“That’s not wild,” Jess said. “To make love to someone and mess up when you’re wounded and lonely. That’s just…hungry.”
Damien slanted a swift glance at her. She twisted her hands. It was insane how hard it was for him not to just lay his own hand over both of hers and calm them.
It’s okay. Shh. It’s me. Remember?
“Thank you,” Tante Colette said quietly. “But it was wild for the fifties. Her father was furious. And Jacky lit into him for failing to uphold the family honor, and he ran away.” That old, dark gaze fell. She stared at her own hands, wrinkled and spotted and still capable of weeding a garden or sewing a button or making a soup. “And he kept running. Once in a while, he’d send something to me, you know. A postcard from California, a mask from Papua New Guinea. I would never know what to expect. He never told me anything in them. It took a professional heir hunter to track down the children he had left behind.”
Did that plural
children
mean two, and now they were done, or were there more?
“But he kept running. He never came back here. I guess there was just too much he needed to get away from.” Tante Colette’s gaze was straight and steady as she said it.
“I’m so sorry,” Jess said unexpectedly. She closed her hand over both of Tante Colette’s, exactly as Damien had restrained himself from doing for her. Both he and Tante Colette stilled in surprise. “That must have been so hard for you. I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you,” Tante Colette said slowly, staring down at Jess’s young, slim hand over her old ones. If Damien hadn’t known his Tante Colette better, he might have thought that quick breath she drew, the flicker of her eyes, was to fight off the threat of tears.
He stared at his own hands, wishing he had offered that gesture of consolation. Wishing he could offer it now—one arm to Jess, one to Tante Colette.
Maybe Jess was right in her belief that he was shallow, hard titanium.
Probably, in fact, the reason Layla had cried into Matt’s shirt was that Matt had pulled her into his arms. He could imagine Matt doing that, the big, growly bear, who pretended to be so tough and was actually a damn marshmallow. He wanted to be able to imagine himself doing it, too.
“I wish I’d tracked you down earlier,” Tante Colette said. “I wish I had been able to meet your father, too, before he died.”
Jess gave a soft intake of breath, and her eyes filled, her free hand clenching into a fist on the table.
“I’m sorry no one was there for you,” Tante Colette said.
Jess pushed back quickly from the table, grabbing her purse. “Excuse me.”
Damien rose automatically, reaching too late for her chair, and stared after her as she went into the house. Something about the threat of her tears, the sudden departure, made his stomach hurt.
Wait. He still thought of Chris Bianchi, with his fascinating niche perfumes, as a living contemporary. How recent was his death?
“Excuse me,” he said to Tante Colette and went after Jess.
He found her in the kitchen, splashing her face with water from the kitchen sink. Then she curled her hands around the edge of the sink, just standing there, her back to him, her shoulders slim but straight, as she took long, deep breaths.
“Are you all right?” Damien asked.
She whirled so fast he might have been trying to stab her in the back. Her fingers clutched the edge of the sink behind her. “I’m fine.”
“Fine like my head?”
“What?” she asked blankly.
Here in this kitchen where he’d been fed so much soup all his life, with its dark wood and sunlight and cheerful red pots, he felt oddly vulnerable. Shakily vulnerable, almost sick to his stomach, as if he was exactly as vulnerable as a woman in a strange land who’d just been splashing her face with water to hide tears. He took a step closer. “I didn’t realize your father had died.”
Her head drew back a little in shock. Then her eyebrows crinkled in disbelief. “Did your
secretary
send those flowers?”
“What?”
“The flowers you sent! For the funeral!”
He couldn’t conceive of his executive assistant sending flowers for somebody’s funeral without alerting Damien to the death. Frédéric knew better. “Are you sure it wasn’t some other Damien? A friend of your father’s?”
Her face worked, and then tears spilled over again. She dashed her hand angrily across her eyes. “It wasn’t even
you
?”
“Jess. I didn’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Why the hell didn’t I know?
Couldn’t
you
have—
“I’m sorry.”
