She didn’t seem to mind.
It was the happiest Christmas he had spent since he was young enough to believe in Santa Claus. No, far happier than that. Believing in the Père Noël was nothing compared to learning to believe that this small, happy woman might not try to throw him right back out into the cold again the next time he misbehaved.
But she didn’t seem to have any trouble, believing in him. Not now. He still couldn’t fathom that. They would lie in front of her little fire, with the clementine peels she liked to set on the hearth to scent the room, playing cards, while he wondered if he could change the stakes from cookies to clothes. And he would look at their hands side by side, when they both reached for a card at the same time, and think, How does she trust me like that? How does she welcome me in where everything is so warm, and she’s so vulnerable, and smile at me? I hurt her.
He finally asked her once, after he had won all the cookies a man could eat for the night and just wanted to lie on that rug with his head in her lap and let arousal un-curl, drowsy and fire-warmed and growing hungry.
She smiled down at him, petting his head, something he enjoyed so much he really wondered sometimes if he might be part dog. “You can learn a lot about a man by the way he says he’s sorry.”
Well, she had cried, damn it. He had hurt her. What the hell was he supposed to do, besides say he was sorry?
Her petting hand slid to curve around his jaw. He wanted to just curl his face into the embrace of her body and maybe . . . press his mouth right to the seam of her jeans. He wondered if she knew he could scent her arousal from here: clementines, and smoke, and her desire. If his family could ever bottle that perfume and all the happiness it contained, they would make another fortune.
Selling it to all those poor suckers who didn’t have their head in the lap of the real thing.
In fact, if he had to start his own company as the only way to establish a place in the flower valleys again, that might be the scent he used to swipe the top luxury-house license away from Rosier SA. He could redirect all his supply lines and contacts in Africa right to his own new company, and headhunt some good noses from the family while he was at it. They would be livid, especially his grandfather, but . . . It’s either love or war, Pépé, and in the end, all’s fair in both.
“You can learn a lot about a man,” Allegra said softly, “by the way he lets you sleep on him for hours, despite how hard the stone is under his butt.”
Yeah, but she had dug her fingers into his butt later. Really hard. His butt was okay with that trade-off.
Besides, she had felt so soft and trusting in his arms, and he had just wanted to soak up as much of that as he could, in case she went back to hating him when she woke up.
“You can learn a lot about a man, by the way he goes all out for you, no hint of stopping—and still takes no for an answer.”
“I took no for an answer?” That didn’t sound like him at all.
She smiled. “When you were trying to warn me against letting you in.”
“But you didn’t say no,” he said, confused.
Her smile deepened. Sometimes she looked at him like . . . well, he didn’t know if he wanted to risk articulating it, but . . . like she just loved him. Just the way he was. “But you tried so hard to let me have a chance to. So convinced you shouldn’t be let in.”
“I shouldn’t have been let in,” he pointed out involuntarily. “That was a crazy thing to do, Allegra. Don’t do it again.”
“Well, no, I can’t now, can I?” she murmured, amused, while her hand caressed his hair, which had to be one of the three most perfect sensations in the world. “Only one wild wolf per household, I’m pretty sure.”
Entirely guilt-free about leaving any other wolf out in the cold, he turned his head into the deeper embrace of her lap, letting his breath heat that seam of her jeans.
She made a little low sound of pleasure, her fingers flexing into his scalp. Nice start, he thought. Let’s see if I can make you love me a little more.
But she said, “Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust me?”
To—what? “To trust you? Me?”
“You could try to sound like it’s remotely possible,” she said, stiffly.
He rolled his head to look back up at her face. “Allegra. Have you looked at us?” He was lying with his head in her lap, and he still practically loomed over her. When she curled in his lap, her whole body fit. “I don’t need to trust you.”
“No?” she said softly.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to let that little no? dig its way into his heart and find out all the trust issues inside it, but the fire was so warm, and the feel of her hand in his hair so beautiful. And that scent of her arousal so heady. He was damned sure not going to run away and end up back out in the cold.
“I think I hurt you,” she said quietly. “Too. I think you’re a lot more vulnerable and romantic than you think you are. The kid who ran off to Africa for the adventure rather than stick with the wealthy family that offered him all kinds of more practical opportunities to succeed.”
“I’m not nineteen anymore, Allegra, and—”
She laid her fingertips over his mouth. He drew in a breath, silenced by the sensation of softness against his lips. No one touched him like that. Like . . . like he was hers to care about.
“And of course you are very ruthless and hardheaded,” she said soothingly. “And that’s why you iron your aunt’s sheets and let a woman curl in your arms and cry.”
Uh, well . . . he buried his head between her legs again, not at all sure how to defend himself from this kind of thing. Oh, wait, no, he bet he knew how to change this subject. He went with his instincts and bit her.
Not too hard, not too soft, right through the seam of her jeans.
She made a little gasping noise, and he grinned and put some more effort into it, and she didn’t say another coherent word for the rest of the night.
Damn, he had spent almost all his adult life in the tropics, and it seemed like half that time, he had been dreaming of making love in front of a citrus-scented fire with a woman who thought he was wonderful. Which must be why he kept doing it so much, now that he got a chance.
