Chapter 13

The sun slanted over the valley, catching pink roses in its light, glinting off leaves, as the rows of roses filled with men and women in long sleeves and hats and sometimes head scarves. Fifteen years ago, much of their seasonal crew had come from Spain, but now apparently more came from Morocco. Lucien stood near the truck and took a slow, deep breath, full of fragrance and memories.

He glanced at Matt, who was surveying the fields with pride. Big now, a man whose body showed its muscle and his jaw a tendency to shadow, Matt seemed to have grown into the patriarchal-heir role he had filled so clumsily as a teenager. His birthright as heir had led to tension in his dealings with Raoul and Lucien himself, who were older than he was but not the only son of Jean-Jacques Rosier’s firstborn son, dead far too young. His role as heir had most certainly been part of the reason Raoul had ended up heading out to seek his own fortune. Lucien, who had always liked to range far, might have gone with him, but then learning he wasn’t really a Rosier had pushed him into an even more extreme choice.

Only the half-curls in Matt’s dark hair made him still a little familiar, and a tendency to growl to cover up how sensitive he was and impose his will. He was better at the growling these days, though, his voice deep and come into its own.

Lucien stared out at the morning fields, releasing a hard sigh. He’d opted for fifteen years of combat training and military exercises and actual war over this. The choice of a boy who had felt desperate. But now he saw the roses through the faces of his men, the medals he had earned, the impossible mountains he had climbed, the planes he had jumped out of—all the impossible things he had achieved himself and the impossible things he had trained other men to achieve.

I’m proud of who I’ve become.

But damn, I missed these roses.

I missed my family.

Involuntarily, his fingers slid under the edge of his T-shirt sleeve and rubbed the rose tattoo he had gotten once long ago, at twenty-one, when very drunk. One of the reasons he’d learned never to let himself get quite that shit-faced again. Plus, he’d moved higher up in the ranks, and a man responsible for his men had to keep his head.

“Is this why you left?” Matt growled abruptly, and Lucien glanced at him again, taken aback.

“This?”

Matt’s big shoulders were almost hunched, his voice very gruff. “This.” He gestured and cleared his throat. “The fact that you couldn’t have this.”

The fact that he couldn’t deserve this, maybe, rather. “I’m not even a biological part of this family, Matt,” Lucien said wearily. “How could I have imagined I should get this?”

Matt turned so aggressively that all Lucien’s fight instinct flared up, ready. “Oh, shut the fuck up about that,” Matt growled.

Lucien’s eyebrows went up. Was his little cousin challenging him? Okay, not little anymore, but he sure as hell didn’t have Lucien’s combat training and—hey. You’re not teenagers anymore. You don’t have to respond to his wolf challenge like you’re a wolf yourself. “Excuse me?”

“That ‘biologically part of this family’ shit. No one ever cared a fuck about that except you.”

Lucien stared at him, his jaw hardening. “Well,” he said, knowing his voice was going into that tone he used on his out-of-line men. “I am me. And I did care.”

“Well, it was a stupid reason to leave,” Matt growled and stalked off abruptly to go give orders.

Well, that was a…relief. The unadulteratedly joyful welcome during the wedding had made Lucien feel so totally wrong. Anger and wounds, now…those made sense. It felt right for them to show.

“He growls because he cares,” a wry voice said from behind Lucien, and Lucien turned toward his youngest cousin. Tristan was long and lean these days, and nothing like the still-awkward fourteen-year-old Lucien had left behind. He still had that wicked glint in his eye, though, as if he was surrounded by highly amusing people and was about to do something to get them all stirred up.

“I figured that out,” Lucien said dryly.

“Layla calls him Growly Bear,” Tristan said, with a lurking glee.

That jerked a laugh out of Lucien. “Does she really?” He’d known he liked that curly-haired fiancée of Matt’s when she got his grandfather out on the dance floor.

“Oh, yes,” Tristan said, in tones of great savoring.

Lucien grinned. Tristan had always liked to see his elder cousins get a bit of a comeuppance back in the old days, too. Not enough to really hurt them—he’d always been a highly empathetic kid—just enough to bring them down a peg. He’d struggled in school, but it was no surprise to learn he’d become a great perfumer. Specifically not a surprise because once in a while Lucien had checked the Rosier SA website, when he was maybe not shit-faced but a little drunk and willing to poke at old wounds.

Tristan shifted to the start of a row of roses, picking them as if it was a compulsion. The kid—hell, the man—lived on his nose.

So Lucien, perforce, shifted to start the row on the other side of the bush. That first touch of a rose stabbed him right in the heart.

But Tristan kept on lightly talking. “What’s Elena call you?”

“Trust me, if it was as embarrassing as Matt’s nickname, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Tristan grinned. “I’ll see if I can get it out of her.”

Lucien couldn’t figure out how his cousins had been so slow that one of them hadn’t snatched Elena Lyon up long ago. What the hell had they been doing?

You’re never going to know. You can look at photos. You can get glimpses of what you missed.

But you’re never going to know the teenagers and men they were for those fifteen years.

“If you flirt with her, I’ll have to kill you.” Lucien dropped a handful of roses in his pouch.

Tristan just grinned at him. “You and whose Legion?”

Lucien fixed him with the kind of look he’d frequently had to fix that kid with when he was a wiggly brat and Lucien was responsible for keeping him out of trouble. Along with Raoul, Lucien had been given the responsibility of keeping Tristan, Damien, and Matt out of trouble before he had even learned to read, a habit that had made his first promotion in the Legion come as a relief. Finally, I can keep these idiots in line. “Tristan. Don’t flirt with her.”

Hell, women these days might find Tristan irresistibly charming. He acted like a guy who was used to women finding him irresistibly charming.

“I’m engaged, actually,” Tristan said. “To Malorie Monsard. Just a couple of weeks ago.”

That stopped Lucien cold. “Engaged?” Even Tristan was engaged? “Hell, you’re only—”

“Twenty-nine,” Tristan supplied, holding Lucien’s eyes with an odd glint in his own. Not amused this time, not wicked. Almost…oh, yeah. Accusing.

“Twenty-nine.” It came out of Lucien with a huff of breath. He rubbed his hand over his head. Tristan had been fourteen when Lucien left. The kid of the family.

“I missed you,” Tristan said suddenly, low. “I mean…not to rub it in, but…just so you know.”

“Yeah.” Lucien looked down at the roses he was picking for a moment. “I missed you all, too,” he said, very, very low. Missed them so bad those first months that he’d been grateful for the relentless, even abusive training at La Ferme that had left him no energy at all to think.

“Yeah?” For some reason, it seemed to be what Tristan needed to hear. His expression eased. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

But he hadn’t realized it before?

“It was a tough time,” Lucien said with difficulty.

Tristan looked at him over the rose bush a long moment, a straight, steady look that reminded Lucien of their grandfather or their Tante Colette when the elders searched his soul. A look that made him realize that, yes, Tristan was a man now. Suddenly, Tristan’s face split into that old Tristan smile, the one that always made everyone around him smile, too. “You know what, Lucien? I’m really glad to have you back.”

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?”

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.”