A Wish Upon Jasmine (34 page)

What fit with what she knew of him? That he was socially and professionally savvy and had not only exquisite manners but a bone-deep, true-to-the-heart courtesy where women were concerned. That he was highly photogenic, and models were highly photogenic, and cameramen were always looking for the good shot. That if he was speaking to someone and suddenly they found themselves being photographed, he would hardly shove her away or humiliate her, but would pose calmly, used to that kind of thing.

She shook her head and pushed the phone back across the counter. “He’s dating me,” she said firmly. “That’s why the Rosiers haven’t given me any trouble. That’s why they’ve been very kind.”

Because they really love Damien quite a lot, even if he’s at some stage in his life where it’s hard for him to understand that.

She picked up a bottle, rubbing the dust free from it in that automatic worry motion that reassured her so much. One, two, thr—

“Damien Rosier is dating you,” Antoine Vallier said, startled. His green eyes flicked over her once. “
Damien
is,” he repeated, as if to confirm she knew which cousin was which.

“Damien is,” said a voice behind him, and relief and happiness just seemed to burst wide open inside her and fill the shop, as if she’d dropped another bottle of bitter almonds.

Antoine Vallier moved quickly to the side, turning, not like a man alarmed, but like a man who definitely didn’t want Damien Rosier standing right behind him. He didn’t want that kind of enemy at his back.

Damien’s gaze held hers just for a second, his own somber, intent, and…and
joyful
. And then his eyes zeroed in on Antoine Vallier and went cold as ice.

Oh. Wow. And she’d thought Damien had been cold with
her.
She’d had no idea. All this time, every time, no matter how mad he was, he’d never taken out his full ruthlessness on her. “Antoine Vallier,” Damien said, water-under-ice dangerous. “Are you trying to stir up trouble between me and my—Jasmin?”

“I didn’t know there was trouble to stir.” Cool green eyes held gray-green. “You work fast.”

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

“Your emotional issues aren’t,” Antoine agreed, with a little bored moue that was
exactly
like Damien’s. He inclined his head to Jasmin. “But if you need legal advice on how best to protect your ownership of this property, how to sell it, or how to set up a business in France, let me know.”

“She’s got me,” Damien said, hard. “If she wants to establish a business. And an entire phalanx of Rosier SA lawyers I’m happy to let her consult.”

“The Rosiers have infinite resources, of course,” Antoine Vallier said with a thin, cool smile. “All of which are devoted to Rosier interests. No stranger to the family would come out of that kind of little favor stripped of everything, would she?”

“Are you
sure
the two of you aren’t related?” Jess asked suddenly. The resemblance in the two profiles as the men faced off against each other was striking.

Antoine’s face blanked. Poker face. Exactly like Damien’s.

“What?” Damien recoiled. “
No.
” He stared at Jess a second, then glanced once, sharply, at Antoine, then frowned.

Antoine’s face was as unreadable as it was possible to be, a faint, cool smile on his lips as if everything in this room now bored him.

“Look, I appreciate the offer,” Jess said to him. “But I trust Damien.”

A quick shifting in the air, as if the whole room took a breath and light slanted in.

“And I also really appreciate you stopping by to check on me. But I just—right now, I need to talk to Damien.”

“I’m not your lawyer at this point,” Antoine said. “But if you’ll allow me one bit of advice pro bono…be careful.”

Damien pivoted on him like a knife striking. “Get the hell out,” he said, low and deadly.

Antoine looked to Jess.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “This is very private.”

His lips twisted once. He nodded, held Damien’s eyes a moment, and then strolled past him out through the outer shop. They heard the street door that Jess usually left slightly ajar thump closed.

Damien looked at her. Their eyes held, and already, in that long moment, the trembling tension that had filled her stomach for the past week eased a little.

“You weren’t out picking up beautiful models this weekend, were you?” she said, trying for lightness.

His eyebrows slashed together. “Did that bastard claim I was? I’ll fucking—”

“Journalists posted photos of the Abbaye launch.”

