Chapter 6

Elena sat in the corner of the old lavoir, on the stone bench, her arms wrapped around her knees. She’d come looking for Antoine. Antoine was terrible with these happy family reunions, and she didn’t know why he had to insist on going to Damien’s wedding, because he was by far the worst about it when the happy family was the Rosiers. As if they were some giant symbol to him of what he could never have.

Let it go, she would tell him. We make our own families. But sometimes she thought that, just the way she’d never been sufficient as family to any of the foster families who had taken her in, she also wasn’t sufficient to Antoine, even if they had latched on to each other in the system.

He remained darker about it, the whole foster-child-no-family thing. He claimed she over-compensated by playing with other families as if she was building so many dollhouses, making sure each one had a complete and happy family in it, but even if there might be a grain of truth in that, she didn’t see what was so bad about it. The families she helped got to be happy and complete, and she got to feel good about helping make them so.

After the scene in the place, the priest had still been waiting for the church ceremony, and it had been heart-achingly sweet the way Damien insisted Lucien stand up there with the other cousins, even though he was in one of those military-green T-shirts he seemed to favor and everyone else was in a tux. Lucien had been struggling so hard with emotion, too. But that was the great thing about religious ceremonies. They really did give emotions a focus, a rhythm, a way of pacing themselves.

She loved weddings, and she tried not to ever admit to herself the knot of anxiety being in a crowded church caused in her stomach. It was just a tiny knot—a walnut-size knot. A knot of difference.

She had been far from the only person sitting with quiet attention rather than participating in things like Communion, given the very low percentage of people in this traditionally Catholic country who actually practiced or even believed. She didn’t believe herself, not in a God who listened to your prayers and would save you, anyway. But she of all people knew how important religious ceremonies were as a social bond, and though she tried to keep her instincts quiet and tell them people weren’t that way anymore, her instincts still lifted the hairs on the back of her neck to try to warn her about the dangers of being different.

It was the exact opposite of going to the synagogue in Cannes, where the luminous blue Star of David over the door promised her a kind of refuge, a place where she belonged. There were a lot of people like her who showed up for Yom Kippur and the high holidays who didn’t really believe—she just couldn’t believe, not after what had happened to her family—but who wanted that sense of who they were, of where they fit. Of a people.

She was still grateful to the foster care system for helping her make it to the March of the Living when she was in high school, because the state really did try to make sure that kids in state care could practice their religious identity. She still remembered the power of that walk, all of them in a sea of blue honoring the lost and joining together to keep on living. It had been a pivotal moment in her life and probably helped give her the strength, six months later when she was old enough to set off on her own, to start building a good life for herself.

A good life. A life full of flowers and sun, a life where she could help people, bring people home. In the church, surrounded by a difference that had destroyed every last family member she had, she had focused on the people getting married instead. Focus on the good things, on hope, on what could lie ahead, not what lay behind—that was what she tried to do these days. Jess had looked so pretty and happy that Elena had been bursting with pride. I did this. See? I helped make a family.

But she’d still wanted to get away from people for a little, after. Somewhere she could be herself.

She smiled now in the shadow of the lavoir, thinking about Damien and Jess, savoring her role as a secret fairy godmother. Antoine would twit her about it, but hey…it was better than slipping off to sulk.

Which she totally wasn’t doing, unlike Antoine. She was just taking a little break to gloat. It could get a bit agoraphobic up there among the hundreds who had flocked to celebrate the first Rosier wedding in a generation. It could feel lonely on so many different levels.

Her hand traced down the chain at her neck to clasp the pendant. Smooth and solid, the rich red heart a small, reassuring pressure against her palm.

So quiet, the old lavoirs in these towns. Once they were places full of chatter, as women washed clothes together. But these days, the chatter was just beyond, in the place. Echoes of the conversations reached her.

Perfect. Humanity was there. She wasn’t isolated from it.

But she didn’t have to deal with it. All those tempting families that she wanted but that she didn’t quite believe in enough to have.

A tough, hard body, assessing eyes, the warm, careful roughness of calluses as he drew his thumb so gently down her arm, seducing her.

She closed her eyes and tightened her arms around herself and the goose bumps on her skin. She’d overestimated how warm this spring day would get, that was all. She should have put on another layer.

Nobody would miss her if she slipped away now, probably. She’d kind of snuck herself onto the guest list anyway, via Madame Delatour. She just wanted to see it, the lost family member she had found, Jess Bianchi, returned to the fold, everyone happy, everyone solid.

She’d wanted to dance all night at her wedding, too, but not if Antoine was going to ditch her. Not with Lucien Rosier there.

