“Still putting your family last in your life, I see,” Raoul’s grandfather said dryly later that night, when Raoul had escaped outside for a breath of fresh air. He wanted so badly to be comfortable in the uproar of family again, and yet he just couldn’t, quite. “Don’t show up, don’t call. What, were you too sleepy to get out of bed and bother to see your grandfather?”
Raoul shoved his hands in his pockets, squinting at the stars, which shone with a heart-breaking brilliance tonight, in the sky swept clean by the mistral. Around them, hectares of roses stretched, stripped by the winter down to skinny branches and thorns. But still he breathed the scent of them in, a ghost perfume from every summer of his childhood, when he would come in coated with rose oils from a day’s harvest. All the kids were expected to pitch in. “I lost my phone, Pépé. I apologized once already, didn’t I?” He had stolen Damien’s phone to keep calling Allegra, but the meeting with his grandfather had been completely forgotten by that point.
“When I was your age, we didn’t even have phones, and I still managed to go see my grandfather when he asked for me. My father would have boxed my ears if I didn’t.”
“When you were thirty-three?” Raoul asked dryly.
“Are you thirty-three already?” his grandfather asked, offended. A tall man himself for his generation, he was only a few inches shorter than Raoul, even with age. He still stood amazingly straight for ninety, just as his step-sister did at ninety-six. “Why haven’t you had kids yet, then? They won’t even be able to know their own great-grandfather at this rate. What’s the matter with you boys?”
“I’ve been trying to maintain our supply chains in the middle of conflicts and attempted kidnappings, Pépé. It’s not conducive to family life.”
“I met your grandmother when I was smuggling kids out of France in a wagon full of roses and she was their next guide over the Alps into Switzerland. You boys whine too much.”
Raoul set his back teeth and wondered, reluctantly, if his grandfather had a point. The old man always did this to him. Raoul had once driven himself twelve miles to safety with a bullet hole in him, a ghastly experience that had taught him worlds about his ability to persist no matter how much it hurt. He had survived at least ten kidnapping attempts. He had kept Rosier money coming to small farmers whose kids might have starved to death if he let the unrest in their area convince him Rosier SA should turn to other sources. He had used sheer force of personality— aggressive personality—to get a crazy would-be warlord to release four drivers and not kill Raoul himself while he was at it. And yet whenever he determined that enough was enough, damn it, and he was going to come home, his grandfather somehow managed to make him feel like a big baby.
He remembered kids being jealous of him in school when his grandfather would come share tales of his Resistance hero days, but frankly, it was hell having the man as a patriarch.
“Why don’t you go talk to Tante Colette, and the two of you can reminisce one last time about smuggling those kids out?”
His grandfather’s eyes flickered at that one last time. But . . . ninety-six and giving away family heirlooms . . . there weren’t going to be many more chances to talk to Tante Colette about anything.
“Maybe if you’re friendly to her, she’ll tell you herself if she knows anything about Niccolo Rosario’s things. It’s her last chance, too.”
His grandfather grunted. “I have a better chance of getting it out of that little American researcher. I knew you were the grandson to catch her for me.”
Raoul tilted his head back and squinted at the stars. “I didn’t catch her for you, Pépé.”
“What do you mean by that? You told me you would go after her for me, didn’t you?”
“I was in a sarcastic mood. Can we not bring this up again, Pépé? Fuck.”
“Don’t you talk to me that way, jeune homme.”
Raoul sighed. This was another way his grandfather got him to go back to Africa every damn year. Pure aggravation. But this time, rather than fantasize about freedom in the tropics, he thought about running away to Allegra’s little house in the hills instead. And smiled.
His grandfather gave him a sharp, searching look. “She’s a happy little thing, isn’t she? I felt bad that time I made her cry.”
Raoul pivoted, keeping his hands in his pockets because it was often a good precaution around his grandfather. The urge to strangle could come on so quickly. “You made her cry? What the hell did you do to her?”
“You made her cry, too? Already? I thought I raised you better than that.”
