A Kiss in Lavender

by Laura Florand

  It was kind of good to be back, Lucien thought, as his hands fell into that old picking rhythm and the rose scent clung to his skin.

  It was really good to be back.

  He cleared his throat. “So Malorie Monsard, hmm? You’re marrying your own worst enemy?”

  Tristan looked pretty pleased with himself. “Oh, it’s a really long story.”

  ***

  The first day of the harvest was almost always a half-day, unless they had a dangerous heat wave that made the roses all bloom too fast. So as cousins and aunts and uncles and their elders sat under the plane tree for lunch, the first load of roses getting their oils extracted even now, they could all relax, looking forward to a lazy afternoon after a hectic wedding and before the harvest revved up.

  Lucien, sipping a rosé, found himself almost regretting that he needed to leave that afternoon. He had missed fifteen years of harvests. May had always been a hard month for him in the Legion, every single damn year. It had been in May that he had gotten that stupid tattoo.

  He was glad not to have missed the first day of this harvest. And yet now he felt it acutely that he would miss the rest of it.

  “I’m heading back tonight,” he said abruptly into the peace. He didn’t want to disturb that peace, but he’d promised to tell them.

  As a nineteen-year-old, he hadn’t perhaps realized that running away betrayed other people. It had been all about himself. But in the Legion, he had quickly learned how essential it was for the men around you to be able to count on you. No matter what the hell was going on in your own head.

  Everyone around the table went still, looking at him. His grandfather, his cousins, his uncles, his aunts. Even Damien and Jess had come to join them for lunch, since they didn’t fly out on their honeymoon until that evening. Jess reached discreetly to lay a hand over Damien’s and squeeze.

  “I only had a few days leave for a little R&R in Italy,” Lucien said. “I’m due back.” Only one more thing he had to do before he left. Well, two, but only one he had to do.

  “But you’re coming back later,” Tristan said into the silence. “For Matt’s wedding at least. And anyway, we can find you now.”

  I think I like who Tristan has grown into. Lucien’s youngest cousin had retained an essential optimism in his dealings with the rest of humanity, a kind of tolerance toward their foibles, that was pretty rare in an adult.

  Lucien looked around the rest of the table, every single person watching him.

  As a captain, he often had a whole company of strong men watching him for his decision. And he had to make the right one, even if it meant admitting his last one had been wrong. In his world, lives depended on his ability to look past himself and his pride.

  He met his grandfather’s eyes. “I’ll come back.”

  Those blue eyes assessed him with no apparent judgment. Everyone stayed silent, waiting for Jean-Jacques to speak, but he just sipped his own rosé and dipped his head infinitesimally in acknowledgement.

  His sons and their wives and his grandsons and their fiancées/wives/girlfriends all trained their eyes back on Lucien. Deciding whether they believed him? Whether they wanted to believe him?

  Then Tristan grinned one of his wicked grins. “I’d come back, too, if Elena Lyon danced with me like that.”

  Malorie pinched him. Tristan winked at her.

  “Will you sit on him?” Lucien demanded of Malorie in exasperation.

  “You know how that works out,” Damien said from down the table. “He wiggles out from under. Every single damn time.”

  He had, indeed, been the most uncontrollable kid, even when all four of them tried to sit on him at once. He had taught Lucien all kinds of things that came in handy when he was trying, later, to control a company of adrenaline-addicted men.

  “What?” Tristan said innocently. “I’m just trying to imagine myself in your shoes.”

  This time, Malorie thumped him. Tristan laughed and put his arm around her. Really nice to see, that kind of laughing, teasing trust between those two. They had known each other since they were, what, four years old? Apparently Malorie had gotten over all the times Tristan tried to cover her with finger paints.

  “Don’t imagine too hard or I might have to kill you,” Lucien reminded him.

  Tristan brushed his chest with his knuckles and blew on them. “What, you and all your commandos? Do you want me to tie one hand behind my back?”