You should have thought of the consequences of that little trip up to Lucien’s apartment in Italy before you chose to make it.

She stroked the heart. Lucien would be all right, probably. He hadn’t looked all right, when she’d left to find Antoine, but surely his family could handle it now. They’d all wrapped around him so fast, so happy, he couldn’t fail to understand how much he was welcomed back.

So she sat there, absolutely not brooding at all, for a long time, until a foot shifted on stone.

She startled as a big body filled the opening of the lavoir.

Then startled even more, all the way upright, when she realized who it was.

Lucien Rosier himself. Big and tough and brown all over, except for those blue-gray eyes and the T-shirt that didn’t exactly add a splash of color. Fine lines of fatigue showed around his eyes, but his body radiated a tight-reined energy. Power in reserve. I may be holding myself in check, but I can go from 0 to 100 in 0.5 seconds if there’s a need.

She grabbed for composure. Tightened her stomach muscles a little and made sure her shoulders were straight and down, that her head was up, that her hair swung over her shoulders. Quit posing. But she did like to look pretty for him. Far too much.

“Are you okay?” she said. “Managing? You’re not going to try to run away again, are you?”

She had known kids and teenagers who ran away, usually in some counterproductive hope to find somewhere they belonged. So she didn’t blame him for doing it when he was nineteen. Well…kind of she didn’t. She tried not to.

He gave her the kind of hard, rejecting look she’d fled from in Italy. “What do you care?”

Oh. Her thumb rubbed over one of the chips in her lionheart. Sometimes you paid a price for risking your heart.

Most times.

“I just thought it might be kind of tough coming back,” she said. She wouldn’t know, exactly. From the outside it looked pretty awesome.

He folded his arms, the biceps straining against the sleeves of his T-shirt. “Oh, you did, did you? Is that why you chose to interfere in my life like I was some damn doll you needed to put back in the right dollhouse?”

First Antoine, now him. “I do not play with dolls,” she said with dignity.

She’d never really been able to keep a dollhouse, although some of her foster families had had ones for the kids to play with. You had to share, and the boys in the family were guaranteed to have ripped off the dolls’ limbs at some point. Not Antoine, but plenty of the kids with whom she’d shared foster situations had had much harder times adjusting to their childhoods than she and Antoine had had.

“No, you play with humans,” Lucien said.

Okay, but she was retiring from that. From now on, she only sought out lost objects, not lost people. She was even going to see a therapist next month to help her wean herself off the human-dollhouse habit.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “This from a man who directs human beings where to place themselves in battle while the rest of us content ourselves with a chessboard?”

He pulled back.

She winced. She probably shouldn’t have said that. He…merde, following his orders, some of his men during his fifteen-year career might even have been killed.

You are a terrible person. Don’t strike out wildly like that, just to protect yourself.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling horrible.

Blue eyes fixed her grimly. Green-brown water flowed beside them, quiet and steady.

“For saying that. Not for finding you. You’re welcome for finding you.”

And he had been literally welcomed. His family had been so damn happy to have him back.

“Do you think this is easy?” Strain roughened his voice.

“No. I just acknowledged it might be tough.” She tried to stop herself, but then it just burst out: “Although I don’t see what’s so hard about it. Prodigal son returns. Family welcomes him with open arms. Everyone lives happily ever after.” She brushed her hands together. A job well done. Be happy now, Lucien.

“You’re unbelievable,” he said.

She fell back on the most effective defense she’d ever developed to deal with the male half of the world—sexy mockery. “That’s what all you guys say.” She gave him a slanted smile.

“Are there a lot of us?” he said coolly.

Okay, so sometimes her attempts at sexy self-defense could still come off clumsy, and it probably wasn’t a surprise that all her old thirteen-year-old awkwardness should leak through around him. But still. She’d been trying to be witty, and he was just being cruel. Blaming her, essentially, for having breasts and curves the same way she’d been blamed over and over ever since she first started developing them.

Her hands clenched slowly in her pockets. The image he had conveyed of strength and self-containment had called to every craving she had. And yes, she had fallen victim to that craving before. And been hurt. Her nails dug into her palms. “I can guarantee that you’ve slept with more women than I have men. I’d take odds that sometimes you didn’t even know a woman’s name. So if you’re wanting to form a judgment, you look in your own fucking mirror.”

She jerked her hands free of their hiding place in her pockets and strode past him.

“Elena.” He reached for her wrist—not a grab, really, just a loose clasp of callused index finger and thumb to try to catch her attention.