“You didn’t raise me.” Raoul plunged his fists deeper into his pockets. Really, he would never be welcomed back into the bosom of his family if he strangled the old man. Unless his cousins elected him CEO in gratitude. “I had parents. What did you do to Allegra?”
“She got me talking. She gets everybody talking. That’s why I think if Colette told anybody anything, it would be her.”
No arguing with that.
“She was asking me questions for that immigration history thing of hers, and somehow she got me talking about smuggling those little kids out hidden in roses, and, I don’t know, I guess she got a picture in her head. It hits people with hearts that way, you know, little kids curled up in rose petals, parents lost, being carried by strangers to the safety of strangers.” His grandfather cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “Kind of gets to you to see it, to tell the truth. That’s why you keep doing it, even when you know you might be caught and tortured.”
Damn, but his grandfather made him feel like a grain of dust in comparison sometimes. Of course he loved the old man. Who wouldn’t? But it certainly was hard to fit in the same valley with him.
Raoul looked once again across the valley toward where Allegra’s little house lay on the other side of the hills, and smiled a bit, his hands relaxing in his pockets. Maybe there was another place he fit just fine. God, she had made this Christmas dinner with his family so much more . . . whole. As if he belonged with someone or to someone at long last.
“How did you manage to get Tante Colette here?” Damien asked, coming out of the house. The women were inside preparing to serve the thirteen desserts, a sexist division of labor Allegra probably wouldn’t put up with their whole lives, but she seemed to be enjoying herself tonight. Damien and Tristan had at least helped clear the table between courses, but Raoul had had to escape before he cracked at the pressure of so many people and so much noise and ran off to the hills. From which, of course, he would look back down longingly, wishing he could sneak back in and somehow fit.
Raoul shrugged. “Allegra, I think.” It was hard to tell with Tante Colette. She might even have joined their Christmas for his sake, but his stomach swirled strangely when he tried to think that. Ever since he had failed to make it home before his own mother’s sudden death, he had a really hard time believing he deserved to be loved. Make sure you won’t want it back again before you throw this family in the trash, his grandfather had warned him, in one of their many fights before Raoul headed off to adventure at nineteen. If only he had listened.
“Why did you bring her, that’s the other question,” his grandfather said grumpily, as Tristan and Matt joined them, their shoulders rolling and settling, as if to savor how much more space there was outside the house than in it. Only Lucien was missing now, of the five first cousins, but Lucien had been missing for a long time. And unlike Raoul, he showed no inclination to come home, or even visit. He was another thing Raoul had wasted, maybe, when he ran off at nineteen in search of adventure. He and Lucien used to be so damn close. All their adventures were together.
“The last I checked, she was family,” Raoul said. Like me. We all want to fit. “Speaking of which, maybe one of you can tell me why Allegra says Tante Colette sees more of Gabriel and Raphaël Delange than she does her own nephews.”
“Their restaurant is only two streets away! I stop by at least once a month,” Matt protested, offended. “To make sure she doesn’t need any heavy lifting. Nobody can make Tante Colette feel included enough, though. She’s worse than you.”
What?
“It started way back when those two were kids.” Matthieu jerked his chin at their grandfather.
Pépé just lifted his chin and said nothing.
“I stop by every few weeks,” Damien said indignantly. “Gabe has to walk by her house on his way to his restaurant! I spend half my time in Paris right now, and do you know how many family members I’m supposed to visit at least once a month? I do my best. Besides, she always looks at me as if she knows I left the house without ironing my underwear. And the next day, Maman always stops by and irons it for me. It’s enough to drive a man insane.”
“Maybe you should try running the Africa division for a year or so,” Raoul suggested, not entirely ironically. “Instead of running around fulfilling everyone else’s wishes all the time.”
Damien looked at him a moment and then looked away across the winter-stripped rose field. He didn’t say anything. Matt took a long breath at the thought of Africa and sighed it out, gazing at the fields of roses that kept him rooted there with vast pride and possessiveness . . . but maybe a certain wistfulness.
