Once Upon a Rose

by Laura Florand

  Wish for me

  On a falling star

  No matter where you are

  Look for me

  It soothed her a little, to try to make a song out of this. She brooded over the guitar.

  Wish for me

  On a four leaf clover

  Don’t think it over

  Just come and find me

  Darkness was settling over the valley, shadows creeping toward her like anxieties that had snuck out of holes in the ground and out from behind trees, prowling towards her.

  Wish for me

  Just blow out your candles

  I’m not too much to handle

  Be a hero for me

  The shadows nibbled at her toes and caressed fingers through her hair.

  Wish for me

  Toss your coin in the fountain

  Come climb the glass mountain

  Take three apples from me.

  The shadows climbed up her legs, crawled down her arms, and he still hadn’t come.

  Wish for me

  It’s not too much to ask for

  A man who will last for

  Ever, dreaming of me

  The notes died away. She bent her head.

  That was…was that actually a halfway decent song? Did it have potential? She needed to record the rough version before she forgot it. If she had a phone, she could do that right now. If she had a phone, of course, she could have called Matt.

  What did it mean, that he still wasn’t here?

  ***

  Matt went rock climbing. Up the limestone cliffs at the end of the valley, where he and his cousins had climbed so many times before, where they went when they needed to get away and needed to burn up a lot of frustration, to strive against a rock face into the blue above.

  You couldn’t stay enraged, rock climbing. You had to focus on the rock, on the next grip, on the muscles flexing you up, working that hurt and rage out. It was a good thing to make yourself do, before you faced the person you might lash out at with that rage.

  He climbed to the top of the cliff and sat for a long time, gazing down at his valley. A few yards away, invisible from almost every angle, was the gap in the rock where Niccolò Rosario’s heirlooms had once been hidden during the war. Pépé insisted Colette had stolen them, but Matt had a hard time imagining his aunt climbing up that face. Even with all those old photo albums to help him, his brain kept failing to envision her that fit and young.

  His hand stroked over the phrase his grandfather had carved into the limestone, Niccolò Rosario’s motto, adopted when Niccolò laid claim to this valley. J’y suis, j’y reste.

  I am here and here I’ll stay.

  My valley, Niccolò had said, on behalf of all his descendants. Mine. We will hold this land against all comers: French kings, Italian mercenaries, German soldiers, perfume house accountants, time. We definitely, definitely won’t weaken and give up part of it to some rock star who can’t even tell the truth about who she is and clearly just came here to leave a great gaping hole in a man’s heart when she ran back to New York.

  Where he couldn’t follow her to get it back, obviously, because…he was a valley.

  I am here and here I’ll stay.

  I think I’m falling really hard for you.

  With her head pressed against his chest, she had said that, so that nothing protected his heart from the words.

  The sun was setting over his valley. He was going to have to have it out with her sometime, wasn’t he? Face her again, with her betrayal like a knife right there where he’d lowered his arms to let her at his heart.

  And he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to have this fight. He didn’t want to defend his territory. He didn’t want to drive her back and leave everything that mattered to him safe.

  He didn’t want to need to.

  He’d wanted her to be a safe person to let in. A person he could trust.

  He wished he could stay up here all night, but he couldn’t. From the full moon above, a vague blur of his mother frowned down at him. Matthieu Michel Laurent Rosier, what are you doing rock climbing in the dark?

  He always imagined how his mother would react based on the ways his cousins’ mothers had acted when they got in trouble. He blurred it with memories of his grandmother’s chiding of him to be safer, and with photos, and with a child’s almost-memories of a lap and hugs, to try to come up with an approximation of a mother-in-the-moon. But he’d never really had that—the person who kissed his skinned knees. Who was tender with him.

  He looked down at the stitches on his arm, remembering the graze of callused fingers as Layla re-wrapped it in gauze, remembering the strength of her arms around his neck, holding her weight off it to make sure it didn’t hurt.

  In the valley below, where his house was, a light clicked on as if someone had made herself at home inside it.

  He stared at that light a long time, and then grimaced and reluctantly started to abseil down.

  ***

  In the end, Layla was just a coward. She couldn’t face the dark anymore, or her fear that Matt was going to leave her alone in it. She couldn’t stand it, so she just took what she wanted.

  Light and warmth and welcome.

  She just went through that door he had left unlocked, to that space where he had said she was welcome to stay, and sought refuge there, locking the door against the dark outside.

  Chapter 19

  Not only was Matt’s own door locked against him—that strange, alien gesture that kind of pierced his heart with how vulnerable and small Layla must feel in this world, compared to him—but an empty bowl of cereal sat in his sink, her guitar leaned against his biggest leather armchair, and she was sleeping in his bed.

  Now how the hell was that fair?

  He folded his arms over his chest.

  That was just—that was outrageous, that was what that was.

  She lied to him about who she was, she lured him in under false pretenses, she stole his heart—his valley’s heart, he meant. His valley. And now, when a man had spent four hours climbing rocks to try to work his mad out and not yell at her, he came home to find her curled up in his bed, with his light on in his bathroom as if she’d been scared without it, and her arm over his pillow, as if it had substituted for a teddy-bear, and all that curly hair mushed and tangled across her face, and her lips faintly parted in sleep, and…

  That was just cheating.

