Chapter 4

Before the little stone Mairie in Pont-le-Loup, the place was full. Hundreds of people had come from all over France and as far away as Quebec and Argentina for the first Rosier wedding in a generation, and most of them couldn’t fit into the tiny city hall where Damien and Jess were currently signing their marriage certificate. Elena had arrived too late to have a chance of fitting inside, and she might have trouble fitting into the not-much-bigger village church for the second ceremony, but maybe she’d be able to peek through the door. As much as she loved weddings, churches always made her feel awkward anyway.

The Rosier cousins poured out of the Mairie and lined up on the steps, so Damien and Jess must be about to come out. Various members of the Rosier clan moved through the crowd, distributing confetti cannons. A job well done, Elena thought to herself. You found Jess a home.

And she’d found one for Layla, too, over there with a confetti cannon, happily waiting for the couple to appear. She loved finding other people a home.

But she’d screwed up with Lucien.

“Well, that went well,” she told Antoine Vallier dryly, stopping by his side.

“At least you made it back in time.” Antoine glanced over her. “What, he didn’t take the bait?”

Elena wasn’t about to tell Antoine that she had actually tried using herself as bait. Antoine wouldn’t even look judgmental if she did, and she couldn’t get her rebellious instinct going to protect herself against that kind of matter-of-fact acceptance of her. Antoine was tricky that way.

“No,” Elena said with a huff. “He was pissed.”

“He didn’t even think about it?” Antoine studied an unlit cigarette between his fingers a moment, green eyes narrowed as if he and the cigarette were having a hostile discussion. They stood off to the side of the place, near the lemon tree stretching its branches over the wall of Madame Grénier’s garden, and no one had reached them with the confetti cannon distribution yet.

“I might have gotten a little pissed off, too, and stomped out. Can you imagine, rejecting a family like this?” She waved.

She wished she hadn’t lost her temper, though. He’d been hurting her, and it was Lucien, her hero, and…she closed her hand around her lionheart. Sometimes she was just afraid that if it got one more chip, it would shatter. But you can’t be a lionheart if you’re afraid of breaking yourself.

Antoine studied the crowd of extended Rosier family and all their friends and drew a breath in and let it carefully out. “But it’s definitely him?”

“Yes.” Would it have helped if she had stayed and argued more? But Elena had learned a lot growing up about trying to handle all kinds of difficult men, and it seemed to her that a man capable of joining the Foreign Legion and then thriving in it must be freaking hardheaded. And hardheaded men only got more stubborn the longer you argued. Maybe it was best to plant a seed and let it grow?

He had the ring. Surely he wouldn’t just keep such an important Rosier heirloom and stay estranged from the family. Of course, he could always mail it back in a box with no return address.

“Bon,” Antoine said. “You can tell Madame Delatour later, after the ceremony, and she can make her decisions about what to do.”

“She can send his cousins after him,” Elena said. “I’m sure they would have much more influence on him than I could.”

Antoine flicked a discreet sideways glance once up and down her body, raised an eyebrow, then refocused on his unlit cigarette. “I don’t know,” he said sardonically. “Fifteen years in an all-male military. He might be more susceptible to you than you think.”

Elena felt herself flushing. Thank God Antoine didn’t know the professional line she had crossed.

“They certainly are a handsome group,” she said to change the subject. Raoul, Matt, and Tristan had lined up on the stone steps on one side, Gabriel and Raphaël Delange on the other, Léa and Daniel and Layla and Allegra just below. Damn, the Rosiers were good-looking. More than just the looks, though, it was the strength and confidence that came off them. It made a woman feel that all her problems were going to run for their lives if ever a Rosier man strolled in her direction.

“That’s what I hear,” Antoine said dryly.

Elena laughed. “Don’t worry, you hold your own against them. If you were up with that group, you would fit right in.” His hair was a tawny gold, unlike the mostly black-haired Rosiers, but he could have given Damien Rosier a run for his money, in terms of looks, and even in terms of lean, cool irony.

Antoine said nothing at all.

“I wonder what it’s like,” she said. “To be part of a family like that.”

All those people around you. All those personalities to deal with constantly, but also all that humanity that was attached to you, that linked you to the world. The support and the power and the way they strolled through the world as if they’d been born to rule it.

“I wouldn’t know,” Antoine said.

