Chapter 14

A job well done, Elena thought with satisfaction late that afternoon, in the storage area of the museum. She adored being in storage at all times. Even after years of it, the adventure never really got old, and right now she was working on something extra special. She finished photographing the gloves that Damien Rosier had loaned to the museum, gloves they were preparing for an exhibit on the origins of perfumery in Grasse, including a special tribute to Niccolò Rosario and Laurianne Manosque Rosario. Tristan Rosier had confirmed for her yesterday the most wonderful news—that they had now recovered the original perfume recipe book that Niccolò and Laurianne had written—and Elena was itching to get her hands on it.

Not least because she was appalled it hadn’t been in a museum earlier. For all the Rosiers adored their family history, they took it way too much for granted, if you asked her. Good thing there was someone who knew the value and the fragility of family history around to curate for them.

Her cell rang. “Monsieur Rosier is here to see you.”

Fantastic! “Send him back to my office.” Tristan knew his way around this museum as if it was his second home.

She took one last photo of the exquisite embroidered gloves, locked them back in the case and stripped off her own vinyl gloves, then ran up the staff stairs, her heart racing with anticipation.

But the man standing in her office didn’t have tousled dark hair. His was cropped brown, his waiting stance not restless and pseudo-lazy but straight and calm. Maybe a little tense?

Her heart started thumping like mad. “You’re still here?”

You idiot for getting so excited about that.

There’s a pretty big leap from “not having run off yet” to being able to count on someone.

Lucien turned from her window, the tension disappearing from his shoulders. “Nice view,” he said. “You can see right to Corsica.”

Well, there you go. “Don’t turn into a bird and fly straight there,” she said exasperatedly, setting her big camera on her desk.

“Are you back on your swan thing?”

“It’s better than a cuckoo bird.”

Gray-blue eyes assessed her, with that look that was growing familiar, as if he thought she shielded herself with a lot of bullshit and that he was quite capable of seeing through it, if he persisted. “You thought I’d run out on you,” he said abruptly. “Without even checking in.”

Well…hadn’t he run out on his family once without checking in? It was true that people usually said good-bye when she was shifted around in foster care as a kid, but guys didn’t necessarily have that same civility. And they’d only kissed a couple of times.

Okay, maybe a hundred times, depending on how you counted up kisses, but…

Elena opted for giving him an ironic look, since words failed her.

“I’m not nineteen anymore, Elena.”

And he sure didn’t look it. He looked about as solid as they came.

Not that she was an idiot or anything. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had a history of developing long-term relationships.”

Lucien gazed at her with faintly narrowed eyes for a long moment, and then said suddenly: “I don’t remember you at all from when you were a kid.”

Of course he didn’t. Hero who arrived in a flash of light, saved the girl, went on his way. “My hair straightened after puberty. My skin cleared. I lost the braces. I got contacts once I was on my own. And I…filled out,” she added very dryly, making his gaze flicker discreetly down her body. One side of his mouth curled up. “Plus, I was six years younger than you, just barely starting collège when you were finishing high school. So no, you probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Got any photos?”

“I’m pretty sure I burned them all.”

He laughed a little. “I guess I burned my past up, too.”

Had he ever. “I’m not the ashes of your past, Lucien.” Meaning he was not supposed to be spending all his time stirring her up to see if there was anything worth rebuilding.

“No, you’re a beautiful dose of the present, Elena Lyon.” He came forward to bend and kiss her cheeks in belated greeting, or so she assumed. But when she tilted her face up, he pressed his lips directly to hers.

She jerked back and glared at him. “Will you keep your mouth to yourself?” She pointed to her lips. “These aren’t on constant offer. You had your chance last night. And blew it.”

He looked a little startled. “Right.” He stepped back, broadening the space between them to that of acquaintances and not intimate friends, and gave her a look half exasperated and half resigned. “So,” he said after a tiny regrouping, “associate curator?”

“For about two years now.”

“Is that how you got into helping Tante Colette track down strays as a side job? Me…and apparently Léo Dubois’s grandchildren?”

So he really had spent the night at his Tante Colette’s. And apparently Elena’s ears should have been burning at breakfast time. “She actually only pays me with tea. I was trying to make myself sound more official when I told you she hired me.”

His eyebrows went up. “The Legion is supposed to be impenetrable. Sounds like a lot of effort for tea.”