  Damn brat. Lucien found himself grinning across the table at him. Well aware of what Tristan had just done, to ease the situation, as nearly everyone around the table laughed and relaxed.

  “I might have to kill you,” Malorie told Tristan. “And I can definitely do that with one hand tied behind my back.”

  Tristan looked quite thrilled at the idea and kissed her.

  Lucien smiled into his rosé. It had always been a good family.

  Maybe, while he was here, he could make sure no one else screwed it up.

  ***

  The sun-streaked gold head lifted at his entrance into the office in Grasse. Green eyes measured him with weary irony. “If it isn’t the only Rosier who hadn’t yet burst into my office,” Antoine Vallier said and stood.

  Lucien closed the door behind him.

  Antoine eyed that shut door and raised one eyebrow. “Should I roll up my sleeves?” He came around to the front of his desk and leaned back against it.

  Lucien would give the younger man credit. He sure as hell didn’t intimidate easily. Lucien folded his arms, to signal aggression but not the immediate threat of violence, and gazed at the other man grimly. Even commando paratroopers usually avoided messing with him when he gazed at them like that.

  Antoine raised one ironic eyebrow. He didn’t even reach for a cigarette. Pretty impressive.

  “Who,” Lucien said very softly, “the hell. Are you.”

  “If certain people who would like me to quit smoking could see the shit I have to put up with on a daily basis,” Antoine muttered.

  “Answer the question.”

  Green eyes lasered in on him. Cold. Face bland, almost unreadable. “Who do you think I am?”

  Lucien knew better than to make a sharp movement, to reveal his own emotion. And yet he made one anyway, pacing to one of the office windows and turning. “You’re my fa—Michel Rosier’s son? Is that it? You’re the one who should be in my place?”

  For a second, Antoine was absolutely still. A bomb-aftermath second of stillness. As if, despite his challenge, he had never expected Lucien to say this out loud. He straightened slowly from the desk, moving with an almost old-man’s stiffness, as if that bomb explosion had made his bones ache. “No,” he finally said. His voice was very flat. “No.”

  Lucien stared at him. “Whose then? Or are you descended from some adventure my grandfather had before he got married? Is that it?” Oh, fuck, of course. Relief ran through him. He’d been so convinced…

  Antoine just gazed at him. He didn’t say anything at all.

  And the unease grew back. Dread. “You might as well go ahead and spit it out,” Lucien said.

  “Why?” Antoine said coolly. “You haven’t created enough upheaval in your family? You want to make some more?”

  Lucien hardened his jaw.

  “I’m just asking,” Antoine said, bored. “Since you seem to be chasing after random and upsetting fairy stories you’ve made up in your head.”

  Lucien looked through the window. Down the street, a glimpse of the perfume museum where Tristan had told him Elena worked. “Does Elena know?”

  Tension ran through Antoine—more tension—and his eyes grew icy. “Why don’t you stay away from Elena?”

  Lucien knew where that ice came from, but Elena wasn’t a problem he could solve for the other man. Or would solve. Antoine had known her a hell of a lot longer than Lucien had. He’d had his chance. Besides, when a woman said Eww like that…a man was fucking screwed. “She said you lived in the same household a few years?”

&nbs
p; Antoine’s expression went completely unreadable again. “Did she?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m sure if Elena wants you to know anything about her, she’ll be glad to tell you.”

  Yeah. Right. “Sorry,” Lucien said very dryly. “I thought you’d met her.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t confide in you?” Antoine looked mildly pitying.

  Lucien thought longingly of the days when he could just punch a man and hadn’t learned such a damn ethical responsibility to control his own ability to kill people. And then he thought: She did actually. It took lavender and moonlight and quiet, but she did tell me something that mattered to her. “I want to know what you’re plotting.”

  “Well, I meant to review this last file and leave work on time for once, but now that you’re here, I suppose I’ll have to listen to another Rosier rant for the next half hour.”

  Lucien ground his teeth. “None of my cousins have seen it?”

