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village.
    Matt turned back to the curly-haired enemy invader who had sprung up out of the blue. Looking so damn cute and innocent like that, too. He’d kissed her. “You can’t—Tante Colette gave that house to you ?”
    Bouclettes took a step back.
    Had he roared that last word? His voice echoed back at him, as if the valley held it, would squeeze it in a tight fist and never let it free. The air constricted, merciless bands around his sick head and stomach.
    “After all that?” He’d just spent the last five months working on that house. Five months. Oh, could you fix the plumbing, Matthieu? Matthieu, that garden wall needs mending. Matthieu, I think the septic tank might need to be replaced. Because she was ninety-six and putting her life in order, and she was planning to pass it on to him, right? Because she understood that it was part of his valley and meant to leave this valley whole. Wasn’t that the tacit promise there, when she asked him to take care of it? “ You ? Colette gave it to you ?”
    Bouclettes stared at him, a flash of hurt across her face, and then her arms tightened, and her chin went up. “Look, I don’t know much more than you. My grandfather didn’t stick around for my father’s childhood, apparently. All we knew was that he came from France. We never knew we had any heritage here.”
    Could Tante Colette have had a child they didn’t even know about? He twisted to look at his grandfather again, the one man still alive today who would surely have noticed a burgeoning belly on his stepsister. Pépé was frowning, not saying a word.
    So—“To you ?” Tante Colette knew it was his valley. You didn’t just rip a chunk out of a man’s heart and give it to, to…to whom exactly?
    “To you ?” Definitely he had roared that, he could hear his own voice booming back at him, see the way she braced herself. But—who the hell was she? And what the hell was he supposed to do about this? Fight a girl half his size? Strangle his ninety-six-year-old aunt? How did he crush his enemies and defend this valley? His enemy was…she was so cute. He didn’t want her for an enemy, he wanted to figure out how to overcome last night’s handicap and get her to think he was cute, too. Damn it, he hadn’t even found out yet what those curls felt like against his palms.
    And it was his valley.
    Bouclettes’ chin angled high, her arms tight. “You seemed to like me last night.”
    Oh, God. Embarrassment, a hangover, and being knifed in the back by his own aunt made for a perfectly horrible combination. “I was drunk .”
    Her mouth set, this stubborn, defiant rosebud. “I never thought I’d say this to a man, but I think I actually liked you better drunk.” Turning on her heel, she stalked back to her car.
    Matt stared after her, trying desperately not to be sick in the nearest rose bush. Family patriarchs didn’t get to do that in front of the members of their family.
    “I told my father he should never let my stepsister have some of this valley,” his grandfather said tightly. “I told him she couldn’t be trusted with it. It takes proper family to understand how important it is to keep it intact. Colette never respected that.”
    His cousins glanced at his grandfather and away, out over the valley, their faces gone neutral. They all knew this about the valley: It couldn’t be broken up. It was their patrimoine , a world heritage really, in their hearts they knew it even if the world didn’t, and so, no matter how much they, too, loved it, they could never really have any of it. It had to be kept intact. It had to go to Matt.
    The others could have the company. They could have one hell of a lot more money, when it came down to liquid assets, they could have the right to run off to Africa and have adventures. But the valley was his.
    He knew the way their jaws set. He knew the way his cousins looked without comment over the valley, full of roses they had come to help harvest because all their