7. Eau de Rose
EAU DE ROSE
*the petals are most fragrant right before they wilt.
W innifred Lyons wasn’t the only one in the family who never seemed to age. Lucas had looked the same for ten years. While his brother had transformed from a lanky teenager into a bona fide hunk, Lucas seemed carved from stone.
Even now, dressed in the same black tux as the last time we’d spoken, before I’d left for Paris—one of the only times we’d spoken—it was like no time had passed.
He had the same short, neatly trimmed dark hair, the same broad body that was just a little too tall, the same deep-set eyes that, even in the dim light of the greenhouse, swirled like a thunderstorm lurking on the horizon.
Immediately, the temperature dropped. I honestly wondered if the bright pink camellias behind him were going to shrink.
Oddly, though, I didn’t think the goose bumps that had just broken out on my arms were from the sudden chill.
Maybe it was the champagne, or because I’d already taken a verbal lashing from one of his family members, or maybe just that I was a Zola, but I felt braver than before.
I stood taller under his imperious gaze. Unafraid to meet him head-on.
Who was I tonight?
White pea gravel crunched under Lucas’s feet as he approached. His head tipped to the side.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only meant that it would be a pity if this”—he nodded subtly over my dress and, I guessed, the other changes in my appearance—“happened just once every ten years. Though if tonight is the only night for it, I’m a lucky man.”
Our eyes met, and the force of the cloud banks hiding in that expression seemed strong enough to push me over.
“I—what?” I breathed.
Had Lucas Lyons just paid me a compliment? Other than the short, but strangely intimate conversation we’d shared before I left for Paris, the only other words I’d ever heard Lucas say were “now” and “coffee.”
Actually, that wasn’t fair. Lucas had the reputation of ruthlessness and a nonexistent heart, but when I thought about it, he’d never been anything but courteous with me and other staff members.
Unlike his parents, who treated me as if I were invisible unless I was doing something wrong, Lucas had always greeted me by name.
He’d always said thank you when I served his food or picked up his laundry. He was distant, but unfailingly polite.
It still didn’t explain why that had just come out of his mouth, though.
He seemed to notice my bewilderment.
“Er, we ,” he corrected himself as he turned toward the non-blooming orchid. “Daniel, in particular, is quite lucky.”
At the mention of Daniel, I looked around Lucas, expecting to see his brother enter. “Where is he? Is everything all right?”
“Something came up. There’s been an accident.”
My hand found my mouth. “Is everything okay?”
“Daniel’s fine. Senator Hubbard might be another story.” Lucas shrugged, an uncharacteristically boyish move. “He slipped on his toupee and ended up with a concussion.”
“He slipped on his what?”
“A wind came up and blew it straight off. The senator was walking too quickly across the dance floor, stepped on his hairpiece, and went flying into the punch. He took out four waiters. Everyone ended up in the pool.”
He was so serious that I almost felt bad for wanting to laugh. But then I saw it, subtle, but there. A dimple in Lucas’s left cheek.
Those eyes met mine again; a bit of his own dark starlight glimmered through the clouds.
“It’s not funny, Marie,” he chided, though the dimple deepened. “Errant hairpieces are a legitimate hazard.”
I folded my lips together, trying unsuccessfully to maintain my composure. “Clearly.”
“The senator might have a head injury, and if that happens, he’ll certainly take it out on the industry. Toupee sales across the country may suffer.” He couldn’t quite hide the way his mouth twitched. “Daniel’s taking him to the hospital.”
Immediately, my amusement faded. “Daniel left?”
Lucas nodded. “He and Emma Hubbard—that’s the senator’s daughter—are…friends, and the senator is the head of the appropriations committee. It was the right thing for him to do.”
I didn’t know what any of those things had to do with one another. All I knew was that this night was wasted now that Daniel was gone.
I might as well go find that bath.
“I thought this might help.” Lucas held up a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
I peered at them, then looked back at him. “Um…why?”