“She makes good tea,” Elena said coolly. And when she served it, Elena got to sit in her garden or her kitchen with her. And feel rooted and secure.

“True enough.” Lucien said quietly. Maybe he had once felt rooted and secure in Colette Delatour’s presence, too? He watched her a moment as she busied herself hooking her camera up to her computer to upload the photos. “How did you get started drinking Tante Colette’s tea? Your work here, or had you sought her out because of your grandmother?”

“Well…the Rosier family is one of my project foci here.”

“So, not a dollhouse but a museum collection,” he said dryly.

She glared at him.

He raised an eyebrow back at her, challenging her to prove otherwise.

“You’re not the past, you’re a very strong dose of the present, Lucien Rosier.” Her emphasis on his given name over his Legion name might have been a tiny bit snarky in the circumstances, but she couldn’t help it.

“You don’t know what a relief it is to hear someone say that. You’re the only person I’ve talked to in the past two days who can.”

Elena sighed. “Trust me, Lucien, I know exactly why you keep seeking me out right now. I’m not your past, and sex is easier than pretty much anything else a man could focus on.”

“Instead of ‘easy’, maybe we should say you’re turning into a challenge I’m more than happy to take on.”

Elena stared at him, oddly stymied. It was just…she had a long childhood history of being dumped whenever anyone found her too challenging to take on. It wasn’t her, of course, it was them—they always said that—but it always happened, just the same.

“Why did you agree to seek me out?” He threw the challenge right back at her. “If your focus is Rosier family history, why do you care about the present?”

“It’s not like history stops at some point. It always comes right into the present. That’s why it’s so interesting.”

Blue eyes studied her astutely. She couldn’t shake the impression that some part of him was always focused on strategy…and the goal of his current strategizing was her. It was oddly erotic. “You still feel your history, don’t you?” he said, and there it was again. That gentleness for her.

No wonder the man had made her cry in his arms. Sometimes he made her feel as if he actually cared about her. She wished he would quit doing that.

He closed the space between them again by just one step, slipping one finger under the chipped Murano glass heart she wore and rubbing a thumb over it. “Is that how you got so interested in how the past affects the present?”

Elena felt disoriented. Maybe she’d had really lousy luck with men, as Antoine often suggested, but other men seemed to spend most of their time trying to make sure she knew them…and was suitably impressed. Lucien, on the other hand, seemed much more focused on trying to get to know her.

And since men very rarely thought to ask her about her, she wasn’t used to how vulnerable talking about herself could be. She took her heart back, instinctively, and their fingers tangled briefly before he released it. That blue gaze rested on her clutching fingers, and for some reason, that sense of his steadiness started to grow in her again. Of his gentleness with her, inside that tough shell. A sense of safety that made her hungry.

“I did my master’s thesis on the fate of local Jewish children, particularly tracking the ones who were rescued, but…” She kept hold of the heart, but still folded her arms enough to try to warm herself against a chill. “It was a bad subject for me. I couldn’t distance myself enough emotionally, and I was pretty much torn up the whole time I was working on it.”

He settled that big, warm hand over her shoulder.

“That’s why I stopped with my master’s and didn’t finish my PhD.” She’d also been pretty damn broke by that point, with no family to house her while she went to school, but mostly she just couldn’t force herself to engage with her thesis anymore. “Obviously I knew your aunt and your grandfather by then. I had sought them out when I was still in high school, when they came to give a school talk, to tell them thank you. And later I interviewed them extensively. I had been working at the Musée de la Résistance, where I had a fellowship while I was doing my master’s, but when your aunt told me about this position opening up, I leaped at the chance to shift my focus to the Grasse perfume industry. Flowers and…a lot more potential for happiness, you know?”

Lucien gazed down at her a moment, all the sun lines visible around his eyes, his lean face hard to read. Then he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “You did the right thing, finding me. I’m not sure I would define this as happiness yet, but…it was a wound I needed to heal. Thank you, Elena.”

Elena broke into a smile, relief spreading up through her like a sunrise. She caught his hand and squeezed it. Thanks for telling me.

Lucien’s hard mouth relaxed into that little smile that was just for her. That curled so much warmth and hope and security in her that she wanted to unfurl in its sunlight right up onto her toes to kiss him. “So, bella. It’s almost time for you to get off, isn’t it? Want to get a drink on the Promenade des Anglais?”