A Wish Upon Jasmine (17 page)

He could hear Jess shifting around, shoes forgotten again, her feet making almost no sound. Slouching in this chair while she was on her feet working felt oddly intimate. Like a man might stretch out on a couch after a hard day and not come to his feet when his wife entered the room but just smile at her and maybe form his lips into a kiss to invite her to come to him, to bend down, to brush his lips with happiness.

I’m here. You’re here. It’s been a long day, but now we’re together.

But at the core of that shadowy, quiet intimacy, his stomach knotted. He kept his breath calm, his eyes closed, his body slouched. No need to let anyone else see his nerves as he waited to see what fragrance she had made for him this time.

He almost hadn’t come, he’d dreaded the moment of truth so much. The slap when every raw ripping open of himself at lunch was thrown back in his face. He’d gotten to the shop so late that she’d been visibly surprised to see him, coming down from upstairs where, apparently, she had been making the bed with the pressed sheets Tante Colette had given her after lunch.

He thought about helping her spread those lavender-scented sheets. Thought about looking at her across the bed as their hands swept over cotton, tucked it under corners, made that bed ready…

He tried to channel
gorgeous
and
sexy
. So sexy that the next time she walked near him in that damn wannabe-a-model red skirt she had put on sometime that afternoon, he could just catch her by the waist and pull her down astride him, shove that tight skirt up and find her panties…all…wet. Oh, yeah, and he’d—

A scent wafted under his nose, the strip brushing his lips, and he jerked, his eyes flaring open.

“Sorry.” Jess drew back. In French, her accent was almost perfect, thanks to her father, but America slipped into it in the stretch of certain vowels. “Were you falling asleep?”

“Of course not.” Because this wasn’t an intimate moment full of trust, this chair wasn’t a couch at the end of a long day, the brush across his lips wasn’t a kiss, and so he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t relax.

“Do you want something for your head?”

Yes. He did. He wanted her to dampen a cloth with cold water, he wanted her to fold it and lay it over his eyes and rest her hand on his forehead, he wanted to just sit there, like that, with the cold on his eyes and the gentle, shaded warmth of this room in the hot August, the scents stirring while she moved around him, letting him soak up the peace. “I’m fine.”

His head didn’t hurt at all, in fact. He just wanted that cloth anyway.

“Did you take that Advil?”

“My migraines have been greatly exaggerated,” he lied, and took her wrist, bringing the scent strip back to his nose.

He braced just a second before he breathed. Titanium again.

God damn it.

He started to release her wrist.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Wait for it.”

His jaw set. But he brought the strip back to his nose, forcing himself to learn this salutary lesson on opening up.

And then…his hand slowly relaxed on her wrist, his thumb stroking her pulse unconsciously, as his head cocked. And then his stomach tumbled, and something vulnerable tried to escape, as this sweetness reached him, politely hidden by that titanium. This elusive, dancing breeze of sweetness, like the whisper of coolness in the shade on a hot Provençal day, protected by walls.

“Is that fig?”

“Maybe a tiny bit.” Her eyes were large in the dim room. He hoped to God he didn’t look as vulnerable as she did.

“Lavender?”

She smiled a little and didn’t answer.
Merde
, her mouth looked so sweet when she smiled. It made his own lips so hungry.

He couldn’t figure out all the scents. But the heart notes of the perfume were starting to come out, and unlike that titanium head note, it was this rich and yet simple heart, this gorgeous pure dappling of sun and shade, with steel still running through it like a sword plunged into dirt after a battle, and it made his throat tighten. He fought his own vulnerability, wanting to yank that sword out of the dirt and hold it up to ward everyone off.

“It will take a good thirty minutes for the base notes to come out,” she said. “Can I try it on your skin?”

His stomach clenched, at the thought of what the base notes might reveal, some deep-rooted betrayal of this moment of peace, and yet…he might be able to risk it. He held out his wrist for a spritz, tilted back his head for another, there at the vulnerable base of his throat. “Push-ups again?” he asked ironically.