The dimple appeared again. It was the same as Daniel’s, but deeper, almost like a fresh cut. I resisted the urge to press my finger into it.
“I was sent,” Lucas said as he opened the bottle with a loud pop, “to take care of you.”
“Like a babysitter?”
“Like a brother.” He proceeded to pour me another glass of the expensive tipple. “Cheers.”
A fourth glass of champagne.
Guilt chimed through me as I looked at the golden liquid, though I couldn’t say why.
“Everything all right?” I found Lucas watching me. “You don’t have to drink that if you would prefer not to.” He blinked. “It occurs to me that I’ve never seen you drink before tonight. Not even at the staff Christmas party.”
“Well, usually I don’t.”
He seemed genuinely surprised. “No?”
I shook my head. “No. Other than a little wine at communion, I’ve never been much of a drinker. You wouldn’t be either if drinking killed your dad and put your mom in jail for twenty years.”
The words toppled out before I could stop them. Good lord, that was revealing a bit much. Lucas had come in here to convey a quick message, not to hear my family’s sordid history. I shut my mouth, but not before shock flickered through those dark eyes.
“Christ. I didn’t know.” He started to pull back the glass, but I found shaking my head.
No. I didn’t want to go back there. My whole life, my siblings and I had been treated differently when people discovered what had happened with our parents. Joni and I got the majority of that pity. “Practically orphans,” they called us when they thought we weren’t listening. “Fatherless children.”
Like that was all we could ever be.
“It’s all right.” I seized the flute and took a hasty gulp. The champagne burned going down. “I’ve already started. And it’s a party, right?”
Lucas looked skeptical but allowed me to drink anyway, then filled his own glass, though only a few sips’ worth. We watched each other while we drank. The stars in his eyes came out again.
They weren’t the luminous, tropical blue of his brother’s, but there was something about the brewing storm that invited me in just the same.
“Does he do this a lot?” I meandered about the plants, drink in hand. “Send girls here to meet him?”
One of Lucas’s dark brows arched as he followed me. “I think you know the answer to that. You followed him to the end once, didn’t you?”
My cheeks heated. “I wasn’t in his closet because?—”
I cut myself off when his brow lifted even more. I wasn’t sure how Lucas knew what had been going on in that bedroom before he entered, but obviously he did. Just like he knew I’d heard it all.
And he had been gentleman enough not to mention it until now.
“I went there to say goodbye, not hide in his dirty laundry,” I muttered as I turned to face a gardenia, its shy petals just emerging for the end of summer. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Of course not.”
I turned, and in that moment, I realized he knew . I couldn’t have said how, exactly that arrow-straight gaze could see right through me, but it did. Without a shadow of a doubt, Lucas Lyons knew more about me than I’d ever thought possible.
He knew I’d been waiting in that room for Daniel.
He knew I was here to see Daniel tonight.
He knew that I’d been desperately in love with his brother for ten long years.
“You don’t disapprove?” I found myself asking.
Lucas tipped his head back and forth. “I can’t say it’s my favorite idea in the world, for obvious reasons.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Me waiting for Daniel? Or being in love with him?
“Because I work for you?” I guessed.
Lucas snorted. It was surprisingly cute. “Ah, no. If my family were going to get on that high horse, we’d all fall off, starting with the woman who hired you. She was the old gardener’s daughter, you know.”
My eyes popped open. “Your mom was the gardener’s daughter at Prideview?”
Lucas looked like he wanted to spit out his champagne. “Absolutely not. My mother grew up on a ranch outside of Santa Fe. She and my father weren’t together long. Winnifred’s father, though, worked for my grandfather here at Prideview.”
A wave of astonishment washed over me.
“You didn’t know that Winnifred is my stepmother?”
I probably should have, but I didn’t. I could hear Joni tsking at me: This is what comes from being a shut-in, Mimi.
At fifteen, I wouldn’t have cared about this kind of gossip, bewildered as I was by Daniel and a shiny new paycheck. Ten years later, most of the staff here probably assumed I knew this detail. After all, we were the keepers of the family’s secrets.