The Rosiers’ Christmas packed the patriarchal farmhouse so tightly that they burst its seams, light spilling from the windows, people escaping the heavy old stone walls to breathe outside under the stars, noise echoing softly across the valley of roses, such a scraggly valley in the winter, framed by hills of bare winter vineyards and, higher up, rich green forests. And the stars glittered so brilliant and low, here where the hills hid the bright lights that lined the sea. The valley turned upside down in winter, Raoul said softly when they were walking up to the house. Instead of picking roses, you wanted to reach up and pluck all those stars.
Allegra liked people, but part of the reason she liked them so much was that she was an only child, and the sheer mass of Rosier humanity had her bouncing off big male bodies everywhere she turned, until Raoul took exception to that and placed both hands on her hips, pulling her back into the shelter of his body. And from then on he held her to him, his fingers rubbing her hips minutely, like a worry-stone. She reassured him, she realized suddenly. His portable sense of belonging.
Practically pocket-size, she thought wryly, as he shifted her body easily to allow someone to pass. She curled her hand over his arm, and his mouth relaxed.
There were a lot of big men in his family. She had met many of them before, while sitting on the floors of various old farmhouses looking carefully through albums and boxes of century-old photos, or while interviewing Jean-Jacques Rosier and Colette Delatour and other grandfathers and great-aunts who carried this region’s memories. But all of them together made for a lot of people and a lot of testosterone. Jean-Jacques had had sons, and those sons had had sons, and even the presence of women from marriages and second cousins could not quite set the balance right. Especially since neither Raoul nor his cousins had married and given this Christmas gathering the delight of children, something Jean-Jacques Rosier complained about severely.
The tree in the great living room, which was also serving as a dining room that evening, took up far too much space for the crowd they had, and it made her smile to think of one of the big Rosier men out in the field cutting it down, absolutely convinced it was smaller than it was. Ornaments of all shapes and descriptions crowded it, some such old, fragile glass that the family history on that tree filled Allegra with wonder. A Nativity scene covered the entire mantle above the huge fireplace and extended on down to tables set up at either side of it, and Allegra got lost in it for some time, tracing generations’ worth of painted clay santon figures, some that must be a hundred years old or more, others by quirkier artists with younger paint, little kitten and puppy figurines that children must have given their grandmother as presents.
Although some members of the family seemed there for the night, others passed in and out, visiting before returning to their smaller family clusters at home. An unfamiliar couple arrived, the man tall and dark and with gorgeous clean lines to his face that probably photographed like a dream, the woman with straw-blond hair and an angular charm, like a student artist or an athlete. People gravitated toward her, while her smile lit up her face, and the brilliant-eyed, dark-haired man rested his hands on her hips, holding her back against him and watching the chatter with a kind of absorbed quiet, like someone who didn’t relax very often.
“Léa and Daniel,” Raoul said in response to her inquiring look. “Laurier,” he added absently.
“The chef? I didn’t know you were related to them!”
“Léa’s a third cousin, on my grandmother’s side. Plus, they have that house in the hills.” Raoul pointed to a precise point on a wall, as if he saw directly through it to where every single thing in this valley was. “So they’re neighbors.”
“Can we go eat there?”
He grinned down at her. “If I can talk Léa into fitting us in sooner than six months from now. She’s tougher than she looks, when it comes to that restaurant. You sure you wouldn’t rather spend the same amount of money on a luxury vacation to Costa Rica?”
Allegra blinked. Michelin three-star restaurants were so far out of her graduate-student budget that she had never really looked at the prices, but . . . Costa Rica? She needed to be a little more grateful for those tidbits from the Aux Anges kitchens that the Delange brothers were always sharing with her when they found her at Colette Delatour’s.
“I’m kidding. We can do both if you want.” Raoul bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I might be a tiny bit financially secure,” he whispered, amber eyes alight with a very smug pleasure in the fact.
“I, on the other hand, am intellectually secure,” Allegra informed him loftily, just to hold her own. Because her graduate stipend came to about five pennies a month.
He laughed. “Plus, you make really good cookies.”
She grinned and rested back against him again. Warm. Snug. Entirely comfortable. Directly across the room, Daniel and Léa stood in very nearly the same position, Léa lit by a radiance from within and Daniel rarely speaking, completely secure in the hold on her waist that meant all that radiance belonged to him.
“I want that.” Raoul’s deep, low voice rumbled against the back of her skull and the nape of her neck.
She followed the direction of his gaze and frowned. “A luminescent blonde in your arms?”
He drew a lock of her dark, glossy hair through his fingers. “What they’ve got. They got married at the same age that I was running off to Africa, and every single Christmas I’ve come back, they’ve looked like that. I may be forty-three by the time I hit my own ten-year anniversary, but I want the same thing.” His fingers flexed into her hips.
She was caught by his eyes, both of them locked into each other. He’s thirty-three, she remembered. So to have a ten-year anniversary at the age of forty-three . . .