  “Seen what?” Antoine asked, perplexed.

  Lucien stared at him. Hell, maybe Antoine didn’t even see it. Was that possible? Were they all so close to the situation that they had never had that effect of arriving on the group as a near-stranger and assuming at first that Antoine was part of that group, because for a man used to distinguishing between a hundred-plus men with shaved heads and therefore looking at bone structure and build rather than hair color, he looked so fucking like Damien and Tristan? Jesus, that first moment, Lucien had wondered if one of his cousins had gone and bleached his hair.

  He shoved his hand over his head. “If I find out you’re messing with them…”

  “You’ll what?” Antoine drawled. “Rant and rave and try to coerce other human beings to the royal Rosier will?”

  Lucien put his hand on the doorknob and jerked the door open, gazing grimly back at the other man. “You know, you have a really dangerous ability to annoy the hell out of others.”

  Antoine gave him a faint, sweet smile, eyes very green, as his assistant came up to Lucien’s shoulder with a stack of files and a worried expression. “Sorry. It must be in the blood.”

  Chapter 14

  A job well done, Elena thought with satisfaction late that afternoon, in the storage area of the museum. She adored being in storage at all times. Even after years of it, the adventure never really got old, and right now she was working on something extra special. She finished photographing the gloves that Damien Rosier had loaned to the museum, gloves they were preparing for an exhibit on the origins of perfumery in Grasse, including a special tribute to Niccolò Rosario and Laurianne Manosque Rosario. Tristan Rosier had confirmed for her yesterday the most wonderful news—that they had now recovered the original perfume recipe book that Niccolò and Laurianne had written—and Elena was itching to get her hands on it.

  Not least because she was appalled it hadn’t been in a museum earlier. For all the Rosiers adored their family history, they took it way too much for granted, if you asked her. Good thing there was someone who knew the value and the fragility of family history around to curate for them.

  Her cell rang. “Monsieur Rosier is here to see you.”

  Fantastic! “Send him back to my office.” Tristan knew his way around this museum as if it was his second home.

  She took one last photo of the exquisite embroidered gloves, locked them back in the case and stripped off her own vinyl gloves, then ran up the staff stairs, her heart racing with anticipation.

  But the man standing in her office didn’t have tousled dark hair. His was cropped brown, his waiting stance not restless and pseudo-lazy but straight and calm. Maybe a little tense?

  Her heart started thumping like mad. “You’re still here?”

  You idiot for getting so excited about that.

  There’s a pretty big leap from “not having run off yet” to being able to count on someone.

  Lucien turned from her window, the tension disappearing from his shoulders. “Nice view,” he said. “You can see right to Corsica.”

  Well, there you go. “Don’t turn into a bird and fly straight there,” she said exasperatedly, setting her big camera on her desk.

  “Are you back on your swan thing?”

  “It’s better than a cuckoo bird.”

  Gray-blue eyes assessed her, with that look that was growing familiar, as if he thought she shielded herself with a lot of bullshit and that he was quite capable of seeing through it, if he persisted. “You thought I’d run out on you,” he said abruptly. “Without even checking in.”

  Well…hadn’t he run out on his family once without checking in? It was true that people usually said good-bye when she was shifted around in foster care as a kid, but guys didn’t necessarily have that same civility. And they’d only kissed a couple of times.

  Okay, maybe a hundred times, depending on how you counted up kisses, but…

  Elena opted for giving him an ironic look, since words failed her.

  “I’m not nineteen anymore, Elena.”

  And he sure didn’t look it. He looked about as solid as they came.

  Not that she was an idiot or anything. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had a history of developing long-term relationships.”

  Lucien gazed at her with faintly narrowed eyes for a long moment, and then said suddenly: “I don’t remember you at all from when you were a kid.”