  He growled about it, very softly, experimentally, but she didn’t wake up, and he felt instantly guilty for adding any possible fear factors for a woman who had clearly gotten scared of the dark.

  He felt guilty for not having been there, so she hadn’t been scared of the dark.

  She’d told him flat out that she’d been on her own in strange situations for a long time.

  He was good at handling the kind of fears that came after a woman when she was alone in the dark. Those were the kind of fears he could punch in the nose. When he got done with those kind of fears, they whimpered back where they came from and never, ever messed with what was his to protect again.

  He eased closer to the bed. It was late. She was very obviously sleepy. Maybe he could just skip this whole confrontation-over-lying part and, and…what? His heart winced at the options. Pretend she was telling him the truth? Pretend she was here forever?

  She looked really good in his bed, damn it. She looked as if she should be there forever.

  A curl had gotten caught against her parted lips. One of his hands worked its own way free of the protective fold of his arms and eased that curl away. Then the other curls, stroking them back, freeing her face. Her hair was so damn intensely curly that it felt a bit like parting the bramble bushes to get to the princess when he did that.

  He glanced around, but there was definitely no one to see him be such a complete idiot, and because he was an idiot, clearly, he bent and snuck a little kiss of the sleeping princess.

  She screamed, coming awake in a clawing, fighting roil.

&
nbsp; “It’s me!” He jumped back. Damn it. The whole damn prince thing never did work out for him. “Layla! It’s me!”

  “Oh, God.” She stilled, blinking around in confusion. “Oh, I’m—here.”

  “Where did you think you were?” He made his voice gentle. Well, what? A man couldn’t yell at a woman for lying to him when he’d just terrified her out of her mind. He was not being a softie or a pushover. It could wait one minute, until she calmed down.

  “I don’t know.” She pushed a hand across her face as if to clear her vision. “My old room back at my mom’s, maybe. You know how you wake so disoriented when you’re in a new place and your mind still expects to wake up in an old place.”

  No. He wasn’t that familiar with that sensation, in fact. He mostly woke up right here. “You still live with your mom?” he asked, distracted by his own curiosity.

  “When I’m not touring. I used to not be able to afford my own place. Impractical musician,” she added wryly.

  Anger flicked him again. He opened his mouth to bring up the lying—and she launched herself abruptly across the bed into his arms.

  They folded around her automatically.

  She clutched his shirt and tried to bury herself in him, shivering. “You scared the hell out of me,” she whispered.

  Yeah, he did seem to have a knack for doing that. He spread his hand wide over her bare arms, rubbing gently. Hell, she was sleeping in one of his T-shirts.

  Aww, hell.

  That made him feel so damn…mushy.

  Also, to be honest, rather aroused.

  Damn it, it was not fair for her to be that cute. How the hell was a man supposed to deal with that?

  “I think you gave me a bloody nose,” he said.

  She looked up at him quickly, in credulous guilt. “I did not!” she realized in instant relief. And then, “Oh, crap, I did scratch you, though.” Her fingers stroked over his cheek.

  The touch, gentle and apologetic, eased through him somehow, from that burning streak across his cheek down toward his chest and into his heart. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “You didn’t mean to hurt me, did you?”

  “Of course not!” she said, horrified at the idea.

  No. Of course not.

  “I was just scared,” she said. “I didn’t know who you were yet.”

  “Right.” He stroked his hands up and down her arms.

  “Just some stranger in the dark when I was out here all alone, you know?”

  “No.” He didn’t know. He’d never been afraid of strangers in the dark. But with her in his arms like this, their size difference was so obvious that he could kind of understand. He sure as hell wouldn’t like to be the small one in this scenario, with nothing to keep her safe but the morals and decency of a stranger she couldn’t control. He wouldn’t like to be the one exposed to the world’s mercy or lack of it.

  “Bouclettes,” he said very gently, adjusting his arms to cradle her as completely as he could. “Is there something you should tell me about your music career?”

  She went very still. And then her head slumped. Right against his chest. She didn’t say anything at all, but she wrapped her arms around him and held on, like she didn’t mean for him to let her go.

  He liked that so much that instead of growling at her, he found himself petting her hair. This was pathetic. How could a man expect to protect himself if he couldn’t even stay properly mad over being lied to? “Damien told me. There are pictures of us all over the web.”

  She lifted her head, blinking. “Of us?”

  “‘Did Belle Find Her Beast?’ You know, the usual.” He shrugged as if he didn’t give a crap about that kind of thing. Which he almost didn’t. Obviously, he wouldn’t mind punching a few people who wrote copy for those sites or possibly some paparazzi, but that didn’t count as giving a crap, did it?

  “The usual?” she said blankly. “I’ve never been on a celebrity gossip site before except once when there was a red carpet shot of me for the Grammys.”

  “Well, there you go,” he said very dryly. “I’ve upped your visibility.”

  “Because you dated Nathalie Leclair.” She sat abruptly away from his body, shaking his arms loose to scowl at him. “You could have warned me about that!”