Her face crumpled, her skin so splotchy and red. She didn’t cry prettily. It was wrenching his stomach apart. He couldn’t handle this. He couldn’t handle being her bad guy right this second.
She grabbed her purse off the counter and dug into it, and he looked around for Tante Colette’s box of tissues. But instead of a tissue, she pulled out her wallet, digging out a business-size card from among the credit cards. “This wasn’t you?”
She thrust it at him and then shoved both her hands across her face again, trying to scrape away the tears.
A florist’s card. He turned it over.
If you need anything, anything at all, this is my private number. Damien.
He pressed a fist to his heart. “Good God. Your father died—then?”
Right after they’d slept together, right after he’d walked into Amour et Artisan that Monday and realized she and Jasmin Bianchi, whose company he had taken over, were one and the same, right when she’d kept showing that brittle, cynical flippancy whenever he tried to talk to her, until it had hurt so much to keep trying that he’d sent her those flowers and stopped. Sent her those flowers with his phone number because…fuck, what if she ended up pregnant? Sent her those flowers because…well, he would have kind of liked to send her flowers that next day, if he’d known her full name then and where to find her, if by the time he’d found out her name she wasn’t making it obvious that she didn’t want anything to do with him again. Sent her those flowers because…he’d wanted one last excuse to give her his number. And never once when he’d jerked his phone out of his pocket at the ring of that private number had it ever been her call.
She stared at him a long moment. And then she turned her head away. “He was dying when we met,” she said wearily. “It’s the kind of thing that makes a woman
stupid.
”
Fuck. He reached out and gripped the doorjamb. Everything she had just said hit him too hard—what she must have been going through. And the fact that he was her
stupid.
That she thought sleeping with him had been that bad a thing to do.
When he’d thought it was possibly the best thing he’d done
for himself
in his entire life.
“I’m sorry,” he managed.
“He’d been dying for two years,” she said. “But it was…the end. And he…finished two weeks after you—took over Amour et Artisan.” So two weeks after that night, too.
Fuck.
Fuck and fuck and fuck.
“Jess.” He moved toward her, his hands stretching out.
She started as his hands closed around her upper arms and stared up at him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, because what else was there to say, with her face so splotchy red, her pain so visible. It was worse than his pain. It made his pain feel like self-indulgent whining. Kind of the standard opinion of any of the male cousins’ pain when they were growing up, in fact, so dismissing his own feelings was a familiar comfort. “I didn’t—Jess, you should have told me. You were
alone
?”
He couldn’t even conceive of facing his father’s death alone.
Everyone
would be there. People would hug him or grasp his hand or kiss his cheeks, over and over and over. His body would almost never stand untouched, the whole funeral. He wouldn’t even be able to move, the church would be so packed with family, his cousins’ shoulders pressed tight against his as they crowded together to fit everyone into the church for the ceremony. Their strong shoulders would lift the casket for him, to help carry his burden. His shoulder still sometimes felt the imprint of Raoul’s mother’s casket, six years before.
“Why didn’t you
call
me?” he asked incredulously. How could anyone face that kind of thing
alone
?
Her face crinkled in confusion. “Why would I call you?”
It stabbed right through to his heart. He couldn’t breathe for it. Couldn’t move his hands on her arms. Couldn’t speak as his throat tightened and tightened.
Her eyebrows crinkled more, her dusk eyes turned bluer by tears, searching his face as if he was some new, fascinating molecule and she was trying to figure out how to turn him into a perfume. “Did you think you
mattered
?”
He released her arms as if they’d turned red hot and took a step back. His fists clenched over the burn in his palms.
“I mean…” She fumbled. “I mean, that I mattered? I mean…I don’t know what I mean.”
He shot her a savage glance. “Of course you fucking mattered, Jess.” God damn it.
She stared at him. And all at once her eyes filled again. “I can’t even imagine it,” she whispered. “I can’t even imagine having someone there who would make me feel not alone.”
Oh, hell. He just reached out and yanked her into his arms, holding her tight. It hurt him everywhere. The burn of her up his body, the pain in his palms against her back. All those fucking things that
did not matter.