The night made them resemble each other so much— stripping the rust out of Raoul’s hair so that it looked just as dark as his cousins’, turning Damien’s gray-green eyes and Raoul’s amber to the same dark color as Matt’s and Tristan’s. The night took their colors and left four tall men with broad shoulders and proud bearing who could be mistaken for each other in the dark. Lucien’s absence from that group left a hole almost as painful as his mother’s, although different. The absence of a shoulder braced against a shoulder as they got into trouble, rather than a fond, proud maternal kiss.
He sighed. Lucien had come to visit him in the hospital in Central Africa, after he was shot, one of the very rare times anyone in the family had seen Lucien in the last decade, and even four years ago, Lucien had looked like a man who needed a home.
While the night made them all look the same to a stranger, it also subtly emphasized the differences that those close to them could see: the way Matt and Raoul were bigger, but Raoul always held himself alert, as if trouble might come out of the dark, while Matt held himself braced, as if trouble, when it came, would meet him head on and give full warning of the fact that he was going to have to bludgeon something. Damien, leaner, with an athletic intensity to him, had also a cool arrogance that somehow fed into his need to give people three times what they expected of him. Of them all, Tristan was by far the most relaxed in his skin, although Raoul didn’t know how he did it; being the youngest of the five of them was not a task for the faint of heart.
Yes, they all had their differences, enough that someone who loved a man should be able to pick his form out in the dark. But Raoul didn’t expect it, and when a hand slipped under his jacket and touched his spine, he whipped around and shoved Damien, the nearest, as hard as he could, adrenaline surging through him.
And then, one second too late, he caught himself.
Damien was knocked three steps before he managed to recover and keep his feet. “Damn it, Raoul! What’s wrong with you? Don’t tell me you’re trying to start a fight on Christmas Eve.”
“Sorry.” Raoul’s brain had overcome his reflexes now, and he pulled Allegra into a loop of his arm. “I just—startled.” Now he really wanted to get away from people for a while, maybe drag Allegra off on a hike into the hills where they could be alone. Yes, he liked the idea of an alone that had Allegra in it with him. But he would be mad at himself, later, to have driven himself out of the Christmas gathering early, and wistful at having missed part of it.
“Sorry,” Allegra murmured, too, pressing against him. “I just came out to tell you the thirteen desserts are ready.”
He knew she was trying to distract everyone with the mention of the desserts, but unfortunately, they had been eating for three hours now, and none of them were nearly as motivated by the thought of thirteen desserts as they had been when they were kids. It was always nice to be reminded that he had found himself a thoughtful sweetheart of a woman, though.
“What were you trying to do, get me out of the line of fire?” Damien asked dryly, with something dark in the dryness, as he stepped back to the group.
Raoul didn’t say anything, just looked at the stars for a while.
“Thanks,” Damien said after a minute. “I appreciate the thought.”
“Croumpa un chut,” Raoul murmured to Damien in Provençal so Allegra couldn’t understand him.
“What does that mean?” Allegra asked promptly.
“‘Shut up,’” his grandfather of course told her. “You might want to learn a word or two of Provençal, if you’re sticking with this one. Otherwise, how are you going to teach it to the kids?”
Raoul choked and didn’t dare say anything. Smart predators were silent predators, and his damn grandfather was going to scare away his prey. And it hurt having to chase her down and talk her back around to liking him; he could stand not to have to do that again for at least another year. Was it at all reasonable to hope he could stay out of trouble with her for a year or two at a time?
“What?” Pépé protested into the crystalline silence that his grandsons left in the wake of his comment. “Somebody has to nudge you kids along. Although if you’re thinking about producing heirs, Raoul, you had better quit traipsing all over Africa and make sure they’re brought up in the family. No great-grandchild of mine is going to be raised where he doesn’t know the smell of roses.”
Oh, pour l’amour de Dieu. Instead of stealing family heirlooms he should have been getting somebody pregnant instead? Allegra was probably loving this.
“Yes, I’m home to stay,” Raoul said flatly, to get the conversation off assumptions that might scare a woman who had just met a man into running to the other side of the Atlantic.
Dead silence. All the men stared at him, in the starlit night, and Allegra leaned her warm body against him, a shield that made all those stares not even bruise his skin.