  His jaw dropped. “Now how the hell was I supposed to warn you when I didn’t even know who you really were? It wouldn’t have been an issue if you were just Layla Dubois. Besides, when was I supposed to mention it? ‘God, it’s so much nicer eating in this restaurant with you than with her’? That would have gone over well.”

  She shoved away from him so hard she hit the headboard and made him wince at the impact on her. “You took her to the same restaurant?”

  “See?” He opened his palms. “I told you it wouldn’t go over well.” And he was a damn idiot for proving his own point, too. He should have kept his mouth shut on that one. “It’s the best restaurant in the area,” he said. “One of the best in the world. She wouldn’t put up with anything less, and you deserved the best I could give you.”

  Her lips parted. She hugged her knees to her chest. “Oh,” she said very softly, as if he’d said something right.

  Wait a damn minute. How had he ended up being the person in the wrong here, trying to work his way back into being in the right? She’d lied to him. “You—”

  “Did you make love to her in the same place, too?” Her mouth had gone very sulky. She tightened her hold on her knees.

  Well…he glanced down at his bed and back up at her. She looked like a woman who was never going to let him get her naked again. Damn it. Date one damn supermodel in your life and the consequences pursued you forever. “This is a really terrible subject of conversation. Let’s talk about you lying to me instead.” Let’s talk about this trip to New York you have in three weeks, and whether you’re coming back here after it.

  “I didn’t lie to you!”

  His teeth snapped together. “Layla. You didn’t even tell me who you really are.”

  “Yes, I did. I didn’t tell you the name I use when I perform, but I definitely told you who I really am. That’s who you make me feel like—me.”

  Well…hell.

  His heart had gone so mushy it was pretty much liquid, dripping in some stupid mess through his fingers, impossible to keep together. This was completely and utterly unfair. “Layla,” he said helplessly.

  “Does she make love better than me?” she asked mutinously.

  Oh, for God’s sake. He shoved up from the bed. “Layla,” he said between his teeth.

  “I can’t believe I told you I was falling for you.” She dragged her hands through her hair until fistfuls of it were clenched over her face, hiding it while she yanked at her own curls. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “No.” He came back to her immediately, sitting on the edge of the bed and putting his arm around that balled-up body. “Don’t say that, Bouclettes. Not—not for that.”

  She peeked through her hands, wistful and uncertain.

  Damn it. He wasn’t even entirely sure he had any heart left in him, it had gotten so mushy. He quite suspected it was being crushed in two strong guitarist’s fists along with handfuls of curls. Why couldn’t he defend himself against her? Growl her back? Stand his ground? Keep his heart safe? Point out, at the very least, that the last thing he needed was crap over someone he had dated six months before he even met her?

  “Not for that,” he repeated softly, stroking her hair, trying to ease some of the poor curls free of her fists. She had one hell of a grip.

  Her mouth trembled. Subtly, with the shifting of a couple of centimeters, she snuck a little deeper into the hold of his arm. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she whispered. “I just…wanted to pretend it wasn’t true. That there were no expectations, nothing for me to fail, nobody wanting anything from me. That I was just me again. Just me and you. And that it wasn’t a just, you know? That me, without music, was still a huge, wonderful thing to be.”

  Hell.
He cuddled her. His heart lacked backbone, that was its problem. It couldn’t stand up for itself against this kind of treatment. You make me feel huge and wonderful, too, he wanted to say to her, with his squeezing arms.

  She looked up at him again, something sparkly shimmering in her lashes. “You made me feel as if I wasn’t pretending. As if I really was…me.”

  Damn it, he gave up. No, seriously, he just flat out surrendered. A man couldn’t fight this kind of battle. She won.

  He kissed her, having no arguments left in him at all, just that need to part her lips with his, to blur that intimate space of their bodies together, gently at first, and then with more hunger.

  He eased her back on the bed as her body softened to him, her guard lowering.

  She turned her head into his throat. “You smell of roses,” she whispered. “And…” This delicate searching breath against his skin as she tried to figure it out.

  “Limestone,” he said. “Dirt. Sweat.”

  “All these you smells. I like them.”

  He drew a breath of pure wonder, stroking his hand down over her body in his T-shirt. All the shapes of her—slimness and curves, muscles and softness. It made his body seem kind of boringly, stubbornly just-plain-hard in contrast.

  It made his body feel really, really strong.

  “Belle.” He found one of her wrists and rubbed his calluses very delicately against the inside of it, watching her face as she shivered and her eyes closed. “I like it. It suits you.” He could imagine her as a dream-filled, clueless teenager wanting to be Belle and taking the name of a fairy-tale princess to perform.

  “It’s what Layla means,” she explained, a little embarrassed. “And with the French language from both sides, I thought…well. I mean, I had to use something besides my real name when I first started posting covers on YouTube, back when I was sixteen.”

  “Of course, now the media are having a field day with the Belle and the Beast thing.”

  “The media never get anything right.” She sighed. “Although I guess a big, grumpy bear is a kind of beast.”

  Hey. “A big, grumpy bear?”