She jerked away, so hard she bumped back against the stone post on the other side of the lavoir entrance. “Don’t touch me!”

His eyebrows drew together. He looked from her wrist to her face. A deep, startled anger flared in his eyes. “Has someone hurt you?”

“You just hurt me.” She ran up the stone steps.

Smack dab into Antoine.

She bounced off his hard chest, and he grabbed her so she didn’t fall back down the steps. Green eyes swept over her face and then cut past her, below. “‘Hurt you’?” he said, in a voice like a knife blade.

Elena caught her balance, looking from him to Lucien, who had stepped out from under the shade of the lavoir to gaze up at them. “Not like that,” she hissed. “Antoine, you know he—it’s Lucien!”

“Men change a lot in fifteen years in a military branch known for being utter assholes to women,” Antoine said flatly. He hadn’t looked away from Lucien.

“I knew you fifteen years ago?” Lucien’s gaze flickered over her, completely failing to recognize her, and went back to Antoine. Who did seem to inspire a flicker of recognition. Or more than a flicker. Lucien’s whole manner was sharpening.

Elena shoved Antoine. “No!” And under her breath, “Shut up, Antoine.”

“I did know you,” Lucien realized. But still his attention seemed torn between her and Antoine.

Nice to know she was so riveting here. “I grew up around here,” she said impatiently. Mostly. “I was six years behind you in school, so no, you wouldn’t remember me.” If Antoine didn’t jog his memory. She gave Antoine a filthy warning look.

“Oh.” Lucien looked a little confused. “You would have been a kid, then.”

“Exactly.” She nodded firmly.

He ran that long, searching gaze over her, the one that made her feel as if he could analyze her body for data like a futuristic robot, but didn’t seem to come up with any face match results. Antoine, though…Lucien looked back at him, blue-gray eyes gaining a dangerous look that she realized she had never seen turned on her. Not even when he was furious. “Who the hell are you?” he said.

“No one you would know.” Antoine held his eyes coolly. “Antoine Vallier.”

“How old are you?” Lucien said inexplicably.

“Why?” Antoine said, edged.

“A year older than me,” Elena said. “Why are you guys fighting?” She tugged on Antoine’s arm, and Lucien’s gaze went to where Antoine held her and her hand covered his.

“Merde, look in a damn mirror sometime, Elena,” Antoine said abruptly, sounding frustrated beyond belief.

Elena faltered, looking up at him uncertainly. Wasn’t Antoine kind of like her brother? When her body started changing and all the world of men grew so very dangerous for her, when she never knew if a foster brother or foster father might try to corner her as soon as she got alone, Antoine had always been safe. Always.

Like Lucien, only closer. Less like a safe crush and more like a safe brother.

She looked from one to the other.

Lucien held out a hand, palm up. What? She felt as if she’d become a toy in a tug of war. Especially as those blue eyes held hers and…gentled in a way that pulled her so strongly. “I need to talk to you privately,” Lucien said. His voice had changed, quieter, more soothing than it had been a moment ago when he’d been upset.

She hesitated, cursing herself for wanting to go right back down and put her hand in his. Seriously, what are you, a dog? A little petting and it doesn’t matter he just kicked you?

“No.” Antoine tightened his grip on her arm.

She looked up at him incredulously. “How the hell is that your decision? Merde, Antoine. What’s wrong with you?”

He looked down at her, and there was the tiniest pause as he regrouped behind that cool control he liked to keep over himself. “I need to talk to you, too,” he said. Also quietly. Meeting her eyes.

Oh.

Elena glanced between him and Lucien again, while Lucien’s eyes narrowed on Antoine as if the man had just painted a big, bright target on his chest.

“Okay,” she said slowly. Antoine was Antoine, after all. They’d been sticking by each other for a long time, when no one else was around to do it. “Maybe later?” she said to Lucien doubtfully.

She was not at all sure she was willing to be Lucien’s emotional punching bag, even if she was partly responsible for him being in this situation. “It’s not my fault, though,” she said suddenly, as she started to walk away with Antoine. She turned back. “It’s yours.”

“What?” Lucien stared at her.

“That you’re in this situation. You chose to leave and make no contact for fifteen years. That’s not my fault. That’s yours.”

Lucien’s jaw locked. He glared at her as if she was doing herself no favors in his eyes.

“Come on, Elena,” Antoine said gently and dropped his hand to the small of her back, guiding her away.

Was it her imagination, or did his fingers shift against her back in a particular way? She shot a suspicious glance up at Antoine. “Did you just shoot a bird at him?”

“Who, me?” Antoine said blandly.