Her gaze flickered to his torso and arms in a way that surged slow and hot through his blood.

His voice went deeper. He held her eyes. “Or shall we go straight to the arousal test?”

Yes. I want to do the arousal test. Pull you down astride me right here, shove that skirt up your waist, push your legs wide with my body, leave you all exposed to me.

Let’s go back to what we were good at.

Sex. Naked. When everything seemed possible and everything seemed true.

“We could go for a walk,” she said, soft and rapid.

It came from so far outside the box of his thinking that he stared at her. “A walk?”

A little flush touched her cheeks. She turned to neaten up her workspace. “Around town.”

A walk. Around town. Around his town—his beautiful, happy, stubbornly defended town. “Together?”

Her jaw set a little. She looked down at the bottles on her counter.

Come here
, even that hint of wounded vulnerability immediately made him think.
It’s all right. Come sit on my lap.

Preferably astride. Preferably with his hands insi—

“A walk.” His stomach eased. His head eased. Maybe even his heart. Slowly, his lips relaxed and even curled upward. He rose. Oh, thank God. She still had to tilt her head back to look up at him. He still could cling to that primitive, desperate power of being born a man.
“It’s a nice evening for a walk.”

***

He was doing it again. Seducing her. With these exquisite manners and this quiet care, as if he was picking a jasmine flower, trying to hold the flame on a candle without putting it out, cupping a dandelion without knocking away all its seeds before the wish could be blown.

As evening fell, the old Renaissance streets of Grasse were quietly active, shops shutting up while restaurants spilled their life and warmth into the street, everyone dining at the outside tables. No, not dining yet, Jess realized, except for a few tourists. Mostly hanging out with drinks or coffee with friends, before it was time to shift to meals.

People collected around a stand that served gelato-style ice cream of all flavors, including the flowers and herbs of the region—jasmine, lavender, rose, thyme. Damien glanced at her and opened a hand toward the stand, but her stomach felt full of flickering candle flames, tickling and scary, and she shook her head. Her heels and little skirt were hard to walk in, the skirt shortening her stride, the heels wobbling on cobblestones. She half wished she had worn a knit sundress and sandals and half wished she could just carry off sexy and sophisticated like one of his models, even when strolling on paving centuries old. Sexy and sophisticated required so much work and attention to unimportant things, like how much you ate and how you fixed your hair. It was a particular skill, requiring a certain amount of luck in your genetics and then, exactly like most other accomplishments, at least seventy-five percent hard work, practice, and persistence.

And she’d chosen to practice something else, something that mattered to her more. Those models who looked so great as they marketed her perfumes to the public could no more have made a perfume than she could have looked that sleek and alluring. They worked in symbiosis, she and those models, but she was the secret element of that symbiosis, the elusive magic, and they were the glamorous show.

So naturally, it made sense to assume that the elegant Damien Rosier might prefer the glamor.

And yet…here they both were. Together.

A couple of times, Damien caught her arm as she wobbled. His fingers would curve, warm and strong, around her upper arm or her elbow, for just one moment, holding her up. And then, always, they dropped away.

His hands slid into his pockets, where they could never accidentally brush hers.

People sat at tables under plane trees along the great Cours Honoré Cresp, children riding on a merry-go-round. Damien led them down the long esplanade to stop at the parapet, and they stood there, looking down at the more modern town, the great spill of lights toward Cannes.

The memory of standing on a terrace above New York, leaning against a railing as they talked, looking down at the dazzle of city lights, came back vividly.
Yes
, she thought.
Let’s go back to what we were good at.

Talking. Quiet. Care. Two strangers slowly offering each other sincerity.

Sex, also. She had to admit that they’d been
really
good at sex. Or Damien had, at least. Maybe she’d seemed pretty ordinary to him. A star or two above a one star rating, but nothing phenomenal.