It made sense now that I thought about it. Lucas was much older than Daniel, and other than blue eyes, basic stature, and a similar dimple, they looked nothing alike.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t. I’m not very good about things like that.”
“Things like what?” His mouth twisted wryly. “Dirty gossip?”
I shrugged but nodded. “Yeah.”
Lucas looked at me hard for a moment. I held his gaze until the lines on his face softened.
His next move caught me by surprise. Gently, he took my mostly full champagne glass and set it down, along with his own, on a concrete bench. When he turned back, his hand was outstretched.
Just like his brother’s.
“He said he owed you another dance. I’m just following orders.”
Unsure of what to do, I stared at the hand until I hesitantly put mine in it.
Lucas pulled me close and led me in a simple two-step, our feet crunching in time with the lilting music still audible from the party.
No longer the familiar bars of “The Way You Look Tonight.” But I had a sneaking suspicion I’d remember this song forever anyway.
“I can understand why he’s smitten.” Lucas’s dark eyes flickered over my face, pausing on my bare shoulders. I tried to ignore the way his gaze set everything alight. “I would have been too, had I seen you first. Half the damn party was staring at you the moment you arrived.”
I bit my lip. “That’s ridiculous. You didn’t even see when I arrived.”
His broad palm stretched across the whole of my bare back, then led me through a turn that was so sudden, it stole my breath as it forced me to follow effortlessly.
Lucas moved in that way, I realized. All at once, or not at all.
In other words, he was a hell of a lead.
I found myself flush against him, close enough that I felt his heart beating and smelled the sweet hints of mint and champagne on his breath. He didn’t wear cologne, like Daniel. Instead, his scent, mixture of soap and musk and something all his own, was indelibly him.
His breath heated the nape of my neck as he leaned down to rumble into my ear. “Nine thirty-four p.m. Through the back door alongside another couple. Nathan Hunt, escorting a woman who could only be your sister.”
I allowed myself to be turned again. “That’s Joni. She’s a dancer. Everyone notices her.”
“I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd now, and I doubt anyone else could either. We were all looking at you.”
My breath came up short. This was…what was he doing? It wasn’t flirting. Lucas Lyons didn’t flirt. He gave dry observations that happened to sound like compliments.
So why were his words causing goose bumps of pleasure all over my skin?
“You don’t see it, do you?”
I blinked up at him. “See what?”
I waited for his answer while he led me around a few more turns.
I felt dizzy again. It was probably the champagne.
Not the press of his hand between my shoulder blades nor the muscle of his thigh when it brushed between mine.
Not the way his stare seemed to pin me against him, nor the way I couldn’t quite remember the exact shade of Daniel’s eyes when I was looking at Lucas’s.
“You’re mesmerizing,” he told me.
My mouth fell open. “I—I am?”
Of all the things I expected anyone to call me, mesmerizing had never been one of them.
“It’s just a dress.” Vaguely, I wondered why I needed to deflect the compliment. “I found it at an estate sale.”
“Well, it looks like couture on you. You’re not meant to bloom for one night, Marie. I have a feeling that whatever change you went through in Paris, it’s just getting started.”
I shied but couldn’t quite look away. “I don’t know about that.”
His dimple appeared again, followed by an impossibly sweet smile that warmed Lucas’s face so much, I swore I could feel joy heating my back through his fingertips.
He leaned down. “I do.”
And then he did the most shocking thing of all.
Lucas Lyons, CEO, patriarch, stolid grump, and brother of my one true love…kissed me.
I startled at first. Shivered in his arms despite faltering into that warm touch. Not just because of the kiss, but also at the realization that for all his stoniness, a part of Lucas Lyons was soft .
Like the lion for which he was named, he growled, a deep and dark sound from the back of his throat that woke me from the last of my life’s old slumber.
Then, fully alert, I did the strangest thing.
I kissed him back.