Not from him.
Not to her.
She held very still. He could feel the shakiness of her breath, little gasps that fought tears.
Fuck.
He lifted a hand and stroked her hair. So soft. Those little, gentle ripples of curls. The twist of it into a knot at her nape. His thumb worked into that knot without him even realizing he was doing it, until her hair loosened and fell down her back. He stroked the length of it.
It’s all right. Shh. I’m here.
I’m not all right, but I’d like for you to be.
“You’d have cared?” she whispered into his chest, and he felt wetness through two layers of shirt.
Her tears, while she questioned whether he would have cared
that her father died.
“Jesus, Jess.” His throat strangled any other words. What the hell was the point of even trying, against an opinion of him like that, when he’d thought…he’d thought…
Hell.
“Of course I’d have cared,” he finally managed. He still couldn’t even let go of her, although the hurt had sunk all the way into his bones now, turning them achy and old.
She opened one hand against his chest, spreading her fingers over his pec. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she said slowly. “Have a little black book full of women and still actually care about someone you hooked up with at a party.”
He closed his eyes. The instinct to say something ironic and cold, to fight her back from him, was so powerful, and yet…how could he add hurt to a woman who was crying over her father’s death, which she had faced all alone? “I don’t have a black book full of women,” he said through his teeth.
“A phone. Whatever.”
His hands closed into fists, against her back. “You were supposed to recognize the phone as irony.”
“Irony?” She lifted her head. She looked an utter wreck. It made him want to do everything sappy. Stroke all those tears off her cheeks. Give her himself again.
“A lie,” he said tightly. “A stupid lie, because you believed it.”
Her eyebrows drew together again. “So I’m not in there as a one star?”
Jesus. He let go of her. He couldn’t do this anymore. He just couldn’t. “No.”
She folded her arms around herself, making him feel like a jerk because she was once again having to console herself alone.
But I would have been there. If you’d believed I could be.
“Jesus. A
one
star?” he said suddenly. “
Fuck
, Jess.” He shoved his hands across his face. He needed longer hair like Tristan, so he had something to yank out. He needed his watch, his coat, his cufflinks.
“Can I ask you something?” she said suddenly.
“God. Please don’t.”
“How often do you hook up with someone like that?”
So much for denying her permission to keep stabbing him.
“I mean…for example…how many women have you slept with since me?” she asked, her voice dropping as if maybe some of her questions might actually hurt her, too.
He turned abruptly for the kitchen door, wishing he could walk straight out of the house and didn’t have to go back to the garden and his aunt.
“For me it was none, see,” she said suddenly, and he stopped still in the door, his back to her. “None before, not for a long time before, and none since. See? I told you I wasn’t good at it.”
He stood very still for a long moment. And then strode two steps down the hall toward the garden. And then stopped.
He came back just enough to show half his body in the doorway, his hand gripping the doorjamb until it hurt his fingers. “Me neither.” Her eyes widened. He held them. “None since.”
He jammed one of his own knuckles with the force of his grip on the frame before he jerked his hand loose and strode back into the garden. Maybe for once in his life, he could hide behind his ninety-six-year-old aunt.
“Did I ever tell you about the time Damien tried to catch the moon?” Colette asked, and Damien coughed on his soup.
Jess, spoon in her mouth, looked over it from Colette to Damien, then awkwardly swallowed the lemony chicken orzo soup Colette had had ready for their main course. The soup seemed an incongruous, cozy winter choice for this hot August day, but in the quiet shade of the garden its lemon and comfort worked oddly well. “Uh—no.”
Obviously, since she’d only met Colette Delatour forty minutes before. Of course, Colette was ninety-six. Maybe she genuinely couldn’t keep track of what stories she’d told anymore.
“I think I’m going to have to go.” Damien looked at his left wrist, then curled his fingers into his palm when he found that wrist bare. “I’m sorry to rush out in the middle of lunch, Tante Colette, but—”
“His mother wished for it,” Tante Colette said, and two streaks of color appeared on Damien’s cheeks.