  Of course he didn’t. Hero who arrived in a flash of light, saved the girl, went on his way. “My hair straightened after puberty. My skin cleared. I lost the braces. I got contacts once I was on my own. And I…filled out,” she added very dryly, making his gaze flicker discreetly down her body. One side of his mouth curled up. “Plus, I was six years younger than you, just barely starting collège when you were finishing high school. So no, you probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “Got any photos?”

  “I’m pretty sure I burned them all.”

  He laughed a little. “I guess I burned my past up, too.”

  Had he ever. “I’m not the ashes of your past, Lucien.” Meaning he was not supposed to be spending all his time stirring her up to see if there was anything worth rebuilding.

  “No, you’re a beautiful dose of the present, Elena Lyon.” He came forward to bend and kiss her cheeks in belated greeting, or so she assumed. But when she tilted her face up, he pressed his lips directly to hers.

  She jerked back and glared at him. “Will you keep your mouth to yourself?” She pointed to her lips. “These aren’t on constant offer. You had your chance last night. And blew it.”

  He looked a little startled. “Right.” He stepped back, broadening the space between them to that of acquaintances and not intimate friends, and gave her a look half exasperated and half resigned. “So,” he said after a tiny regrouping, “associate curator?”

  “For about two years now.”

  “Is that how you got into helping Tante Colette track down strays as a side job? Me…and apparently Léo Dubois’s grandchildren?”

  So he really had spent the night at his Tante Colette’s. And apparently Elena’s ears should have been burning at breakfast time. “She actually only pays me with tea. I was trying to make myself sound more official when I told you she hired me.”

  His eyebrows went up. “The Legion is supposed to be impenetrable. Sounds like a lot of effort for tea.”

  “She makes good tea,” Elena said coolly. And when she served it, Elena got to sit in her garden or her kitchen with her. And feel rooted and secure.

  “True enough.” Lucien said quietly. Maybe he had once felt rooted and secure in Colette Delatour’s presence, too? He watched her a moment as she busied herself hooking her camera up to her computer to upload the photos. “How did you get started drinking Tante Colette’s tea? Your work here, or had you sought her out because of your grandmother?”

  “Well…the Rosier family is one of my project foci here.”

  “So, not a dollhouse but a museum collection,” he said dryly.

  She gla
red at him.

  He raised an eyebrow back at her, challenging her to prove otherwise.

  “You’re not the past, you’re a very strong dose of the present, Lucien Rosier.” Her emphasis on his given name over his Legion name might have been a tiny bit snarky in the circumstances, but she couldn’t help it.

  “You don’t know what a relief it is to hear someone say that. You’re the only person I’ve talked to in the past two days who can.”

  Elena sighed. “Trust me, Lucien, I know exactly why you keep seeking me out right now. I’m not your past, and sex is easier than pretty much anything else a man could focus on.”

  “Instead of ‘easy’, maybe we should say you’re turning into a challenge I’m more than happy to take on.”

  Elena stared at him, oddly stymied. It was just…she had a long childhood history of being dumped whenever anyone found her too challenging to take on. It wasn’t her, of course, it was them—they always said that—but it always happened, just the same.

  “Why did you agree to seek me out?” He threw the challenge right back at her. “If your focus is Rosier family history, why do you care about the present?”

  “It’s not like history stops at some point. It always comes right into the present. That’s why it’s so interesting.”

  Blue eyes studied her astutely. She couldn’t shake the impression that some part of him was always focused on strategy…and the goal of his current strategizing was her. It was oddly erotic. “You still feel your history, don’t you?” he said, and there it was again. That gentleness for her.

  No wonder the man had made her cry in his arms. Sometimes he made her feel as if he actually cared about her. She wished he would quit doing that.

  He closed the space between them again by just one step, slipping one finger under the chipped Murano glass heart she wore and rubbing a thumb over it. “Is that how you got so interested in how the past affects the present?”

  Elena felt disoriented. Maybe she’d had really lousy luck with men, as Antoine often suggested, but other men seemed to spend most of their time trying to make sure she knew them…and was suitably impressed. Lucien, on the other hand, seemed much more focused on trying to get to know her.