
Lucien re-appeared by her side with a bottle of water in one hand and filled her glass.
“Thanks.” She pressed the cold glass to her hot cheeks.
He downed a glass himself and blotted his forehead with the sleeve of his T-shirt, smiling down at her. “Want to get some fresh air?”
Hmm. Yes, but…maybe not. There was a pretty clear path that could go down.
“I still wanted to talk to you,” he said.
It’s Lucien, she reminded herself. He might actually mean that.
But in her history of men trying to get her off by herself since the age of thirteen, never had they ever really just wanted to talk to her. Except for Antoine, but he was special. He never stole her things, and he never tried to get his hands under her shirt, either. He was the one who had taught her there were good guys. As had Lucien, when he had saved her.
Well…might as well finish shattering those illusions from the start, right? Then you won’t have those daydreams pestering you anymore.
Still hated to let them go, though. She sighed as she left the pavilion that had been put up for the wedding and walked out amid the rows of roses. They were budding.
Her breathing slowed closer to normal as they walked, the fresh air drying the glow on her cheeks. Lucien reached out a hand to trail over the buds, that wicked laughter on the dance floor fading to an expression so complex that she wanted to hug him. Every time she let one of her softer instincts slip out around men, they always treated it like a crack in her defenses that they’d been happy to crowbar open to take advantage of her, though.
“The harvest will start soon.” He struggled so hard to keep his voice neutral that…oh, screw it. She reached out and squeezed his forearm.
He broke a bud off, stripped it of its thorns, and tucked it into her hair. She touched it, profoundly unsettled by such a romantic gesture.
“I wanted to apologize.” The dancing had relaxed his body, and his voice had regained that calm that had been so powerfully persuasive that evening in Italy. His quiet was like the night spreading out around them after the loud energy of the dance floor. Refreshing. Reassuring. “For what I said earlier.”
Oh. Elena blinked rapidly, against a stirring of confusion. She couldn’t actually remember the last time a man had apologized to her.
Lucien faced her, so big, his expression hard to read in the moonlight, the color gone from him so that he was all tones of shadow. “You’re right. I made my choices. If I have a hard time dealing with the consequences, I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
Elena stared up at him, dumbfounded. That was a full and open apology. She had no idea what to make of it. When men did something wrong to her, they usually tried to insist that it was all her fault.
“So I’m sorry.” Lucien cupped her cheek. She didn’t know how his voice had gained so much power over her so fast. It was such a deep strong voice, his tone so calm, his eyes so level, that it felt as if she could throw herself into that voice and it would wrap her up, and she would finally, finally be home. “Especially if what you said is true, and I managed to hurt you.”
Her nose stung, for no good reason. She cleared her throat, completely disoriented. Since no man had ever apologized to her before, she wasn’t quite sure what to do when that man was also hitting on her. Was she supposed to accept the apology? Didn’t that open the door to him continuing to hit on her?
Was that a door she wanted open or closed?
When in doubt…raise your defenses. He needn’t think she was a sucker for any good dancer who showed up. Even if good dancing was pretty hard to resist. She folded her arms and raised a mocking eyebrow. “Why are you sorry now? Horny again?”
She knew what men wanted out of her. They’d never given a damn about her when she was too young for sex, and she still hadn’t even understood what sex was when they’d started making it clear to her that now that her breasts were starting to bud, she might be worth their time. She’d done everything she could as an adult to turn attractiveness into her strength, something she owned and could take joy in, rather than something they always tried to steal from her, but sometimes…well, she made a hero out of a man in her own stupid head that still insisted on trying to find a hero, and that idealization left a chink in her armor, where he could hurt her.
“Wishing you hadn’t wasted a chance at an easy lay?” she added. Trying to close that chink, too late.
There. Take that, hot, laughing man on the dance floor. I am not stupid.
Lucien was silent for a moment, gazing down at her, and all she could tell from his expression was that his eyes had faintly narrowed, searching. “I guess you could say that,” he allowed finally. “Your way of thinking about it sounds a hell of a lot more contemptuous of us both than mine did, though.”
“Probably best to let it go,” she said kindly. “I know weddings are supposed to make women desperate, but really…it’s not Italy.” Where all the romance in the world could hide the fact that they were really just talking about an easy lay. Where sex just for the pure joy of it seemed like the way the world should work.
He studied her a moment, not so much annoyed as analytical. Thoughtful. Trying to get into her head. “Want to go for a drive?”
“What?”
He reached for a strand of hair that had fallen loose by her face and drew it through his fingers, watching her as if he could see every hair that shivered at his touch. She liked the way he hit on her so much. The way he didn’t just grab for the sexy bits. He gave her all this space to show whether she was willing or not.
“To Italy,” he said. “It’s only a few hours away. Nice night for a ride.”
Yes. Wrap her body around him on that bike of his, lay her head on his back, feel the powerful thrum of the motor between her thighs as they followed the coast, the moon shining on the water as they cut fast through the night to somewhere romance came true.
But in real life, you’d have to wear a helmet and your butt would start to ache from sitting in one position so long.
“You’re using me to run away,” she realized slowly. “For a distraction.”
She didn’t know why that had to hurt so badly. That’s what you get for making a hero out of a man. Stupid hopes. How many times had Antoine warned her about that where Lucien Rosier was concerned?
He raised his eyebrows. “What were you using me for?”
She hadn’t been using him. This language of use and anger getting ever more thickly layered over something that had been seductive and alluring made her uneasy. Sad. “I was just dancing. Just having fun.”
His big hand slid into the falling hair at the nape of her neck and massaged there, ever so gently. “In Italy.” His voice was coaxingly soft. “What about then?”
That warm, massaging touch was almost irresistible. But she was tough, and she would resist it. She would. “In Italy, I was distracted, too. Now I’m not distracted anymore.”
He was silent for a moment. Then his palm ghosted, not really touching, down her arm,
to curve under her hand. He gazed down at her smaller hand resting in his a moment and then smiled a little and stroked his thumb over her knuckles. And only then did she realize she probably should have pulled her hand away.
He was so gentle. So confidently willing to expose his own attraction to her, without insisting she accept that attraction. Always leaving her space to pull away. She liked it so damn much.
“What was your distraction?” he murmured, his lips curving just faintly, a hungry anticipation for her answer that he was trying to keep contained.
Her gaze tracked involuntarily over that big body, and a tide of heat ran up her own body to her cheeks. He made every hair on her skin try to lift toward him, for more of that seductive gentleness. That combination—lethal and strong and probably ruthless, and all of that gentled for her.
“The sunset,” she said. “I told you.”
“There’s a moon.” He linked her fingers with his and brought them to rub her knuckles against his jaw. “Shining so bright over a field of roses we can see the buds in it. That’s pretty romantic.”
Damn it. He was right about that. Especially when the man standing in that field of roses was her very own hero, returned at last from the wars. And he was patient, and he was tough, and he needed her in some way. And when he let himself go on the dance floor, he had such fun with their bodies together.
She frowned at him. “You’re far too good at this. Seducing.”
He laughed a little, low in his throat. He knows he’s good at seducing, she realized. He’s practiced this. Fifteen years in the Legion with the only women he meets always strangers. Of course he has. “I’ve got a very enticing goal,” he said.
She kind of liked that. Being a goal. Someone he was willing to work toward, not someone he just grabbed as if she was his because he wanted her.
“Forgetting all your troubles through a bit of quick sexual oblivion?” She meant for the question to come out ironic, but instead she was afraid it sounded wistful. Because that sounded pretty nice—sexual oblivion with him—and yet…they weren’t in Italy anymore. They weren’t two strangers in the night.
A Kiss in Lavender Page 6