“The kids are very fond of you,” she teased gently. “I didn’t know you were the paternal type.”
Her remark had the unexpected effect of making. Luke duck his head in obvious embarrassment. “The children are important to all of us,” he muttered.
Joey couldn’t quite keep the amusement out of her voice. “And I’ve noticed that everyone pronounces your name differently here. ‘Luc.’ ”
Clearly relieved by her shift to a more neutral subject, Luke looked up, the drawn lines of his face relaxing. “My mother named me Luc, but I found it more expedient to anglicize it when I grew older. Most Outsiders manage to mangle even so simple a name.”
Joey drew herself up in mock offense “Are you implying I couldn’t pronounce your real name properly?”
At Luke’s wry headshake, she added, “And do you think of me as one of these ‘Outsiders’?”
The question carried more significance than she had meant it to. Luke’s muscles tensed where her hand rested on his arm. For a long moment he looked into her eyes in that way of his, so intently that her breath caught, and she could not pull away. At last, with a deep sigh, he dropped his eyes again. “I don’t know.”
Almost of their own volition Joey’s fingers slipped from his forearm. She felt stung by his answer, but also more deeply puzzled. As in the conversations she had witnessed between Luke and his grandmother, she knew there were subtexts to his words—vital ones—that she was missing. More missing pieces that must be found.
She deliberately turned away from searching for them. There was still time “You should help me with my French, so I won’t be such a stranger,” she said lightly. The momentary tension between them relaxed. “Val Cache—that means Valley…”
Luke shifted his elbow on the table to allow one of the village matrons to clear away his plate “Hidden Valley.” His smile was a little crooked, but it was a smile. “A simple name, but appropriate.”
“Very appropriate,” Joey concurred. “How many people even know about this place?”
Touching her shoulder lightly—a touch that sent a stab of sensation all the way down to her fingertips—Luke pushed away from the table and stood. “Not many,” he admitted quietly. “And that’s how the people here prefer it.”
“Outsiders,” Joey muttered. Luke seemed not to hear as he led her across the room, pausing once or twice to exchange bonjours with friends and family. At the door he paused, turning to sweep his gaze across the room as if to take it all in, lock it so deeply into memory that it could never be lost. As if he never expected to see it again. Joey shivered at the blast of cold air that invaded the room in the wake of departing villagers.
Luke’s familiar, intense warmth kept the cold at bay as he walked her across the village common, his arm brushing hers, their footsteps falling into a safe and comforting rhythm. The quiet after constant noise was almost overwhelming, and Joey was content to savor it, as she savored Luke beside her. When he would have left her at the door to his grandmother’s cabin, she caught at his arm, held him there with more will than physical strength, until he had no choice but to look down at her.
She felt herself beginning to lose her way in his strange, pale eyes, but now it brought no unease. A muscle jumped in his jaw, skin stretched taut across his high cheekbones—she knew instinctively that he was poised on the edge of flight. But he stood unmoving, and she waited until his hands came up slowly to brush her arms, to burn her skin through the sweater and pause there on the edge of embrace. She turned her face up, her breath coming faster, willing him to read in her eyes the things she could not say aloud. Her hands slid up of their own accord, resting on his narrow hips, moving up over the firm hardness of his torso, splaying on his chest. His heart pounded under her palms.
“Y etait temps que vous r’veniez!” The cracking interruption of Bertrande’s voice behind Joey made them jump apart in the same instant. Joey nearly stumbled, a firm grip caught and steadied her. The old woman’s not-unpleasant breath puffed against her cheek. “Easy, my little owl. Time for bed.” Bertrande turned to Luke, who hovered in the doorway looking considerably shaken and almost forlorn. “As for you—” Joey could not miss the gleam in the old woman’s eye as she looked back and forth between them. “You will have time for that later. Allez. Go!”