“What, and I was in some of them?
Merde
, Jess, you know what those things are like. I must be in hundreds of photos with models from those things. Anyone would think I slept with a different model every nigh—” He broke off. His eyes searched hers.

“Yes,” Jess said wryly. “A woman who grew up in the perfume industry would have to be a complete idiot and…and kind of cowardly, to believe in photos like that. Over what she really knew of the person in the photo.”

Damien took a deep, slow breath and released it. He took a step forward, holding her eyes. “Or kind of sweet, and kind of shy, in her sarcastic way, and with a history of losing what she most wanted to hold onto.”

She bit the inside of her lip. “I don’t lose it.” She held up the bottle she had been polishing. “I put it in here.”

He shook his head and came toward her, both hands held out. “Terribly tight living quarters in a bottle. I know I’m a lot more trouble outside of it, but…you sure you wouldn’t rather have the real thing?”

That made her eyes sting. “You know I would.”

He picked her up and set her on the counter and bent his head to rest it between her breasts. And just stayed there, a deep breath moving through his body, and then another.

The anxiety that had trembled in the pit of her stomach for a week now eased all away, almost in time with the easing of his own muscles. She circled her arms around him, petting her fingertips through his hair.

He made a tiny nuzzling motion into her chest at the stroking.

Peace. Ease. Utter relief. It seeped through her bones, ran down her body from the nape of her neck in slow shivers, eased everything about her. Eased everything about
him
, so much tension running out of his body and dropping away.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he murmured at last. “I just—I’m sorry.”

Of course he was. Of course he would accept his own mistakes and apologize for them. She had never known what a special thing that was until she met him.

“You have very thin skin.” She could wound him so easily.

He gave a little laugh into her chest. “No one has ever accused me of that before.”

She petted him, enjoying that silky texture of his hair, the line of his back bent over her breasts. “Maybe it’s only thin in this one spot.”

“Right here,” he agreed, sliding his arms around her.

“I could have called, to.” Except that she’d needed that time to think and process just as much as he had. “But it was easier for me to make perfumes. Even though some of those perfumes—”

“Took all your heart and courage?” He kissed her collarbone.

Yes. They had. To make a baby star like her father—to offer it to Damien. To make a wish. To slip herself into his own fragrance, like its heart. That had taken every drop of courage she had.

And yet it had filled her with dreaming, with pride, with conviction, the more and more she did. She was as strong as every risk she took.

He lifted his head. “Jasmin. About the business help—I won’t take over. I won’t try to change what you do. You tell me what kind of business you want—a little shop where you customize perfumes for individual clients and mix your own ingredients by hand or a niche perfume company that sells all around the world—and I’ll
enhance
that. I’ll make sure it can work. That’s what I do.”

Right. And it was as important to him to give that to her as it was to her to give him baby stars caught in a bottle. She nodded, and he let his head relax back against her breasts. The last drop of tension eased from his body.

“I’m
not
just trying to strip you of all you have,” he said, muffled. “No matter what that bastard Vallier says. I’m trying to give you something, too.”

“You give me everything,” she said quietly. It almost hurt to say it, he gave her so much. She’d had to work so hard to keep any light shining in her life until she met him—and then it was as if he had ignited her, filling her up with so much light she radiated out to the edges of the universe.

Like he was turning
her
into the star.
I love you
. “You make me feel like I…shine.”

He lifted his head at that, for a quick search of her face. Then he kissed her quick and fierce and pressed his face back into her breasts again.

“Damien.” She ran her hands down his back. “I think somewhere deep down I must have decided to try for you again the day I bought a ticket for Grasse. Or hoped to try again and just never admitted it to myself. And I
have
tried. I haven’t backed away from one single challenge you’ve thrown at me—not scents and not riverbanks. But it never even crossed my mind that I could
keep
you. Maybe a memory of you”—she touched a vial holding one of his trials—“but not
you
.”

Against her throat, she could feel his eyebrows crinkling.