The lights below were beautiful against the pink and dusk blue of the sky over the sea some ten miles away. Their arms on the parapet braced that careful distance apart, just like that night in New York, when they were strangers. Damien gazed toward the horizon, his profile so perfect he could have been built by Disney, except that there was too much real strength to that jaw, to the scar on his chin, the straight black lashes, the strong cheekbones and the way his lips seemed to default to a firmness that left those little lines at the corners. As if allowing them to soften was what took conscious effort.

No tension at the corners of his mouth that night in New York. None at all.

“It would have been like believing in magic, to believe in you,” she said suddenly.

“Yes.” His breath released roughly. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“In the morning. At night, it’s easier to believe in dreams.”

He glanced at her once at that and then looked toward the horizon again, where the pink grew thinner and thinner. She remembered his multiple attempts to speak to her, after the takeover announcement, the way he withdrew, his expression closing, from her attempts at cool sophistication. She remembered her father dying, and her company lost, and her whole world coming all to pieces while she tried to play it cool because, of all the stupid things, she cared what he
thought
of her.

“It’s night.” His voice was as velveted as darkness.

“Almost.” Her own voice felt like velvet, too.

A feeling grew in her, as if she was standing in the wings, getting ready to shove herself naked out on stage.

It would be nice if he took her hand, to lead her out on it.

That night, he’d seduced her, no question about that. All the moves had been his.

But this time, he made no moves at all. He was seducing her effortlessly…just by being him.

She stared at her fingers, stretching them to see if they held any courage.

So much courage in the history of her family. And she was afraid to touch a man’s wrist?

Not a villain of a man. Not a superficial player. But a man who carried chests down from the attic for his old aunt and tried to catch the moon for his mother and who may not have understood how easily wounded she could be six months ago but who hadn’t meant her any harm at all.

She took a breath and touched that strong forearm. It tensed under her fingers.

She curved her hand around it and lifted his arm, bringing his wrist to her nose. It made her a little dizzy to take for herself that right to touch him.

Was that scent him? Had she gotten him this time? “What do you think?” she asked him.

An artist’s question, always vulnerable. Lesson after lesson in the perfume industry had taught her cynicism—not to put her heart into her work like her father. To approach it like a chemistry formula, plug these notes in for success. To keep her critical distance. But this afternoon, working on this scent…some of her heart had snuck into it.

It was the fault of that little shop. It was the fault of that lunch in a garden with a woman who had risked her heart and her life time and again. It was…his fault. His fault for yanking her into his arms when she was hurting.

Damien braced. Why would he brace? But then he brought his wrist to his face and breathed the scent.

The tension eased from the corners of his lips. His gaze swept over her once, searching. “It’s got…stone in it,” he said, low. “Stone and sun and time.”

So that had worked. She bent her head, smiling a little.

“Depth.”

She nodded.

He focused on the view again. No lines at the corners of his mouth. In profile, that mouth even looked…uncertain.

No. Hard, elegant, ruthless Damien Rosier? Uncertain?

“Do you like it?” she asked nervously. An artist’s most painful question.

“I might.”

Not exactly enthusiastic awe. But his caution touched her, somehow. It gave her the courage to lift her hand to finger his open collar. “May I?”

He turned to face her, leaning on one elbow on the parapet, the angle of his body bringing his throat more easily to her level. She stepped in close and nestled her face between the panels of his shirt to breathe deeply.

The sweet warmth of his body.
A man should wear his fragrance wherever he wants to be kissed,
one of her mentors had once said. She wanted to close her eyes and let her head sink forward, just stay there forever, breathing his scent. Except…

“It’s not right.”

“No?” his voice sounded husky.

“It’s still not you!” She drew back, frowning up at him. “Damn it.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I think I like it.”

No. If she’d gotten it right, he wouldn’t
think
he liked it. His whole body would vibrate like a chord struck just right when its scent was on his skin.

“Well, what do you know about it?” she said crushingly. “Are you a perfumer? No. It’s
not
right. There’s something missing.”

His lips curved in the most aggravating way. Like a moneyman indulging an artist. “I guess you’ll have to try again.”