No. She slipped her hands in her skirt pockets. She wouldn’t either. A big body, steady, assessing gray-blue eyes, a hard quiet…stop it, Elena. “I don’t understand how Lucien could do it.” The word Lucien tried to curl around her tongue and linger. “Abandon a family like that.”

Antoine tapped the unlit cigarette against his lips and studied the end again, for all the world like a man who had just taken a long, contemplative draw on it, but without the inhalation part. “If you’re not truly part of it, I can understand why you might not want to be an extra. Taken in on the fringe out of courtesy.”

“She gave him Niccolò Rosario’s ring. That’s not fringe.”

Antoine’s lips twisted. “I think it would be safe to say that Colette Delatour’s actions are not in line with general family preferences.”

True enough.

Antoine tapped his cigarette against his thigh.

“Are you trying to quit or something?” she asked. “Or do you think one of the Rosier cousins poisoned it?”

“If I were trying to quit, I would have quit,” Antoine said coolly. “I have a will.”

She suppressed a smile. He did, indeed. One he enjoyed flexing against the Rosier cousins—in fact, she was halfway convinced he took these inheritance cases for Colette Delatour just so he could butt heads with the Rosier cousins when they burst into his office threatening to strangle him.

In fact, he probably only smoked for the pleasure of blowing thin streams of smoke when they were in his office and watching the way their sensitive nostrils pinched to try to block the smell.

But that was probably overestimating the Rosier cousins’ influence on him. Even Antoine wouldn’t destroy his lungs just to thwart them. Would he?

“And I think they want to kill me too much to use poison instead of their bare hands,” Antoine said, with a faint curl of satisfaction to his lips.

A little laugh from the other side of him, and Elena realized that Malorie Monsard had stopped beside them and was handing Antoine a confetti cannon. She didn’t think Malorie had recognized her yet, but then she had been a year behind Malorie and Antoine in school, nearly two years younger when you threw in the differences in their birthday cut-offs, so even if Elena hadn’t changed so much, it was pretty normal that Malorie never have noticed her. Elena had trailed around after Antoine, obviously, but Malorie and Antoine hadn’t really been friends, per se, just rivals for top spot in class.

“So how’d you end up at the wedding?” Malorie asked Antoine now. “If they can’t kill you, invite you to join them?”

Antoine studied the tip of his cigarette. “You could say that.”

Sometimes Antoine was really odd about the Rosiers, even Elena had to admit it. Right now, his gaze drifted to Louis and Véronique Rosier, Damien’s parents, who had just come out of the city hall and were beaming at everyone, hand in hand. They moved down to the bottom of the steps and turned to wait eagerly for Damien and Jess. Even tough, ruthless Louis Rosier, businessman first and everything else second, looked openly proud and happy as he waited for his son.

“I don’t know why I came,” Antoine muttered, darkly.

Yeah, Elena didn’t either. She was about to jab him with an elbow to get him to behave in a more wedding-like fashion. Don’t sulk. Envy doesn’t become you.

Nor you, Elena Lyon.

Malorie reached across Antoine to introduce herself and was flatteringly (well, for Elena’s current self) astonished to realize she already knew her, but Elena was distracted by the sound of a powerful motor.

A motorcycle, the motor quickly softening as the driver slowed, coasting to the far edge of the crowd where he could park, trying to keep the motor quiet. He sat there a moment, as Elena glanced toward him and then glanced again. Straight shoulders in a leather jacket. A tall man.

He swung off the motorcycle and stood there, very still, before slowly stripping off his gloves, then his jacket. Elena’s heart started to beat too hard at the hard torso revealed. All those damn butterflies woke right up.

He brought his hands to his helmet, and hesitated another moment, and her whole body tensed in anticipation.

He pulled off the helmet and set it on the seat, never taking his eyes off the crowd.

It was him.

He’d come.

A military green T-shirt pulled tight across his chest and clung to hard abs and the swell of his biceps. His shoulders were straight, his hands loosely fisted at his sides as if he was ready for anything, even a fight.

Elena thought she felt Antoine stiffen beside her, thought maybe there was a jerk of awareness on the city hall steps from the cousins, but just then Damien and Jess came out, Jess with a weave of jasmine through her loose brown hair, Damien almost mercilessly handsome in his black tux.

The new arrival stood frozen as confetti cannons went off all over the place and inside Elena’s stomach, a burst of fluttering colors everywhere. Damien and Jess were married.

And Lucien was back.