“I can reach for you,” she said. “If I’m lucky and I stretch far enough, I can actually touch you for a while. But it’s never even occurred to me that I can
hold on.
So many things have slipped through my fingers.”

For a moment, he said nothing, still breathing her skin. Then he straightened slowly, gazing at her very seriously.

“But I’m going to try anyway,” she said firmly. “I like trying for you. It’s just believing I can get you that’s the hard part. You have to be tolerant with me about that.”

“Would this help?” He pulled a small box out of his pocket and held it out to her, opening the lid.

Shock ran through her. For a second she could neither think nor feel. Then her heart started to beat very hard. In the box was a diamond ring, the diamond large and absolutely flawless, catching the light even in that dim shop and radiating it back at her.

“It’s not a star,” Damien said regretfully. Like he
still
believed he should be able to catch actual stars for the people he loved. “But it’s the best I could do.”

Oh, Damien. She pressed her hands to her face. Her eyes stung.

“To show you that I know how to hold on.” Damien took one hand from her cheek, linking his fingers with hers while he still held the box, tightening until their knuckles pressed together. “Hard.”

She was shivering inside, this growing vibration that was going to show in a minute, crumple her to the ground like a building in an earthquake. She stared at the ring. The platinum band imitated a jasmine vine, lifting up that diamond star like a white flower.

Oh.

“If I put a ring on your finger, you can turn your hand any way you like, but you can’t drop it. It’s going to stay,” Damien said.

Her voice shook. “I would
never
deliberately drop you again, Damien. Not now that I know you. That was a very bad time.”

But that ring scared the freaking hell out of her. Like if she reached out and took it, his car would go off a cliff tomorrow and
she’d
take cyanide and die. Oh, God.

“But if you’re not ready for that,” he said, “I got this.” He set a businessman’s leather satchel on the counter and pulled out a long box, opening it.

A delicate diamond bracelet, with the same jasmine motif.

What? What in the world?

But…it
did
seem kind of…safer than the ring. Was it safer to him, too? Was that why he had bought both?

“Or this.” He set the bracelet on the counter and proffered another box. This time an exquisite necklace, the jasmine its pendant.

What?
Her heart felt like it was about to strangle her—beating in her throat like it wanted to leap out of her body. It pounded in her head. What was he doing?

“A handful of wildflowers isn’t what you need, is it?”

“I love flowers.” She was a perfumer!

“But they die. You love them, but they die. And you have a hard time believing something beautiful can last.”

“I’m trying,” she said immediately. “It’s not you, it’s—”

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Right. Just like the first time, I took it personally, but I really should have been paying attention to you.”

“You mean you didn’t sacrifice yourself enough?” She shook her head. “Damien—”

“These don’t die.” He took the bracelet out of its box, so that the diamonds glinted, delicate and flawless, able to shine even in the dim light in the workroom. “Diamonds are forever.”

She almost smiled at that, but then he fastened the bracelet around her right wrist. It took her breath away, more beautiful than anything she had ever imagined gracing her body. Except maybe a twining vine of actual jasmine as his fingers locked with hers and his body moved inside her.

“I know I’m just using money, when you’re in here pouring your heart into your art. But…I’m good at that. Money.” He took the necklace out of the box. Calluses brushed her nape as he fastened it, stroking down the chain to settle the diamond jasmine flower halfway between the hollow of her throat and the swell of her breasts. She caught the scent of lavender oil on his wrist. “It’s solid. Money. I can give you something that you can be sure you can keep.”

“I want to keep
you
.” It felt good to say it.
Yes. That’s what I want and what I will fight to do.

“But when you aren’t sure you can,” he said. “When you have those fears and doubts, and maybe I’m not around or I’m thinking of something else and not paying attention, you can touch these. Like I can smell your lavender, when I’m up in Paris and I need to remember someone cares.”

The diamond bracelet fell with unfamiliar delicacy against her wrist when she set her hand on his chest. “You’re giving me what you’re best at.”

“Isn’t that what you just gave me? In those bottles you left on my desk? That’s the best present anyone has ever given me in my entire life.”