The moment stretched until she felt herself blushing softly and ducked her head. His hands slipped from her hips to circle completely around her waist, holding her snug against him. He had just laid himself right out there on the line for her, hadn’t he? She curved her own arms over his, holding them to her.
Laughter was everywhere, kisses and hugs and glasses being raised in toasts, but after a little while of trying to fit into the place, she could see why Raoul felt so strongly that he didn’t. Within the vast sense of family, everyone had their little nucleus of parents and children. And he was alone. Entirely alone and surrounded by fourteen years of jokes and references that did not include him. These things didn’t bother her, because she had always been the only child who had to insert herself into friendships wherever she wanted them, and anyway, this wasn’t her family, her one place to call home. But for him, the sense of isolation in a crowd was clearly a rawer, more wounding thing. Plus, his fourteen years in Africa must have left him a much warier and wilder person than when he had left, and far too conscious of his own roughness. How many times had he told her that she wasn’t supposed to be letting him in?
Allegra slipped away from him—his fingers clutching for her hips a second too late—and went to the little armoire full of photos and family albums. While her research concentrated on the old albums of yellowing black-and-white photos, she had opened some of the others by accident, including some albums from the cousins’ childhood. Now she found a spot on the arm of Madame Delatour’s chair, smiling cheerfully at the old woman who was also self-isolated in a crowd.
“Oh, lord,” Allegra said, deliberately letting a page fall open as Raoul came behind the chair to reclaim his hold on her. “Raoul, please tell me that’s not you.”
The photo showed five boys with various shades of russet to dark hair, naked but for their underwear, each body-painted entirely in a different color. Raoul, the tallest and the oldest, was green. She was pretty sure the blue boy was Damien Rosier. The purple one, the youngest, must be Tristan. Meaning the red and yellow were—
“Merde, not the alien photo!” Tristan cried, making a pretend grab for the album. He had to lean over the back of his Tante Colette’s chair to reach, so that Colette Delatour was now embraced by people. His shoulders brushed Raoul’s. “Who dragged that out? Can we not have one Christmas without that—”
Damien groaned, squeezing in between Raoul and Tristan to peer over Tante Colette’s head. “Merde, Raoul, they’re going to torture us with that photo the rest of our lives.” In the photo of the naked boys, Raoul looked quite smug. “I hope it eats at your conscience. Do you know how many jokes I get about genies and bottles?”
“You’re the one who picked blue, Damien. You said it was your favorite color.” Raoul was grinning a little bit. Allegra could feel his hand relaxing on her shoulder, holding her less like his reassurance and more just like someone he loved to stroke. “You could have picked purple like Tristan.”
“I did not pick that! You made me, because I was the youngest.”
“We didn’t have any pink,” Damien informed his younger cousin kindly. His gray-green eyes glinted subtly.
“I like the underwear,” Allegra commented. “The Lone Ranger suits you, Raoul. I’m not sure about Superman, though, Matt.” Big, growly Matthieu, joining the group, gave the photo an utterly disgusted glare that he then transferred to Raoul. A middle cousin in age, Matt was the only son of Jean-Jacques’s oldest son, which lined him up as the clan’s future patriarch. It was an interesting role to have, among such intensely dominant only-son cousins.
“You know, it’s your fault none of us will ever be able to get married,” Matt informed Raoul.
“You sure you can’t blame that on yourself?” Raoul retorted. The rough teasing was making him increasingly relaxed and happy, and Allegra hid a self-satisfied smile. “Not that I want to mention your damn grumpy temper again at Christmas, Matt.”
Wait—“Why can’t you get married because of this photo, exactly?” Not that this was a pressing concern of hers or anything, but—
“They’ll show it at the wedding dinner if we do,” Damien said. “I guarantee it.”
“If you were the first one to get married, you might be able to outwit them and destroy the projector just in time, or something,” Tristan said. “But the youngest wouldn’t stand a chance. They would have figured out all the tricks, and it would be hopeless,” he added glumly. “You’d end up doing the toasts with a giant banner of it right behind your head, probably. I can’t believe you talked me into purple. I was only four!”
“Blame Raoul,” Damien said. “I always do. Remember that time you burned the bottom of your shoes trying to jump over that bonfire?”
“I remember the time he got you all to climb over my garden wall and try to steal my raiponce,” Tante Colette said, with a smile that relaxed her whole face. “I guess coming in through the unlocked door was too boring.”
“Lucien broke his arm,” Damien remembered and shook his head.
“It was Lucien’s idea!” Raoul protested. “He just wanted to use my shoulders for a boost up.” His hand slid so that his thumb could rest on the nape of Allegra’s neck, rubbing it gently. She was pretty sure it was his way of saying thanks.
She smiled to herself as the argument over who had gotten whom into trouble grew to encompass more and more childhood memories, harking back to another unit this family used to have, not just the nuclear families but the solidarity of five male cousins who had once looked to Raoul as their ringleader.
It didn’t bring his mother or grandmother back to life, and it didn’t bring his father back from South America, and it most certainly didn’t undo the effect of fourteen rough, isolated years. But she thought it helped a little.