“Did you tell my father?” Damien asked finally. Louis Rosier had headed Rosier SA for thirty years now and was responsible for directing a good deal of its astonishing global growth. The cousins’ competitiveness had stood Louis in good stead, when it came to making them tools for the company’s glory. Damien’s own competitiveness had gotten to the point that if Uncle Louis regretted out loud that he hadn’t made a different decision the day before, Damien would go out and fly around the planet fifty times to try to turn back time.
“No, but if there’s no place for me with Rosier, I can always start my own company,” Raoul said and let the edge of his teeth show just a little.
Everyone prickled to alert, Damien shifting to face him full on.
“You’ll do what?” his grandfather asked incredulously.
“Well,” Raoul said apologetically, “I like earning a lot of money. But if there’s no room for me to do that with you here in Grasse these days, I’m pretty sure I can still do it against you. I’ve learned a lot in the past fourteen years. And I’m tired of working on the other end of the world, where people try to kidnap me and shoot at me. I want to come home.”
“What is this, your crowbar approach to being let in?” Allegra murmured to him in English. Damien laughed wryly, catching it.
“Do you always have to start trouble?” Matt growled.
“If you don’t go after what you want, you don’t get it,” Raoul said and Allegra tilted her head back, shaking her head ruefully. It had been a long time since someone laughed at him with that kind of warmth and affection, as if even his flaws were entirely welcome. His hand covered hers, pressing it between her stomach and his palm. “Let’s go get our dessert,” he told her. He was ready to be done with the Christmas dinner, so that he could go tuck himself up somewhere cozy and private with her for the night.
The men turned toward the house, Matthieu and Damien both brooding, and in the cool, clear night a bell rang out. Piercing and profound, as it had rung for eight hundred years. Once, twice, thrice . . . the little medieval church in their village at the far end of the valley was ringing people to Midnight Mass.
All the men paused, caught by the bells, their old, familiar call turned into something compelling by the midnight air, summoning up old ghosts of memories. Every single Christmas, all his life until his grandmother died, the whole family would go to Mass at Christmas. Mostly they walked; it was only three kilometers and they would rather drink good wine at Christmas dinner than stick with water and drive. All of them together, trooping down the road by the winter-bare rose fields, the boys chasing each other among the bushes and proudly taking their place beside the older men packing the walls against the back of the tiny, eight-hundred-year-old stone church to leave the pews for the women. Not that the women were thrilled with the seventeenth-century pews; his grandmother always brought cushions.
When she died, they lost the emotional power center, the force that moved them all from the house to the church on a cold Christmas night when people would rather sit at the table laughing and drinking. Damien’s mother had tried, the next year, appealing to their memories of their grandmother and how important it would be to her. Raoul had started off all right in the back of the church, but as the familiar Latin rhythms echoed against stone—the priest always reverted to Latin for Midnight Mass—he found himself staring at his toes, as it grew harder and harder to swallow. Beside him, Matt folded his big arms and looked grim and enduring. Damien shoved his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth pressed down. Tristan left them to go sit with his mother and put his arm around her. When Raoul finally slipped out, taking deep breaths, trying to shake the sting out of his nostrils, he spotted his grandfather, walking into the rose fields that started on the outskirts of the village. As he followed Pépé to catch him, the old man trailed his hand against the bare bushes as if they held flowers, stroking ghosts of petals even when the thorns tore at his skin. Raoul had fallen into step beside him, and neither of them spoke to each other, the whole walk back to the empty, empty farmhouse.
That was the last anyone tried to get them to go.
But as the bells rang out, twelve times, they all tilted their heads in the direction of that Christmas call, wistful not for the Mass itself but for that time in their lives, when their grandmother was their heart. When they all held together around that solid center of confident, warm love.
When his own mother was still alive. He would have kept going for his own mother, if she had wanted it.
Raoul rested his hands on Allegra’s shoulders, so glad for her warmth it almost squeezed his heart out. His cousins’ glances flickered just briefly to that intimacy and then away, as if shying from a hurt.
And it occurred to him that of all the men there, he might be the only one who, right at that moment, had a person to call home.